Libb

The two big things for me are 1. I don’t want to use the command window for everything, or really much of anything, at least at the start. and 2. I currently use Proton VPN and I’d like to use it on this new laptop too. Unfortunately, based on what I saw on the Proton website, if I want to use it on linux it looks like the only way is to get it on Ubuntu, Debian, or Fedora using the console.

• Complexity: have been using Linux Mint for a few years and I’m not an expert at all (50+ years old lifelong ex-Mac user, to give you an idea I got my first computer in the early 80s and it was an Apple). Everything worked out of the box (including my Airpods, and back then at least it was the only version of Linux that was able to connect to them). I don’t think I never was forced or expected to use the command line… but I slowly started to use it out of curiosity and I learned to appreciate it’s efficiency and now I love using it but that’s by choice, not out of necessity ;)
• Proton VPN: you need to understand that most distributions (version of Linux) are ‘clones with a few variations’ based upon a very few limited ‘originals’ distributions. Ubuntu is one clone that has become very popular but in reality it’s based on Debian, and therefore it uses Debian installer package (DEB). MInt being based on… Ubuntu also uses Debian installer. And so is Kubuntu. So, if there is a DEB installer, there is a real chance it will work on most Debian-based distributions.

Proton: it’s command line. I use it too (I’m a paid subscriber to their service, just not their VPN, which is good), but the VPN I use is Mullvad… which is at least as good and has a graphical installer ;)

Just for reference, uhhh how easy is it to fuck up the process of trying and then installing a linux distro? Like completely-make-the-computer-unusable fuck up? Because that’s my biggest fear

1. Testing from the Live CD/USB, there is zero risk of damaging anything. That’s one fo teh first thing I fell in love with testing Linux myself ;)
2. Installing Linux on the computer, well, shit can happen. They are not usual but they can happen. Hence the importance to test it live before to see that most things are working all right. Using a distribution like Mint things should dead simple just following the graphical installer. The last time I installed Mint, it took me less than 10 minutes total (from the first click to me booting on the new installed system) and most of that was the installer downloading packages and installing them while I was drinking my coffee) But that’s the exception if you use something like Mint (I preach for my own chapel here because I know how reliable it is) with its integrated graphical installer. You simply click a few buttons and answer limited few basic questions like what will be your user name, what is your time zone and do you want to encrypt the disk (you probably want that at least on a laptop so if it’s stolen your data will be safe from thieves). It’s real quick process. That also was impressive coming from macOS (installing any new Mac takes way too much time, a lot more than it used to back in the old days.
3. No matter what version you decide to use ALWAYS BACKUP your personal files before installing a new operating system. It’s a bit like opening someone’s chest and removing their heart before putting an new one. It’s… well, better be safe than sorry. Do you value your personal files at all? Then you should have backups, and not just during install. At any time.

Also, I’m kind of confused about how updating things works on linux

With Mint, you regularly will get a little pop signaling there are updates. If you don’t like Notifications (I don’t), you can simply ask it to deal with updates for you and to not bother you (I almost never have to update anything myself). Then, from time to time there is a ‘major’ upgrade, from one version of Mint to the other. Here again, Mint will kindly let you know when everything is ready for your computer (which will not be the exact same day the new version is announced to the world, there is no hurry), it will tell you if anything needs your attention (and why) and do the upgrade for you (reboot required).

For all my life I thought in terms of simplicity Apple was the way to go. That was until I tried GNU/Linux Mint ;)

P.s. I’m sorry to make another “what distro do I use” thread, but I had some questions that I didn’t see answers for in the other threads. And honestly, I’ll feel a lot more comfortable with switching if I feel like I’ve actually talked it out with people who know what they’re doing.

Don’t apologize. The best thing to do do would be to:

1. test the the live CD and
2. keep using a ‘noob’ friendly distribution like Mint (there are obviously others, I’m just totally bluffed by how well Mint worked out of the box, and how reliable it has been for the now 4 or 5 years I’ve been using it. And, yep, I tried quite a few other distributions before settling on Mint ;)). Being ‘noob friendly’ doesn’t mean they’re a lesser kind of Linux, say, not as complete as Arch (which is another kind of amazing distribution, just less easy to begin with). It just means that the technical part, at least most of them, have been taken charge of one way or the other. The moment you need the more advanced/powerful tools, they’re already there, waiting for you to start using them: it’s 100% full GNU/Linux just less intimidating ;)

Is that possible?

