New to Linux, have a few questions
I currently use Windows 10 and I’d like to try out Linux. My plan is to set up a dual boot with OpenSUSE tumbleweed and KDE Plasma. I’ve read so many different opinions about choosing a distro, compatibility with gaming and Nvidia drivers, and personal issues with the ethos of different companies like Canonical. I value privacy and I’d rather avoid a Linux distro that’s implementing something like ads or telemetry…if that’s even a thing that’s happening?
As a complete beginner, what sort of advice would you all have for me? Should I avoid OpenSUSE or KDE Plasma for some reason? Are there any ‘10 things to do first when installing Linux for the first time’ recommendations?
Despite all the ‘beginner friendly’ guides and tutorials around, I still feel a little lost and like I’m going into this blind.
EDIT: Thanks to everyone who's offered advice, I really appreciate all the help and the patience with my dumb questions! There's a lot to look through and it's been a busy day for me, but I'll get back to reading through everything and replying as soon as I can!
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Jacob Urlich 🌍
in reply to Nokinori • •don't like this
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Rustmilian
in reply to Nokinori • • •I'll do my best to point you in the right direction.
Moobythegoldensock
in reply to Nokinori • • •My big question would be why are you starting with a dual boot? I would recommend trying each one with a liveUSB or in a virtual machine and simply do a single boot with the one you like better. There’s likely little need for you to actually maintain two distros unless you have a very niche use case that one distro can’t solve.
My advice would be to just relax and realize that the underlying OS is 90% the same regardless of what distro you choose. All the discussion you see on different distros, package managers, snaps, wayland, etc. are all the other 10%. It really doesn’t matter what distro you start on as long as it’s a general purpose distro (both of the ones in your OP are): once you learn the first 90% of linux, you’ll develop your own tastes, and then you’ll be able to decide on the remaining 10%.
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Chewy
in reply to Nokinori • • •OpenSUSE Tumbleweed is an awesome distro with up to date packages. KDE is also a great choice, especially with Plasma 6.0 around the corner.
I wouldn't worry too much about Nvidia drivers, just follow OpenSUSE's guide [1]. The remaining issues of Nvidia with KDE Wayland are getting fixed over the coming months.
Edit: OpenSUSE can't ship some codecs by default for legal reasons (like RedHat, Fedora), but makes it simple to enable them (optionally through graphical YaST) [2].
[1] https://en.opensuse.org/SDB:NVIDIA_drivers
[2] https://en.opensuse.org/SDB:Installing_codecs_from_Packman_repositories
SDB:NVIDIA drivers - openSUSE Wiki
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atzanteol
in reply to Nokinori • • •It's a bit of an unpopular opinion, but if you pick a mainstream distro there isn't a lot of difference between them. Especially to somebody who is new to linux.
With most any distro you can use KDE, gnome and other desktop environments. You can pick which one you want to use when you login. So don't think you're tying yourself to KDE if you install kubuntu or something.
If you want an easy way to switch to a new distro make sure you create a separate partition for /home. Then if/when you want to install something new you can have it overwrite everything except your home directory. So all your steam configs and games will be left untouched (for example). Alternatively just backup /home somewhere and restore as you need.
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Astaroth
in reply to Nokinori • • •If you're going to be using a DE and mostly do stuff through the GUI instead of terminal/command-line then make sure you can go admin mode (Root/Sudo).
Besides small annoyances I had with KDE Plasma 5's UX the main reason I didn't like it was that often enough I would have to use admin privileges but I couldn't do it through the GUI File Manager (Dolphin) so I frequently had to use the terminal.
It should be possible to have admin privileges in Dolphin but I was a noob and didn't know how (and still don't even now).
If you end up facing that issue then either be a bit smarter than me and look up how to do that or use Nemo, another file manager, which is more or less the same thing as Dolphin except when I ended up using it on Linux Mint a while back it let me use it as Root as a feature out of the box.
And for the record I don't like Linux Mint, apt package manager sucks (package managers are basically app stores where you get all your stuff), but at least it was super easy to install and Nemo was a good file manager.
If you don't mind tinkering and h
... show moreIf you're going to be using a DE and mostly do stuff through the GUI instead of terminal/command-line then make sure you can go admin mode (Root/Sudo).
Besides small annoyances I had with KDE Plasma 5's UX the main reason I didn't like it was that often enough I would have to use admin privileges but I couldn't do it through the GUI File Manager (Dolphin) so I frequently had to use the terminal.
It should be possible to have admin privileges in Dolphin but I was a noob and didn't know how (and still don't even now).
If you end up facing that issue then either be a bit smarter than me and look up how to do that or use Nemo, another file manager, which is more or less the same thing as Dolphin except when I ended up using it on Linux Mint a while back it let me use it as Root as a feature out of the box.
And for the record I don't like Linux Mint, apt package manager sucks (package managers are basically app stores where you get all your stuff), but at least it was super easy to install and Nemo was a good file manager.
If you don't mind tinkering and have a secondary device with an internet connection in case you break something then I would recommend Arch Linux. Or you could try it in a Virtual Machine I guess.
Pacman (Arch's package manager) is a hundred times better than Apt, and then there's the AUR on top.
Also while I've never used it I hear a lot of good things about EndeavorOS, Arch Linux but supposedly easier
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Avid Amoeba
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