Screw it, I’m installing Linux

Yep.

Just cause it doesnt affect you, doesnt mean it wont eventually have an effect on you.

Lots of people shrugging their shoulders and going "Why should I care about spying? I've got nothing to hide" are exactly why we are where we are right now.

yeah i can report i've dealt with TB-sized external NTFS-formatted disks for years and never had issues with linux with them :)

exFAT is great for compatibility but it doesn't have journaling, so if there's a power outage while writing to a file, you can expect the file to get corrupted and unusable (which sucks). apart from that, yeah, it's great.

what i can recommend if you're working in a big organization or group or sth is to use a network drive, i.e. a drive that's accessed over the network. you typically don't have problems there.

I' think this will be my best bet going forward. I still need to have my windows computer setup for modding, but i'd rather use linux for daily use and torrents.

Truly. I honestly feel like a lot of the linux oldheads got off on being part of an exclusive club and actually hated when things became easier to use (hence all the crying whenever anyone who isn't literally a cis admin or c developer points out the glaring UX flaws that plauged and still plagued linux).

Steam has the money to both fix a lot of problems and bulldoze through the wave of elitist condescending douches that typically inhabit linux spaces.

On top of that, and I know this part will get hate, now with LLMs, a lot of the questions that would get you absurdly rude and defeating remarks, you can just ask an LLM and get on average more accurate answers and less hazing for no reason. Yes, I am saying that LLMs give more accurate responses, as that has been my experience when it comes to asking questions on forums vs them.

And just to be clear, I have always been the type of person to ask questions as a last resort because I can't deal with those people and don't think being hazed should be a necessary part of doing power computing. You shouldn't need a thick skin to fix a driver issue for instance.

Anyways, I do think that these things have made linux far more approachable, but common apps being supported is still something that needs focus. Like the only CAD options for linux are what, freecad, where its free because you pay with your time and frustration, SolveSpace.... or onshape, which is simply not viable for hobbyists who at all ever want to make any money from their hobbies?

The same is true for video editting where there are absolutely some first class programs that run on linux, but the media creation pipeline also clearly has adobe shaped holes (just to be clear, though I feel it doesn't need stating, I do hate adobe).

I'm using KRdp for the first time in several years today and am BLOWN AWAY by the quality of the connection. It is in virtually every regard as good as Windows' RDP.

GeForce app for some cloud gaming on Anti-cheat and that's a wrap. I don't need anything else now.

I haven't used Manjaro in many many years, but IIRC it was the first distro I used that reliably supported Wi-Fi.

I am trying out Kinoite now but it's very similar. I think the immutable distros are best for people who want a "Just works" experience to start with.

I'm standing slightly to the left of you.

Bazzite is good for noobs looking for a gaming option because it's "immutable" which means the OS filesystem can't be edited, which makes it nearly impossible to break.

Mint is still very noob friendly, just not immutable. Both are solid options because neither one requires any command line to get it on-par with Windows.

Mint is Ubuntu/Debian based and uses their Cinnamon desktop environment.

Bazzite is Fedora based and uses KDE as the desktop environment.

The biggest difference is that Bazzite is atomic or immutable distro. The core systems are read only so it's harder to break. It's also harder to tinker with. You're mostly limited to packages that are available in their package manager. You can install other stuff via layering if you really need to tinker.

You need to remark your files !! Just run sudo rm -Rf /

To be fair (even though I also am both happy and relieved to see articles like this), just because you convert to Linux, that doesn't mean everyone else will. I have used so many guides to help debloat windows computers, and turn off nonsense I don't want (mostly so I can use proprietary software for work). My choice to not use windows in my personal life on my personal devices doesn't really change my situation with needing those guides to help others circumvent windows BS.

I wish we didn't have to live in interesting times and all that, but the guides are helpful.

I got annoyed and stopped reading before that became apparent.

Content churn. Pussy-footing. Just get on with it! Heh.

Still, it's good to see more are jumping ship (to freedom), with how much M$ keeps making it worse (abusiveness).

it can be absolute pain for those expecting things to just work without any interest on why they experiencing issues.

I think that describes computers.

Windows does the same thing, only worse because it is harder to trouble shoot, and harder to fix if you find yourself at the point where a reinstall is the only way out.

I am dealing with a laptop like that now for someone else, and it would be simple if it was linux, but of course its a pain in the ass because its windows.

it can be absolute pain for those expecting things to just work

Linux Mint just worked.