I used to do that on my desktop (swapping OSes), using a very similar bay.

100% this.

I have nothing to offer but some sympathy and one advice: I have two critical backups running: my personal files and the various folders containing my config files.

As I learned more or less the exact same way you just did how critical it is to backup those files too as, losing them by formatting my drive, I instantly realized they’re as personal and important as my ‘real’ files are.

Safely? Do you have a backup of the files in that C drive? I f not, do a backup be fore you do anything else as there is always a risk (of losing all your files) when resizing a partition. Sorry that I cannot help more.

So what would it actually take to get you to switch? I’m all ears.

Nothing. I switched a few years ago. On Mint, from Mac.

What prevented me of doing it for many years was my own fears—it must be difficult, it’s too complex/geeky for me (hint: it was not)—and my own habits as I had been using Apple computers since the early/mid 80s. After my switch, what almost got me to switch back to Mac was all the ‘moral’ codes of conduct I saw popping out. I mean, what the fuck was wrong with people telling users what they could and could not do in a very similar way proprietary software with their EULA were doing!? thinking that if I had to deal with that same level of shit why not simply keep using a Mac? But then, I realized those were only a vocal minority.

I don’t miss much from macOS, beside Spotlight. This was so useful and so well integrated into the system.

On that I could not tell much: I’m really not a dev and I use my Linux like I used to use my Mac. But I have little doubt there are a few more interesting alternatives to Fedora.

But if the GPL is a thing this should not matter that much. That’s also why I worry to see a big distro like Ubuntu considering replacing GPL core tools with non GPL ones. Maybe I’m just paranoid but I see that as a long-term way to get rid of the GPL and took control of Linux to make it their product, not ours anymore.

what is an American distro?

I mean does the kernel or DE have a nationality if they’re Free Software? Anyone is supposed to be able to reuse them, no? Exactly like China has already building its own OS based on GNU-Linux

That’s why, as a mere user myself, I consider the GNU-GPL license so essential (so much more than the code being ‘Open Source’) as GPL makes it so that no one can limit what anyone else wants to do with the code. And even if the USA one day stopped being our best friends, they would have no legal claim to prevent us (or China, or anyone else) from building on top of their code or to fork it. Freedom, is great.

I use to think I was moderately good at computers

That doesn’t say a lot. It all depends what you already can do with a computer. Setting up a server is already somewhat technical stuff. Using a computer to browse the web and click stuff, is not—heck, even I use Linux and I’m no expert ;)

Just looking fro advice on my first build.

As a true beginner, imho you need a beginner-friendly distro aka one that will do most of the work for you. I use Mint and I like it a lot but there are plenty choices available (and I don’t run my own server neither). So, take some time to find one you would like to use. Also, if you only want to create a server (not use it as your personal computer) you should focus on a distribution for servers, not your usual end-user one. I mean, any distribution can be used to setup a server (they all have access to the same tools) but some are more focused on general users (like Mint) while other are more on technical users like people that will admin a server.

So, my first advice would be to tell you to decide what exactly it is you want to do with that Linux computer. From that you will then be able to pick a good distro and then start reading teh docs as needed. And that reading will also depends your skills level. Something like Arch (a great distro) has an amazing Wiki, like it’s really excellent. But it’s also very technical and not that beginner-friendly. Then, there are things like https://linuxjourney.com/ that are so cool for beginning but won’t be as complete ;)

I would not try to setup a server if I had not started using Linux already to get some familiarity with the system and its basics. For that you can pick any distro you like. Once again, I would suggest Mint out of personal preferences but I should probably say that before that I was a very happy Arch user too (I just realized I preferred to get less frequent updates)… There is not one best distro everyone would agree upon but there are various ones that are better suited to whatever type of user one may be.

