Are there any good resources for helping someone getting into Linux? One of my friends I never thought would get into Linux is asking me for help. He specifically is an advanced Windows power user. I also had someone who was a complete noob, even to Windows.
For the noob, I suggested LMDE and Kubuntu and they’ve been having some issues installing LMDE.
For the power user, I suggested the easy distros such as lmde, kubuntu, nobara but also told them if they wanted to jump into the deep end, arch is cool.
However, my suggestions don’t even cover DEs, WMs or what they even are. I just wish there was a good guide out there. I think that’s the biggest hurdle, so many options and not knowing what to pick.
Just for choosing: https://distrochooser.de/ - or put some distros with a tool like Ventoy on a USB stick and do a live install to test it on the actual system. The many options are a great thing, but of course not easy to get into at first. So I’d try not to overthink it, distrohopping is a hobby for some of us :D
For trying out how it looks and feels: https://distrosea.com/
For understanding more about Linux: https://linuxjourney.com/
I can highly recommend linux journey!
This isn’t a guide but Linux Mint is a good stepping stone.
Agree, pop os is also good for beginners
I spent my first year of Linux installing a new distro, or same distro with a different DE probably every other week, sometimes more than once in a week. The Linux ecosystem rewards self starters with curiosity and the ability to search for answers.
LearnLinuxTV is an amazing YouTube channel, high quality distro tours and reviews, as well as tutorials at various levels of mastery. ItsFOSS and Phoronix are great sources for Linux news that help you build some awareness and vocabulary. The official forums of almost every distro are extremely helpful places to find solutions to problems. You just kinda have to be motivated to seek out the answers you need as they arise.
Ooo I just started my Linux journey and I’m definitely checking out that YouTube channel.
they should just install it in a VM and check it out. it might help to point out what man pages and the texinfo manual are and that there’s some docs in /usr/share/doc/
+1 for Linux Mint for the power user. They will fell familiar and can start their journey from there. The most important concept I would explain would be package managers and flat pack, as in vanilla Windows there is no such thing.
The second one would be regular updates and that you have to do a little maintenance from time to time
Mint would be my recommendation for the noob as well. It is a clean distro and does not require a lot of maintenance except regular updates.
I сrеаtеd а whоlе guіdе 2 уеаrs аgо, Кnоwіпg ехасtly thіs would happen with their “special” “security” chips like Pluton or proprietary form of TPM, and Al NPU chips that also exist on Google Pixels, for example. I will NEVER trust Google/Apple/Microsoft hardware. I also made this guide knowing in advance about the EOL for Windows 10, which still has over one year left.
And to all the FOSS zealots going around saying use this or that favourite distro, STOP. They should be the focus, not you. Windows users need the most well community supported, LTS tier stable distro that everybody develops for as first or second preference. Ubuntu LTS with GNOME fits the bill best. This is how I selected my first distro 7 years ago when jumping from Windows 7 to Linux, and successfully mitigated my Windows usage. Now I am a Debian Stable user since last year, since I gained enough knowledge.
Fedora, Ubuntu, Opensuse, Debian. Everything else are just derivatives.
This is the smart answer for people who understand things conceptually. But it’s so much easier to just tell anyone who wants to try Linux to “just install Mint” and then they can distro hop later. You can’t go wrong with Mint.
Unless gaming and using multiple monitors. That was my experience after a couple of months. Fedora, a few weeks in, has made things lot smoother. Otherwise though, Mint was great and with further Wayland I could see me use it again.
All guides are different. There are tons of parallel efforts.
I would in general avoid
- opinionated upstream (Ubuntu)
- too outdated packages (everything Debian, when not using Flatpaks)
- pretty unstable (Arch, Fedora Rawhide, Debian unstable/testing)
I tried a lot of distros, wanted to use KDE which was pretty bad until Plasma 6 to be honest. So always hopped and stayed with the distro where “just KDE breaks”. Fedora Kinoite.
The distro upgrades are automatic and either fail or are not applied (atomic). The distro is premade and does not need changes, the base is as minimal as reasonably possible (even core apps are Flatpaks, to separate them from the base system).
But you can install some RPM packages, the exact same that you could install on other Fedora, external repos, COPR etc. The moment you install a single one, updates will take longer. I layer Librewolf, virt-manager and more without issues, and updates are in the background.
As the system is so modular, uBlue came to life. They ship base images but also highly opinionated ones. I always used kinoite-main, which is just the Fedora base with minimal changes and especially included restricted codecs. Currently trying Aurora, which has more fancy stuff. Bazzite is the one you can use for possibly the best Gaming experience on Linux, Chris Titus made a video about that.
Bazzite is pretty similar to Nobara I think, with the difference that they dont disable SELinux (lol) and use the way more stable rpm-ostree, so they will simply not break.
You also always have an entire snapshot when updating, not just a kernel. So you can always reset to the past version.
You can make a manual snapshot of a specific version, also before a version upgrade etc. These stay there forever until you remove them again.
The interface is easy but there is no GUI yet. Wouldnt be that hard to do, I think that would be a cool Qt/Kirigami project.
And if you still have strange bugs, you can reset, this means all the custom changes (installs, uninstalls, …) will be removed and you get the current Fedora base install without modifications.
This is simply unique, as this is otherwise only possible with a reinstall. The moment you start modifying a “traditional” distros base, you are pretty irreversibly different from upstream.
Its pretty scary, and with Atomic Fedora I basically dont plan on reinstalling ever again.
