That is a splendiferous idea Wendell :) I'd be interested to know how to integrate with Linux. I would probably obtain another laptop to experiment with a suitable distro for the newcomer to Linux.
2. What games do you primarily play? I'd be surprised if you played all 150 of those games frequently (;D), and even among those that you don't play often, you might be able to find suitable alternatives until [if-ever] they get ported.
3. I have a Lenovo Yoga 13, and I must say, the multi-touch support is much better than it was a couple of years ago. Multi-touch has been "available" in the kernel since 3.8 (I think?), but has never been really properly implemented, until Gnome 3.14. I actually like Gnome 3.14 as a touch interface more than Windows 8, all except for the onscreen keyboard, which is horrid. Pretty much every other desktop environment supports only single-touch, and even that is shaky at times. It's pretty portable as both a touchscreen and a laptop interface, in my opinion. As for a note-taking program, I've used Libreoffice Draw, and while it's not as touchscreen-friendly as a note program in Windows or Android, it has a lot of features.
A look at a distro like Linux Mint Debian Edition and Archlinux would be nice for learning how to install/customize Linux distros. Manjaro is also nice, but I think Archlinux is important and would be redundant to do it twice - I think a couple of different family bases would be nice.
I like the Debian Edition more for a couple of different reasons, though I suppose 17.1 could work as well. Sabayon sounds interesting, though I never did get it to work myself. I'd also looove to see a Gentoo install video if at all possible, so Qain should definitely jump on that.
I think a brief look at go-to Linux-centralized programs/commands/environments would be helpful for newbies - perhaps not something as confusing or perplexing as X vs. Wayland or how the filesystem works, since those are better grasped hands-on, but stuff like Bash, Git, and GNU apps.
Holy War: Manjaro, hands down. I've had more driver success in LMDE, but I only have one computer (x2 years) of hands-on experience with Linux distros, and most people almost certainly would not have the same problems I've had.
Since i am new to Linux , these where my first questions. A good set of hardware monitoring tools, Multimonitor set up, and configuring games in wine? My two fav from a nubs perspective is Mint KDE and Manjaro. I almost forgot the main reason i started to use linux, How to fix windows issues with linux. Dual- booting and scanning your system with clamav. Which i found not to be the clearest thing to do. All the normal nub ?'s
For hardware monitoring Concky is pretty great at it but you can do a ton of stuff with it like RSS feeds.
Setting up stuff in wine might not be bad like installing winetricks and pull how to pull different .NET libraries. For the newbie that isn't the easiest thing to do.
+1 on clamav super useful tool and how to would be really cool.
i would actually cover debian before gentoo, gentoo is like e-peen mostly
Definitely +1 for the wine tutorials. Also, consider substituting Antergos for Arch. It's essentially Arch with a functional live environment and graphical installer, so it may be a good option for the new user who's interested in the Arch ecosystem but doesn't have much experience.
My primary experience with Linux stems from my work as a web developer, thus limiting most of my knowledge to server side applications and deployments. As I have said before, most webservers globally run one of the following OS’s: CentOS, RedHat, SUSE (some OpenSUSE), Debian (some UbuntuServer), and to a lesser extent, Windows Server. For server use I typically prefer OpenSUSE for rock solid stability, YaST’s reputation for migraine inducing security features, flawless(ish) XEN integration, and a relatively regular release schedule. LAMP deployment on SUSE is a breeze with the included package manager (yast), and XEN’s bare-metal approach to virtualization really hits the spot for me. I have used SUSE (and OpenSUSE) for everything from VM Servers, LAMP Stacks, Game Servers, all the way to Exchange Servers, git Repositories, and much, much more.
That said I personally would love to see your take on a Linux home server configuration for say, light game servers, NAS storage, webhosting, and media streaming.
From the perspective of a desktop user, OpenSUSE has the advantage of including four of the most commonly use desktop environments in the installer. Gnome, KDE, XFCE, and LXDE. YaST’s software manager provides users with a relatively easy to learn graphical interface for installing packages/applications including but not limited to Steam and PlayOnLinux (great for aspiring Linux gamers with a large Steam library full of games developed for M$ Widnows).
That’s my pitch for SUSE/OpenSUSE, thoughts anyone?
1. I would definitely suggest Ubuntu Gnome and Cinnamon Mint for the new users. I do think that Mint is the easiest to begin with especially if you come from a windows perspective, plus Cinnamon is an elegant GUI for both average and advanced users. Plus the software manager and back-up options of Mint are really good. I have tried to start ppl with ubuntu using gnome and unity and both seem a bit to intimidating for most. That is the most important thing for an average user coming from windows or apple. They might be intimidated by the simplest/easiest thing just because its not familiar. They need to be eased into the idea by providing familiar interfaces. If you have to do only one Ubuntu-based distro you should do Mint. It sounds sad but familiarity plays a huge role in getting ppl to using Linux. Even if practically there is no difference and its just about lack of confidence of using new things.