You’re welcome. Hope you will enjoy Mint ;)

Also, I could probably reformat the entire laptop if I could only figure out how to replace the Google Drive for sync backup for roughly 15 GB of personal photos and videos.

If by replace you mean find a non-Google alternative that will work fine under Linux (or Windows, Mac iOS/Android), you may want to check Filen (affiliate link this matters to your specific requirements, read further).

What is Filen? It’s a small German company which offers cloud with end-to-end (zero knowledge) encryption, aka what’s considered best practice security and privacy-wise. They don’t offer as much features as Google or other big cloud providers, it’s a really small company, and their apps are kinda on the rougher edge of things but they work fine. The one real drawback for photos backups on mobile is that it’s not fully automated (one needs to start the app for it to start copying the pictures) but it works fine on Mint (fellow Mint user here) ;)

By the default, their free plan is 10GB which is not enough for you but if you use my affiliate link, or anyone’s else, you double that free plan to 20GB (it’s a one time extra, you can’t stack them up but it’s really free for you to keep and use). Also, if you ever decide to upgrade to a paid plan, you would keep your free storage as an extra bonus. Finally, once you created an account (a free one is enough), you should be able to share your own affiliate link and that could get you up to max 30GB more free storage, making it a total of 50GB free storage. Disclaimer: I’m a paid user of Filen.

You may also want to consider Ente.io which is another encrypted service focusing this time only on photos. It works real well but you only get 5GB free. Since I barely do any photo myself, that was not my priority but had it be, I would have seriously considered using them (and one of their paid plans) ;)

Thoughts?

Like already mentioned if you care about your photos, or any other file, make backups (no need to use that company’s services (even though they work nice) it’s just a fine explanation of what a good backup strategy should be).

From Linus’s reply:

Honestly, what you have been doing is basically saying “as a DMA maintainer I control what the DMA code is used for”.
And that is not how any of this works.
What’s next? Saying that particular drivers can’t do DMA, because you don’t like that device, and as a DMA maintainer you control who can use the DMA code?
That’s literally exactly what you are trying to do with the Rust code.
You are saying that you disagree with Rust - which is fine, nobody has ever required you to write or read Rust code.
But then you take that stance to mean that the Rust code cannot even use or interface to code you maintain.
So let me be very clear: if you as a maintainer feel that you control who or what can use your code, YOU ARE WRONG.

and

So this email is not about some “Rust policy”. This email is about a much bigger issue: as a maintainer you are in charge of your code, sure - but you are not in charge of who uses the end result and how.

100% agree. No one should think they’re entitled to be doing that.

how much time should I spend with a distro to actually get the gist of the distro? a month maybe?

Why change would I change distro to begin with? I mean, you do as you like, quite obviously, but I never considered my objective to switch distro and test them all. I would see that as a waste of my time, as I’d rather be doing stuff with that computer.

The distro I switched to (approx 3 years ago) I only switched because I could not solve an issue I had using the previous distro. A silly issue that simply was non-existent with that new one ;)

Hi & welcome from a fellow Mint user.
It’s a stable distribution that comes with a lot of things preinstalled (so less extra stuff to install, but also a lot of stuff you might not need)

• +1 for Encryption, both Luks for the system disk and whatever other internal drive and for USB stick or external storage. If someone was to steal my computer I would pissed off but OK, I can deal with it knowing they can’t access my files. Use a good password (mine is 20-ish characters long all random and, yeah, I’ve memorized them but I have a decent working memory ;)
• • for (automated) backups.
• +1 for automated updates
• +1 for not installing from any source. It’s tempting but it should be the exception (for me, it means yt-dlp and Mullvad for the most, of there is also my RSS app of choice newsboat since it’s not officially available anymore :/)
• I don’t use antivirus on Linux (nor on my Mac). But I seldom download anything and don’t open attachments I’m not expecting to receive ;)
• I would not play with services as a beginner as you risk deactivating something you need.
• The firewall as gui that’s installed by default (on my Mint, at least ;): its Gufw on the command line and it’s called Firewall Configuration in the main Mint menu. Open it, type your password, activate the ‘Status’ toggle. Done. Then you can start adding rules as you need them.

