If you are new I suggest bazzite, and get lutris to install windows apps outside of steam. It takes care of most of the stuff and to install software, on bazzite you use “sudo rpm-ostree install <package name>” and then reboot because bazzite uses an ostree system, or just get it in a flatpak if available. Between bazzite and knowing how to install packages outside of the flatpak repository, that should cover most of your bases for a few years and you can learn other stuff when you have the inclination. ChatGPT is really knowledgeable about Linux since it’s open source. It’s often much faster than digging through forums just be specific when you speak to it.
Also if you get your setup in a decent shape, you can shrink the partition and image it with dd with a single command, and then compress it to have a full system backup, which is basically your own image. Then you just write it back with a program like etcher later if you screw up your system and then just reexpand the partition to the full drive. If you get bazzite though you won’t have much need to use the terminal or install anything outside flathub which will keep you from breaking the system. Also update the system occasionally, to get security fixes once a week or two is probably fine if you don’t have open ports to run a server and aren’t running random software.
Seriously, if I was new to Linux, coming from Windows, asking for a cheat sheet or Linux for dummies manual, everything you wrote would sound like absolute gibberish to me.
If this was someone’s response to me when asking for advice I’d immediately reinstall windows where at least (from the perspective of a typical end user) they speak words that make sense.
It’s the easiest way to get into Linux if you need good GPU support and I assume most people play video games. Bazzite is what finally got me into Linux because it mostly just worked out of the box which is something most Linux distros I tried before that never did. I would always end up breaking them in a day or two trying to get the GPU driver installed or something. Bazzite is really good for beginning users. Not the greatest for mid tier when you are trying to gain a deeper understanding because it replies heavily on containers and file system overlays.
Also you have to remember that for people who aren’t ultra Linux nerds. It’s an incredible amount of work to get Linux to work. It’s often days of painful configuration and research per machine. This, and a lack of gaming support is the main reason I think most people avoid Linux, which is why I suggest bazzite, as the shit just works distro.
It seems to be okay for me, there is maybe a handful of things I install, and I don’t want fedora so much as that’s what bazzite is built on. If it breaks I’ll just move on as I’m getting a bit more familiar with Linux. I will probably install Debian or mint or something with a much more simple file system when this one breaks.
Even though bazzite is fedora-based you’re not really meant to interact with the fedora side of it all. At least that’s the impression I’ve gotten from it.
I dont think it matters really for installing little programs. You probably shouldn’t change your kernel or something. When you update the system it’s just using rpm-ostree and doing a standard update through the repos, then it updates flatpaks. On the steamdeck since it’s arch it will break pretty easily if you update the wrong thing, but bazzite is built in fedora.
The rpm-ostree systems is also good for anything that breaks because it’s basically a snapshot system. Everytime you install something or update it creates a snapshot of your old working install which you can easily roll back to if anything breaks. You could use containers for stuff but that’s not really necessary. It does probably make the system more stable in ways but then you have to deal with the headaches of using containers and having everything isolated from each other. For web services though containers are worth it as it greatly increases the security of the system.
I installed some stuff with epm-ostree early on in my experience in bazzite and at some point i could no longer update. I had to do a rebase to sort it. Thankfully, that’s easy and pretty quick though.
Interesting, this is one of the reasons I’m trying to sort of get everything to Debian eventually. I think complexity in software is often bad. Especially for someone like me who is always tweaking and changing stuff and trying things.
In all of the bazzite documentation they always warn against it anyway. As long as you use the OS as intended it’s super smooth and simple, you just have steam and flatpaks readily available.
If you want a good gaming distro but more control like using a proper native package manager instead of flatpaks, I’d recommend cachyos. If you don’t want to delve into distrobox on bazzite to get use of a package manager anyway.
You could always have a Debian distrobox if you want to use its systems within bazzite.
Yeah well bazzite was sort of my first real long term use of Linux, it was good for that purpose. Let me mostly just use the machine without needing to be a Linux hacker. I will probably move on to a more simple system after it breaks. It works fine as it is, I can solve many little issues it might have with repos or keys or something. Flatpaks are cool and all that, but some of the software I use like my tethering app, binary decompilers and compilers, and little misc tools aren’t available in flatpaks. Sometimes if something is simple enough I just copy it into the bin folder I can’t imagine that would cause many issues other than not automatically updating.
Using containers is just too much of headache for me rn. I’m usually pretty limited in my time, I work overtime most weeks. I’m often spending hours just trying to get one or a few simple things done in my off time. Fooling with extra complexity quickly just gets out of control. I don’t want to use containers because, it’s not integrated into the system, the file system isn’t unified, it’s tons of extra stuff to learn to essentially gain little to no benefit, and it often breaks more documented ways of doing things, and I rely a lot on documentation and forum posts and chatGPT and stuff to do these things because I’m just not on that level of Linux user yet. Reinstalling an operating system is fairly trivial to me. It’s maybe a day, where adding all the complexity multiplies my inefficiencies over many days.
