So anyway, any beginner tips?
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My best advice is:
You should never blindly copy and paste commands form the Internet into your terminal.
But...
If your hardware is old and proprietary (designed for Windows), you might someday need to copy and paste a command from the Internet into your terminal.
Joking aside, the key is to try to understand what it does, first.
And feel free to ask the community for help if you need it.
Edit: Nevermind. Your choice of immutable distro makes it less likely you’ll need this advice. Nice.
So, this one is a bit controversial but, when something doesn’t work try running it from terminal.
Unlike windows, Linux doesn’t tend to do “pop up errors”. Running in terminal gives these alerts, and can often give you a hint as to why it isn’t working - be it a missing library, a permission error, or something internal you can quickly search. Usually, someone has a fix!
Also, if it’s a decent application, it probably logs stuff somewhere. Check /var/log for software installed system wide. If the logs are not there, check the install dir etc. If there’s a README around, check that out first.
Good luck!
Execute “ujust” and marvel at what’s possible right out of the box. If you used KDE check out some simple tips on how to configure cool windows effects. A little wobble makes all the difference. Browse the apps you can install, there are some pretty neat things in there you probably never heard of before.
And don’t forget: once you got the things you want working, let the system fade into the background. No need to constantly tinker with your distribution unless you enjoy it.
I’m using GNOME because I like it more
And yeah, system fading into the background is the end goal
Yes gnome > KDE
This is a hill i will die on
⚔️ You just started a war. 😂 KDE > Gnome. 🤭
I can’t get excited about the Gnome interface. It somehow works in such an unfamiliar way. What is the advantage supposed to be?
I’ve had to use it in vocational school, and after a few months I started to like it over Windows interface. Later on I’ve touched Xfce and seen people around me use KDE, but still prefer GNOME. I’ve got no idea why.
Completely agree. I find GNOME just annoying, ugly, and in some places inconsistent.
KDE/i3/Sway 4evarr!
gnome with arcmenu (I like windows like menu - the ads) dash to panel (place window menu at bottom alongside commonly used apps, date/time, and the control center), window thumbnails (pip any window) and a few other plugins is very nice looking imo feela like an os from the future, and its clean, stable. I got kde plasma looking pretty close to it layout wise, drag and drop was a bit more finnicky than enabling extensions and clicking through settings.
I just overall like the look better and it feels better to use, gnome feels like modern de, you can’t just throw something together (someone who knows what they are doing coded those extensions and how it could fit within your layout, they tested it over time) while kde plasma feels like a really feature rich de from 2012, layout placement is up to you to test and figure out, idk how else to explain it in my head
I respect GNOME for it’s simplicity, but prefer KDE for the chaos.
I’ve installed Fedora 42 KDE to try out Plasma 6.4 as last time I’ve used KDE it was 5.x… Anyhow, I’m back to GNOME after 2h of messing with settings unable to get desired results. And the KDE animations are just bad… Still better than Windows though.
I try once each year for about a month but so far I just can’t and I’m the opposite. Before the total style change it was also opposite and early kde was just kinda gross. Old gnome was my entry point with desktop environments and linux in general. When the change happened I tried literally everything else before kde because I didn’t like the older versions but eventually it came standard on a lot of distros and I just got used to it.
I agree, Gnome 2 was better. Ever since then, however, Gnome has been the worst environment available.
I totally agree - distro hoppers who complain about the “nightmare” of finding the right distro are living in a hell of their own making.
I somewhat get it. I used Mint ages ago on a laptop I had. It was fine. Two years ago I decided to see if I could use Linux full time in my desktop, and I installed Ubuntu. It was fine. Windows decided to fuck things up and I never fully recovered the system, and decided to cut Windows out and start fresh, and I installed Fedora, and it was fine. I fucked that up somewhat while messing around and learning and heard about Garuda and tried that. I love it!
I could have lived with any of the previous distros I tried. They did the job fine, and I didn’t think much of it. Garuda seems perfect for me though. Being Arch based is great, but it started with most of what I needed so it wasn’t the typical Arch install process (though I hear that’s better now than is memed). For someone comfortable with their computer skills, I think it’s the perfect option for gamers coming to Linux. I probably wouldn’t recommend it for someone coming from Windows who never learned computer skills, but anyone who edited registries should be able to handle it just fine.
Almost everything is better than it’s memed. Too many people treat memes like information when they’re more like graffiti.
They like it but haven’t come out of the closet
Can’t live without my magic lamp animation for minimise/maximise. Feels so out of place without it
Oh so you always need a lamp do you. Can you also fly??
ONE OF US ! ONE OF US !
is this your production machine? If yes, dont type random commands until you know exactly what they are.
I know it’s Linux and you can try many things as you want, but unless you are very experienced, dont do it on your main laptop.
