this post was submitted on 05 Aug 2023
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I just got a real bad malware on my windows PC and I'm legit considering using Linux as a response. What's the best into to someone who isn't a programmer but understands computers relatively well enough?
Try a few different distros. People often recommend Mint for a beginner. I use Fedora personally, I also like Debian, it's stable but a bit boring and can be outdated. You can also creat a bootable live USB and try before you install!
Tbh, I consider "a bit boring" a pretty good feature for an OS. "Exciting" usually means dozens of hours to fix simple things.
LTS releases get more and more attractive with age.
That is very trueˆˆ
Depends on how new your hardware is - distros with new kernels work much better on many brand new machines.
To clarify, because I think this would be pretty confusing for someone who isn't already into Linux.
So a "distro" is short for a distribution of linux. Strictly speaking, Linux is just a kernel which is a technical component of an operating system. A few different organizations have taken the Linux kernel and added the necessary additions to turn it into a typical PC operating system e.g. Ubuntu, Linux Mint, Fedora, CentOS, Arch Linux, Manjaro Linux. Some are harder to get set up and some are plug and play. Ubuntu, Linux Mint, and Manjaro are considered to be "easy" to set up. Arch Linux is typically considered the hardest.
But how do you actually install it? (1) choose the distro. (2) download the
.isofile from their website (a few gigabytes). (3) burn it into a spare usb flash drive to make a "live boot usb". (4) go into your BIOS and select to boot from your usb instead of your typical hard drive. Now you should be in your chosen distro. Conside this a sandbox that is contained to only your flashdrive. If you shutdown and remove the flash drive, nothing would change. (5 optional) play around and try it out. Do you like it? (6) Double click the installer on the desktop to install it on your hard drive for-real.A note on step (3), you can find guides for this online. My favorite software that does this on windows is rufus.
A note on step (4), everyone's BIOS looks a little different. You can search "how to change boot options on XYZ" for your laptop/motherboard.
A note on step (6), if you really hate windows, you're free to nuke it, but your installer will give you the option to "install alongside windows" which will let you choose which OS to boot into on startup. This is known as "dual booting". It's the option with less commitment, but sometimes minor issues come up that requires troubleshooting (windows likes to fuck shit up when it updates).
If you're planning on keeping Windows intact and you have a spare drive lying around I recommend temporarily removing your main SSD and installing the distro on the spare. This will prevent potential bootloader issues if you decide Linux isn't your daily driver. The downside is if you want to swap OSes you'll need to select the drive you want to boot from in BIOS.
Awesome thanks! Great info!
Starting out I'd say linux mint with a cinnamon desktop.
What's a cinnamon desktop?
The standard version of Linux mint is with Cinnamon. Desktop environments are basically how your desktop looks. Cinnamon looks similar to Windows, and Mint is newbie friendly, so you will have no problem moving.
Linux has a bunch of different "desktop environments" (user interfaces that look and act somewhat different). Cinnamon is one of them that happens to feel relatively familiar to folks migrating from Windows.
(If you want to get a feel for what different DEs are like, try downloading different variants of the Ubuntu distribution — plain Ubuntu (with the GNOME DE), Kubuntu (KDE), Xubuntu (XFCE), Lubuntu (LXDE), etc. — which differ only in which DE they come with by default. Run them straight off a flash drive to try them out.)
Personally, I tend to use KDE, but it's a choice very much based on personal taste rather than any objective superiority of one DE over another.
Every few years I try Linux as a daily driver and it never really sticks. Zorin is the first Distro that I've stuck with more than a month and haven't had to switch back for something. I can't tell if Linux community in general has just evolved or if it's Zorin, but it's definitely great for people coming from Windows interested in Linux.
Does it have wine or something like that built in for windows games?
Because TBH the only thing stopping me from switching is the games.
It actually does, but you may also be surprised how many of your Steam games are Linux compatible nowadays!
