;tldr Beginning to use a new OS, even using a distro as friendly as Mint, is harder than the overall community says it is. The second there is a problem expect hours of consuming, likely outdated, information. That said I’m happy I switched.
I’m not a programmer. If you are someone who is unfamiliar with GNU/Linux you probably aren’t either. Good news: a week after you start using Linux you’ll feel like one! Here are some critical things I eventually learned while installing Ubuntu/Mint:
You should expect to use the terminal . Period. Something about your particular hardware or software setup may require special tweaks or install that requires typing. Anyone who even hints this isn’t the case is at best deluded. I know this is a deal-breaker for many people but I’d rather not waste your time.
Locations and commands are case-sensitive . -h means help -H Human-readable (or is it the other way around? More typing yay!). It’s in /etc/ X 11, not /etc/x11 (something almost impossible to see the difference of on a blurry 1080i resolution not being properly displayed).
While the basic user storage locations mimic what you are used to, the underlying system organization is completely impossible to navigate. Pertinent files can be scattered over several locations for whatever reason so don’t even bother trying to figure out a pattern and just follow guides. That said,
Guides helping you to navigate this jumbled mess are possibly outdated so check their dates or you may end up following directions and quite possibly break your installation when you add/remove/alter a file that used to be important but has been deprecated or relocated and now redundant. Speaking of which,
It is possible/probable your distro is effectively a skin of another older distro , so you should search the underlying distro directions too in case there aren’t any for the ‘skin’ you’re using.
All said and done, I am very happy to say I now have my Mint OS on a portable USB keychain that I can use on any PC (assuming TPM permission). The actual OS is pleasantly unobtrusive, nimble, and supports 90% of what I want to do with it. Critical failings seem to be completely relegated to proprietary software (for me, 1080i support was abandoned by all the graphics card developers years ago and I’m unable to either find older working drivers like I can in Win10, or find/figure out the tweaking needed to force the issue). Check all your mission critical programs to see if they are Linux compatible , or ‘simply’ learn to use the open-source competitor if they aren’t.
I learned that upgrading mint broke my video editing software and I had to go back to windows to work on one of my jobs. I also had some issues with networked SNES emulation (for ALTTPR) that I could never work out.
I can survive without SNES games, but not being able to update my os without worrying about breaking things I must do for my job is a deal breaker (I have 2 jobs as well, one of which is my own farm business, so time is a luxury I don’t have).
I can’t wait for this to stop being an issue and move fully to linux
You might prefer an immutable distro which don’t typically break on updates (and if they do you can easily rollback).
It’s a little confusing, at first you say you’ll need to use the terminal to correct “something about your particular hardware or software setup may require special tweaks or install that requires typing” then later you say “I now have my Mint OS on a portable USB keychain that I can use on any PC.”
It doesn’t seem these two statements could both be true. But regardless, I’m glad you appear to have found a working solution to whatever problem you were trying to solve. I believe the greatest strength of Linux is that in general the problems are solvable whereas in closed source systems they are often not and in fact are often discouraged either to make more money or just simply exert control.
People who have these complaints often have forgotten how hard it was to learn Windows and how hard it was to find info before XP lasted for 14 years. These are all the same problems you would have if you had never seen Windows before. For instance I don’t think you would be complaining about case sensitivity if you had not used a system that wasn’t first. Also, Windows itself is a “skin” on older OSs; Windows retained DOS compatibility for years and many of it’s quirks, like the case sensitive thing, are a result of that. Not to mention that the WinNT kernel was built on from the Win32 kernel (itself an upgrade of the Win16 kernel) and IBM’s OS/2. There are literally screens in Windows 11 that are the same screen they were in Windows 95, the format dialogue for instance.
In my experience having to use the terminal also applies to windows.
