I just fucking can’t with windows anymore. I’d preach about it but I imagine you’ve heard it all. I have minimal computer expertise.
I use my PC mainly for streaming, downloading torrent files who’s copyright you don’t need to worry about, and light gaming. Usually just messing with New Vegas mods.
If someone knows of a good YouTube channel or guide or something written for andelder millennial caveman I would be grateful.
Edit: after having been recommended mint OS and giving it a quick Google, I got this! I haven’t fucked with anything linux scince the early aughts. And holy shit has that come a ways. Guess I remembered back and got a little intimidated. Mint is downloading now. As a small f.u. I booted up edge to do it. Ty you beautiful people!
Can’t recommend channels or guides of the top of my head, but maybe search Linux Mint beginner guide or something. Linux Mint is recommended everywhere for people who are new to Linux and should have plenty of guides and answers
Linux mint, alright I’ll give it a go
User name checks out. Have fun with Linux Mint!
Lol right!? It’s been ordained
Are we related?
You’re yesterday grandpa(ma?)!! Gotta keep it fresh yo!
If you need extra help for mint feel free to DM me
Mint is my go to Linux desktop distribution. There’s plenty of solid choices, but it’s served me well ever since Crunchbag Linux closed up shop.
Oh man, I loved Crunchbang! It was my last distro before I switched to Arch when they discontinued it.
I miss their friendly
#!wallpaper
Mint used to be my go to recommendation, these days I might offer up Pop!_OS, its unfortunate name is the only reason I might not, but when I’ve used it, it was a really nice experience.
Ty!
Hey, others have already replied to a lot of things and you’ve already downloaded Mint (which is what I would have recommended also), so I would like to point out some things I always tell newcomers and some specific things for what you said.
First of all: Linux is not Windows is the hardest lesson to learn, there are a lot of things you’re used to doing one way, but that doesn’t make that way correct. The main example is installing software, looking on the internet and downloading a binary from a website is NOT how you do it, the example I always give is that of a smartphone, it’s just as ridiculous to do in Linux than on a smartphone and for the same reasons. Instead use the package manager of your distro, that should work like the play/app store (except it’s free), and if something is not there maybe you can add a repository to it, or maybe the program doesn’t exist on Linux, only as a last resource should you do it manually.
Partitions and drives: Linux doesn’t have the concept of a C: or D: drives, instead drives/partitions are mounted onto regular folders, so navigating through them is seamless. This means that if for example you were t mount the folder that contains all of your personal user data (
/home) into a different partition from the root of the system (i.e/), you could format and change the system entirely without losing any personal data. This is very useful because it’s very likely you will poke something and break stuff, with much freedom comes much power to break things, so being able to reinstall your system without worrying about your personal data is a good thing.Drivers: mostly you shouldn’t worry about drivers on Linux, unless your GPU is Nvidia, if so you should worry about drivers a lot. Nvidia’s work best with the proprietary
nvidiadriver (instead of the default opennouveaudriver), but the fact that the driver is proprietary makes it a pain in the ass to deal. You should 100% use it since you’re gaming, but you should steer away from distributions that use Wayland (nevermind what this is for now) instead of X11 (Mint so far uses X11). If you have a Radeon you shouldn’t worry about this.I use my PC mainly for streaming
Be careful, afaik not all streaming software/sites are compatible with Linux. But that’s not a world I dabbled much, I know OBS works excellently, but other than that don’t know much.
downloading torrent files who’s copyright you don’t need to worry about
We all have torrent downloaders, for our Linux iso which are distributed via torrent of course
and light gaming. Usually just messing with New Vegas mods.
Iirc new Vegas is not on the supported list on steam, so you need to go to settings and enable Proton compatibility for all titles. I’ve never put mods so not sure how to do that, but you might need to read something before because the game is being run through a compatibility layer, so the files are not exactly where you would expect, and if you need to run a binary to find those files it needs to be in the same profile as new Vegas (each game creates their own profile based on steam ID, and each profile is in a different folder). Other than that New Vegas works perfectly on Linux, I’ve played it a long time ago, and now with the TV show I’ve started again.
Last but not least: Welcome!
Excellent reply!
I just want to add that partitioning your drives is not backups and can never replace backups. It just increases the likelihood of making it easier to fix should you fuck something up with your install.
Also, if OP means “watching streaming services” and by “streaming”, there should be little to no setup. Mainly the browser might ask you to enable DRM for the service to work.
Piggybacking on to this excellent comment to elaborate on modding New Vegas. Everything except NVR works great! I’d recommend using this to install MO2
4GB patcher has a Linux specific version on the Nexus Mods page.
You can run most tools like the BSA decompressor or the TTW installer using Protontricks.
xLODGen can be added as a tool to MO2 and just works.
edit: Forgot to mention, Wabbajack doesn’t work. Best just to run it on a Windows VM and move the files. Also, the current working version of MO2 doesn’t support Root builder. So just move any files that need to be in the game folder directly to the game folder.
