I’ve also got the Linux Basics for Hackers book but it’s at home while I’m on vacation.

I’m just really happy rn yall :) this install took some work, SecureBoot kept getting in the way and I’m not the most savvy person so there was a lot of Googling and trial and error in the way of getting here.

  • CMDR_Horn@lemmy.world
    1171·
    15 days ago

    Welcome! Don’t listen to anyone trying to shame you for your distro choice. The most important is that you didn’t choose windows.

    • FindME@lemmy.myserv.oneEnglish
      602·
      15 days ago

      No, no! Listen to the shamers! Change your distro eight times over the first month as you listen to them whine, and eventually return to the first one you chose, full of wisdom of why those other distros suck so you can tell the noobs who choose one of them first instead of your glorious choice!

    • A_Union_of_Kobolds@lemmy.worldOP
      39·
      15 days ago

      Thanks! I plan to experiment with others, but I wanted a nice smooth transition for my wife and I both, so Mint seemed like a great starting point.

      • acid_falcon@lemmy.world
        9·
        14 days ago

        Mint is rad. I currently use barebones Debian testing with a bunch of customized stuff, but I always keep a bootable Mint flash drive on my keychain. It’s a very solid choice

      • dustyData@lemmy.worldEnglish
        3·
        14 days ago

        I used Mint for almost its entire existence so far, but recently I’ve started main driving immutables, and gotta say the experience is even more user friendly. That’s my current experimentation stage but, so far, it doesn’t feel experimental at all, it just works out the box, no issues.

      • Thymos@lemm.ee
        2·
        14 days ago

        My boyfriend wanted Linux on his laptop and he’s not tech savvy at all. I installed Mint for him and he’s very happy with it, no complaints. It’s a very good choice.

      • megopie@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
        2·
        9 days ago

        I’ve been daily driving mint for over a year now, gotta say, never been tempted by anything else. It really is solid and functional and easy to work with. The only issue I’ve ever had with the system was programs closing randomly, and turns out I was just running out of ram. Fixed that by adding more swap (using part of the hard drive as back up ram).

        Having come from windows, it’s really nice to not have to search through 5 different settings menus, not to mention not having changes I made reverted at every update.

    • cmnyboEnglish
      161·
      15 days ago

      Just as long as it’s not Red Star, that’s even worse than windows.

      • theangryseal@lemmy.world
        13·
        15 days ago

        If you have something to hide from The Glorious and Omnipotent Kim Jong Un, our beloved leader, you do not deserve to be a human. All hail our Dear Leader.

        M’comrade…

    • stupidcasey@lemmy.world
      12·
      15 days ago

      I agree that’s why I don’t listen to all the hater’s who say my distro Choice of Android Tv is bad.

    • Atlas48@ttrpg.network
      2·
      10 days ago

      Mint’s a pretty nice distro, all things considered. The only one I’d turn my nose up against is Manjaro, mostly because of their leadership’s reputation as clowns.

  • CaptainBasculin@lemmy.ml
    52·
    15 days ago

    Quick tip: forgot how to use a command? Use man commandname to see a short manual page for that command.

    Forgot sudo on your command? !! refers to the previously typed command, so you can simply type sudo !! to fix it.

  • hondaguy97386@sh.itjust.works
    35·
    15 days ago

    “I’m just really happy rn yall” - be careful with that rn command if you’re anywhere near Arch, wouldn’t want all your happy uninstalled! Seriously though, good for you! Welcome to freedom.

  • Samsy@lemmy.ml
    29·
    15 days ago

    Good job, welcome to the free world of tech. Installing is often the hardest part.

    Next lesson: forget about downloading installer from the browser, check out the software center or learn package manager commands, that’s the first new thing about Linux.

  • NutWrench@lemmy.mlEnglish
    21·
    14 days ago

    You’ll probably be making lots of changes to your computer over the next couple of weeks, so it’s a good idea to use TimeShift to make system snapshots. (It works like System Restore in Windows). It can even rescue an unbootable system. Just boot from your Linux Live CD / flash drive and you can run TimeShift from that.

    • SpaceCowboy@lemmy.ca
      5·
      14 days ago

      Whoah… wish I knew about this when I was setting up my raspberry pi. Got a brand new computer on the way (well half of it is here already) so this might come in handy… thanks!

      • _cryptagion@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
        21·
        14 days ago

        FYI, you can usually automate creating timeshifts whenever you add packages or update your system. I did that for mine, so that I don’t have to remember to do it.

  • Smokeydope@lemmy.worldEnglish
    17·
    15 days ago

    Welcome! I have been using Mint many years now its a gold standard distro you made a solid choice.

