I've bought new parts and I am awaiting their arrival so I can build my brand new computer. I've decided to go for Arch Linux with KDE plasma or perhaps Gnome as my desktop environment but that's as far as I've come.
One thing I suggest is:
You're trying to get something working but it isn't going anywhere? Try again later.
First, because of the obvious calming down, since stress can affect the person's capacity to solve problems.
Second, I've noticed how many things on Linux have some degree of similarity and/or relation to one another. So trying other things in the meantime can give you the needed insight for solving a previous problem.
A good refinement of this advice is to keep a Q&A sheet in your Dropbox or in Google Sheets or something, because writing down your answers that you discover can help you remember them, and can provide a backup plan in case you forget the answer and need it later, and can remind you to circle back to a question later when your toolkit is bigger.
Edit: also, it helps manage your backlog - you can make a rule like "if the unanswered count ever gets to ten, I'll sit down with an experienced user and try to clear them all"
Yes! I have an entire folder in Joplin that's just lists of what broke and how I fixed it so I can refer back to it later. It's saved my ass so many times.
Boosting this advice. When I started using Linux as my daily driver (14 years ago), I got into the habit of taking notes on everything: troubleshooting solutions, bug fixes, how-tos, configurations, useful software, etc. It's not the Arch Wiki, which is a treasure, but I can solve a lot of my own issues just by looking up what I've done before.
And don't skip over reading things! I also run Arch with KDE and honestly with almost all problems I have, if I carefully read through either the Arch Wiki (this will probably be your most valuable tool) or the error message that comes up, the answer is usually in there somewhere, it just needs digging up.
Also: if something with a GUI crashes and doesn't give an error message, try running it in the terminal. So like, if Firefox crashes and doesn't give any info, try opening up a terminal and running firefox from there and the terminal will tell you everything that's going on. (It'll be a different command if you're using a flatpak but that's the general idea.)
One thing I suggest is:
You're trying to get something working but it isn't going anywhere? Try again later.
First, because of the obvious calming down, since stress can affect the person's capacity to solve problems.
Amazing how many situations in which this can be applied!
Your system will almost certainly get irrevocably broken by something at some point and you'll have to reinstall. This isn't a failure on your part though, it's a rite of passage that everyone goes through at least once, especially if you have Nvidia drivers lol. It'll happen less and less over time the more you learn how to fix stuff though.
This may be a lot more than you are looking for, but it will give you a good foundation to understand and control your OS.
Spend some time on tutorials that help you get comfortable controlling your system from the command line (bash). If you have the patience, I would recommend you learn how to write basic bash scripts rather than just how to use it as a CLI, because this will give you a greater depth of knowledge as to how Linux works.
Some basic shell commands you should learn: cd, ls, pwd, mkdir, rmdir, touch, rm. Some command line utilities you should learn how to use at a basic level: man, vim, pacman, grep, find, possibly ssh. Some topics you should learn about: anonymous pipes, FHS hierarchy, file descriptors, input/output redirection. If you’re going to use this as a study guide, I’d recommend you go more or less in order as these topics build on other.
I am not saying at all that you must learn all these things to make use of your PC running Linux, this is just a little guide on things to learn that will give you a good foundation to “get” Linux. I hope you have fun! Learning Linux is a pretty cool experience, or at least it was for me.
You could try this, to figure out which distro suit you best : Distrochooser
As far as Desktop Environments go, just try them out. Almost every distro has a live cd feature, just mount the iso in a vm and try different DE's and choose the one that suit your needs.
Doesn't matter what distro you choose. I'd suggest picking one with a large support base, and not a niche distro.
But ultimately, pick one, don't become a distro hopper, or one of these folks that's always asking "what's the best distro".
As a new user, if you try out a distro for a few months and it's just not "clicking" for you, there's nothing wrong with trying something else out.
More than anything else, once you do find the distro that feels like home, learn to tune out the haters, because they're going to crawl out from under their rocks every bloody time you mention the distro you use, and try and tell you why what they like is better.
You'll notice I haven't mentioned which distro I use. And that's for a reason. I happen to think it's pretty damned fantastic, but there's at least one other person that will read this, and feel its the worst thing ever, of all time.
As far as tips go? Learn to read error messages, learn how to use a websearch, learn how to ask intelligent questions when you need help.
If you're installing Arch, one trick the installation wiki article doesn't tell you:
If you type "archinstall", it has a command line installer there that'll do the install for you, and lets you pick from several desktop environments as well. I've had it crash before more than once, so it's not perfect, but it's less of a pain then doing it all by hand...
