Credit to this comment on Reddit: https://old.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/kzzbcs/first_time_trying_linux_im_using_a_lightweight/gjqtyhs/

1/ Don’t hesitate to ask for advice or search for something with keywords.

You may be unlucky and have trouble with some devices or software, chances are some people will have worked on it already. Error messages on Linux are usually clearer and more informative than Windows, so it’s easier for people to give you some tips or possibly straight solution.

2/ Don’t force yourself on command line, but don’t be afraid of it either!

Gradual learning is the best approach, start with the classic “install a new software” (and it’s so much faster than interface) and whatever is useful for you right now.

I’d suggest focusing on “find information” commands which are much, much more powerful than interface once you know a few options: ‘find’ and ‘du’. If you work with lots of basic text files, ‘grep’ will be very useful too.

It may seem a bit daunting at first, but it’s really just like learning a language. And once you get the hang of it, some tasks will be achievable in seconds or minutes instead of minutes/hours. No exaggeration here.

3/ Whenever you plan on buying hardware, LOOK AHEAD AND PLAN!

This is honestly the only problem still strong with Linux: driver compatibility with hardware, especially printers (Brother is reliable, HP has neat drivers too), network cards (avoid Killer chipsets) and gaming peripherals (improving gradually, but you’d better search before buying whatever brand you’re looking at).

4/ Don’t be afraid to experiment (reasonably ^^)

As long as you don’t elevate yourself as administrator in command line (‘sudo’) and make some potentially data destructive move (like using the rm command which deletes files), it should be hard for you to really “break” something.

Your interface should be fairly customizable (even if it’s not KDE), feel free to look for colors and icons that you like. Sofwares are installed and desinstalled with just a few clicks or one command, always neatly, so it’s no problem to install “just for trying” and uninstall at a whim.

5/ Save your /home regularly

Losing / crashing a system is bad, but easy to recover from. Losing your home is obviously bigger issue. :) You can use free software like for example FreeFileSync (or whatever else really) to make a full copy in a regular way, from your internal drive to an external one.

There are also several cloud storage providers that now offer Linux clients for easyness of use (from top of my head, Mega, PCloud, you can find updated list easy on internet).

If you can, saving system would be nice too but it requires to know a bit more about internals of Linux. Home is really the essential one for classic usage and normally stores everything you could care about: not only your documents, but also all personal data related to your software (browser bookmarks, mails, application settings, your desktop customization, etc).

Enjoy!