2. I would definitely make an elementary OS or pantheon video since its the interface that old apple users would find familiar.
3. I would also definitely make a segment clearly describing the Ubuntu dashboard amazon searches on how to disable them or remove them if a user wants to. They are made in a way just to fool the non-advanced user into using without knowing it (my main gripe with ubuntu at the moment).
4. I would make a single video for Fedora/Red Hat and throw CentOS in there too as its a red hat rebuild. But that would be for more professional use. Also definitely a Open Suse video for workstations. Debian fall into the same category. Best if you require stability. Good candidate to show customization too.
5. You should also consider Mageia as the user friendly/newb version of rpm distros.
6. For the love of god a PlayOnLinux Tutorial. Absolutely required.
7. Bash Basics. Also very good.
How were these charts built? It does not seem that a lot of thought went into making them. Arch scores so low on docs while its wiki is one of the best linux resources around.
On the cutting edge side it seems to not take into account that OpenSuse and Debian can be place into a rolling package mode.
Security might be an important topic. Of course the Linux concepts improve the Situation, but coming from another OS there might be a lot of unknown errors one can do without knowing.
Maybe general methods to improve security?
Btw. great development! I'm really looking forward to the GNU/Linux, OSS boost. :)
I hope you guys talk about manjaro. i believe rolling release distros are important for gamers so that we avoid having to re install everything every 6 months and also i saw a tweet from Logan complaining about installing GPU drivers, well, distributions like manjaro already come with proprietary drivers so it makes things a lot easier
For Arch it doesn't take the AUR into account. I'm sure that you would have at least the same amount of packages as openSUSE.
"[..] tweet from Logan complaining about installing GPU drivers [..]"
Only if you use proprietary drivers. And you are forced into it if you have nvidia because of the very poor Nouveau performance. The guys that work on Nouveau get zero support from nvidia (well, nowadays is getting better for the new stuff, but it's still negligible).
Things are much brighter for AMD users. And they will get better once AMD finishes implementing their drivers in userland, that means absolutely no issues with their proprietary drivers when changing kernels, they are basically another application as far as the kernel is concerned. You're also going to need a fairly up-to-date distro if you want to take advantage of this, and not a conservative one, like Debian stable. Or Linux Mint for that matter, they are on kernel 3.13... that's almost a year behind kernel versions.
These are old, don't take everything into account, and are just not really valid any more.
I can see I'm a little late. I'd personally reccomend openSUSE for the majority of users. When I was newb (in theory aren't we all as per kernel release?) I distro hopped between Debian and RPM deriatives. I eventually settled on Fedora. BTW, a video showing newbs how to compile the kernel may prove useful, or just basic bash commands.
That's because he insists on using Nvidia GPUs when in fact AMD now supports Linux first.
I know there are a lot of sites that tell us whether or not a program is compatible with Linux, or with Wine, but I know a lot of people who simply don't understand how to properly set them up. For example, a lot of my friends use raidcall, and it is not natively available on Linux to my knowledge. Being able to set up programs such as that to use on a Linux distro would help immensely.
I frequently hear of alternative programs, but with certain ones, where friends and contacts will continue to use, there is no option to switch.
I don't really think the early days of linux, when I started using it, would bring a lot of relevant info as to what would help newbies nowadays, because everything has changed enormously.
Back then, linux was really technical to use, before kernel 2.4 or so one had to really know how to solve pretty complex problems to even get the system to work. That has changed over time, and the last 10 years or so have really made linux a lot easier to use, in fact, a lot easier for advanced users than any other platform, because it's easier to get the added functionality that enthusiasts want from computers.
Nowadays though, people are familiar with the concept op repositories, and encrypted sockets, etc... except, many people instinctively forget what they know about modern software and go searching for programs to download from some website, don't care to use encrypted connections to download software, don't show any discipline in using root, etc... because they are used to Windows and they are used to compensate for the failures of the MS-Windows environment.
I think the first thing that needs to be explained, is how linux really is as safe as it is, and how to keep it safe, by only downloading from repositories, by using the correct system tools, etc... in the old days, linux was a really IRL social movement, and it was easy to learn because linux users met IRL and explained stuff directly, and there were still a lot of UNIX people around that showed the way to proper practices. That has changed, linux is now an entirely online type of deal, and is the first operating system that people have learned by using it and getting instructions on the Internet. Google has literally learned the world how to use linux, except, people don't associate what they've learned from Google with x86-machines. I think that's the first problem that needs to be addressed. People need to unlearn stuff before they can use linux, not learn new stuff. When that is sorted, and they can use linux safely, then they can learn new stuff.
