Advice for a middle-age, moderately pc knowledgeable person to finally switch to or become proficient with Linux?

Andonyx@lemmy.ml to Linux@lemmy.ml – 253 points –

This is my third attempt. Partly to rage quit Windows, and partly to gain utility and control with some professional AV software.

I have converted an old Asus netbook to Ubuntu netbook remix and used it for a while. I was impressed with how much better that tiny thing ran with Linux than Windows. But in the end it still had less power than a TI-84. So I stopped using it, and never really learned Linux proper.

I dual boot my Chromebook, so I can use gimp for photos on vacation, but everything I do with the Linux partition is cut and paste from articles by people who know what they're doing. (I was motivated to post here by a meme about that.)

I'm thinking of dual booting my main desktop, because I need Windows for some fairly processor intense A/V software I use for work. So what would be a good distro to look into for a novice and where should I look for a tutorial? I would ultimately like to see if I can use Linux to run my AV software in emulation and add drivers for some professional audio interfaces. I'm fed up with windows and trying to see how far I can get without it. Your help is appreciated in advance, and if this is inappropriate for this topic, let me know and I'll delete it.

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General tips:

  • Don't look for Linux versions of the Windows software you use. Instead look for software that fulfils the same purpose.
  • If you're cutting-and-pasting a lot of stuff from those articles, give yourself a check on what those things actually do. See it as a small investment of time to economise time later on, as you'll rely less and less on those articles.
  • Stick to popular distros. And for the desktop environment (DE), use whatever works for you.
  • Keep it easy. It's fine if you need to log into Windows once in a while, but over time you'll notice yourself doing it less and less.

give yourself a check for what those things do

To add, don't kick yourself for forgetting and needing to double-check something. For example, even as a Linux vet, I still sometimes need to double-check whether it's -r or -R for recursive on whatever command I'm using sometimes.

Also it’s good to get into the habit of using man or - -help instead of or in combination with searching on the internet. Makes you less reliant on searches and also ensures that your are using commands that correspond to the version of the software you are using

IE: man rm | grep recursive

Use something + reddit word in search for finding answers to your problems. This chatgpt's articles are full trash usually. Stackoverflow is also sometimes helpful!

I predict that the "how to shoot web site:redditcom" trick will eventually wear down, as the place is slowly becoming a dumpster fire. A better approach is to handle search in a way that SEO crap backfires:

  • lots of "apostrophe usage" to force specific expressions
  • usage of -negative terms to sort out things used in SEO
  • simple keywords instead of full sentences

The Arch wiki, Ubuntu forums and Mint forums are often good sources of info, regardless of your distro.