Hello!
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.
https://pcpartpicker.com/list/Xw4sRv
I figured I would ask the community if they have any tips or suggestions, thanks!
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”
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.
Good advice to be honest. Luckily I have a lot of patience so I think I should be fine in the end.
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!
hey! don’t listen to all the people who are telling you to choose an “easier” distro. my first linux was gentoo. i had never really bothered to learn computers before. that was 20 years ago and i was a teenager. i’ve been using various linuxes over the years since then.
if you want something that mostly just works, don’t want to mess around with your computer, and are fine with having to reinstall every 2-3 years because updates always break, then yeah, ubuntu derivatives are fine. fedora and friends are a little bit more stable and offer a similar experience.
if you want to learn, though? then it’s 100% correct to go with something that lets you do more of the work but has an excellent manual. in that vein, arch or gentoo are the leading experience.
the advantage of these is also that they won’t break as easily as anything debian/ubuntu based will.
you will have to do a lot of reading, a lot of learning, a lot of asking people embarrassing beginner’s questions (DO join the respective IRC channels for support! they’ll love to have you), and you should keep a rescue system on a stick or CD because you have a pretty good chance to break yours.
(strongly recommend putting your /home on a separate partition if not its own drive, so you can simply unmount it and then do with your system whatever you want, without having to worry about your important files.)
as for everyone else recommending you to use a different distro: you will get this advice incessantly. whenever you ask a question or are trying to find solutions to a problem, people will swarm you to tell you to use a different distro. this is an unfortunate habit of the linux community. so my most important piece of advice is to wholeheartedly ignore the distro recommendations at all times except when you have explicitly asked for them.
you know best what your needs and wants are. the whole point of free software is to empower people to do with it whatever the fuck they want.
Great comment, I’ve decided to go for Arch and I know that it might come with a lot of tinkering and work. Thanks for the tips and encouragement!
Remember to trust first and foremost the Arch Wiki.
Never follow the random tutorial on youtube/blog/whatever.
Take your time to read. Mess up. Fix the mess. Enjoy.
If at any point it feels too much, no shame in taking a different direction: it’s your life and your own time.
Best wishes!
I’m on arch and just got back into using linux after playing around with it years ago. I’ve managed to get a lot of things working on it just fine, like Diablo 4 and various software not packaged specifically for arch, which forced me to learn the system I am using.
It’s exactly what I want!
I disagree. Over the past few decades many of us have seen friends try out Linux and then leave it be, and one of the common reasons is the complexity of doing various tasks. Of course figuring out things is part of the fun, and I hope that a lot of people will do so, but if things don’t work out of the box, that can be really frustrating. And people are busy. They might want to mess around with their Linux box, but this might not be the time to do it.
That all being said, I think many of the popular distros today are designed reasonably well for new users, compared to the much more adventurous landscape we had 20 years ago.
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 see that you already are confronted to the Arch btrainwashers, we made memes about them
Ubuntu is a very solid choice and will give you results very fast without hurdles. You can then look under the hood to see in detail how it work if you want to.
It’s important to just stick to your package manager at first, don’t jump too fast into the flatpak/snap/container wagon. When you know exactly the purpose of a package manager then you can look outside. Your package manager is your best friend, whatever the distro you use, stick to it as much as possible, you won’t regret it.
Also, if you are looking for a program under linux but you only know the equivalent in windows/apple, you can use https://alternativeto.net/. Enter the name of the program you are looking for, then search for the alternative for linux.
For example, photoshop -> Gimp or Krita. Then search for it in your package manager.
If you are completely new to linux, you wanna consider other options than arch. Maybe a derivate like manjaro would be for you, if you really need to have arch. If other options are valid as well, i would go with linux mint or popOS. Or just plain Ubuntu.
Manjaro comes with a lot of bloat that I don’t want on my system, that’s why Arch sounds so interesting to me.
I shouldn’t, but I’m going to…
Define “Bloat”.
Seriously. What do you mean when you say “Bloat” and why is this an actual legitimate technological concern of yours?
(This comment has absolutely nothing to do with Manjaro, or any other distribution. It’s got more to do with the use of the word “Bloat”)
Arch is low-bloat. But it’s also a lot of work.
EndeavourOS is arch-based without the bloat of manjaro.
Mint is non-bloated and it “just works.”
Debian is non-bloat, a bit of work to set up, but then it’s more “stable” than arch.
If you’re ambitious enough to try arch, but you’re a beginner, I think Debian is an excellent choice.