I was wondering what Linux distro you reccomend for beginners. I've never used Linux, but I really want to try it out. But I don't know where to start.
Can you give me some advice? What do I have to do, what should I know?
I'm thinking about "ElementaryOS", "Ubuntu Gnome" or "Manjaro". What do you think of those OS's ?
I originally went with Manjaro to start, and then proceeded to realize that I jumped into a very deep pool. Not as deep as straight up Arch, but deep none-the-less. I was using commands without knowing truely what they did (following guides to do things) and that wasn't how I wanted my linux experience to go.
I've moved to Linux Mint for the time being while I get a hold on the commands, etc, of linux. I really like what they've done. Its a nice GUI for the transition from Windows/OSX. And even though you have the nice GUI you can still use the command line to get stuff done. I figured that was a better place for me to start compared to Manjaro, where if you didn't know the ins and outs of the CLI you pretty much couldn't do anything.
Its really up to personal preference, but that's my story.
Most recommend dual booting. I recommend trying linux from a VM, using either vmware player or virtualbox. Both are free, and are preference based. Make sure virtualization acceleration is on in the bios, you can use the command systeminfo in command prompt, it will appear near the bottom to check.
Stick with Ubuntu distros, like linux mint. Skip ubuntu 13,04 if you do not want amazon ads.
Man (manual) is your friend in the terminal. Example: Man vim
Manjaro is still a really good choice for beginners. Light, fast, Arch-based, and very powerful.
However, you may want to look into Antergos, which is less like Manjaro, and more like a slightly better prepackaged Arch install. It has decent software preinstalled and decent repos. I have it installed next to my main Arch install. Pretty much an easy way to install Arch to UEFI hardware without having to know what is going on.
Where you to want to jump head first, though, you could do a Vanilla install of Arch via CLI; it is incredibly lightweight, has no packages or processes preinstalled that you don't need, and has an amazing community willing to help you (very egotistical, but incredibly knowledgeable).
Mhm, I was thinking about dual booting. But my laptop doesn't really have good hardware. In other words, my laptop is shit. Does that matter if I dual boot? And about the linux in a VM, Zoltan (you probably know him if you have read this forum for a while) said that using Linux in a VM is crap. You don't get the speed and security Linux will give you if it's installed as your primary OS, it would give you a negative experience... Is that true?
Yes I was thinking about Linux Mint, it seems like a very awesome distro to learn more about Linux. What's wrong with Ubuntu 13.04?
thank you
Is Manjaro really that hard to begin with? It seems like an interesting distro
It's not; I used it for a while. You don't have to use the CLI for that much, no more than any other distro.
What makes Arch so good? You seem to have a preference for Arch. Am I allowed to ask what repos are? I just started learning about Linux :) and what is UEFI?
Atm my laptop runs windows, is it still possible to do a vanilla install via CLI ? or is CLI only for Linux?
thank you
Ok. But aren't all the commands you can perform the same in all Linux distros? Or is it in some distros harder to do stuff in the CLI?
Some linux distros are better at being VMs then others, that and make sure acceleration is on in the bios, it makes a very noticeable difference. I believe linux mint is good with vmware.
Dual boot will slow down startup and create partitions as linux does not use NTFS like windows. Windows will be able to use the linux partition do to this, but linux can read the windows partition.
If you look at my hardware, I can run VMs fine as long as I have no apps open on the host (or not too many).
Ubuntu 13.04 has receive criticism for integrated ads into its os for revenue. Some see this as unnecessary or distracting. Ubuntu 12.04 will have support until 2017 unlike 13.04.
But in a Virtual environment it does not hurt to experiment. Find the OS you like then create dual boot or overwrite windows (make sure to back it up).
UEFI is a 'bios'.
Arch is like building your own house, might not be for beginners, but there are guides here and a wiki.
As an example of difference between distros. Ubuntu uses Apt-get while Fedora use yum, while arch uses pacman. They all do mostly the same thing, install stuff.
I am pro Arch. What's good about Arch is the performance; it's lightweight, but incredibly powerful. Super fast.
UEFI is the replacement for BIOS; supports a low-level GUI for the hardware-level interactions.
Repos, or repositories, are collections of software/packages, generally hosted by the distros themselves.
CLI is just command line interface. Arch vanilla is installed via CLI, but certain forks have a live X server that lets you install via a GUI interface.
Also if you are in a trying out mood I would recomend using LIVECD's on a thumb drive to check out the distro before you install one. They are bootable from bios
I just got into running a VM on my Manjaro machine to look at different distros. The problem I see with VM's are when you are short on computer resources IE sharing ram, CPU, GPU between your primary OS and the VM. The primary will run them both which on a older machine could slow you down alot. Also depending on your primary OS is where your main security holes or threats would be inhertenly lie. IE: if you were running XP with a lot of malware/spyware all on the primary your VM would then be running alongside of that inflicted OS.
The distro's vary on your willingness to not use a GUI. Which I would say they range from Arch (intensive text only) to Ubuntu/Mint (GUI tastic) the other differences are how they are maintained rolling release VS 6mo schedule.
I myself wanted to dive into linux a little deeper than a typical user. I would ask yourself:
What am I going to be doing with the computer?
What software will I use? Can my lappy toppy handle that?
How willing am I to "get my hands dirty" under the hood of said Linux? Or what is my comfortability with using the Terminal and typing commands into it? I found it to be like DOS when I had to make boot flopys.
For advice the forums and reading about different things that intrest you are your best bet. I found some different sites that where from bloggers trying out newly released distros. I will plug Spartyscupoflinux on youtube becase he has a crash course style of getting new users comfortable with the terminal and it's free!
They're mostly different. For example, To install a program in Ubuntu, you would use
sudo apt-get install program
Where as in an Arch based OS, you would use
sudo pacman -S program
I never said it was hard. I said that I didn't know what things did. Doing those things was easy, but I had no understanding of what the underlying workings was doing, so I didn't know what they were doing to my machine. So I told myself that I would stop doing that until I read more about linux commands, etc.
The problem is that, for me at least, I found the GUI of Manjaro lacking. Sure I could install a different DE/WM but that would mean that I'd probably be using commands that I didn't understand, once again. So instead I looked for something with a GUI that I enjoyed BEFORE I needed to know commands to load a new one on a distro that I do actually want to use.
Right now I'm putting up with ubuntu based Linux Mint so that I can run linux and learn the basic underpinnings before I move to Arch which assumes that the user knows more than I did. Once I get to the point where I feel confident in my understanding of those things, I'll move back to Manjaro, or Arch itself, and start digging deeper than Mint "allows".
Aha, and why is that? And, do you have any recommendations where to learn all those commands?
Ah ok, sorry. Yeah I can understand that just copying code doesn't feel very exciting. You find the GUI of Manjaro not good, I have looked up some pictures, and in my opinion it looks pretty awesome! But oh well. So do you think Linux Mint is good to learn the basic Linux commands? Have you learned alot from Mint so far?
I have read the Wikipedia article about UEFI already, but I don't really understand it. Replaces it the BIOS with an other bios?
Is there a better CLI ? They probably all do the same, but with different commands, am I right? But why are there different CLI's then?
Why is it faster than other distros? Because they don't include alot of preinstalled programs? or because of efficient coding? but it's open source, so that wouldn't really make sense, because if they have a new, efficient way of coding, others will do it that way too. mh.
Are repositories the software packages included by the distro itself, or are they still downloadable afterwards?