Free Palestine 🇵🇸

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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: August 16th, 2023

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  • What caused you to get into it

    The year was 2002. I was told about Gentoo Linux by a college. I saw it as a new, shiny toy and immediately wanted to try it out. I realized that it was better than Windows, so I stuck with it. (Not with Gentoo, but with Linux. I still use Gentoo sometimes today, but I also tried out many many other distros throughout the time and I don’t use Gentoo exclusively nowadays.)

    are you an evangel

    Yes, I believe that Linux is far superior to Windows and I tell people about it

    are you obsessed?

    Absolutely



  • Another thing that helped me: Get comfortable in the Terminal. Obviously you have to learn some commands and how they work, but just configure your shell and commonly used CLI tools. It makes the experience so much more pleasant. Install a nice shell prompt, set up some aliases for frequently used commands, learn the basics of shell scripting and write your own useful little scripts for things you often have to do, maybe start using Vim and configure it the way you like it. Also explore other shells. Bash is the default shell, but there are better options like zsh or fish. You can watch this video to get some inspiration: https://youtube.com/watch?v=KKxhf50FIPI. This is actually pretty close to my shell setup. If you want to start customizing bash, check this out: https://youtube.com/watch?v=b3W7Ky_aaaY.

    To continue learning, maybe subscribe to some Linux-oriented YouTube channels. DistroTube makes great videos about Linux, tiling window managers, how to use various commands, how to configure your shell environment, etc. He also reviews many Linux distros or explains why free software is important. If you search any Linux-related topic on YouTube, chances are that DT already made a great video about it.



  • I thought a more advanced distro, that is still stable, would be good overall. However, not getting new software for a long time sounds quite annoying.

    Arch is actually not as bad as many say. It’s pretty stable nowadays, I even run Arch on some servers and I never had any issues. It gives you the benefits that you can basically find any package in the AUR and everything is up-to-date. Try it out, if you don’t like it, you can still switch to something else.

    I’m wanting to challenge myself to get much better with Linux, partitioning, CLI, CLI tools

    The best way to learn the CLI is to use it. Try not to use your graphical file manager for a while and only interact with the file system through the terminal, that teaches you a lot.

    I’ve been considering installing Arch the traditional way, on my X220, as a way to force myself to improve. Is this a good way to learn more about Linux and a Linux system in general?

    Yes.

    I always hear good things about the Arch Wiki.

    It is truly fantastic.

    Is there any other tips someone can give me, to sharpen my Linux skills?

    Use the system, don’t be shy, try different things out. If you are scared that you might break something, try it out in a VM. Break your VM and try to fix it. That teaches you a lot.

    I was even considering trying out Gentoo on my X220, but the compiling times sound painful.

    I would not recommend that, updating packages will take ages, it’s not a great experience.


  • I’d rather avoid a Linux distro that’s implementing something like ads or telemetry…if that’s even a thing that’s happening?

    Fedora has some telemetry, but as far as I know, you can turn it off during the installation. Some desktop environments like KDE Plasma also have options for telemetry but it’s disabled by default. If you want it, you manually have to enable it in the settings.

    Should I avoid OpenSUSE

    Some software might not be available on openSUSE

    or KDE Plasma

    Not really, Plasma has a shitload of features and customization options, if many options tend to overwhelm you, you might be better of with a different desktop environment, if you are fine with customization options, Plasma is great for you.

    Are there any ‘10 things to do first when installing Linux for the first time’ recommendations?

    Since you said that you want to install openSUSE, I recommend this video: https://youtube.com/watch?v=ajVqJ1nl9bM