I’m gonna be honest with you, Linux is so much more simple than people make it out to be. If it’s your first time dipping into that world, you can grab Ubuntu, KDE neon, or Linux Mint, all of which are very stable and beginner friendly. Ubuntu has a more unique look to it, and neon/mint looks more like windows. You can run and manage both without ever having to open a terminal or dive into any code, just use it like a normal computer and you’ll be fine. I’ve been using Linux since about '08, I’m not a sysadmin or coder or anything like that. I play most of my games in Linux with no problem
that’s a fair point. I just think the Linux community does itself a disservice by making things seem way more complicated and techy when it’s really not that crazy at all. It can be, sure, but that’s entirely up to the user
Probably stupid question that I can look up, but I think Linux expounding isn’t a problem here:
I have an Intel/Nvidia laptop as my only machine right now. I’ve read the jokes about how hard it is to get working peripherals and the jokes about the brains of those who can’t get them to work.
I’m an amateur web dev (looking to un-amateur) so while a command line isn’t super scary, it sure would feel like work or daunting at least for a bit. I also gotta share the machine.
So I guess the question is: how true are those peripheral driver issue things for say random stuff like using a Dual Sense controller with (I think this is the right name) Proton for the gaming nights, and am I right in assuming any distro (except those mutable or atomic distributions that seem to be divisive) that is “beginner friendly” with a GUI for the family is still going to enable me to poke into further learning with the CLI, i.e. you don’t sacrifice full featured command line for GUI?
Silly ahead of myself concern, but if I can avoid needing to learn more PowerShell junk and just focus on learning Bash, that’s actually a bonus I hadn’t thought of.
Those are great questions! Dualsense is supported through drivers provided by PlayStation and to my best recollection, most features work out of the box. Last I recall, the adaptive triggers weren’t functional outside of normal trigger activity and the audio jack doesn’t audio. Proton is a tool that Steam/Valve made to make most windows games work within Linux without needing a lot of tinkering. I’ve had mostly success with it, however some games still won’t work, usually due to anti cheat software. There’s a website called protondb.com that can be used to check the compatibility of most games and it usually offers tips for getting the best performance depending on the game.
As for the GUI vs CLI question, you’ll still have full access to the terminal or command line through the terminal emulator. Think of it like the cmd prompt in Windows. You sacrifice nothing by using a graphical interface and can still do all your terminal work without a GUI if you’d prefer, that’s entirely up to your preference. For example, with Ubuntu, you have your software center, which is essentially an app store that you can use to download different programs and/or utilities. You can use that, or you can open a terminal emulator and type in something like “sudo apt install Firefox” and it will do the same thing.
Linux can be as complicated or simple as you want to make it, as the owner of the computer, everything is entirely up to you. You can rely entirely on GUI based applications and never run into a problem. I do a little of both, but I’ve also got several years of experience tinkering around with things.
I don’t know what your current level of proficiency is outside of webdev, but if you’re familiar with virtual machines, like VMware, you can spin up a virtual environment and test drive Linux without having to modify your existing computer at all. With this being a shared computer, you could always dualboot it. That’s when you have two different operating systems installed at the same time. When you power on your PC, you’ll get a menu to pick windows or Linux and can switch by restarting your PC to get back to that menu. Windows files will be accessible in Linux, however Linux files are usually not accessible in Windows.
Drivers are pretty easy, most are already built into the Linux kernel. For Nvidia drivers, you have open source drivers, or proprietary drivers. The open source ones are readily available in almost every distro, and the propriety (better performing) drivers are a few clicks away. Most times, you’ll be asked if you want the proprietary drivers during your installation and won’t have to mess with them ever again.
I know I hit you with a full essay and a half, and it may seem like a lot, but I promise you it’s really not as complicated as people like to make it seem. My elderly mother ran Linux on a laptop I gave her years ago without even noticing for years. If you have questions, there’s a million and a half different places to ask, including my DMs. Feel free to shoot me a question, and I’ll do a little digging to see what I can teach you.
