Is debian a good choice for new users? I know it's used as a base for a lot of distros. But I've never used it. I assumed it was more technical and less user friendly.
As an avid user who has primarily used Windows and Linux only for recovery purposes when Windows goes tits up , I've been playing with Nobara and Linux mint on a small 180gb SSD and I'm intimidated by the terminal knowledge that is needed when things don't go right .
I also have a steam deck so technically I've been playing with arch btw
I’m intimidated by the terminal knowledge that is needed when things don’t go right .
As opposed to the trial and error required when things don't go right on Windows? :)
Let's be honest to ourselves - for more complex problems, we'd be pretty much dead in the water without an internet search engine on either system. However, on Linux, at least you can do failure tree isolation relatively systematic: narrow the issue down, and eventually fix it (or find out it's not fixable, e.g. certain driver compatibility for specific hardware). For windows, it's mostly trial and error until you find "the right solution". Rarely is there any good resource for narrowing your problem down, mostly because of the absence of good advice for terminal commands, or because each windows version shuffles settings around to a new place / config file and holds duplicates and triplicates of settings god-knows-where.
I remember back in the 2000s when I tried to isolate a problem this never worked out. Too vague, too little understanding of what's what. If it wasn't for the help of one more experienced user in our campus, I would've given up pretty soon.
I hope things are better now, as I haven't been using Linux for quite some time and consider going back but this time there will be no one to ask
What ever do you mean, isn't it obvious to just navigate here :
"/HKEY/current_user/sytem/reg/software/currrent_version/microsoft/explorer/advanced/pleasedontfkmymom"
and set that to 1?!? as well as the 3-4 other very similar looking places.
An now on a toilet break after trying to fix a permission problem with a local network NAS. I am so fed up with all the (u)mounting, users/groups, chmod/chown and so on, as I am now 3 hours in to it.
Yes, on windows its a trial and error with two ir three checkboxes, done in a few minutes or half an hour. The terminal-knowledge mentionned is definitely a big thing, even with modern distros like Linux Mint I am using right now
I'm pretty computer stupid. Been using Linux for 4 years now. Used the terminal to some extent, but I've only needed it for specific things and my day to day doesn't need it at all. Just dive in.
Do you work from home and are forbidden from using Linux and don't have even a laptop or pc where you can install Linux outside a vm? do you perhaps even have a work issued fairphone?
I just switched my gaming PC to Linux yesterday. Well, switch is strong, I still have Windows in case I need to go back.
It's come a long way, though. I started using Linux desktop around 2000, and it was not a fun experience. I tried again in 2019 with a System76 laptop, and it's been just fine. My home theater/gaming PC was the last holdout.
So far, it works great. Steam Link works, my games all seem to work, RetroArch is going strong. The only downside is Oculus support doesn't seem to exist at all, so I might need to keep my Windows drive a bit longer just for VR.
MintLinux and Pop!OS are normally the two front-runners for new users. Basically, if you use Steam and you don't play online-only games with bad implementations of anti-cheat software, you are good to game on either.
Make a USB that you can "live boot" from, so you can test out how they work with your hardware. Generally speaking, Mint works better with AMD, and Pop! works better with Nvidea.
It's actually been 6 years or so. However, I love it so much that I built a time machine to continuously go back so I can use it more (makes no sense, I know, just roll with it) so for me it has been 84 years