It is pretty difficult because you can do things like installing new enviroments or try out different hacks for free. If you really want to tinker, do it on a 2nd laptop or just in Virtual Machine.
As this is bazzite, an immutable distro, the neat part is: if you reach finding out phase after fucking around, simply reboot and chose the previous version during boot. Very convenient for people who like to mess around with their systems :D
Mess around until it breaks. It’s fun.
Also checkout “ricing linux.” (There is a unixporn community here that can help you)Welcome in from the cold. We have hot cocoa and blankets.
Obligatory fastfetch is right there post
Neofetch came preinstalled, so I’ve used it
I guessed as much, I only say so because fastfetch was on the terminal prompt too - could it be both are preinstalled?
IIRC on Bazzite neofetch is just a symlink/alias to fastfetch due to muscle memory and the overall prevalence of neofetch.
May be, tbh I didn’t even read the MOTD until now
You can blindly download and install things from the internet on Windows, you can’t in Linux. If you try, it’ll be confusing at best, destructive at worst. If you want to install something, best to look for it in your GUI software manager (the “app store”)
If you’re up for the challenge (it’s extremely tedious to set up, partially thanks to its horrid instructions), you can try installing winapps. It’ll save you a lot of time with running Windows programs
This is not totally true. Deb packages will just activate the package manager and will mimic the feel of installing something on windows.
Bazzite is based on fedora atomic, which means I don’t get debs and have to deal with flatpak, brew and distrobox
Okay, I kinda do get debs through the last one… I think. I’ve never used db before, my experience comes mostly from Ubuntu and Pop_OS!
Yea, and appimages are a lot like a single .exe
learn how to configure your shell now it will save you so much time and make it easier to learn if everything is already tailored to you just find documentation on your shells configuration its usually in ~/.zshrc or ~/.bashrc
I did something similar a few months ago! But honestly it took me forever to pick between GNOME and KDE. Ended up going to KDE for certain things I wanted to customise.
Curious about what you plan to play with them specs.
Runs pretty much everything in stable 60 fps, and I don’t see any difference between medium and ultra settings
More specifically: DOTA 2, Pathfinder Kingmaker (took 4 hours to set this one up, and it’s the SECOND time), Chrono Ark, 1000x Resist, They Are Billions, Mechwarrior 5 with friends, TTRPGs in browser, and some souls-like once I’m done with one of the listed games
Ah, okay. “Pretty much everything” in 60 fps at medium settings sounds reasonable.
Not trying to hate here btw, I was just curious. 😁
Linux is great but make sure you also have a secondary computer for if and when it randomly doesn’t boot or won’t update anymore. You can probably get a used laptop pretty cheap.
I have a junktop with Ubuntu 24.04 and a live USB
You’ve obtained the zen.
You’ve chosen an immutable distro based on rpm-ostree. If you want to install a program/application/app then flatpak is the way.
Heroic Launcher works great for installing GOG/Epic games but if you want to install a game or other program from an offline installer then I still fall back to Lutris.For more in-depth read up on rpm-ostree and flatpak
Heroic I find is great for offline installers. I actually prefer it to Lutris I think. You set up your application and it creates a prefix. Before selecting the executable you press the “run installer first” button and it runs the installer on the prefix. Once it’s done you select the executable and it’s set up and good to go.
The Lutris method, IIRC, is you create the prefix, select the installer to run, then you modify that to target the new executable after. It’s not difficult, but the Heroic experience is slightly more streamlined I think.
Also worth checking out all of the pre-made “ujust” recipes.
Just type “ujust” in the terminal for a list. Tons of useful shit.
Meh, I’ve found that Heroic works just fine for most offline installers. YMMV of course.
Yeeeah, for a fresh Bazzite install I’d agree that “swap Lutris for Heroic” is solid advice.
In Bazzite flatpak is the way so much that you will open Discover and only see flatpak, so if this was really, really beginner tips I’d suggest not learning what any of that means for as long as possible and just relying on Discover for your apps until you hit a roadbump. This guy seems well informed enough that is not a problem, but hey.
I’m also mildly annoyed that ujust is important enough to still need that terminal splash screen but not enough to be baked into the config tools by default in GUI. So weird.
That’s either another thing you should try not to learn about if everything works fine out of the box or something you really should look into if it doesn’t, and that’s not great.
The best tip I can give you is to get rid of windows, and, well, you’ve already done that :)
Use alternativeto.net … not necessarily for just Windows programs alternatives; but it is also great for looking at popular utilities for any task in Linux.
Some programs I use a lot were not suggested anywhere else (e.g. Pluma as a basic text editor and Pinta for basic image editing).
They also have the best tech/software blog I’ve ever seen
Nice, thanks!
