I’m a windows loser looking to make the plunge into Linux. I was thinking of switching my gaming PC to Linux in the near future. Before I make up my mind, I’ll probably try out VMs of distros.

I’ve lurked a few Linux communities here and on lemmy.ml, some I’m gonna regurgitate some things I half remember in the hope of being being corrected and starting discussion about what I should be doing.

  • Ubuntu isn’t good
  • Mint is good despite being based on Ubuntu. Made with former windows users in mind
  • Debian is good because of their packages or package manager or something. Recently sold out, but there are spinoffs that don’t use proprietary software like Duvian.
  • Fedora seemed to get some good word but I can’t remember why.
  • Arch and it’s spinoffs require a shit ton of finagling to get right but can do a lot of cool things
  • There are different desktop environments like GNOME, Cinnamon, and … others? I honestly don’t know what a desktop environment is.
  • Wine (or the fork Proton) can run windows native games on Linux
  • There are snap, flat something or other, and … other ways for installing software.

I’m sure I’m missing a lot and got some things wrong. Any help getting started is appreciated.

Edit: I ended up going with a KDE plasma spin of Fedora 36. Once I figured out how to get the nvidia drivers set up it was smooth sailing.

  • Arsen6331 ☭
    5•2 years ago

    I think snap is going in the right direction in a couple of ways tho…

    Kind of. I like flatpak more. Both due to the fact that snap has a proprietary backend, and because flatpak just works better in my experience.

    AppImage’s are supposed to be simple to package and they always work easily in my experience.

    That is true. AppImages are great for software that just doesn’t want to work on your computer. I’ve been using them for Cura.

    But I am liking guix and I have been trying to package my first application using their lisp dialect.

    Guix is interesting, but I don’t particularly like lisp, though that’s just personal preference.

    Even .deb files require running dpkg -i in the terminal in my experience because of dependencies.

    I’d personally prefer to install deb files using apt. That way, it will handle dependencies, conflicts, etc. whereas dpkg is the low-level package manager that only installs and configures the software.

    Speaking of cross-platform packaging tools, I recently made something interesting in that field about a month ago: https://github.com/Arsen6331/lure.

    • @Cassilda@lemmygrad.ml
      0•2 years ago

      I’d personally prefer to install deb files using apt. That way, it will handle dependencies, conflicts, etc. whereas dpkg is the low-level package manager that only installs and configures the software.

      Yeah, apt is for normal users, and for sysadmins trying to solve particular problems that apt won’t solve for some reason. But a new user, like OP, should be using synaptic (or some other GUI front-end for apt). I think Mint does a good job of surfacing it?

      • Arsen6331 ☭
        4•2 years ago

        Package managers really aren’t difficult to use. They’re quite simple, especially apt. To install, just do sudo apt install software. To remove, sudo apt remove software, etc.

        I encourage new users to use the command line for basic tasks from day one, so that they can learn about it, rather than just using GUI forever.

        • @Cassilda@lemmygrad.ml
          2•2 years ago

          I mean, i agree that package managers aren’t difficult to use, and I live in the command line (or actually in Emacs), but there’s a widespread perception that you have to use the terminal to use Linux. It helps to dispel this perception by pointing people at reasonable GUI tools like synaptic.

          • Arsen6331 ☭
            2•2 years ago

            Yeah, I agree, but there’s also a perception that the command-line is scary, which I would also like to dispel.

              • Johnny Mojo
                2•2 years ago

                Not scary, confusing. You can’t just click around to find what you’re looking for, you have to memorize a certain amount of basic commands. For someone who has a hard time making a Skype call without assistance, it can be impossible.

        • Johnny Mojo
          0•2 years ago

          Many people just want to USE their computer, and need simpler interfaces or they get lost. I don’t mind using dnf or even building from source, hell, I use Vim to write emails, but my ex-wife likes Gnome Software, and GUIs, and relies on me to do any tweaking. I think it’s fine for people to stick to graphic interfaces if that works for them, it’s part of the reason why GNU/Linux desktop is getting more popular with regular non-techie users, which are the vast majority of potential users.