Iāve wanted to go over to Linux for a long time but I have no idea how to go about it. I hear about incompatibility problems with hardware and all the different options for different Linux OSās and thatās it, I forget about it for a while to avoid the headache.
So where do I start? I donāt even know how to choose hardware or what to look for. The number of options with Linux makes things a little confusing.
And although others here have answered the question before, Iām unsure what I have to do to stay āsafeā on Linux. Are there extra steps or is it just the standard, donāt open dodgy links and turn off Java script in the PDF viewer kind of thing? Does Linux come with a trustworthy firewall/antivirus/malware detection? Is there a chance of Linux e.g. sending my passwords, etc, to someone or just letting someone into my harddrive? I hear that āopen sourceā means people can check the code but how do I know if someone has checked the codeāI wouldnāt know what to look for myself.
I followed the Linux subreddit but the users the can be ratherā¦ enthusiastic, which is great, but I need something far more basic to get started lol.
Is there a good step-by-step guide somewhere? Or can anyone give me some pointers/tips/advice?
I mainly browse, type, and read pdfs and other text files. No gaming, although I wouldnāt be opposed to it. No need to be mobile; laptops are terrible for my back so I always use an external monitor, anyway, so I wonāt be using it āon the goā.
Edit: Thanks for all the advice. I got a machine up and running from a bootable USB.
Any others who read the comments here because theyāre interested in trying out Linux ā if you have Windows installed and want to keep it on your HDD/SSD, partition your drive within Windows. Then boot from the USB. You can partition your drive (and keep Windows) from the bootable USB but itās a bit more complicated and it makes it harder to create a swap partition and a storage partition. I had to go back and forth a few times to figure this out.
sudo is just running things as root, which is an account on every Linux system that has permission to do everything. The dangerous part is running a sudo command if you donāt know what itās doing, because using the extra permissions, a command can do things like delete your files, break your system, install malware, etc. sudo itself isnāt going to do anything bad, but the command it runs could.
Thanks for explaining this, Elara. Are there any common dangerous commands that I should be wary of? Or any command line databases that are known to be dodgy?
The main thing is just make sure you know what the command is going to do before you run it. There are no specific commands that are dangerous, there are many ways to make a dangerous command. For example, if you see rm, thatās the remove command. It deletes files permanently. Once rm removes a file, thereās no trash you can retrieve it from, itās gone forever, so make sure it isnāt deleting anything important. Some important things are / and ~. If you see a command removing / like the one Sleepless One mentioned, thatās removing all the files on your system. / is the root directory, itās the place where everything on your computer is stored. ~ is your home directory. Itās where things like your documents, pictures, etc. are stored. So, if someone gives you sudo rm -r ~ or something, do not run that. If itās something like ~/.config/somefile, thatās fine because itās deleting a specific file inside your home directory rather than the whole thing.
Thanks for explaining. Where/how did you learn all the commands that you know? Trial and error?