This was amazing. Thank you so much for taking the time to write it all out! I really do have no reason to not dual boot. I only have one site community to manage, and I had help with the original configuration so my exposure to Linux has mostly been the occasional CentOS foray to update the stack throughout the years and start a few experiments that fizzled (but not that backup script! Woo!). I guess seeing it all in one place is just what I needed; there’s no reason to give it a VM a try. I already got WSL installed to “try Ubuntu” I told myself, but well, didn’t have much of a project to try. Your “essay” was the information I needed to get me to just give dual booting a try, work on daily driving it (I write as a hobby, and I heard there’s a trillion of good open source note apps out there, so there’s mini-project one, get a dual boot and a basic “Music,coffee,notes,wordprocessor” no-frills inst–Oh, I see how it starts with y’all. Thanks for your time, truly!
Lol anytime my dude! There’s plenty of options out there for you. I personally use vim for journalling and some other light text stuff, but that’s a fairly minimal terminal tool. You can go that route, or you can grab Libre Office (Microsoft office alternative), or whatever else best fits your wants and needs. Like I said, my DMs are open if you have questions, but I do want to reiterate that I am not a professional, I’m just some dude who learned about this junk in highschool and has been using it as your average everyday computer nerd. I hope you not only learn a few things, but I hope you have fun exploring. If it doesn’t work out, oh well, nuke it and go back to what works best for you. It’s your computer, use it how you want to, don’t let anyone else tell you otherwise.
One last recommendation before I hop off my soapbox, assuming you give Ubuntu a shot, I’d recommend checking out some of their different “flavors”. They all work the same under the hood, but give you a different UI to work within. You can swap whenever, or run all of them, it’s your call. I prefer Gnome (the G is not silent), it’s Ubuntu’s default, but there’s Mate (pronounced like the tea, mah-tay), Kde (short for Kool desktop environment, no I’m not joking), xfce, unity, and more. Other than that, have fun!
Install Ventoy onto a USB, copy over a few distro images onto it, and now you can boot up and try a few.
If you know anyone running Linux just run the same distro as them unless it’s one of the intimidating ones: easiest way to beat the learning curve is to work with someone else. Otherwise grab a beginner-friendly distro. I once started with Ubuntu but today I’d probably start with PopOS
I can read, count, and combine them into steps followed in a sequential order. Can I Linux? I think I can Linux. These fucks are taking the piss.
I’m gonna be honest with you, Linux is so much more simple than people make it out to be. If it’s your first time dipping into that world, you can grab Ubuntu, KDE neon, or Linux Mint, all of which are very stable and beginner friendly. Ubuntu has a more unique look to it, and neon/mint looks more like windows. You can run and manage both without ever having to open a terminal or dive into any code, just use it like a normal computer and you’ll be fine. I’ve been using Linux since about '08, I’m not a sysadmin or coder or anything like that. I play most of my games in Linux with no problem
In many ways it’s easier to use than Windows, as long as there aren’t expectations that it works like Windows.
that’s a fair point. I just think the Linux community does itself a disservice by making things seem way more complicated and techy when it’s really not that crazy at all. It can be, sure, but that’s entirely up to the user
Probably stupid question that I can look up, but I think Linux expounding isn’t a problem here:
I have an Intel/Nvidia laptop as my only machine right now. I’ve read the jokes about how hard it is to get working peripherals and the jokes about the brains of those who can’t get them to work.
I’m an amateur web dev (looking to un-amateur) so while a command line isn’t super scary, it sure would feel like work or daunting at least for a bit. I also gotta share the machine.
So I guess the question is: how true are those peripheral driver issue things for say random stuff like using a Dual Sense controller with (I think this is the right name) Proton for the gaming nights, and am I right in assuming any distro (except those mutable or atomic distributions that seem to be divisive) that is “beginner friendly” with a GUI for the family is still going to enable me to poke into further learning with the CLI, i.e. you don’t sacrifice full featured command line for GUI?
Silly ahead of myself concern, but if I can avoid needing to learn more PowerShell junk and just focus on learning Bash, that’s actually a bonus I hadn’t thought of.
Those are great questions! Dualsense is supported through drivers provided by PlayStation and to my best recollection, most features work out of the box. Last I recall, the adaptive triggers weren’t functional outside of normal trigger activity and the audio jack doesn’t audio. Proton is a tool that Steam/Valve made to make most windows games work within Linux without needing a lot of tinkering. I’ve had mostly success with it, however some games still won’t work, usually due to anti cheat software. There’s a website called protondb.com that can be used to check the compatibility of most games and it usually offers tips for getting the best performance depending on the game.
