Hello!

I’m interested in moving my personal computer to running Linux but I’m not sure where to even begin. As background, I am a casual user and have a desktop with hardware from around 2014 running Windows. I am hoping to setup a NAS drive as a media server in the next year or so, offloading all of the files currently on the Windows desktop and have been interested in open source software such as Jellyfin. I also mostly game on an Xbox and Nintendo Switch, but have used the desktop in the past for gaming such as with an Oculus Rift Headset and some Steam games so not huge on getting games working on the computer. But, I do sometimes torrent using the computer so don’t want to lose that capability (especially with upkeep for the media server).

With all of that said, I didn’t know how to get started with choosing what Linux OS to use, setting it up, backing up my files to make sure I can use them with the new OS, etc. Making the switch seems to have great options for customization and “choosing a distro that works for you”, but I don’t know what would work for me or what will be user friendly for a beginner.

Any tips or pointing me in the right direction would be greatly appreciated! Thank you!

  • @sugar_in_your_tea
    7•9 months ago
    1. Install Linux Mint, whatever flavor you like the look of
    2. Figure out how to install whatever you need
    3. Enjoy!

    Don’t worry about customization, just figure out how to get your stuff installed and go from there. Once everything is working as you want, then try customizing.

    • @[email protected]OP
      2•9 months ago

      Thank you! When people say “customizing” (throughout this thread and others) what are they referencing? For instance, just the desktop layout/formatting, or the way the files are structured, or the kinds of software they are using for tasks?

      • @sugar_in_your_tea
        2•9 months ago

        The answer to that varies by person. But when I say it, I mean doing large changes, like switching your desktop environment (e.g. GNOME -> KDE or a tiling window manager) or trying out custom kernels (e.g. using a different scheduler, like linux-ck, linux-clear, etc). So I guess a little of the first and a little of the last.

    • Dandroid
      2•9 months ago

      How do y’all get past the Nvidia Optimus issues? All the Windows machines in my house have Nvidia graphics, which means at least the laptops have Optimus. I would love to move my wife’s laptop over to Linux when Windows 10 goes EOL, but I had a work laptop with Optimus that ran Ubuntu, and the thing was a nightmare. I didn’t really mind because it was a work laptop. But it caused so many issues coming in and out of sleep that I just disabled sleep altogether. I had horrible screen tearing issues. The GPU performance was bad (probably because I had to use the open source driver to fix the screen tearing issues). It was just a horrible experience that I could look past, but my wife can’t.