I must say on mine laptop it took fewer tries to have Linux mint working. When I was installing the Nvidia drivers I was losing the WiFi ones and couldn’t do anything to fix without internet there

So after some reinstalls I learned I need to update mint first, than do the Nvidia update, this did the trick for me.

I hate it because I don't know how to do anything

Some examples of what you've been unable to accomplish might add clarity.

but I'm not smart enough to learn terminal

Bull. Shit. You're just not used to it and, even without picking up any knowledge of shell scripting, you're only a man somecommand away from understanding what specific command line programs do. somecommand --flag --another-flag /home/me/thing typically isn't much different from opening some GUI app on Windows, ticking two boxes, opening the file picker and selecting C:\users\me\thing then clicking a button.

All that said, now we really need examples because there's probably no need for you to be messing with the terminal to begin with. At least not if you aren't doing anything outside basic computing like web browsing, chat, productivity tasks and such. So what are you trying to do in the terminal that the OS failed to provide a GUI for?

Flatpaks... NOOOOO...

I haven't used Zorin but flatpaks are enabled by default if I understand. Yes, you can install them via the command line but it looks like you could just open the built in software center and search for whatever it is you want. The only exception I can imagine is if you're trying to install from a source other than whatever Zorin uses by default (Flathub, I would guess).

dependencies not found

With Flatpaks? Wat? With some other command? Context, please.

Anytime I have to use terminal I ALWAYS make a backup

You're competent enough to image and restore your drive but not stay out of trouble in your OS? You presumably had to learn whatever software, and the underlying concepts, you're using for that. Clonezilla, Rescuezilla, Macrium Reflect, etc all exist to make it easier but you've gotta know what an "image" is, what it means create it and subsequently write it onto a drive. How to identify the correct drive so you're not wiping out something unintentionally.

So, are you not spending even a few minutes to check if the code snippets you're pasting are applicable to your specific distribution? At least skimming the man page for the commands you try to run? Are you assuming "it's all just Linux, right?" and that there isn't nuance between distributions? Running shell commands you don't understand is like running whatever backup solution you're using without understanding it - just blindly clicking buttons and maybe you get a backup or maybe you format a drive and lose decades of family photos, your research paper draft, and whatever else. And if a fuckup costs me a literal day of my life in restoration time, I'm making it a point to use that time to figure out why so I hopefully don't repeat the process in the future.

There's little substance in your complaints and I'm left just so genuinely confused. In my head I'm imagining a walking talking XY Problem. Some specific examples of what you were trying to achieve or the snippets you were blindly pasting might shed some light but, left to guess, your actions sound akin to gamer kids running random batch scripts claiming to tweak power settings or whatever else in order to eke out a few extra FPS. Windows isn't going to protect anyone who treats it the same way you have seemingly treated Linux.

Can't speak for you, but trouble shooting, even if you dont know what you do, is at least in my experience way easier. A terminal command does the exact same thing, no matter on which system (OK, there are differences like package manager, but you get what mean) and no matter when. On Windows you get 10 screenshots of a UI that has changed 10 times since the creation of the guide and no or a completely useless error message if something does not work. As long as you are not trying to debug big ass problems that affect core components of your system (bootloader, drives, stuff with the kernel) it is in fact quite hard to fuck up your entire system (it can happen with Updates on Arch, but this is usually quite rare). As long as you are not touching anything else except your /home directory you should not be able to break your entire system. Also if you are still scared of losing date, there are ways of creating system snapshots (backups). Backing up your home directory is enough because this means, that all the files you use daily are backed up.

Since you mentioned dependencies, here's a quick answer to what this means. There are a shit ton of programming libraries. A library has the use case, that a developer does not have to reinvent the wheel every time they want to do something. You dont want to write a complete library for GUIs every time, but instead use standardised well maintained and documented libraries. Since Programms use these they depend on the user having this library (or alternatively Programms) installed. This is called a dependency. In most cases dependency errors mean, that an expected library is not installed. In this case simply copy the name, and search "install name Linux (or your Distros)" and you are almost guaranteed to find a tutorial for installing it.