As for the GUI vs CLI question, you’ll still have full access to the terminal or command line through the terminal emulator. Think of it like the cmd prompt in Windows. You sacrifice nothing by using a graphical interface and can still do all your terminal work without a GUI if you’d prefer, that’s entirely up to your preference. For example, with Ubuntu, you have your software center, which is essentially an app store that you can use to download different programs and/or utilities. You can use that, or you can open a terminal emulator and type in something like “sudo apt install Firefox” and it will do the same thing.
Linux can be as complicated or simple as you want to make it, as the owner of the computer, everything is entirely up to you. You can rely entirely on GUI based applications and never run into a problem. I do a little of both, but I’ve also got several years of experience tinkering around with things.
I don’t know what your current level of proficiency is outside of webdev, but if you’re familiar with virtual machines, like VMware, you can spin up a virtual environment and test drive Linux without having to modify your existing computer at all. With this being a shared computer, you could always dualboot it. That’s when you have two different operating systems installed at the same time. When you power on your PC, you’ll get a menu to pick windows or Linux and can switch by restarting your PC to get back to that menu. Windows files will be accessible in Linux, however Linux files are usually not accessible in Windows.
Drivers are pretty easy, most are already built into the Linux kernel. For Nvidia drivers, you have open source drivers, or proprietary drivers. The open source ones are readily available in almost every distro, and the propriety (better performing) drivers are a few clicks away. Most times, you’ll be asked if you want the proprietary drivers during your installation and won’t have to mess with them ever again.
I know I hit you with a full essay and a half, and it may seem like a lot, but I promise you it’s really not as complicated as people like to make it seem. My elderly mother ran Linux on a laptop I gave her years ago without even noticing for years. If you have questions, there’s a million and a half different places to ask, including my DMs. Feel free to shoot me a question, and I’ll do a little digging to see what I can teach you.
This was amazing. Thank you so much for taking the time to write it all out! I really do have no reason to not dual boot. I only have one site community to manage, and I had help with the original configuration so my exposure to Linux has mostly been the occasional CentOS foray to update the stack throughout the years and start a few experiments that fizzled (but not that backup script! Woo!). I guess seeing it all in one place is just what I needed; there’s no reason to give it a VM a try. I already got WSL installed to “try Ubuntu” I told myself, but well, didn’t have much of a project to try. Your “essay” was the information I needed to get me to just give dual booting a try, work on daily driving it (I write as a hobby, and I heard there’s a trillion of good open source note apps out there, so there’s mini-project one, get a dual boot and a basic “Music,coffee,notes,wordprocessor” no-frills inst–Oh, I see how it starts with y’all. Thanks for your time, truly!
Edit: Missed important word.
Lol anytime my dude! There’s plenty of options out there for you. I personally use vim for journalling and some other light text stuff, but that’s a fairly minimal terminal tool. You can go that route, or you can grab Libre Office (Microsoft office alternative), or whatever else best fits your wants and needs. Like I said, my DMs are open if you have questions, but I do want to reiterate that I am not a professional, I’m just some dude who learned about this junk in highschool and has been using it as your average everyday computer nerd. I hope you not only learn a few things, but I hope you have fun exploring. If it doesn’t work out, oh well, nuke it and go back to what works best for you. It’s your computer, use it how you want to, don’t let anyone else tell you otherwise.
One last recommendation before I hop off my soapbox, assuming you give Ubuntu a shot, I’d recommend checking out some of their different “flavors”. They all work the same under the hood, but give you a different UI to work within. You can swap whenever, or run all of them, it’s your call. I prefer Gnome (the G is not silent), it’s Ubuntu’s default, but there’s Mate (pronounced like the tea, mah-tay), Kde (short for Kool desktop environment, no I’m not joking), xfce, unity, and more. Other than that, have fun!
Install Ventoy onto a USB, copy over a few distro images onto it, and now you can boot up and try a few.
If you know anyone running Linux just run the same distro as them unless it’s one of the intimidating ones: easiest way to beat the learning curve is to work with someone else. Otherwise grab a beginner-friendly distro. I once started with Ubuntu but today I’d probably start with PopOS