Idk where else to post this but I've finally kicked Windows for good and I'm SO EXCITED
I've also got the Linux Basics for Hackers book but it's at home while I'm on vacation.
I'm just really happy rn yall :) this install took some work, SecureBoot kept getting in the way and I'm not the most savvy person so there was a lot of Googling and trial and error in the way of getting here.
"I'm just really happy rn yall" - be careful with that rn command if you're anywhere near Arch, wouldn't want all your happy uninstalled! Seriously though, good for you! Welcome to freedom.
Good job, welcome to the free world of tech. Installing is often the hardest part.
Next lesson: forget about downloading installer from the browser, check out the software center or learn package manager commands, that's the first new thing about Linux.
You'll probably be making lots of changes to your computer over the next couple of weeks, so it's a good idea to use TimeShift to make system snapshots. (It works like System Restore in Windows). It can even rescue an unbootable system. Just boot from your Linux Live CD / flash drive and you can run TimeShift from that.
Hey congrats, @A_Union_of_Kobolds@lemmy.world! By getting through that hurdle you most certainly are that savvy of a person. Enjoy the after success glow and welcome to the hacker universe.
Trial and error is 90% of life! Thats how you get shit done!
I'm about to repartition and reinstall everything. I'm very fucking tempted to drop this dual boot nonsense now that I have a good idea of what little I'd be losing.
The Linux Command Line book opened up a lot to me. How Linux Works is very good, but the command line is so essential, and that book gives you some great starting knowledge like aliases and shell scripting.
Especially aliases. Take note of aliases, when you start using aliases it can change your world once you realize how much you can accomplish with what essentially are one line programs you wrote for you own personal needs.
Welcome beyond the pale, friend. You've made it to the other side. Only freedom awaits, should you have the determination to work for it.
Welcome to the club! Mint is an excellent choice, especially from a beginner's perspective. Don't let that stop you from trying other things though if you get the temptation. Fedora and Arch are the two other 'families' I can think of to play with, though I've stuck with things in the Debian side of things myself.
That Linux command line book is really, really good. I love how it actually explains the commands and why to use them instead of just being a copy of each commands help document or something.
If you want to mess with the command line, I recommend tldr. Anyone could do xkcd's tar challenge if they can run tldr tar first! (pretty sure it's in mint's apt repos)
Honestly, I consider myself moderately tech savvy. But I also had issues with SecureBoot when installing Linux. It really doesn't help when every single BIOS has different settings and they all want to make everything as poorly worded and unintuitive as humanly possible.
"Oh, you want an on/off toggle for SecureBoot? Sorry, no. Let's just fuck with you until you either brick your motherboard or somehow manage to install Linux."
My congratulations! You've managed to get past the most difficult hurdle.
Nice. I'm currently waiting on a "new" laptop, get off this old Core2 duo I'm typing on. Under $300 from a trusted ebay seller and I'll be in the right decade. Linux is awesome for using old hardware but my favorite part is the "free as in freedom" aspect.
If you do run into windows mandatory stuff it's not all that hard to run virtual machines now. I've been using VMWare player but on my incoming machine I'm going to give QEMU-KVM a shot. Move away from proprietary VMWare and onto free as in freedom software.
I reccomend trying TUI utilities to get better at Linux for example: btop, fastfetch, ranger, vim, and apt (also ignore anyone who tells you to sudo rm -rf /*)
Congratulations! Enjoy the journey! You'll look back in a few years and wonder how you ever managed with a Windows set up while you slip into the comfy-ness of your customized system.
Anyone have tips for someone wanting to do the same but have two hurdles?
Need multi-org account support for Teams due to multiple contracts across different orgs. At the moment I could run Windows in a VM for it but then notifications are rough. An option is running teams in multiple browser profiles / tabs but this is also not entirely ideal (6-7 profiles/tabs just for teams is rough). Any clever ideas welcome, or someone who may have experience with Matrix bridges to accommodate this somehow? Does that work for adhoc calls?
Speedy remote desktop. Parcel seems to be the closest in speed to RDP thus far, but it doesn't consistently transmit shortcut keys which makes development difficult. Any other suggestions, gladly welcome.
3. (no longer an issue) if you've seen my past comments, I used to seek an alternative to Fancy Zones, but my fix for this was to just get rid of my ultrawide and go back to multiple monitors. So this is no longer needed.
I do have a question: Do you like your current desktop environment (Cinnamon)? Some newcomers complain that it looks quite dated (which I agree). If so, you could try out KDE Plasma or GNOME instead.
I have been using Kubuntu as a daily driver for almost 10 year now, and never regretted it. I had one Windows box for things like special cases (like dumb website forms that won't let me use Linux), Pearson Vue exams, and edge cases related to work, but it's on standby as a secondary system I RDP into. I am not a gamer, so I didn't need it for that. I saved so much money not having to buy hardware in the last decade or so.
Sadly, Windows 11 won't work on anything I have (TPM issues, too old), so I recently got a cheap Windows 11 laptop before the tariffs hit and I pay more for dumb Windows-only reasons.
Linux all the way, man. Gave me a career, a life, and my hardware back.
Congratulations Comrade! Good luck to you in your new world of free awesome software. I escaped Windows years ago and can only imagine how bad it's gotten.
Different distros deal with securebot differently. If you try OpenSUSE, secureboot works: you will be asked to enroll your keys after the install reboot. And you will see the ooensuse-secureboot
entry in the UEFI boot order list.
Congrats! Made the switch finally early this year myself, after thinking about it for nearly twenty years. Hasn't been nearly as hard as I was worried it would be.
I will say that the "Linux Basics for Hackers" is a pretty disappointing book that really should just be called "Linux Basics", and spends too much time pandering with things like "cool" scripts that do nothing useful or wrap a simple command in a way that doesn't actually make it more useful or easier. It's also full of inaccuracies and just isn't very well written, and if you've gotten through much at all of How Linux Works, you're not likely to get anything out of it.
I love how under most Linux threads there is war and anarchie and many know-it-all, but under this?
A New Penguin?
Lets Embrace him in the best Community there is.
I've used Linux for 20 years and never picked up a book on it. Not that there's anything wrong with the books, but let's not give the impression that it's necessary.