The distro is not really important for advanced users, any distro can do any job with the right tweaking.
There are however a few things that are not distro-dependent, but are growing in importance:
1. the release model: with everyone connected, there really is no reason to go for a distro that is not at least a quasi-rolling release distro. With Ubuntu, it's still impossible to perform a complete distribution upgrade without breakage. I think that is just not modern any more, and is hugely inconvenient. Fedora has had a quasi-rolling model for a few versions now, with fedup as main upgrade tool, which works perfectly, and a lot of constant bleeding edge package updates throughout the life of a release. OpenSuSE still has the periodic release model, but recently, they have also merged their Factory and Tumbleweed repos into OpenSuSE Factory, and that is hugely successful, because it provides a full rolling release model, and people want that, because nowadays, GPU driver updates have become really important, and a lot of driver improvements need new kernel features and new X11 or Wayland features, and those are only available on bleeding edge distros, and the frequent update scheme of those distros, make a rolling release model much more sensible, if not necessary. A lot of people also have more recent gear nowadays, and want the extra performance they've paid for, and bleeding edge distros being as stable as they are now, every bit as stable as Debian Stable that is, there really is no more reason to go for a non-bleeding-edge distro on a desktop PC.
2. We're in the transition from X11 to Wayland. This is a big deal. The display server is one of the key components of any operating system, and is arguably the single most appreciated feature on desktop installs for mainstream users. X11 is really old now, but it's come to a point - many years ago already - where it doesn't really fit the open source philosophy any more, in that it was kept alive. If all the many thousands of hours of hacking on X11 would have been invested in the development of a new display server, we'd be in display server walhalla by now. I think it would be a bad direction to go in to give X11 more support than it should become, so I would definitely go for a distro that uses Wayland. Ubuntu uses Mir, and that's just not Wayland, and it's mere BSD licensed, not GPL like Wayland. I think this is a decisive factor.
Fedora is a really nice distro for newbies, because the tools just work and the general security setup is solid, and it's a minimal distro out of the box, which is easily expandable with very simple to use tools like yumex, the new one-click installs like OpenSuSE has had them for years, and gnome-tweak-tool, and it has all of the Gnome extensions goodness available. OpenSuSE is now also mainly a Gnome Shell-focused distro, and SuSE supplies packages for all distros in existance, but out of the box, it's a pretty bloated distro, even though that has it's advantages. OpenSuSE Factory is the most attractive desktop distro for me at the moment for general use. Steam works great, pacman always has the latest Catalyst (now also KMS on bleeding edge distros) and nVidia proprietary drivers for Factory, Steam always works well, all virtualization tools just work, all development tools and all desktop environments and window managers are well maintained and available through the official repos, and, because of it's Corel legacy, OpenSuSE has the best online manual of any distro by far. Manjaro is a really nice distro for young hackers, because it has the largest offering of application software available through the AUR, advanced solutions can be found on the Arch Wiki, which is unsurpassed in that respect, and Manjaro takes bleeding edge seriously, for instance, they are the only mainstream distro at this point to offer KDE 5 in stable release, which is also a pretty big deal. Manjaro is now also partly upstream to Arch, so it's not simply an Arch derivative any more, it's a fullblown Arch spin.
In my opinion, those three are probably the distros that are most sensible to teach new users. As a side note, Fedora being a minimal distro will probably offer more learning potential, and is definitely a safer choice in terms of security, it being the only community distro with a full SELinux implementation that actually works. Also, Fedora has adopted the OpenSuSE feature of hot upgradable kernels, which is a really nice feature, that is only available on OpenSuSE and Fedora, and OpenSuSE and Fedora are the only distros that have really stable implementations of the newest filesystems (btrfs probably being the most sexy amongst them).
Fedora, OpenSuSE and Manjaro all support legacy and EFI BIOS, and run out of the box on all hardware, which is also a big bonus. And all 3 of them are amongst the fastest distros around, especially when it comes to filesystem performance, which is the most determining performance factor on modernish systems, and in terms of next-gen display server and compositor performance using open source GPU drivers on Intel and AMD graphics solutions.
Another big deal is the movement towards using LLVM/Clang for specific targeted compilations. Fedora comes with LLVM-libs out of the box. The Linux Foundation has been lobbying to get LLVM to work together with the FSF to improve the compilers for Linux, and that will undoubtedly be one of the main evolutions that will bring even more performance to Linux in the near future. On ARM, there is already extensive use of optimized kernels to enhance performance, and Linaro and others have proven that compiler optimizations are not a joke or a side-show, the performance benefits are very real. x86 will undoubtedly also want it's share of that extra performance.
So release model, bleeding edge performance, stability, orientation towards the future, safety and ease of use, are in my opinion the main properties that lean in favour of Fedora, OpenSuSE and Manjaro.