Just install Steam and Lutris and install all your games through either Steam or Lutris and they'll generally just work from there.
(Noone uses just wine directly and manually for their games anymore unless there's a special reason. Valve developed a specialised version called Proton that mashes together Wine, DXVK and a bunch of tweaks specifically for gaming. Steam automatically installs it and then any Windows game installed through Steam is automatically configured with Proton for you. Lutris is an app that does that but for installing games without using Steam.)
That sounds pretty nice. I'll take a look at that.
So for example if I want a non steam game like Minecraft I'd go through Lutris but beyond that I'd use steam?
Broadly yes. In the case of Minecraft I think at least one version is just made for Linux though so probably best to just follow the official instructions for installing it. But any game that's made for Windows you're best bet is to install it from either Steam or Lutris in the first instance.
I'm migrating my personal Fedora 38 machines to Zorin. I want them to just work and I want my wife and parents to be comfortable using them. In that respect, it's better than windows and macos.
Where does that idea come from that you have to be a programmer to use Linux? Is it because it's sometimes faster to type a command? That's not programming. It's the same way that it's faster to type your text that to get a voice recognition program to input it correctly.
Idk I just get the vibe that it's a "programmers OS" I'm sure that I'm wrong, especially after looking more into it but that outsider opinion isn't unwarranted IMO especially after looking at something like Arch
There are a lot more programmers running Windows than Linux though. :)
There's like... 1/10 the amount of people on Linux as a whole
It kind of depends where you look.
Home desktop users, sure. Servers... Unless you have a really good reason, running a Windows server is a weird idea nowadays.
Pop_OS!
It's not the best (technically), but its defaults have great compatability and work essentially everywhere.
Search how Pop_OS! Looks though, because it looks quite different to Windows (and you might want something that looks like Windows).
If you want a taskbar like Windows, use Kubuntu (and don't touch many settings or the terminal, KDE has a habit to break if you don't know what your doing) or Cinnamon.
Kubuntu is modern, highly customizable and comes with good defaults. It'll also scale well if you want to put in the time.
Cinnamon has a slightly more outdated look, but it's built ontop of the same base as Kubuntu, so it should work out of the box without any customization. It's good for beginers, and reasonably hard to break (for Linux). But it's not as customizable and won't scale as well as Kubuntu if you want to deep dive into Linux at some point.
Same thing happened to me last year. Right into the uefi. Spent months fighting it after it got into phones,, laptops, Linux Windows, whatever. Eventually got it gone and had been (trying mostly) to use Linux during the whole fiasco. During one of about 150 reinstalls of windows I couldn't remember my password and wasn't getting any of the password reset emails I was repeatedly requesting.
I was locked out of my own fucking computer with nothing to do but reinstall windows. The same shit could happen with Linux except I wouldn't have an expectation that a fucking password reset button would work.
That was the part straw for me. I viewed never to use windows again unless I absolutely had to.
And now that I've gotten thang of it: I fucking love Linux. I'm continually learning more about both Linux and computers. I feel like I'm peeling back later after layer after layer of useful interesting shit that windows purposefully kept from me.
Parts of the learning process were rough, not going to lie, but my god. I fucking love the command line. I just love it.
How would I know if the malware got into my Wi-Fi???
If you're on Linux, you're probably downloading apps through your package manager, or things like Flathub/Snap Store. These places are generally much safer than random .exes on the internet anyways, so just keep being cautious and you'll be fine.
Mint or Pop!_OS if you use nvidia.
PopOs Nvidia version is amazing for common gaming laptops.
My personal pick is Nobara (which is fedora but with easy codecs and driver install script). But anything Ubuntu or Fedora bases is going to work great (From what I remember Nobara and POP_OS! Have great Nvidia support out of the box)
EndeavourOS
Zorin OS is a personal favorite. Don't worry about the paied version, just get the free one. You can get everything on the paid version for free, it's just so thr deevs can get some support