I would add to that:

• Don’t rush to tweak everything at the same time. Try one at a time, it’s easier to revert back.
• Backup your home folder regularly. Not only does it contain all your precious files but it also contains most of your settings and tweaks. So, if you ever need to reinstall you will get back all those settings/tweaks when copying back your home to the fresh install.

On that topic,I’m not much of a geek (a 50-something dude and a 35+ years Apple customer) but I did learn to use git to keep a backup of my config folder. So, when I screw up something (so far, Mint has not once screwed up anything by itself, the few issues I had to deal with were all me-related) , I know I can revert back to the previous version of whatever settings I’ve just damaged without difficulty. Learning the basic of Git is not hard, it’s just…odd, and it works great. If it was compatible with LibreOffice files I would love to use if for that too…

/Not_a_Rant

Are you sure about that?

I don’t mind people sharing their feelings about their switch, joy as well as frustration. And if I did, I would not read them… exactly like I don’t read political topics ;)

It can vary a lot depending the publisher, and some will not care at all while others will use, say, tracking features or work collaboratively (they can even be using OneDrive for that, which includes MS Office in its price), or they will require the author to use a specific Word template that they have devised for Word (with the person in charge of the final layout in whatever layout application, in order to streamline or the process and save time on that part of the job), when they aren’t that kind of publishers that simply do the final layout directly in Word before sending the final PDF to the printer. Also, as an author, if a publisher has asked you to use MS Word and some specific stylesheet and realize they tried to to be smarter than them… good luck with that, unless they’re already one of their best-selling author.

And that’s just what comes to my mind and that I have been witnessing first hand ;)

So I’m wondering if an upgrade is safe because

Imho that’s the wrong question. Without backup nothing is safe whether you pate the OS or not. Anything can happen (the disk can die, the computer can be stolen,…) and, yes, most upgrades should go without any issue but then one won’t go well and then what? You need to do backups, we should all ;)

I’m currently using Proton and still have to move to another service

I’ve moved to Filen (German end-to-end encrypted cloud you can rent (or buy) for a year or… a month (maybe worth the cost at least for a month when you will upgrade) and it works real nice for me on Mint 22.1

Depending the storage you need, you can get from 10 to 50Go for free: 10 base *+10 if you use crate your account using this affiliate link (no string attached, it’s real free storage) and up to 30Go more if you also share your own affiliate link. If you’re wondering, I use their 2To lifetime plan.

2/ Related to the first question: I’m using a old laptop (asus zenbook from 2015 or 2016, can’t remember), so would I be find with an old hardware such as mine?

It’s not that old, you should not worry much ;)

Depends what you need. Many publishers require certain features from MS Word that are not available or are not as ‘compatible’ in LO Writer (not that its LO’s fault ;), but for most use case I would agree. Things are a bit more complicated in the case of Excel as far as I can understand what I read (edit: I don’t use much spreadsheets myself).

I’ve quit using MS Word a few years ago, fully switching to LO Writer. There are a few issues here and there but nothing that’s a deal breaker (and Word had its own issues too), and I must quite like many things in Writer—beside the app not spying on me, I mean ;)

after I backup my Windows of course.

Your data, sorry to insist but Windows itself should be easy to download and to reinstall. Your personal files (photos, texts, passwords, and so on aka your data) not so much. Once they’re gone you can’t download a new copy. Installing Linux should go fine but there is always a real risk something goes wrong, even more so as a complete beginner.

I use it for gaming most of the time.

I don’t game much myself but the first thing I would is check if the games I like to play run on Linux.
Also, I have no idea how realistic it is to play in a virtual machine? Maybe you will have to install Linux alongside Windows in a dual boot configuration not as a virtual machine (you can search info about ‘dual booting’), but not before you have made a backup of all your data on the Windows installation (worth searching more info about that too)

Thank you :) I think I feel a bit more comfortable now.

You’re welcome.

It will feel uncomfortable for a while, that’s the point, but as long as you’re ok to accept that it’s unavoidable nut normal and that it should not last that long you should be ok ;)