Alright, peeps, I want to build Linux on my new PC and need some help with that. On my old PC, I had kubuntu installed, which I liked (at least until downloading Skype fried most of my installers and rebuffed all attempts at deinstallation). When installing kubuntu, I had a lot of help (and by a lot, I mean my friend did like 90% of the work) but as I don’t see them quite as often and I would like to be a little more self-sufficient this time around, I implore thee, Linux users of Hexbear. So here are some general questions:
- Which distribution is right for me?
I have some experience with MINT and kubuntu. I really liked the KDE environment of kubuntu and generally preferred it to MINT. My friend uses archlinux, but they also warned me that arch requires a bit of expertise and isn’t necessarily user firendly. It looked really cool, though. I am willing to learn, but I generally suck with computers. I will mostly use my PC for basic programming tasks and data analysis (mostly python using jupyter, but I would like to learn some basics in C++), similar work related tasks (using TeX-Studio, the pdf editing functions of programs like okular, Libre office on rare occasions etc.) and the occasional Minecraft session.
- Where can I find useful resources for learning about a given distribution?
Keep in mind that I suck absolute shit at computers. I know how to access/use the basic functions of the terminal and how to superficially navigate the PC, but anything beyond that is magic to me.
- Y’all got any good wallpapers?
A FALGSC themed wallpaper that doesn’t burn your eyes out due to being perdominantly red would be cool.
If looking to put in the work while also leveling up in programming since you have some basic experience already, NixOS/Guix should be on your shortlist.
Both have programmatic, declarative configuration instead of a mangle of configuration files that tend to break with entropy as software developers update config files & it’s very easy to miss a broken build until you restart (I remember when PAM had an update & a lot of folks, including myself, panicked as they could no longer log into their machines). Since these config files are tied to versions of software, such issues are much rarer, & with stateless config you get rollbacks to previous working versions for free. Both ship with a powerful package manager that can replace bad programming language package management & tools with overhead like Docker.
The biggest downside is having to learn Nix (language) or Guile Scheme to be able to script your config, but once you get the hang of it, it’s hard to feel confident in any stateful system & you learned valuable skills for package management.