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I use Arch btw
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Honestly the installation guide is super easy to follow and well on the shorter side. Installing arch isn’t the arduous test of one’s linux knowledge some make it out to be
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Output of pacman -Syu
:: Synchronizing package databases… core is up to date extra is up to date multilib is up to date :: Starting full system upgrade… there is nothing to do
Hope this helps!
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Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
Youtube: Checkout Yuki Install Gentoo
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
Home, sweet home 😎
Is the Arch community that bad? I followed the wiki to install it on my Surface Go 2 with secureboot enabled. Is it Arch then? I did update my system in the last 37 seconds, so it’s definitely Arch then? Right?
User is a FOOL. Query resolved.
If it’s arch, it’s arch xD
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Arch users: I updated grub and my computer won’t boot. Wtf?!
Other distros: thank you for finding the bug on latest version of grub. It’s fixed now so our users don’t have to experience it.
You’re welcomed 😉
In case anyone else was wondering, I use Arch.
So do I, but that dosen’t mean we aren’t enemies.
You Linux users sure are a contentious people!
You’ve just made an enemy for life!
You! You are BANNED from this forum! You, and your children, and your children’s children!
For six months.
Nah, they are a loud internet minority. I have never found someone like that
Don’t listen to this guy. He probably used Puppy Linux before.
#! or bust
I have been to some shady pubs and nightclubs in my life, non of them had so much violent people as a linux bugreport thread.
And people wonder why Linux has never gained large marketshare
Oh, for sure. Windows marketshare never drops only because of its friendly community.
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I stg it’s like people in this community never went outside and spoke to a real person before
This is just hateful.
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When the handle tells you everything you need to know. =\
Very insightful of you
What
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It also takes time to learn Windows. As you said, the main difference is that Windows has an unfair quasi monopoly on PC pre-installations, so people grew up with them, that’s why it seems to you that you don’t have to learn it.
Your original comment is equally as asinine, bud.
You literally suggested Linux has not grown because of the community, as if to say every single day thousands of Windows users are booting up their first distros only to be chased away by a toxic community. The only thing holding it back from a boom in users is, what, discord channels?
Because most people actually want to learn from people not a 10,000 word man page written by a robot
So…users don’t want to read, and that’s somehow the Linux community’s fault? Nevermind the fact there’s plenty of very simple and short video guides to help with this.
Look, I’m not going to convince you of anything, you’ve got your mind made up, so whatever. But you’re really reaching here to make a point without any actual evidence. At least have the decency to make some bullshit up like “I’ve spoken with a lot of people that say” or something.
Even the most basic actions, like walking, require time to learn. Linux has some very user friendly distributions like Ubuntu or Linux Mint where you can basically auto-learn really fast. You don’t have to start with Arch Linux nor should you.
Linux will never compete with Windows because most people will never bother to change whatever OS came with their laptop. That had nothing to do with the community.
But it’s on your phone, it’s powering most websites including this very lemmy instance, it’s on Steam Decks. Linux is everywhere. But if you want to narrow it down to desktop computers then sure, it doesn’t have anywhere near the marketshare windows has.
People generally mean consumer facing products when they talk about market share. In particular I was commenting on how many Linux communities are still obsessed with the idea that desktop Linux will win out over Windows
Android is basically Linux. But I don’t see many communities obsessing over it, the ‘year of the linux desktop’ thing has been a meme for decades.
Ya know that’s a fair point about the phones. But as far as desktop I still see lots of posts about how Linux is “taking over” the (desktop) gaming space. Most of which ignore the real reasons people don’t use Linux (again, on desktop) (the community, the difficulty of setup, the inertia, etc)
Most Linux fanboys don’t think Linux will ever truly overtake Windows, just that it has the potential to cut into their market share.
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Even friggin Microsoft Azure runs on Linux
This is only true for webservers. If you check all the servers in the world windows server is leading. There are industries that work with windows mostly like factories, banking, any office business in the world.
if you look at all the servers in the world Windows Server is leading
[citation needed]
A new adoptor doesnt have to deal with bug report hate comments though
“People are an asshole to me. So it’s okay if I’m an asshole to them”
First rule of Arch Linux is you defintely talk about Arch Linux
I use Arch by the way.