  • Possibly linux@lemmy.zipEnglish
    192·
    15 days ago

    Be mindful that Linux changes faster than a lot of books. I would stick to online documentation.

    • rtxn@lemmy.worldMEnglish
      8·
      15 days ago

      Those books were published in 2019 and 2021. They’ll still be mostly accurate a decade from now. Open-source developers usually try not to introduce breaking changes to mature software unless absolutely necessary.

    • pmc@lemmy.blahaj.zone
      7·
      15 days ago

      Books will teach the essentials: my core UNIX knowledge comes from an SVR4 book I read in the late 2000s (a decade or more after it was relevant) and it’s still applicable today

    • JackbyDev@programming.devEnglish
      41·
      14 days ago

      Documentation is not the proper place for an absolute beginner to learn (unless it explicitly has tutorials, and even then they’re not always great).

  • z3rOR0ne@lemmy.ml
    13·
    15 days ago

    The Linux Command Line book opened up a lot to me. How Linux Works is very good, but the command line is so essential, and that book gives you some great starting knowledge like aliases and shell scripting.

    Especially aliases. Take note of aliases, when you start using aliases it can change your world once you realize how much you can accomplish with what essentially are one line programs you wrote for you own personal needs.

    Welcome beyond the pale, friend. You’ve made it to the other side. Only freedom awaits, should you have the determination to work for it.

  • jatone@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
    13·
    14 days ago

    Hey congrats, @A_Union_of_Kobolds@lemmy.world! By getting through that hurdle you most certainly are that savvy of a person. Enjoy the after success glow and welcome to the hacker universe.

    Trial and error is 90% of life! Thats how you get shit done!

    • Mr_Blott@feddit.uk
      5·
      14 days ago

      you most certainly are that savvy of a person

      There are millions of us.

      Glad to hear OP has the spare time to make it “it just works”

      😂

      • jatone@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
        4·
        14 days ago

        Hey everyone that gets over that hurdle implies that its doable and that it might be getting easier.

        Remember that use to be just the first hurdle of many. It sounds like kobold is enjoying the desktop already and there use to be another 7 or 8 major hurdles. Audio, video, x11, network, Bluetooth, usb.

        Seems like all those were just breezed on past!

        • A_Union_of_Kobolds@lemmy.worldOP
          6·
          14 days ago

          Yeah honestly once I got past my BIOS problems everything else has been a breeze. Driver install and updates all went flawlessly. I played around with Linux a tiny bit in decades past (usually just to fix something and get back to Windows), so I was a little concerned about it at first, but, as they say… shit just works 🤷‍♂️

      • jatone@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
        4·
        14 days ago

        Im proud you took the plunge! Feel free to reach out if you get stuck on anything. Im a principal engineer whose done work all over the tech stack including the linux kernel and wrote my own shell. (Think gnome/kde user interfaces.) And these days im playing with biochemistry:)

  • Olgratin_Magmatoe@lemmy.worldEnglish
    13·
    15 days ago

    I’m about to repartition and reinstall everything. I’m very fucking tempted to drop this dual boot nonsense now that I have a good idea of what little I’d be losing.

    • TheTimeKnife@lemmy.world
      10·
      15 days ago

      I screwed up my dual boot a year ago and it was happiest mistake of my life. Forced me to learn linux, and now I feel like I live in the matrix with all my bright green terminals on i3.

      • Victor@lemmy.world
        5·
        15 days ago

        I remember when I used green on black lol. Good times at uni. Nowadays I even use light mode in the daytime… I get too sleepy with dark mode in the daytime lol. Guess I’m getting old.

    • Trail@lemmy.world
      8·
      15 days ago

      You don’t need to reinstall. You could keep the old partition and format it and add it as a new volume while keeping the current installation.

      If the windows volume is to the right of the Linux volume, you could also boot a live-usb and drop the windows partition and then extend the Linux partition then extend the Linux filesystem to cover all disk space. If it is to the left, you can do the same but you’d need to move the partition and reinstall the bootloader as well.

      A backup would be mandatory If you don’t really know what you would be doing with the above, however. But if you do, it’s a lot easier and faster than to rebuild everything from scratch.

  • 21Cabbage@lemmynsfw.comEnglish
    12·
    15 days ago

    Welcome to the club! Mint is an excellent choice, especially from a beginner’s perspective. Don’t let that stop you from trying other things though if you get the temptation. Fedora and Arch are the two other ‘families’ I can think of to play with, though I’ve stuck with things in the Debian side of things myself.