lemmygrad_leftistunix/guides/getting_into_linux.md

So you want to get into Linux?

What is Linux?

Linux is a kernel! This means that it's the layer of software that handles communicating with the hardware of your machine and in allocating resources with the rest of software that may be used alongside with it. It's also responsible for a lot more complicated stuff, but we don't need to dive into that.

This kernel is then used by a lot of people to create and operating system, these operating systems are most likely to use the same or similar software making themselves compatible with each other. This essentially makes them distributions of the same operating system, because the most important part that makes them all interoperable is the kernel.

Should I bother with other distributions?

At the start? Not really, it's best to try them out only after you've gotten comfortable with using Linux at all. If you get comfortable with Mint, and don't feel like exploring what your computer can do or get into more advanced stuff, that is completely fine!

What should I start with?

It's best to start with a simple to install, use, and maintain distribution. We recommend starting with Linux Mint, as this distribution is very similar to Windows, has a bundle of software already installed and has good hardware support out of the box as it comes prepackaged with even proprietary firmware. We'll later touch on how to check whether your Wi-Fi card works before you commit to installing.

Also, Linux Mint is itself based on the Debian distribution. Meaning it gets a lot of support from proprietary software and hardware manufacturers. Playing games from Steam, or connecting an inkjet printer generally shouldn't be a problem here.

How do I get started?

First let's go the Linux Mint website. It does look pretty modern, doesn't it? We are already greeted by a Download button and an Installation instructions button. Pretty neat!

BUT!

The first order of business! Do you have a free flash drive you can use? This is very necessary! After all you have to put the data to used to install your new operating system somewhere. Oh, and this process will clear your flash drive of all of the data on it! Make sure there's nothing important there! The next best course of action would be to back up your data from your computer! Just in case something goes wrong.

If you're ready, let's continue on and click the download button. Woah! That's a lot of options, what is Cinnamon, Mate and XFCE? Two of them sound edible, but unfortunately they are not. These are so called Desktop Environments, such a concept does not exist on Windows because you have only one you are forced onto! These will decide how your desktop looks and operates, on Mint they've been configured to be very similar to each other, and so they won't be headache for you no matter what you choose.

Łumało's personal preferred desktop environment is XFCE because he can make it look like Windows 9x (We'll get back to customization later), however read the descriptions and choose one which you think would work best on your hardware. If you regret your choice later, don't worry! Installing and changing to a new desktop environment is easy!

After you click download, you'll see more information, like the size of the installation image, a link to an installation guide and a list of links from which you can download the image from. Be sure to choose the one nearest to you for a fast and stable download.

Next we'll leave you to follow the official Linux Mint installation guide until the step *boot Linux Mint*. The guide is very well written and easy to follow, also when reading through it please do not skip any steps. Read carefully and do not skim, this is just so you know as much as you can about the process and are aware of the details.

Now, have you booted into Linux Mint successfully? This is called a live session, if everything seems to work correctly we can continue on to installing the OS, but first check if your Wi-Fi card works! You can do that by just starting the installation process, it will check if there are any networks available. Don't see any but you are sure there should be some? Then most probably your Wi-Fi card is unfortunately not supported, you can proceed if you want to but you'll probably only going to get Internet access through the Ethernet port. If your network connection works we can continue the installation.

The biggest question now is: Do you want to keep Windows and all of your data? Because you can install Linux alongside Windows on the same computer, and after turning on your computer you will be greeted with a list of operating systems you'd like to choose from.

You may continue on with the installation guide, be sure to choose your preferred option in Installation Type. Either Erase disk and install Linux Mint or Install Linux Mint alongside other operating system, as this step will make changes to the data on your disk.

After you've finished, congratulations! You have (hopefully) successfully installed Linux on your computer and can use it as your main operating system!

General information

How do I install software?

Linux distributions, unlike Windows, come prepackaged with something called a package manager (similar to app stores of phones). It is used to install software from safe sources, manage updates of said software and the operating system itself. Linux Mint comes prepackaged with a nice graphical frontend to it's package manager, named a software center (or something I don't remember). You can find it in the Start Menu, and search for software from there.