Proton is a godsend. Some games can be a little unstable, but I’ve yet to find one that doesn’t work at all. Even was able to install and mod a game from 2000. For what doesn’t work on Proton, Lutris can hopefully handle. Takes a little doing sometimes but I got Battlenet/WoW working almost prefectly with CurseForge.
Nvidia drivers are a huge pain in the ass, though, and haven’t played nice with Wayland in my experience.
There are games that don’t work with Proton, but at this stage is 99% games that are actively trying not to work with Proton, e.g. DRM infested games.
Typically recommended guides:
https://easylinuxtipsproject.blogspot.com/p/1.html
Have a good transition and if you stick with Mint, I’d recommend the official forums for any questions: https://forums.linuxmint.com/index.php
This is exactly what I was looking for. Thank you!
I’d also add that this Lemmy community is a good forum too. Welcome home!
Since you chose Linux Mint—good choice btw—something to keep in mind is that Mint is based on Ubuntu. While you’re learning and searching the interwebs for how to do x, y, and z, if you don’t find an article or guide specifically about Mint, try searching the same phrase replacing “mint” with “ubuntu.” There’s far more content out there about Ubuntu than Mint, but since Mint is based on Ubuntu, 9 times out of 10 the same solution on an Ubuntu forum works in Mint.
Good luck!
Ty, great advice
It’s often useful to specify the version though. The current version of Linux Mint is 21.3 Virginia and based on Ubuntu 22.04 Jammy Jellyfish, where the first part, Jammy, is the codename of the Ubuntu release. So “Mint 21.3”, “Mint Virginia”, “Ubuntu 22.04”, “Ubuntu Jammy” or even “Debian Bookworm” should be helpful when querying a search engine.
As I’m German and the German Ubuntu-Community has a really good unofficial Wiki which is really helpful for setting things up or just rummage around, I can’t say much about the English pendants for Mint or Ubuntu.
You learn by using it.
Which means you want to do something on Linux. You don’t know how to do it, then you ask or search for the answer and then you know.
Just be patient and it will come naturally.
Yeah, just jump in.
To get started it is best to keep Windows around, then if you need to get something done urgently you can go back to what you know then figure out how to do it in Linux later. Dual-booting is probably the best option if you are gaming as GPU passthrough can be difficult to get great performance. That is the approach I took a long time ago and then at some point I realized that I hadn’t booted into Windows for months and just deleted the partition.
@Iapar @MintyFresh I think to add to that. The more you use it the more you realize how much control you have over a system.
Some people aren’t gonna like me saying this. But when used responsibly chatgpt is the absolute linux mvp.
I stopped being a windows user a month after getting access to gpt4, its been amazing. I learned so much in general and it would not have been feasible for me without there-are-no-dumb-questions-ai
Yeah, I wouldn’t recommend this option. Maybe for some basic question, but don’t follow its directions for anything technical and absolutely don’t enter any commands it gives you unless you know what they do. It makes stuff up all the time. It’ll sound confident, but if you’re a new user you don’t know enough to know what it’s telling you to do.
For that matter, don’t enter any commands you see online without looking at it first. You can’t trust everyone.
“don’t enter any commands you see online without looking at it first. You can’t trust everyone”
This has somewhat become a staple idea of mine. People trust others online way too easily. Ai isn’t all that different in this but its more obvious to us that there is something to be scared about the uncanny valley.
What it tends to come down to is capacity for personal critical thinking which we should aim to foster more in future generations.
Maybe i assume too much that programmer-minded people naturally come with such skills for troubleshooting and will be capable of responsible ai interactions?
explainingcomputers on youtube.
But really he just shows how there’s nothing to it these days.
Probably easier than a windows install.
Especially if you try to force your brain to read the windows user agreement - I tried to do a micrsoft virtual machine install recently, and got stuck at the EUA. My mouse just refused to click yes.The mention of the EULA brought back bad memories.
That was not a joke. I’m the guy that reads the Terms of Service and especially the Privacy Policy. I’m not a lawyer, but the more of these you read, the easier it gets to weed out the good ones from the standard (read: terrible) ones, and the absolutely monstrous ones. The Windows EULA is among the worst ones I’ve read (though I admittedly did a skim read of that one). As I was writing this, I decided to actually read the EULA and found a grammatical error in it lol.
haha.
Similar, I skim then, don’t really know what they exactly mean, but often some terms and phrases are just scary.Is there any youtube channel or something where someone knowledgeable goes through them and points out what the different parts mean.
I think that’d be quite interesting or at least useful.
This may come as a shock but Linux is good for learning Linux. You can’t beat experience.