I use Arch and only use Vim or Emacs for config files. That’s Linux flex culture right there. 🙂
Pathetic and bloated. Nano is all you need
The best text editor is xed, I will take no further questions.
Jokes aside though, it’s so simple and basic, I love it precisely because of that.
Vim or Emacs? Stick to one, you editor two timer!
I use Debian with the Linux-libre kernel and OpenRC, relatively the same experience but without the AUR.
Debian unstable for all 11 of us crazy fuckers out there.
Tbh, I haven’t experienced too many issues other then modifying a couple prgrams to be compatible with OpenRC. On my main desktop I use Debian 12 and Systemd with my 2080 SUPER and haven’t encountered any issues.
Although, when I tried to install the open kernel version of the NVIDIA driver, my system didn’t like it, so I ended up installing the full proprietary driver and it works well. Will be switching to AMD once I need to buy another graphics card.
(I use Gnome as my DE with two 1440p 144hz monitors)
Wait, you use Unstable? My favorite DM still does, but basically noone is both tech savvy enough, and crazy enough to use Unstable Debian. That’s just a Sisyphean task.
The guys that run Unstable Debian end up creating bug reports like this:
Arch user, a cyclists and a vegetarian walk in to a bar
Btw
I’m already sitting there, sipping beer while my Gentoo gently compiles. :-D
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Queue any discussion of Wayland/Xorg, Systemd, flatpacks, snaps, distro choice,
Pipewire/Pulseaudio(last one is easy, Pipewire ftw), Vim/Emacs, GPL/MIT, immutability, etc…Cue* in this case. English sucks.
Thanks. Wrote cue first, but changed it because I got confused.
Hah yeah it’s crazy. Anyway, zsh or death.
Fish is obviously superior (:
It’s POSIX shell or nothing
Nvim > emacs
It begins
Tried Helix yet?
C++ mfs: Nvim <=> Emacs
Unless you’re good at Emacs
How does Emacs in evil mode fit?
Nvim < Emacs + Vim keybindings (aka
evil).
Apt is the superior package manager. Everyone else is wrong.
Lol
but does your package manager show a video game animation when you download a package? (pacman for life)
Pacman + yay is superior. pacman for most packages, and yay to use the AUR, where you can get pretty much anything that can be downloaded online, but as a package so that you can more easily manage what shit you’ve downloaded before but no longer need.
Until the package adding and removing entropy lits your whole system on fire and you have to untangle dependencies, purge keyring, flush your system and reinstall
Luckily that hasn’t happened to me yet, though I’d say pacman is still far better than something like apt, even if you have to untangle dependencies.
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Literally never heard of paru before now, I just went with yay, since it’s better than manually
git clone-ing the aur package and also manually reviewing the PKGBUILD and then building it. I’ll try it out and see how it is.
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xbpsFTWHave you tried out our lord and saviour
xbps?
I think I only recognized like 5 words in that entire paragraph.
Wayland and Xorg are responsible for display, Systemd is an init system, flatpaks and snaps are containerized, cross-distro packaging formats, you know what a distro is, Pipewire and Pulseaudio are responsible for audio, Vim and Emacs are editors, GPL and MIT are open-source code licenses, I can’t explain immutability.
Vim and emacs are editors
Woah woah we’re talking newbies here. Nano will serve you just fine until you wanna get fancy lol. (Although sometimes it needs to be installed first)
Go watch some Brodie Robertson and Distrotube
Y’know how they say its only the tip of the iceberg? Yeah this iceburg is probably larger than the entire planet
Since when is immutability controversial? Linus called out the Google patches as badly designed with massive code quality issues for good reason. Theo described OpenBSDs approach to it and it is truly a simply concept with good security ramifications.
We’re not enemies as soon as a Windows user walks in. Or… Uuuugh… A Mac user.
I’m actually switching to Mac at work (only two options) because I can’t deal with the Windows environment anymore. Of locked down corporate environments, Windows is absolutely the worst.