If you can't find software you need from the package manager, check if it's even available on Linux and whether you have to install it directly from the provider. This is recommended against, but sometimes it's necessary. For example if you'd like to install printer drivers for a Brother inkjet, you'll have to visit Brother's website and acquire it from there.

If you'd like to, you can also check out the package managers equivalent in the Terminal!

What's the terminal?

The terminal is a command line prompt that you can input commands into. Don't be scared of it, on Mint it's not necessary to know how to use it but it can be useful. The best first introduction to using the terminal is by using the package manager through it, and considering the terminal just that for the time being.

Try it out by typing in apt --help, this will give you information on how to use the package manager in the terminal!

Knowing the terminal can also be very useful, when fixing problems people will most likely give you a list of commands to run through it. Now why would they do that? Because no matter the distribution, the terminal is the standard user interface. Everyone has access to it, and it's basically the same for everyone. It's also easy to give instructions to users, they don't need to look for buttons or traverse through menus. Just copy and paste a few commands and you're done. Just look out what you copy and paste and make sure the commands are verified or approved by others! If some one tells you to run this command: sudo rm -rf --no-preserve-root /* NEVER DO SO! It will delete your entire system!

That's also a testament to Linux, it will allow you to do anything to the system. It will ask you to have appropriate permissions, sometimes warn and tell you even that what you are about to do can mess up your installation. But it will never deny you control over your computer.

Do I need an antivirus?

Nope! Popular Linux distributions are known to provide safe software repositories you can download from. Just be cautious the same way you are when downloading software for Windows when downloading it from the web, like making sure it is from the correct provider. Downloading printer drivers from Softonic is never a good idea, no matter the OS you use.

But if you'd like to keep Windows users safe from malicious files before sending any to them, you can use ClamAV which is a very good antivirus on it's own.

Where's the C:\ drive?

TODO: FIND NATIVE GUI ALTERNATIVE TO MODIFYING FSTAB

Linux does not present disk devices in ways that are their own independent directory trees like Windows, all disks exist on the same directory tree, with the disk containing your installation being the first disk that gets mounted and it's directory tree will begin from the root directory.

What's the root directory? It's the highest up directory, also known as /, for example your user directory will be named something like /home/user. Two directories higher of off the root directory.

Well what about other devices you plug in? Their mounting is usually managed by the file manager, or they get mounted automatically. Usually they are mounted in the /media directory. Funky isn't it? / already belongs to the drive on your computer and somehow anything in the /media folder can be made to belong to another drive.

Let's make an example, let's say I have a 128GB SSD and a 1TB HDD. Well I definitely, could use that HDD for all of my user files, and have the operating system on the SSD. So I install Linux on the SSD normally, and then after I install I edit the /etc/fstab file to make the 1TB HDD mount to /home/user. Thus I have a seamless tree directory, across two different disks and save space on my SSD from user data.

OK, but how do I know which disk is which?

You can open the Disks management utility or you can open up the terminal and type lsblk. You will get a list of all block devices. You can probably see a disk name sda, and under it sda1 and maybe sda2.

sd means that this is a serial disk, the a after means it's the first serial disk the system found, if you have more they get other letters of the alphabet sequentially. The 1 and 2 are partitions of the disk found. You should also see information like disk size and mount points.

OK, but where the hell is everything?

Time to explain the Linux directory structure!

/etc is the directory containing system wide configuration files as well as advanced configuration files for managing the system.

/root is the home directory for the root user which on Linux is the administrator account.

/bin is the directory where you will find software executable files, but sometimes they may be installed to /usr/bin

/sbin is the directory where you will find software executable files that need root permissions, it also has it's equivalent in /usr/sbin

/usr contains basically any and all add additional files you may install onto the system but it is broader than that. Also it's name doesn't stand for "user" but User System Resources.

/media and /mnt are directories where external media is mounted, /mnt is the legacy choice but generally is used for manual mounting.

For more detailed information you can read Getting To Know the Linux Filesystem by Les Pounder for Tom's Hardware

What are some good resources for learning about Linux?