If you haven’t had to at least use sfc /scannow to fix the OS having randomly microsofted to shit I assume you’re not regularly using windows…
Also everything being where you least expect it. Did the program install to Program Files\program, Program Files\publisher\program, Program Files (x86)\program, Program Files (x86)\publisher\program, Program Files\Common Files\program, Program Files\Common Files\publisher\program, Program Files (x86)\Common Files\program, Program Files (x86)\Common Files\publisher\program, %appdata%\program, %appdata%\publisher\program, %localappdata%\program, %licalappdata%\publisher\program, C:\program…?
Are the files somewhere in My Documents? In the program’s installation folder? Somewhere in %appdata%? On the desktop? Kidnapped by OneDrive because you forgot to opt out of the “backup” that deletes your system folders and moves them to the cloud, only to immediately complain that you’re using too much space and have to pay a ransom to access them? Windows search certainly won’t help you find them, though it might give you similarly named bing results…And let’s not forget about system configuration… is the setting you’re looking for on the new settings app, the control panel, the registry, group policies, some weird powershell incantation, the task manager’s startup section (!?), the task scheduler, the services manager, the device manager, the computer manager, the disk manager, the old msconfig tool, some random contextual menu, some random management console add-on, some old forgotten executable or cpl in System32 (did you know the old windows 3.11 dialer is still there)…?
For every one of those options you’re almost guaranteed to find at least one or two settings that can only be configured through that particular tool, and I’m sure I’m forgetting some…the underlying system organization is completely impossible to navigate. Pertinent files can be scattered over several locations for whatever reason so don’t even bother trying to figure out a pattern
Good thing you don’t have to figure it out, because its standardized.
This is a better summary than many that are out there even still…
Is that file a bin or opt? oh, it’s an opt linked in bin. No no, it’s a usr/bin my bad.
Like I understand that people smarter than I felt this is the way, but you have to admit this is a lot if a newbie needs to know this for some reason. Thankfully, I don’t need to.
you can always use
which cmdto find where a program is located. if you’re looking for where to find your systems JDK for example you could runwhich java. you can userealpathon the output as well if you’re concerned with it being a symlink.it’s definitely a learning curve, but remember that the curve is there because now you’re being exposed to a lot more fundamental concepts that windows obfuscates. it may seem more confusing now, but stick with it and it won’t take long for you to start wondering why windows would ever do things as it does.
Its good to have a shallow understanding, even if you don’t need to know the details. That way if you find yourself looking for a config file in
/bin/, then you might get the idea that you are making a mistake.Also, the search function in every GUI file browser on linux will be streets ahead of the one built into the windows file explorer, so you don’t need to fear using it. It won’t return ads, or web results, or take 6 years to search through the folder that you are currently in.
I’ll probably put that image on my desktop for permanent reference just in case because it is good to understand how engines work even if you never plan on even changing the oil yourself.
Which newbies need to know that? You already said you don’t, why do the other newbies need it?
I’ve been using Linux on the desktop for 20 years, and managed a whole farm of them professionally on several occasions. While I know the difference between /bin, /usr/bin and /sbin and why it’s like that, it’s hardly something I really need to think about unless I’m building a software package, something a newbie user would never do.
I didn’t say they did. In fact, I say not to.
Then I don’t understand why you’re bringing it up. Are you saying it’s a problem with Linux that you spent time learning something you didn’t turn out to really need?
Standardized is a big word.
Think of e.g. /tmp vs /run, /mnt vs /media, /root vs /home/root, and so on.
/home/root
What distro does this?
Guides helping you to navigate this jumbled mess are possibly outdated
That’s true, but have you ever tried to read Microsoft’s documentation?
You mean the shitty online forums where approved posters fail to understand the question and provide useless advice?
Or the posts with frustrated users just screaming into the void?
Even the official documentation is often outdated.
I’ve seen them reference UI elements that were removed over a year ago on freshly published articles.
But also I love the M$ forums and the constant stream of unrelated replies with begging for people to cave and flag their posts as a solution.
