Every other forum has rules about these posts because there’s such a glut of them, and yes, I could go read a stickied thread elsewhere, but here I am not doing that.

How would someone with no computer skills get acquainted with the OS? What version would you recommend to the hopeless novice? Can I keep windows on my PC and run the new OS or a practice version of it in a partitioned space while I learn? Can someone with minimal skills/time/patience be happy with a unix-like OS?

  • @ShitEnglish
    1•1 year ago

    😊 for the most part you can just use the tar command to back stuff up in the most half-assed way.

    For example: sudo tar cvzf /tmp/backup.tgz /home/

    Or change /home/ to whatever directory has stuff you care about.

    Then plug in a USB drive and copy /tmp/backup.tgz with the gui and it should contain your user data if you need it. It’s pretty much like making a zip file for a backup…

    Then this to delete the backup file: sudo rm /tmp/backup.tgz

    tar xvf ./backup.tgz to extract it or just use the gui.

    My friends have asked me to do basic Linux stuff for them in my off hours and I generally oblige, if it seems quick and I know they are not going to call me having a meltdown in a few weeks if something unrelated breaks. Especially since it sounds like you already put in quite a bit of legwork trying on your own.

    I wish I could help more but I’ve gone out of my way to not use Nvidia or Intel products for over a decade. So I have no idea. ¯⁠\⁠_⁠(⁠ツ⁠)⁠_⁠/⁠¯ I think that the Nvidia webpage has like a .run file you can use to install them but that might just make things worse…

    Try asking here you will probably get the best answer: https://forum.zorin.com/c/hardware-support/7