First of all, this community and others on lemmy! Ask around and we are sure to help you! Even the rest of the fediverse! Many people here are fans of Free and Open Source Software so check out Mastodon, GNU Social, PeerTube and more!

Second of all, Youtube! One of the best youtubers for beginners to check out is Distrotube, he makes a lot of videos exploring the software available for Linux and provides tutorials for most of important tasks (like setting up a printer and the like). With watching his videos, you are bound to be recommended more Linux videos from other people. Just be sure that some of them may have dubious politics they try to shoehorn into those videos, and you are bound to find petite bourgeoisie and reactionary bullshit.

Third of all, you can check out Reddit, but with the whole blackout thing going on that might be pretty difficult.

Another useful resource would be the Arch Linux Wiki, as it contains great guides for almost any piece of software you might want to use and has lists of software that can be used to accomplish a certain task. Keep in mind, Linux Mint is not Arch based so some commands might not be the same, for example the package manager. Arch does not use apt, it uses pacman.

The most versatile, but not too good resource is always searching online through Google, DuckDuckGO, Ecosia, Bing and whatever else. SEO articles will definitely hamper your experience so try to use them as the last resort.

Specialized information

For most, the basics aren't enough to even begin using the OS. Playing games, having functional hardware, and making Linux truly your own is what they need.

I'd like to play some games.

There are many ways to enjoy games on Linux, Steam for example is well supported and works without issue (just be sure to install it from the software center). Many games work on Linux natively and don't need anything special to make them work, but a lot of games are unfortunately only made for Windows… Now you don't need to worry about that, in recent years Valve has been pushing the proton project. It's a simple solution (on the user end), that makes a lot of the games work as good as on Windows, sometimes even better, and sometimes worse. Depends on the game.

If you'd like to know how proton works, or how to enable it after installing Steam check out this guide.

If you do not own games on Steam, and for example GOG you might want to try either Lutris or the more "antique" PlayOnLinux. Both of these utilities use WINE to run games made for Windows on Linux, WINE is short for WINE Is Not (an) Emulator which is a recursive acronym. They have specially made scripts as to make configuration and headaches minimal, so that you can easily play (almost) all your games. Also, WINE is a compatibility layer to make Windows software able to be run on Linux.

Also, Lutris and PlayOnLinux can be used to easily play GOG builds you've gotten from. Let's say. Any source. Make of that what you will ;)

I have to use certain specialized software.

TODO: IMPROVE SECTION

Unfortunately some companies do not provide their specialized software for Linux, and it is difficult to make it work through WINE. We'll use Adobe as an example, they do not provide any of their software on Linux, yet for many creative workers their application suite is an absolute necessity! Unfortunately if you do not want to or are unable to use alternatives, you are most likely out of luck.

I have hardware issues.

TODO: IMPROVE SECTION

Resolving hardware issues can be somewhat complicated, however you might be in luck. Linux Mint has an easy to follow driver manager.

When it comes to most hardware, there shouldn't be many problems as Linux is a monolithic kernel and itself has almost all drivers built in. For some hardware that may be an exception, like nVidia graphics cards, or even FOSS firmware for AMD cards. Check out the aforementioned driver manager to resolve problems as soon as you install.

My system looks ugly, I wanna make it prettier.

TODO: IMPROVE SECTION

The best place to look for resources to make your software eye candy, is Pling. They have a huge repository of application themes, icon themes, cursors themes, wallpapers, fonts and more!

A good place to check out what you can achieve is the unixporn commnity on lemmy.ml and on the unixporn subreddit

Should I know anything else?

If you need any help with stuff not mentioned here, make a post and we'll try to help you. If the problem is considered important or widespread enough for new users we will include it in this guide.

Here are some additional resources that can help you:

Linux is Not Windows by Dominic Humphries (Keep in mind that this article was written in 2006!)

This guide is written for the c/leftistunix community on lemmygrad.ml.

© 2023 This guide is licensed under the Creative Commons BY-NC-SA 4.0 License