My absolute, #1 biggest recommendation is to male separate partitions for / and /home.
What does this mean? In short, you're telling the system to treat different sections of the hard drive / ssd as entirely separate buckets. In this case, you're putting all of the operating system and programs in one bucket ( / ) and keeping all of your files and settings in another (/home).
Why does this matter? As someone learning Linux, you should tinker with things, learn what they do and how they work. Sometimes, that means breaking things, occasionally in spectacular ways. Having your files and your OS separate means that you can completely wreck your OS while you learn without losing your data in the process- you can reinstall from scratch or even distro hop (try out a new version) without having to stress over losing anything. In short, you can learn and play and blunder and explore without risking anything more than a 20 minute reinstall if you can't figure out how to fix it.
I recently switched to Fedora to help get into the Arch based Linux realm. Historically been on Debian based distros. You can’t go wrong with many of the “mainstream” distributions as your first intro to Linux. If you come across any issues ask away and that it a how you’ll learn more about how Linux works, Arch, etc with your hardware too.
The most important thing I had to do when I made the switch was to be patient with myself. I was, at the time, a very experienced Windows user. There would be times when I needed to troubleshoot something in Linux, and I would know exactly how to do the task in Windows but didn't have any clue how to do the same thing in Linux. It was frustrating. I had to learn to give myself time to learn and adjust.
Make use of ChatGPT. I've been interested in Linux for years, but the process of getting into a new OS where I have to learn so many new concepts etc. I could never make the step. Now I am using Tumbleweed for a few months, mainly for gaming, and ChatGPT was so damn helpful, I can't even describe it.
Don't start with Arch unless you're looking for a trial by fire. It's a distro intended for advanced users who already know a few things about Linux. I don't even use straight Arch, and I've been using Linux for years. I do use EndeavourOS as my daily driver though, and that's basically a pre-configured Arch with a GUI installer.
Ubuntu, or one of its variants like Kubuntu or Xubuntu, is a better pick for someone who's just starting out. Mint is supposed to be decent for new users too.
You made a wise choice picking a Radeon, btw. Nvidia support on Linux isn't the greatest. AMD, on the other hand, is nearly plug and play since the drivers are built into the kernel. You may or may not need to install extra drivers for proper Vulkan support though.
Another thing I should mention; if you decide to dual boot with Windows, it may seem like a smart idea to share your steamapps folder between OSes, but this doesn't usually work out well because of the way Proton uses symlinks. You're much better off having separate steamapps folders for each OS, even if it uses more disk space that way. (Proton is the compatibility tool Steam uses for running Windows-only games on Linux. It even works better than running Linux-native games in a lot of cases)
I mention the steamapps thing, because it's a common newbie mistake to try sharing a steamapps folder between Windows and Linux.
Linux is a pretty deep rabbit hole to dive into, and it's not for everyone. But don't let this discourage you; it can be rewarding if you're willing to learn how to use it.
I’d say that Ubuntu is a great choice because there is a lot of support out there, in articles/support forums and apt repos for most things that you can just drop in. Even if you want to run the latest bleeding edge kernels the ppa support is excellent. For me it’s a pragmatic choice of distro even if ideologically I’d prefer to run plain Debian.
I’m rooting for OP, though. Starting their Linux journey on hard mode is something to be lauded!
Truthfully, I think the amount of support Ubuntu has is a double-edged sword, because while it is easy to find resources for it, it's also easy to find outdated information that doesn't apply to newer versions. Similarly, with PPAs, they can be quite useful, but you also have to be careful not to hose your system with them.
If OP is willing to stick with Arch, and learn to work with it, then I say kudos to them. The main reason I don't encourage new users to dive right into it is because I don't want them to get discouraged and give up, People learn things different ways though, and for OP, this may just be the ticket for them.
I don't know about this. In my experience with ChatGPT was really bad, at least for programming. Asking about libraries, it started to allucinate and invent some APIs. Also with working with a REST API from GitHub, it started making up endpoints.
So, specially for a begginer, I'd say that better go with the other popular resources (ArchWiki and Server Fault)
And you can expect this to possibly get worse. I remember seeing a post about how AI is now having trouble obtaining good quality image data because the internet has become saturated with AI generated art. I imagine text content is even worse. I've already seen several news articles lambasting a few lawyers for referring to non-existent cases.
The bottom line is that ChatGPT and other AIs don't understand what they are writing. They are just stringing words together by association with keywords. It's writing convincing sounding fiction about the real world. The fact that you can get things like vaguely working code out of it is just a happy accident.
At best, AI it should be seen as an idea generator. It requires that the person be skeptical of whatever is output.
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