So i really wanted to ditch windows once and for all so i’ve tried Linux for a week trying different distros (debian, manjaro, ubuntu, opensuse, mint) and first of all why? Why are there so many distros out there? What’s the difference between debian + kde and manjaro + kde? They look the same, they work the same. I don’t get it. Also why do things have to be complicated? I’ve installed debian, installed calibre to manage my ebooks, created a library from an existing library on my hard drive (not the one with debian installed), ERROR! All the files are read-only. What??? I’ve followed multiple guides on how to change permissions and finally solved the problem. Now let’s restart my pc. files on the hard drive are read only WHAT??? Fuck debian, let’s go on manjaro. No problems at all on calibre. Managed to create the library as easy as i did on windows. My question is: where’s the fun in this? It’s just problems, after problems, after problems and i didn’t even start gaming. I mean i tried installing retroarch and importing my saves but of course nothing works. Read this guide, read that guide. Nope. Nothing works. Ok, fuck retroarch let’s customize the appearance of my desktop: move some icons on the panel, center this, adjust height, move this on the left, spent 30 minutes tweaking, very nice… kde crashes, all back to default. Let’s download some apps. I want as many apps that i already know as possible. Let’s see if jdownloader is available for linux. Yep there’s one. Nope, not for manjaro (officially). There’s a AUR package available. Nice. What do i need to do to install a AUR package? A wall of text on the wiki, 20 minutes videos, yay. Ok let’s call it a day. Do i need to live another life to make linux work?
They visually look similar because both are running KDE with pretty much all the defaults, as it happens both Debian and KDE don’t diverge too much from the recommended defaults as long as they work well. But under the hood, Debian and Manjaro work completely differently: one uses
apt, the other usespacman. The way those packages are maintained, compiled and distributed is vastly different, with different kinds of QA testing.Ubuntu is a derivative of Debian, so it doesn’t look that much different but Canonical does tend to provide newer packages than Debian does. But Ubuntu also has a lot of flaws so spinoffs like Mint and Pop_OS! take on Ubuntu as a base and “fix” it to their liking and hopefully the user’s too, which, given how popular Mint is I’d say they’re pretty successful in that goal.
It doesn’t, but the amount of options and choices in how to do basically anything on Linux can certainly look very overwhelming. You can click on it in your file manager, you can add it to
/etc/fstab, you can use a systemd mount unit. They’re different ways of automating and configuring what ends up being mostly the same: mounting a filesystem and setting permissions on it, and they come with different defaults.You’re running into the particular area of trying to mount an NTFS Windows partition on Linux, which is nothing like what Linux expects to it fakes a few things to make it work, and that makes everything owned by the same user by default. If you do it from your file manager, it’ll get a temporary mountpoint in like
/run/user/1000/media/YOUR DRIVEbut is mostly intended for when you plug in a USB or something. You probably found/etc/fstabbut then that made all the files owned by root, and you can temporarily change that withchmodandchownbut once you reboot and it gets mounted again, it’ll revert back because it doesn’t actually store those fake permissions as to not break Windows.Yeah, some people end up particularly unlucky in that department. Eventually, over time, it feels as easy or easier than on Windows. It’s just, you have years of experience on how to make Windows do the thing, and Linux is completely new to you. I had a very similar experience a couple years ago when I was forced to learned macOS because the job would only issue MacBooks. Everything felt way overcomplicated and eventually you start thinking the Apple way and it goes more smoothly, you understand better how it works. I mean, how alien is it to just open disk images and copy
.appfiles to/Applicationsand that’s how you “install” things?? And you get used to it and now I wield the macOS terminal like I do on Linux.So, this is why people don’t like recommending Manjaro. It’s ArchLinux with a coat of paint, but still relies on Arch’s infrastructure for the AUR. ArchLinux is well into advanced Linux: it’s a box of legos you have to assemble in the shape of a Linux distro yourself. So yes they do expect you to do a fair bit of reading, but Manjaro doesn’t, and it’s a real problem that has caused a fair bit of drama at its time. The AUR is great, but to make another analogy, the AUR is more like a recipe book: you don’t download premade meals, you have to bake them yourself (compiling source code into binary) to have your meal (the generated package file). Sending beginners that route is a recipe for a bad experience.
Ironically,
yayis the name of one of the tools that helps install AUR packages.No, but it does take some initial commitment to get to the nicer part of the learning curve. The first install is always pretty rough, you will destroy it, that’s fine, you have to learn first.
