this post was submitted on 09 Apr 2024
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Linux

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Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).

Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.

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I thought I'll make this thread for all of you out there who have questions but are afraid to ask them. This is your chance!

I'll try my best to answer any questions here, but I hope others in the community will contribute too!

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[–] [email protected] 10 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (4 children)

Considering switching to Linux, but don't know what to choose/what will work for my needs. I want to be able to play my steam games, use discord desktop application, and use FL Studio. I need it to work with an audio interface and midi controller too. I am not interested in endless tweaking of settings, simple install would be nice. What should I go for?

[–] [email protected] 12 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Mint would probably work for you. Some stuff is outdated, but it has flatpak which is a package manager with more up to date apps. If you're willing to put in the time though, I'd recommend trying some of the more common distros out (Mint, Debian, Ubuntu, Fedora). You can use a liveusb to test them without installing.

Steam is available anywhere so that's not a problem.

Discord officially only has a .deb package, so that's only for Debian based distros (Debian, Ubuntu, Mint). There are other options for almost all distros though - I personally use Webcord

Fl studio might be tricky - supposedly it runs through wine but you might have to do a bit of work. I've personally used Reaper and I works great.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 8 months ago

I just had to install with wine and add some fonts to the wine prefix

[–] [email protected] 9 points 8 months ago

Adding to what others have said I also think Mint is a great option. But I strongly encourage you to install things via the package manager when available, I find that a lot of times when someone complains that something (that should work) doesn't work on Linux is because they're trying to install things manually, i.e. the Windows way (open browser, search for program name, open website, download installer, open installer, follow instructions), that's almost never the correct way on Linux.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 8 months ago

Mint is probably the best install and go experience out there.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

As a fellow user in similar situation, i can tell that i had tried dual boot a few times but would just switch to windows when i wanted something done that didn't work on linux

3 weeks ago i went full Mint install and left windows altogether. This forced me to find solutions to problems that i otherwise would solve by just switching to windows. Dont expect everything to work though. You will need to tweak some things and you may even need to do some things differently than youre used to. But isn't this why we change in the first place?