Macs run on Unix and are pretty sturdy. I was surprised, when i also had to choose and found their osx ux very unobtrusive, allowing me to code effectively. Also, using the terminal almost feels like home.
It’s not just about UX, though. It’s fundamental design philosophy. I care far less about a poor UI than I do about whether or not the OS allows me to do something about it.
That’s what i meant with it being unobtrusive. The Mac really doesn’t stand in your way, when, for example, you want/need to have another git version. Since in Linux i tend to use the terminal for most crucial tasks and important system changes, i was pleased to find out that you can do that on the Mac the same way, natively. OSX is like just an overlay, a desktop UI, like KDE or gnome. I can also open up a terminal and interact the same way with the system, like I’m used to, when on Linux.
On Windows, i always got my work done, but sometimes it took me more time to set up things, just to be able to work, than it took to get the work done.
Edit: in my eyes, the Mac is just the odd kind of Linux distribution: expensive proprietary software AND hardware. But it runs a kernel inside, it’s all Unix.
And what does the Mac UI not allow you to do? There are so many features that still aren’t implemented on Windows or Linux. Things that should work but are just a little off
As someone who has Windows on the majority of their computers… OSX > Windows any day, easily, and by far. Windows is basically its own advertising spyware rootkit.
Depends on your needs, I guess. I despise Microsoft with every fiber of my being, and OSX’s certainly less openly annoying, but many of the things I hate about the current trajectory of windows are straight out of Apple’s playbook.
To put it simply, I won’t accept any platform that doesn’t respect that I’m the admin of the device. And I’m more than willing to suffer less “clean” experiences to retain this.
Mac is my favorite software development OS. Linux has too many issues with related software like Slack and doesn’t have good Office software. Windows on the other hand is fucking dog shit for development.
Someone else once said that macOS is basically Linux that actually has software developed for it.
They were wrong
LibreOffice > MS Office/365
in what world
Not even close.
I have close to no exposure and experience with Linux, but I love you guys.
Whispers: It is time. You join us today.
Join us. One of us! One of us!
I swear to God I hate Microsoft so much I’m going to seriously look into it.
It’s so easy for you young people. Back in my day, in order to hate Microsoft, we had to understand the virus risks of Windows, we hand to have needed to go into the registry to make some minor customization change; we had to know about Microsoft’s nefarious dealings bribing game dev companies to use Directx when they saw the threat of opengl. We had to know about Bill Gates’s dark side (which he did, really well - but we have Behind the Bastards now). We had to be mad about crap like how they locked down gui customization, killing litestep and bb4win. We had to deeply care about the deep innards of your computing experience (read: ricing) to understand why Microsoft sucked so bad.
Today, you kids have it so easy - they’re putting ads in the operating system, their core software is all subscription, they’re talking about making the OS itself subscription based. These days they make it so obvious that we’re not their priority, making good software isn’t their priority; their priority is getting our money.
(I feel like I made the joke already - Microsoft’s really easy to hate these days, you get it - but I’m having fun, so I’m going to keep going.)
They used to put freecell right on your computer - I’m telling you, we had to go seriously digging to find reasons to hate M$. Freecell, minesweeper, solitaire, that weird pinball game my dad liked - we had to be seriously ungrateful shits to head over to Ubuntu dot com.
And now, with one click installers, active discord help channels, eager, excited, and friendly people all over, just happy to see the FOSS community grow - engaging in a healthy relationship with computing has never been so easy - 3 or 4 clicks! Asserting your self respect and aligning your daily experience with your ethics was never like this when I was young.
We used to have to ask on the arch forums where 99% of the time we were told to rtfm (because we hadn’t); we had to be super careful not to let on that we were asking the arch forums about our Ubuntu issues. We had to search for random forum threads that inevitably ended with “nvm i fixed it” - if there was any follow-up at all. We had men whose back sweat trickled down through their unkempt back hair before disappearing into their plumber crack; you guys today have stunningly beautiful men and women who are paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to be “developer advocates” - there are twitch streamers who are getting paid super well at their fancy Netflix jobs but still spend hours and hours of their day sharing their knowledge with newcomers - literally just because they enjoy helping people learn about computers.
