I bought a laptop yesterday, it came pre-installed with Windows 11. I hate win 11 so I switched it down to Windows 10, but then started considering using Linux for total control over the laptop, but here’s the thing: I keep seeing memes about how complicated or fucky wucky Linux is to install and run. I love the idea of open source software and an operating system without any of the bullshit that comes with Windows, but most of the open source stuff I have is on my android and fairly easy to install. Installing and using Linux just feels like it’ll be a whole different beast that’ll eat up most of my time and I’m kind of intimidated by it.

TL;DR Linux scawy, how does a barely computer literate scrub like me who’s used nothing but windows since the dawn of their life get started with Linux?

You are viewing a single thread.
View all comments View context
1 point

I agree that some stuff has gotta stay up to date, I guess I see that more as part of learning how the system works and how to break it/weld shit onto it problem instead of starting from a rolling release.

permalink
report
parent
reply
1 point

Dont know if I understood that sentence.

Testing packages is fine. But randomly stopping updates from upstream maintainers makes no sense. If you develop the software you can freeze packages. Or if upstream has dedicated LTS/ESR variants. But not if you dont.

permalink
report
parent
reply
1 point

Now I’m not sure I’m the one who understands!

I was saying that it’s better for a new user to come to the understanding that their system has its own version of everything and learn how to work around that when they need to rather than start from a rolling release where everything is as new as possible.

permalink
report
parent
reply
1 point

I mean software devs release software when it is ready. Fedora also is semi-rolling and especially the older release has some form of held back packages.

But knowing “my distro ships packages with some random frozen number and these issues will simply not be fixed in a long time” is not really helpful.

Also, people dont know this from anywhere. Android, macOS, Windows all have separated software that is officially maintained and uses the latest stable version. Only Linux distros use this strange packaging form.

So I think using Flatpaks is way better, as they are often officially maintained. A lot of them are not, but they manage the separation from the system very well, so you actually run the latest versions without any chance to break the system.

permalink
report
parent
reply

Linux

!linux@lemmy.ml

Create post

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).

Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word “Linux” in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.

Rules

  • Posts must be relevant to operating systems running the Linux kernel. GNU/Linux or otherwise.
  • No misinformation
  • No NSFW content
  • No hate speech, bigotry, etc

Related Communities

Community icon by Alpár-Etele Méder, licensed under CC BY 3.0

Community stats

  • 8.3K

    Monthly active users

  • 6.3K

    Posts

  • 173K

    Comments