The forums are the tech support equivalent of two girls 1 cup.
That sounds exactly like the GH community forum! Oh yeah…
Which one of the 3 to 5 settings menus are they asking me to change this setting again? All I want is for my desktop to recognize the TV as speakers through the HDMI cable ffs!!! (Actual thing I had to deal with windows a few weeks ago that ended up with us not having actual karaoke for an end of the year lab party ;-;)
I would say: What documentation?
For most users whose main computing habits are browsing the internet, word processing (desktop or Google Docs), or email, you’ll rarely have to touch a terminal.
I set up my mom’s laptop with clamtk (set to auto update definitions), auto backup, and auto update and she generally uses it the same as Windows.
I set up my mom’s laptop with clamtk (set to auto update definitions), auto backup, and auto update
OOC (I have no idea what that is) how long did it take you to first learn how to do that, and more importantly, how long would it have taken your mother to learn it had you not?
I basically moved to Linux Mint from Windows myself back in March so this is everything I’ve learned since then. Auto update and auto backup (using Timeshift and Update Manager) are pretty straight forward since they’re all options in the GUI. Clamtk comes from me using Clamav on Windows for the longest time and most of the packages were found right in the GUI for the Software Manager.
expect hours of consuming, likely outdated, information
Wdym? I just google the problem and copy paste the first terminal command I see in the top search result. /s
expect to use the terminal
This is true, however I’ve never had to use the terminal on all my Mint installations on many different laptops old and new, even one with a 15 year old nvidia video card. If there’s one distro I would recommend to someone who never wants to see a terminal, it would be Mint.
My experience migrating to Linux started off rough. Fedora wasn’t even on my top 3 distro to try (Bazzite, Mint, Ubuntu), but when you’re running Frankenstein hardware with Nvidia graphics, your distro is gonna be the first one that actually boots from a USB drive.
Very happy with it. It’s actually easier to find solutions to most of my issues than it was with Windows 11. I thought I’d miss HDR in gaming more, but not really noticing much of a difference.
If it wasn’t for Linux, I never would have learned about the Heroic launcher, which lets me run games I got from Epic Game store and GOG without downloading those.
Hoping OpenRGB eventually supports my graphics card and HDR gets better implementation for games.
Yup. The one thing I tell Linux-curious friends is that you will install the distro of your choice, spend a week and a half on random forums digging up random commands to get everything working properly, and then you should be good.
Yeah, i agree overall. I’m also not an IT-professional. But i’d call myself maybe a pOweRuSer.
In my experience there is no way around the terminal sooner or later. Even after 1 1/2 years of regular linux usage i’m still reluctant to use it because there is so much needed knowledge frontloaded to use it effectivly. But on the other hand the frequency where i NEED to use it is more or less the same compared to the windows equivalents like cmd and powershell. Atleast in my case the last few years on windows involved overall even more tinkering than on linux right now. Probably a different story for many people but it holds true for me.
Outdated guides, wikis, and searchmachine answers certainly fucked me over in my past ventures with linux. Its not like on Windows where you could find that one thread from 2005 which actually has the answer to your hyperspecific windows 11 problem. So looking for a distro with good and current documentation is really important imho for a beginner. In that regard i’m really happy with cachyOS’ own wiki in combination with the arch wiki. On top of that their forums and discord server. I just started to disregard any info older than 1-2 years. Meanwhile searchengines got so much enshittified that i cant rely on them anymore either way.
The file structure completly broke me tbh. It was always my most hated thing with windows. How windows itself and all the programs just leave behind a scattered mess of folders and files with no fucking coherency. In my mind linux had to be soooooo much better in that regard. Like obviously, right? But nah, its somehow even worse. I even used the pretty alright search function to find and purge some last remnants of an uninstalled program. Just to be greeted with another left behind cache file in a hidden folder a few months later.
The file structure in Linux distros actually makes a lot of sense when you begin to understand the parts that don’t make sense.