Kidding aside Linux is pretty ok, I hope you enjoy it.
Windows has been getting shittier, but I feel that Microsoft as a company has better products now. WSL, GitHub, ChatGPT, even VS is enjoyed by many people.
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they didn’t buy wsl. they bought sfu way back when but wsl is all fresh code since sfu had been depreciated for ages by the time they got around to doing wsl development.
They stopped being dumb assholes with their war on open source and understood that they can make money with it, but they are still greedy assholes.
This exactly. All the things they’ve bought they’ve slowly started pushing towards monetization, away from users.
Old Microsoft was specifically fighting Bill Gates’s personal crusade for IP law; now that his influence is diminishing, they’re seeing the dollar signs that are written all over the phrase “free code.”
(“So I can just… take it? And… sell it?”)
They finally accepted that the real money is in being the world’s datacenter rather than trying to make the default operating system for every computer, especially when some crazy nerds will do that for free
I don’t buy the datacenter argument. The Azure is in the market minority, while Windows and Office are still their main cash cows, even in a slowly diminishing market. Seems like their current play is at some form of videogame dominance with ActiBliz purchase and whatever the deal they have with Ubisoft and others to host all their servers on Azure, but that’s a very dubious strategy given how gaming industry has been eating itself last decade. Honestly, they should’ve kept pushing the windows mobile instead.
You can install it onto a USB key. A search for it gives a lot of results. That’s, ah, about as far as I’ve gotten into the process (oh and I’ve bought a couple of usb flash drives), but it’s looking promising. I might even make some progress and click one of those links tonight, though not sure if I’m feeling that ambitious today.
You can try it out before you install. Most Linux distro offer a “live USB” for install where it will boot a full copy of the distribution that you can verify all of your hardware is recognized and even try out the OS without touching your disk
If you’ve got a sizable USB drive, try Ventoy! Then you can put a bunch of .ISOs on it and boot from any one you want. It’s good for trying distros, or sharing Linux with others, or even putting recovery/rescue software on it. Like if you want to run memtest or alter partition data with Gparted or rescue a system that’s not booting.
Great tool to have. You can even use the leftover space like a normal flash drive and it doesn’t mind!
Ventoy is so awesome! It’s the tool I wish it existed a decade ago. The entire process of creating botable usbs was so tedious and time consuming, and now it’s just copying the isos just like any other file. It works for almost any iso or img file, and even allows us to have windows isos as well.
We will be here if you need help.
Yeah, Linux community got you bro.
Here’s a pro tip for a newbie. Debian unstable. You’ll hate your life, but you’ll know more about how Linux really works than the rest of us.
Nah. Spend the 8-12 hours it takes to build lfs. That’s what taught me the most.
psst hey, popOS. it’s so easy you’re gonna love it trust me
advice #1; never type v-i-m in succession. it summons demons.
I do that so much at work I must be a warlock.
I hear you’re sent to the Shadow Realm where you need input a satanic passphrase to escape, only known to those who have signed the deal with the Devil himself! He’s also known as Joe from IT, so just ask him.
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The “RTFM” linux users.
And then the man page is just a verbose unformatted paragraph written in 2007 by some guy on a lethal dose of ritalin
“The source code is the real manual” 🧘
The source code: 🍝
a lethal dose of ritalin
How much is that though?
Not enough to cure him.
Varies from person to person.
A few hundred 10mg pills for lunch will probably cause irreversible heart damage at the very least.
I’ve always found it’s easier to use Stack Overflow or Google than a man page.
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I bust out kali linux when I need to get into weird places for my clients but usually just windows as that is most of what I have to support.
i miss you linux
I’m so glad I can mostly just ask my Linux questions to AI now instead of hoping I can find someone who will tell me how to do what I want instead of berating my choices and attitude.
Want to fuck the thread up? Just ask “What is the G.O.A.T. Distro?”
Hannah Montana Linux
This is the only right answer.
