Ask Lemmy
A Fediverse community for open-ended, thought provoking questions
Rules: (interactive)
1) Be nice and; have fun
Doxxing, trolling, sealioning, racism, and toxicity are not welcomed in AskLemmy. Remember what your mother said: if you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all. In addition, the site-wide Lemmy.world terms of service also apply here. Please familiarize yourself with them
2) All posts must end with a '?'
This is sort of like Jeopardy. Please phrase all post titles in the form of a proper question ending with ?
3) No spam
Please do not flood the community with nonsense. Actual suspected spammers will be banned on site. No astroturfing.
4) NSFW is okay, within reason
Just remember to tag posts with either a content warning or a [NSFW] tag. Overtly sexual posts are not allowed, please direct them to either [email protected] or [email protected].
NSFW comments should be restricted to posts tagged [NSFW].
5) This is not a support community.
It is not a place for 'how do I?', type questions.
If you have any questions regarding the site itself or would like to report a community, please direct them to Lemmy.world Support or email [email protected]. For other questions check our partnered communities list, or use the search function.
6) No US Politics.
Please don't post about current US Politics. If you need to do this, try [email protected] or [email protected]
Reminder: The terms of service apply here too.
Partnered Communities:
Logo design credit goes to: tubbadu
view the rest of the comments
The first thing to bring to the process is curiosity. Linux is not Windows and doesn't operate in the same way.
What you think of a normal Windows behaviour, is unlikely to work in the same way under Linux.
In Linux everything is represented within the filesystem. This means that you'll find USB ports, soundcards, hard drive devices, mouse, as well as running processes, open files, memory and even the CPU as well as everything else to run a modern computer represented inside the filesystem directory structure you're presented with.
The Linux kernel is the heart of every system. Each flavour or distribution (distro) of Linux package up their ideas for the best way to use the kernel, offering different ways to install applications, drivers, user interface, etc. The variety is endless.
Note that within each distro are multiple versions. Each distro is distinct and unlikely to do things in the same way, so instructions found online for one might not apply to another.
The vast majority of software available is packaged from source by a distro and made available to you as a package.
You can compile anything from source, but that is a very deep rabbit hole, something you'd want to shy away from for the first year at least.
Packages have dependencies which most package managers attempt to deal with. This works fine if you use the same distro, but has a very high chance of breaking things if you start pulling packages from other distros or versions.
Much can be achieved with a GUI, but the real magic happens on the command line.
To get started, set aside an old machine, or build a virtual machine on your Windows PC and start learning.
I've been using Linux daily since 1999, and I'd recommend that you start with Debian. It's stable, highly compatible, has a massive package collection and is properly documented.
Other distros like Ubuntu are (loosely) based on it.
Whatever you do, take it slow, make regular backups of your data and ask questions.