I mean, possibly.
come back here if you need to understand something about it
Hey, friend. I just wanted to let you know that I couldn’t get New Vegas to run on my (up to date) Linux PC until I installed the custom Proton version called “Proton GE.” The GE stands for Glorious Eggroll, which is the username of the developer. There’s guides on how to install it on the GitHub’s readme. I know it may sound complicated to someone new, but you can do it!
Here’s a link to the read me: https://github.com/GloriousEggroll/proton-ge-custom?tab=readme-ov-file#manual
Scroll down to the “native” install instructions.
Of course, you can ignore this if New Vegas just works for you as it seems to for many others. My system is MX Linux, not Mint.
Good to know ty! I’ve heard of proton but don’t know a lot about it. I’ll definitely be looking into it. I have a crappy Nvidia card. We’ll see how that goes
Thankfully, nvidia actually released open source drivers for their cards a couple years ago or so. Nvidia cards are much more compatible with Linux now than they used to be.
Proton is a Windows compatibility layer for games developed by Valve for Steam. It’s based on Wine. Wine originally stood for WINdows Emulator, but it now stands for “Wine Is Not (an) Emulator,” which I always found funny. Technically, it is translation layer for system calls, I think. It’s very good these days!
But really, the only thing to know about Proton is that for any game in Steam, you can go into the “compatibility” preferences and enable Proton for that game. This can allow Windows games that Valve doesn’t support to work in Linux. It’s not perfect, however. ProtonDB (database) is a website full of user reviews of how well Proton works with games. They will tell you what tweaks they used to get games working!
Yeah, I’d say ideally you should be able to run mint and just figure out what you need to do with minimal difficulty.
My partner started using mint recently and the two biggest annoyances for her are having to enter her password all the time to update anything, and minor windowing differences, especially going in and out of fullscreen games. I think both of those are just a matter of getting used to how it’s done differently outside of windows.
IMO the thing that could use some attention is their package manager. There are several warnings and failures that I think have been unnecessary.
ex 1. Almost every update will ask if she’s sure she wants to resolve some package conflict in some default way. This is not a question a normal user is equipped to answer, and only makes the user uneasy about what’s happening.
ex 2. When she initially installed, the welcome wizard had her run a speed test to rank her repo sources, and she picked a nearby university that seemed like a good choice. Then a few days ago at random, it became inaccessible I guess, and now her package update fails to update Firefox specifically. I need to help her sort that out, haven’t had time.
These are the kinds of errors I expect to see on arch occasionally, but on mint I feel like it should always figure out what the best option is for the user and just do it. If it needs to let the user know it did something, fine, but don’t present it ominously. Just put the system in a good state so that it’ll keep working, that’s all a normal mint user wants you to do.
In the update settings she can reset her apt sources back to “default”. It’s not too hard and there’s a gui throughout the process (from memory).
The package conflicts is an interesting one, if you have the time to post one of these on lemmy I’m sure someone will suggest a fix. It’s probably a
apt install --fix-brokenor something simple (hopefully) but I’m sure we could work it out.Totally agree that these are annoying issues though. See if you can use Nala, it’s a TUI front end for Apt and it’s got some nice user changes like if you run upgrade it updates and upgrades. It also has a fetch feature which finds nearby sources, so you’re always downloading from the closest/fastest source.
It might be that it is just asking weather to replace modified configuration files by the default new config file provided by the updated package or keep the old, modified, one.
Saw the edits and I would like to congratulate you on the start of your journey.
All of the stuff you mentioned works very well - OBS is native, (and if you miss the performance of ShadowPlay, somebody made a replacement!
qBittorrent is native (and IMO the best) and the vast majority of games work on Linux now!(ProtonDB is a great resource for seeing what works and what does, and it even has a profile feature where you can plug in your Steam account username so it can automatically show you what’s compatible!)
Mods are slightly finicky, but SteamTinkerLaunch will likely be able to solve all your problems, and r/linux_gaming has numerous discussions and workarounds, including this very recent and relevant one!Have fun, and try not to get caught up in distrohopping!
Hallelujah, another soul saved!
Personally I’d recommend Mint. It’s intuitive and things tend to work out of the box. There are many others that’ll do just as fine, but the large Mint userbase makes it easy to google any problems you might stumble into.
I’ve been primarily a linux user for almost two decades now, and I still run mint, simply because I sometimes just want something simple that does its job without much hazzle.
That’s exactly what I’m looking for. I don’t need much out of it. I just can’t take widows shit anymore. The latest update broke me
Then Mint is for you. No nagging, no AI search. It just… works.
The only thing I have to do after first install is to get nvidia drivers running, which isn’t as awful as some linux enthusiasts might have you believe.
Quick tip to add to all the other advice: if Linux give you a warning, please read it carefully. Its not windows where you can safely blow through warnings. Otherwise, use it and enjoy!
Most of the Ubuntu guides online should work for you if you’re using Mint. (Unless you’re using Mint Debian Edition, but even then a lot will work.)