If you are new I suggest bazzite, and get lutris to install windows apps outside of steam. It takes care of most of the stuff and to install software, on bazzite you use “sudo rpm-ostree install <package name>” and then reboot because bazzite uses an ostree system, or just get it in a flatpak if available. Between bazzite and knowing how to install packages outside of the flatpak repository, that should cover most of your bases for a few years and you can learn other stuff when you have the inclination. ChatGPT is really knowledgeable about Linux since it’s open source. It’s often much faster than digging through forums just be specific when you speak to it.
Also if you get your setup in a decent shape, you can shrink the partition and image it with dd with a single command, and then compress it to have a full system backup, which is basically your own image. Then you just write it back with a program like etcher later if you screw up your system and then just reexpand the partition to the full drive. If you get bazzite though you won’t have much need to use the terminal or install anything outside flathub which will keep you from breaking the system. Also update the system occasionally, to get security fixes once a week or two is probably fine if you don’t have open ports to run a server and aren’t running random software.
Is this satire?
Seriously, if I was new to Linux, coming from Windows, asking for a cheat sheet or Linux for dummies manual, everything you wrote would sound like absolute gibberish to me.
If this was someone’s response to me when asking for advice I’d immediately reinstall windows where at least (from the perspective of a typical end user) they speak words that make sense.
Also suggesting a gaming distribution to someone that gave no indication plays video games at all…
It’s the easiest way to get into Linux if you need good GPU support and I assume most people play video games. Bazzite is what finally got me into Linux because it mostly just worked out of the box which is something most Linux distros I tried before that never did. I would always end up breaking them in a day or two trying to get the GPU driver installed or something. Bazzite is really good for beginning users. Not the greatest for mid tier when you are trying to gain a deeper understanding because it replies heavily on containers and file system overlays.
Also you have to remember that for people who aren’t ultra Linux nerds. It’s an incredible amount of work to get Linux to work. It’s often days of painful configuration and research per machine. This, and a lack of gaming support is the main reason I think most people avoid Linux, which is why I suggest bazzite, as the shit just works distro.
You shouldn’t ever use rpm-ostree to install stuff with, as it can cause issues with future system updates.
First port of call should be flatpaks in the bazaar.
Second, look for flatpaks or appimages online.
Third, use distrobox to install something via a different distro and export it as a shortcut to bazzite. I use arch in a distrobox, btw.
It seems to be okay for me, there is maybe a handful of things I install, and I don’t want fedora so much as that’s what bazzite is built on. If it breaks I’ll just move on as I’m getting a bit more familiar with Linux. I will probably install Debian or mint or something with a much more simple file system when this one breaks.
Even though bazzite is fedora-based you’re not really meant to interact with the fedora side of it all. At least that’s the impression I’ve gotten from it.
I dont think it matters really for installing little programs. You probably shouldn’t change your kernel or something. When you update the system it’s just using rpm-ostree and doing a standard update through the repos, then it updates flatpaks. On the steamdeck since it’s arch it will break pretty easily if you update the wrong thing, but bazzite is built in fedora.
The rpm-ostree systems is also good for anything that breaks because it’s basically a snapshot system. Everytime you install something or update it creates a snapshot of your old working install which you can easily roll back to if anything breaks. You could use containers for stuff but that’s not really necessary. It does probably make the system more stable in ways but then you have to deal with the headaches of using containers and having everything isolated from each other. For web services though containers are worth it as it greatly increases the security of the system.
I installed some stuff with epm-ostree early on in my experience in bazzite and at some point i could no longer update. I had to do a rebase to sort it. Thankfully, that’s easy and pretty quick though.
Interesting, this is one of the reasons I’m trying to sort of get everything to Debian eventually. I think complexity in software is often bad. Especially for someone like me who is always tweaking and changing stuff and trying things.
In all of the bazzite documentation they always warn against it anyway. As long as you use the OS as intended it’s super smooth and simple, you just have steam and flatpaks readily available.
If you want a good gaming distro but more control like using a proper native package manager instead of flatpaks, I’d recommend cachyos. If you don’t want to delve into distrobox on bazzite to get use of a package manager anyway.
You could always have a Debian distrobox if you want to use its systems within bazzite.
Yeah well bazzite was sort of my first real long term use of Linux, it was good for that purpose. Let me mostly just use the machine without needing to be a Linux hacker. I will probably move on to a more simple system after it breaks. It works fine as it is, I can solve many little issues it might have with repos or keys or something. Flatpaks are cool and all that, but some of the software I use like my tethering app, binary decompilers and compilers, and little misc tools aren’t available in flatpaks. Sometimes if something is simple enough I just copy it into the bin folder I can’t imagine that would cause many issues other than not automatically updating.
Using containers is just too much of headache for me rn. I’m usually pretty limited in my time, I work overtime most weeks. I’m often spending hours just trying to get one or a few simple things done in my off time. Fooling with extra complexity quickly just gets out of control. I don’t want to use containers because, it’s not integrated into the system, the file system isn’t unified, it’s tons of extra stuff to learn to essentially gain little to no benefit, and it often breaks more documented ways of doing things, and I rely a lot on documentation and forum posts and chatGPT and stuff to do these things because I’m just not on that level of Linux user yet. Reinstalling an operating system is fairly trivial to me. It’s maybe a day, where adding all the complexity multiplies my inefficiencies over many days.