Windows Subsystem for Linux 2
Not a distro. You can run Ubuntu and Arch on WSL (and many others)
AmogOS
GoatOS, obvs
The one you make yourself
Red Star OS
or TempleOS
Microsoft Azure Linux obviously
with powershell
Apartheid Linux (it really exists, apparently)
MacOS! It’s just linux under the hood
🍿🍿😏🍿🍿
edit: aw i thought we were playing “who can stir up the most shit” but now everyone just thinks i’m a big dummy… i use arch guys… :(
Lol no
To a higher degree than Windows, yes it is.
It’s a UNIX-like system. It’s not close enough to be linux imo
Yeah lots of unix-likes out there but it’s not running the linux kernel so it’s decidedly not linux. I was just trying to stir up shit in a shit stirring thread.
Now, to possibly stir up more shit: Its ancestry might even be closer to unix than linux itself since darwin was derived from nextstep/bsd whereas linux was a mix of minix and torvalds going “fuck this licensing shit i’ll just make my own”
I will say, any time i’ve had to deal with a macos system i’ve appreciated being able to drop into a familiar shell. DOS commands drive me insane. dir is 50% longer than ls! Who has time for that!
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Is it though? Last time I checked on a friend’s computer POSIX message queues were not available. They had to install Ubuntu to code their operating systems homework. Unless mqueue is not part of the POSIX specification, MacOS doesn’t seem POSIX compliant to me.
Hotdog linux
I was deep into linux once, in the 2000s, but then I got out.
And yet, the void still calls to me.
Certified Void Linux user moment
Well, in case Someone didn’t Noted
I’m Use Arch, th’is the Way
I’m on Linux bitch I thought you gnu
Best ERB.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
https://www.piped.video/watch?v=njos57IJf-0
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
I had GPT write and perform this too a while back. I guess I remember-stole that line when I had the AI write the song
This may not be the place to ask, but is there a guide you’d recommend for a lifelong windows user to try out Linux?
I’ve had a Steam Deck for a while now and love it and feel I could probably make the leap.
I have no idea why this comic in particular motivated me to finally ask.
Edit: I just want to say an incredible thank you to everyone and your advice. I was just looking for a link to a guide and ya’ll wrote them yourselves.
I think the prevailing advice of creating a virtual machine to play around in seems like a very good place to start.
recommend for a lifelong windows user to try out Linux?
Try out, what of Linux?
- Windows Subsystem for Linux 2 - you get the full command line 🔧, and can kind of run some desktops. Thanks to HyperX, it runs in a “sister” VM to Windows, so zero performance penalty (compared to Windows). Easiest, fastest, not necessarily the best.
- Cygwin - no Linux kernel, just userland software, that is command line, some desktop, some software. Quick to start 🐇, but somewhat limited.
- OSBoxes - pick any distro, download a preinstalled image, fire it up in either VirtualBox or VMware. Great for a quick first contact. Great to mess things up and not care 💥, including if you try to manually rebuild the kernel and it refuses to boot. Hardware is partially emulated, so not 100% like the real thing, but it comes really close. But look at the beautiful desktops! Pretty pictures! 🤩 (this is what most people think they want, judging by most distro reviews and comparisons).
- Android - it’s Linux, it lacks most of the userland but it can be added (see Termux), and you’re likely to find a cheap smartphone/tablet to mess with.
- Cloud virtual private server / Bare hardware hosting - if you’re going to mess up a system, why mess up your own? Rent a cheap option, and mess it up.
- THE MAXIMUM GAMING PERFORMANCE 🚀 - …try some of the previous ones first, you’ll need the experience. Then look into how to dual-boot, or better yet, get a second PC and install your favorite Linux distro (which you’ll know which one it is by now) as the only OS. Tweak, fix, patch, etc. until your eyes bleed out, and you get those extra 2 fps you never knew you needed to make your life complete!
