I’ve wanted to go over to Linux for a long time but I have no idea how to go about it. I hear about incompatibility problems with hardware and all the different options for different Linux OS’s and that’s it, I forget about it for a while to avoid the headache.

So where do I start? I don’t even know how to choose hardware or what to look for. The number of options with Linux makes things a little confusing.

And although others here have answered the question before, I’m unsure what I have to do to stay ‘safe’ on Linux. Are there extra steps or is it just the standard, don’t open dodgy links and turn off Java script in the PDF viewer kind of thing? Does Linux come with a trustworthy firewall/antivirus/malware detection? Is there a chance of Linux e.g. sending my passwords, etc, to someone or just letting someone into my harddrive? I hear that ‘open source’ means people can check the code but how do I know if someone has checked the code—I wouldn’t know what to look for myself.

I followed the Linux subreddit but the users the can be rather… enthusiastic, which is great, but I need something far more basic to get started lol.

Is there a good step-by-step guide somewhere? Or can anyone give me some pointers/tips/advice?

I mainly browse, type, and read pdfs and other text files. No gaming, although I wouldn’t be opposed to it. No need to be mobile; laptops are terrible for my back so I always use an external monitor, anyway, so I won’t be using it ‘on the go’.

Edit: Thanks for all the advice. I got a machine up and running from a bootable USB.

Any others who read the comments here because they’re interested in trying out Linux – if you have Windows installed and want to keep it on your HDD/SSD, partition your drive within Windows. Then boot from the USB. You can partition your drive (and keep Windows) from the bootable USB but it’s a bit more complicated and it makes it harder to create a swap partition and a storage partition. I had to go back and forth a few times to figure this out.

  • silent_clash@lemmygrad.mlEnglish
    61·
    1 year ago

    Linux is way safer than Windows because barely anyone targets it with malware. As far as safety goes, the main thing is to try and understand what each copy/pasted “sudo” command does before running it. Sudo means “super user do” which gives admin privileges to the commands you are running in command line.

    I have never had any malware on any Linux machine I have run. If you’re worried because of your threat model (government, hackers, etc), staying within the main built-in repositories will keep you safer.

    Things that are community or user-run (RPMfusion, Ubuntu PPA’s/Personal Package Archives, AUR/Arch User Repository) are slightly more vulnerable to malicious activity of the kind you’re describing, although I have never had a problem trusting them.

    • redtea@lemmygrad.mlOPEnglish
      3·
      1 year ago

      Thanks for these details.

      So the sudo line is another potential opening for malicious activity. That’s useful to know as I had thought the terminal was more ‘internal’ from what I knew about it. Is this the equivalent of opening unknown executables or ‘worse’?

      • 🏳️‍⚧️ Elara ☭@lemmygrad.mlEnglish
        6·
        1 year ago

        sudo is just running things as root, which is an account on every Linux system that has permission to do everything. The dangerous part is running a sudo command if you don’t know what it’s doing, because using the extra permissions, a command can do things like delete your files, break your system, install malware, etc. sudo itself isn’t going to do anything bad, but the command it runs could.

        • redtea@lemmygrad.mlOPEnglish
          3·
          1 year ago

          Thanks for explaining this, Elara. Are there any common dangerous commands that I should be wary of? Or any command line databases that are known to be dodgy?

          • 🏳️‍⚧️ Elara ☭@lemmygrad.mlEnglish
            6·
            1 year ago

            The main thing is just make sure you know what the command is going to do before you run it. There are no specific commands that are dangerous, there are many ways to make a dangerous command. For example, if you see rm, that’s the remove command. It deletes files permanently. Once rm removes a file, there’s no trash you can retrieve it from, it’s gone forever, so make sure it isn’t deleting anything important. Some important things are / and ~. If you see a command removing / like the one Sleepless One mentioned, that’s removing all the files on your system. / is the root directory, it’s the place where everything on your computer is stored. ~ is your home directory. It’s where things like your documents, pictures, etc. are stored. So, if someone gives you sudo rm -r ~ or something, do not run that. If it’s something like ~/.config/somefile, that’s fine because it’s deleting a specific file inside your home directory rather than the whole thing.

            • redtea@lemmygrad.mlOPEnglish
              1·
              1 year ago

              Thanks for explaining. Where/how did you learn all the commands that you know? Trial and error?

              • silent_clash@lemmygrad.mlEnglish
                2·
                1 year ago

                If you come across a new command, you can use the manual command to read the documentation. The syntax is “man [commandname]”

                Generally, to use a command line program, you open the terminal emulator, type the command, then add “arguments” that tell the program exactly what you want done. I would recommend you seek out a Linux Command Line tutorial on YouTube or even a text-based one like this: https://ryanstutorials.net/linuxtutorial/