My best tip is, that you take the time to learn the basics of Linux. What is a package manager and which one does my system use, how do I navigate directories, how do I create and delete files, how do I edit files. How do I copy or move files. If you know the basics of these things you know most of the stuff you need to know to understand what you are doing. If you want to read more about a specific command you can also always refer to the man page of said command. For this simply type in man "command name" (e.G. "man cd" this gives you the basic infos about the CD command (used for navigating directorys))

By the way you write I now you are smart enough to learn the terminal and you should not fear it, since you are starting with linux it is expected that you will make errors and that is ok. Linux is yours to do and undo.

One of the reasons why Mac was able to take some market share from Windows is that all their computers are the same regardless of the needs of the user, so trouble shooting is easy as all are the same.

Your full backup strategy is kinda overkill, also tells me your are more than capable of learning the terminal btw, you should just back up the critical data then reinstalling/fixing your installation will take the same amount of time for backing your full drive. There are forums to ask for help in linux and there are a lot of us that try to help brother/sister in need. Also timeshift might be easier faster than the usb thing.

I do not know Zorin OS but there are other flavors of Linux that might be better for you, maybe something atomic like Bazzite which is immutable so you can't fuck it up. One distro does not represent all.

About your Windows for the masses comment, every one of us linux users started with Windows because that's what the computers came with, Microsoft paid a lot for that to happen, and the users got used to Windows and got used to its quirks. That is in itself technical knowledge, so there are no computer users "without technical knowledge"

About the restarting the computer to solve issues comment. That's just not true, my work Windows computer started blue screening with no reason, no amount of restarting fixed that.

Now to the trolls, they are trolls, your are giving a proper argument for your use case and I respect you for that because you are giving linux a try. The trolls im referring to are the ones shitting on linux without even trying it or just calling people names because they dare to try something different.

About your comment for living with issues with my setup forever as a non-techy user reminded me of the 10s of toolbars my aunt had in her computer and complained when I removed them because she had gotten so used to them.

Do not fear the terminal even Windows was once DOS, install and try all the distros you can they are FREE, there are a lot of flavors for different needs.

I'm still going strong two years later! :D

Yes and that's ok, but the comment you tagged is about the people just shitting on linux without even trying it, they are kind of Windows hooligans.

they removed the comment section now 😅

They use Arch, btw

I had blocked the user, might have been before writing my reply. I guess that caused it to fail to the top level, weird. Deleted the comment as it doesn't make any sense there.

Sounds fun!

🤣 Thats pretty funny.

Looks like I finally found a purpose to live

I’ll leave my door open today. Please make it work and let me play games on steam without having to learn.

Seriously, I’m almost ready to try.

I still use Debian all the time. Have for over quarter of a century. I develop in a debian container and run Debian in production. For years I used unstable, pinning etc on desktop/laptop and can make Debian work on modern hardware. I tried arch and was suprised how much I liked it. It is a very vanilla upstream experience. The Debian maintainers have added a lot of baggage over time and some of it annoys the hell out of me (particularly when they add shit patches to ssh). Otherwise it might have been my distro for life.

All Linux regular distros give the user complete control over their system (as they should) and that can be a problem for people coming from Windows. Microsoft had to protect them from deleting their system directory because it turns out people are actually that stupid. People like Linus Sebastian get views telling a Youtube audience of millions how one command made his Linux install unusable. And it is a legit criticism for a typical Windows refugee. We need to re-learn all the shit Microsoft discovered over the last 30 years about what complete morons their users can be because we never cared about that. Linux was for power users and destroying your system a right of passage.

Our football team preferences make no difference to Windows refugees. They want a game console experience, an android/ios experience. Something better than the shitshow that is Windows. We can do that. I have never used Bazzite and it might be shit but they are trying to address those users. SteamOS and ChromeOS do a very good job providing a safe install for non-technical users based on arch and gentoo. The base distro ultimately doesn't matter as much as we think it does. The differences between Ubuntu and Debian aren't that huge. But you ship updates as a signed immutable root with a fallback to the previous install and run everything else out of user storage and your in consumer appliance territory.

You need to backup any data you want to keep to another drive before installing.

Make sure there's nothing important on the flash drive too. Writing the iso will erase everything on it.

https://distrowatch.com/

I use a variety of distros depending on my situation, but I’d easily recommend Mint to anyone wanting to dip their toes in.

Choices which don't matter nearly as much as people like to pretend they do, no less.

If you're having trouble deciding, just pick a popular (general-purpose) distro at random. Ubuntu, Fedora, Debian, Mint, Bazzite, even Arch -- whatever, it'll be fine, don't worry 'bout it.