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this post was submitted on 02 Aug 2023
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Linux
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From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).
Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.
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Yes, I'll switch from Windows to Linux but at the moment I dont trust myself to be able to use Linux as I cannot code and havent any deep knowledge about cpmputers. So I hope that in the next few years there will be the compatibility and ease of use on Linux like there is on windows now.
Edit: ok, thanks everyone.
I am very pro open source and very pro linux (obiously)
With "coding" i ment doing stuff with the terminal. I am mostly concerned with stuff not working when it should and then that the fix is only doable in the terminal and requires trial and error and knowledge and so on...
I was mostly discouraged by the LTT videos about Linux as a daily driver, haming and working on linux and so on. And they made it look that you have problems significantly more frequent than on a windows machine.
And yes, i need to use full office suite, most other programms can be FOSS or linux alternatives tho.
You definitely don't need to know anything about writing code to use Linux! The closest thing to it is the terminal, which is something you basically never need to use on a standard setup like Pop!OS or Mint. I've gotten plenty of my friends using Linux, many of them have never even had to look at a terminal.
I don't even know how to code LOL I know the bare minimum of installing packages either through the gui or through the terminal which isn't coding, just simple commands for installing packages that the gui would do for you
You have gui stores like gnome software, kde plasma discover gui store that let you install application super easy with one click install buttons that's it
Example installing discord on Ubuntu through terminal Sudo means root, apt the package manager that's gonna install the package for us, install telling apt to install said application/software, discord the application. That's it, you type y and it will install said application.
And I even started a YouTube channel called Linux benchmarks with plenty of simple tutorials of how to setup things like proton and learning those things in apps like lutris or bottles or heroic games launcher which are all gui applications for setting up games.
Editing I use kdenlive another gui application, gimp another gui application, updating it through the store as well or you can do the terminal either one they do the exact same thing.
Here's my thoughts about using Linux on both a Nvidia setup and now a full amd setup for one year :)
https://youtu.be/55_TtnN7dnk
You don't need to know how to code certainly. If you choose a "fire and forget" distro like Ubuntu, Linux Mint, etc... the only thing you would really run into any challenge with is running Windows software. Games are pretty well handled by Steam/Proton at this point, but other Windows software like, say, Word or the Adobe suite can be a challenge. If you're okay with using alternatives (libreoffice, darktable, gimp) you'll be fine.
My daughter can't code (apart from dabbling a bit in Scratch) and she can use Fedora on her laptop just fine.
I don't think you need to wait years for user friendly Linux tbh! I recommend checking out Linux Mint. It's basically designed for people used to Windows and handles the technical stuff for you.
You can do almost everything through the GUI rather than the command line, so for things like updates, it'll show you a little notification in the corner by the clock like you're used to, you open up the software manager, and click the update button.
And most software nowadays can either be downloaded through an app store like interface, or by downloading an executable file from a website.
And if you've ever used a mac, there's a time machine equivalent built in (timeshift). So you can set up an automatic backup daily/weekly/etc and if you mess up something, in most cases you can revert back to a point when it wasn't messed up.
I say give it a shot, you can always go back if it's not for you! But usability has improved so much in the last few years.
The LTT videos assume that you are unwilling to spend a bit of time learning your OS. If you can accept that it won't be a perfectly smooth experience from the start and that you'll have to put in a bit of effort to make it do what you want, there's no reason to not try it out.
I recently went for it and left windows for dual-booting, but the only time that I had to boot it was after finding out that if you mount an NTFS partition in linux without first disabling fast boot on windows, it'll get broken sooner or later.
Now I'm at a point where troubleshooting stuff on linux is far easier than on windows. Because it's modular and community-driven, you can always get to the root of a given problem with some googling or asking on one of the many great forums. Windows on the other hand is a proprietary monolith and if something stops working, you can only fiddle around with settings or hope for microsoft to fix it.
Getting there took me about 50-70 hours of troubleshooting total spread across a few years. I wasted a lot more than that trying to troubleshoot windows.
I mean I would accept to get into Linux for the start but I am afraid that my OS will be "a ongoing project" so to say.
I found that it's different from windows, but not really more work. I get annoyed by small things easily, so finding out you have to tweak the registry to set some things in windows has just been frustrating while I can just customize the little things how I like them on linux by changing a config file or even find that there's a good GUI for it, like with the task bar for example.
If you're fine with ignoring the little annoyances on windows, you won't have issues on Linux either.
There will not be the equivalent compatibility at first. But there will be enough compatibility for most users to not care about it anymore. The equivalent compatibility will only exist once literally every hardware and software manufacturer supports Linux on their own as first-class citizen. And they will only do that once Linux has signifikant desktop marketshare. But it doesn't matter as long as most stuff still runs no matter what. Which is currently the case. And it's also gotten easy.