- ROCK SOLID WORKHORSE 💪 - try all the above, then pick two distros: dual boot, mess the partitions, recover them, go into one distro, login as root and delete half the files at random, shut down the computer, power it up and recover the messed up distro from the second working one without reinstalling, reboot again into the first distro, “upgrade” it to the second one without reinstalling, clean it up so it looks like it was freshly installed… then delete it, reinstall, and see what you should have backed up in order not to lose stuff, make your backup, delete the distro, recover from backup. Practice until you lose zero data in the process, now automate the process. Finally, install and fully customize Gentoo. After that… whatever you pick, you’ll be fine 🙂
If you want to check out some linux distributions, I would suggest you use Ventoy. You can then copy the ISO’s to your USB drive and boot from them without having to reformat your usb drive all the time. It’s a really cool tool and I can highly recommend it. I always carry ventoy with me for work with rescue disks, clonezilla, etc.
Personally I would recommend either Ubuntu or Kubuntu (Ubuntu with KDE - it’s what I use). It’s a one of the most popular distributions and well-documented and supported.
If you want to have a look at what’s available, check out https://distrowatch.com/
Edit: If you’re not ready to install on your own hardware, try playing around with Virtual Machines - like Virtualbox.
I’ve been on Linux for about a year and a half. So just passing the newbie phase I guess.
My advice is to dive right in. Don’t know what that file does? Delete it. Punch in cd /; rm -rf, try to us ethe find command, think you understand the find command. Then avoid the find command like your creepy uncle. Open up vim, have no idea what vim is, and restart your computer because there’s a snowballs chance in hell of figuring it out once you’re already in vim. Fuck the install of your first distro beyond recognition, download a new one and do it again. That last one isn’t advice, it’s going to happen so you might as well embrace it.
Just try shit. Say: I wonder how I… And then figure it out. Look into what all the symbols on the bash scripts do. Be curious and brave and remember that as long as you back up the important shit you may fuck something badly enough that it’s not worth fixing but a reinstall doesn’t take very long and it gives you a chance to try another distro anyway.
I’m telling you when the terminal “clicks” it’s such a good feeling. When you write a short bash script that works the first time without looking for help it feels GOOD. But nothing as good as peeling back layer after layer of abstraction and seeing there right in front of you all the shit Microsoft keeps from you. Sure most of an s trace is total fucking jibberish and probably always will be because I don’t have myself enough to learn C but just look at all the stuff my computer does! Boy, look at it go.
Bottom Line is that you can read all the books and how to guides in the world but none of them will do more to carry you forward into the perplexing and frustrating world of computers like a wild-eyed sense of curiosity and a bottle full of Xanax
Honestly, depends what helps you learn the best. I would recommend at first use Linux Mint, it’s ubuntu without the bullshit, will look familiar to you and use that as a way to learn more. Or Pop_OS if you want something a little bit more different from the windows interface. I would also recommend YT channels like The Linux Experiment, DistroTube and Chris Tech Tips. I will also recommend the Arch wiki (even though Linux Mint is not based on Arch it can still be helpful), install tldr for short descriptions of terminal commands, use man for long descriptions, and so on.
In general the best way is fuck around and find out (keep regular backups). Don’t be scared of messing around or fixing stuff, it can be easy and of it isn’t an OS reinstall will take about 15 minutes anyways so you’re good.
Also depends on what you wanna do. If you justbwant to browse the web and use a few common programs you can just install Linux Mint and remember to install programs via the package manager (app store) and you’re generally good. Gaming? Use Steam (enable the proton compatibility mode) whenever possible, lutris should be able to handle the rest. And lastly also look at AlternativeTo when you find programs that aren’t available or you don’t like.
Just start with a beginner distro and work from there. Check guides and get in the habit to read documentation, you’ll be fine.
I’d run some linux on a live USB. Try some of the FOSS software we use like Libre Office, Krita, Kdenlive. Check out the software app. Im a big KDE fan if it isnt obvious enough. Make your windows stuff more portable or interoperable. Get passwords into a database like KeePass, check out Markdown document making. Find out what Linux has for you and your computer interests.
Approach it more like a hobby than like anything else. Test out true waters with a virtual machine (Google is your friend) and YouTube/any other guides. If it’s not for you, so be it.
If it piques your interest, keep going on down the rabbit hole, and continue exploring. And even then, if you get the feeling you know enough, or are satisfied, you will at least have a workable environment to your liking or have the knowledge to change it so.