But yeah. Unless you use something like bazzite the terminal is something you’ll need to use.
This frustrated me when i started using Linux. Then one day i had a neo moment and i was like “I know bash” it just kind of happened.
The best part of Linux , when you get used to the idea, is that anything can be anything and everything is a file.
Something the community is always loathe to admit:
Linux is only “free” if your time is worth nothing.
That was true until Windows started breaking every other week and every major update breaks something fundamental. I moved to Linux to escape the forced update cycle that breaks my desktop so frequently that I gave up on ever having files on my computer and just worked directly off of NAS because any given week had like a 5% chance of requiring that I spend 2 hours reinstalling Windows.
Now Linux, when configured correctly, eats less of your time than Windows, but you have to learn how to use it, just as you had to learn how to use Windows. It is a dumb saying said by people who don’t use Linux because they’re too stupid to learn it, or so stuck in their ways that they can’t break up with their existing workflow, sometimes for valid reasons.
Goes well with “If something bothers you, download the source and fix it yourself”.
Linux, and other FOS software, are free as in freedom not free as in free beer.
lol. Okay, but since you want to be pedantic, most are talking about both, but sure.
edit: btw, the above is such an old interplay, it pre-dates the quote (from c. 1999.) I was literally bored with this 25 years ago.
Im not being pedantic, that’s literally the idea. Most talk about both simply because most can be had without upfront cost, but that isn’t necessarily a requirement.
Many of these issues are why I steer new users toward Fedora KDE or Bazzite instead.
They have their own set of limitations. Fedora has the drivers for my printer but had a strange bug that wouldn’t wake the screen after sleeping, requiring a reboot. Bazzite works well but installing my VPN was really hard to do thanks to its immutable nature. I spent hours trying to solve a problem following all sorts of guides with no results. Often times the commands or programs that work in one tutorial don’t on my PC.
For someone who simply wants plug and play with no additional tinkering, Bazzite or Mint could just work (depending on the hardware you have). For anyone else who was even a moderate Windows power user, it can require a huge amount of tinkering. I don’t know how I’ll be able to get back to running a VPN + torrent while simultaneously dumping the files to my LAN’s SMB NAS drive. I spent hours just tinkering with the VPN’s allowlist and nmap in the console with hardly anything to show for it. Even gigolo wouldn’t work for some reason.
Bind the torrent client to the VPN interface and configure the VPN for a split tunnel.
That part I can do through qbittorrent without hassle. It’s the ability to auto mount the NAS drive and keep it available after starting up the VPN that’s been a major hassle.
Many things can be done using the GUI in Mint, but because there’s a lot of different ways of doing things at the GUI level, and no two desktop environments are exactly the same, the command line is often the best fallback, and so instructions for that are generally what’s found (out of date or otherwise) in online guides.
And as you’ve noticed - and it is somewhat annoying - technology continues apace and things often move around so that old guides don’t quite match up with how distros are now.
As for the graphics card, I’m guessing you probably want the proprietary legacy Nvidia driver if the default Nouveau one doesn’t get the best out of it. (I had a GTS450 and it was a sad day when that got moved to the legacy driver. Still worked fine afterwards though.)
The oldest drivers I could find in the repository are 4.2 something I think and their installation crashed. All the other versions don’t enable 1080i (it looks like a stripped blurry mess) including the Nouveau. F’ing with XrandR didn’t help, and the Xorg.conf file ended up crashing my boot to CLI login and at that point I gave up. I’ve seen others have the exact same issue and nobody had relevant advice that worked based on what I could see. I now just set the resolution to the highest one that uses progressive scan and live with that. It’s my own fault for saving $500 like 20 years ago. :P
You mentioned drivers. One of the nice things about Linux is that most old hardware still works. I had an ancient scanner which barely supported Windows 7 (I think it was OK on 32-bit, not on 64-bit). Linux still supports it.