Honestly by the post you should have done that earlier. As with anything, when you’re frustrated with it you stop learning, you start making it much harder than it needs to be.
It’s fine to take a step back and reboot into Windows and try again the next day. It doesn’t have to be all or nothing, plenty of people have started by using Linux for just one task that’s easier to do on Linux, and eventually you start thinking of migrating more workloads to Linux over time. You’re restarting your computer learning journey from pretty close to the start, give yourself a break, computers aren’t worth getting pissed off at.
wow ! Not OP, but thank you for such a dedicated answer ! 🫶👍
I have another question about this. I’ve tried Arch but realized was too much so i’ve chosen Manjaro because i thought i could learn about linux faster than using another beginner friendly distro. Let’s say for example i decide to hop on Mint. Would that be that easy that i don’t learn anything important?
I’ve been on Ubuntu from 7.04 to 11.04, and only then went to Arch out of desire for more control.
Some people like to dive headfirst, and it’s doable and those people are successful with Linux, sometimes. But you also have to factor in the morale factor in there, are you trying to learn the deep ends of how Linux works or are you just trying to migrate from Windows?
It’s totally fine to use the noob distros for the sake of, you know, getting used to using Linux things in general instead of trying to take it all in at once. Things are so vastly different than on Windows, there’s so much to learn, focus on learning how to use it the easy GUI way before you worry about what’s under the hood.
There’s nothing about Ubuntu or Mint that really stops you from popping the hood open and having a peek every now and then either. You can change whatever you want in
/etcthe same on Mint as you could on Arch, the default configs that will be there will be just different but you don’t have any less control. The only real difference is a distro like Arch is hands off and ships the bare default, whereas in the Debian family it will usually come with a reasonable default ready to go. Oh you install Samba to share files? Done, on Debian it will automatically start and you can just log in and access your home folder. On Arch, nothing happens, you have to configure it, enable it and start it, open firewall ports if enabled, and so on. Debian, again, all done automatically. Best case, you don’t have to change it. Worst case, you have to read the manual anyway but the default got you a base to start off of. As an Arch user, I see it more as crap that’s in my way that I have to delete because I will provide my own config. The difference here is perspective and expectations.Kind of ties back in the why so many distros: because there’s users for all of them. You pick a distro that works best for you, not the distro everyone else says is the best. The best start with Linux is trying a few distros and see which you vibe the best with. You, personally. It’s called a software distribution because that’s what it really is: a distro just takes a whole bunch of software from many projects, compile it all and bundle it all into nice packages and then make an installer to install and configure all of it. You can just download and install all the little pieces yourself, that’s what Linux From Scratch is. Distros are fundamentally opiniated, their take on how to mash all that software together such that everything works correctly.
Circling back to Mint, nothing there stops you from compiling your own kernel, or your own packages. You can strip out all the Mint parts to the point it’s bare Ubuntu and then strip out the Ubuntu parts until it becomes bare Debian. You’re just changing your starting point. You get to see how they made it work, you can to see and explore how the magic works. You can always install Arch in a VM or container, or slowly build an LFS yourself in a VM just to learn it without it blocking you.
To me that’s what’s truely so cool about Linux. It’s not a singular thing or product. It’s an ecosystem and a community, It’s a collection of independent software, in all shapes and colors, all coming together to give the end user experience we have. People can help eachother and make distributions that does one thing well (Kali, Dragon, Ubuntu Studio, SteamOS, Bazzite) so you don’t have to set it all up yourself. Freely replace any component with another. You can collect patches you like that the author won’t implement in the official release. A lot of people spent a lot of time on all of this, so might as well appreciate all the effort and enjoy the easy mode until you itch for more.
And also, we learn so much better when we enjoy ourselves doing so. All you’ve learned so far is that Linux can be really frustrating very quickly, and no reward for it.
Yeah, i think that’s it for me for now. Can’t create a simple shortcut to an .appimage in two steps. I need to manually look for the icon. Going back to windows 10 until they discontinue it. It’s been a pleasure (not)
I would avoid AppImages and use Flatpak instead. They’re pretty notorious for their lack of integration, and the author of AppImage is severely against progress and is actively sabotaging Wayland support in them which leads to other bad experiences on Wayland desktops. The shortcuts is merely the surface of the problems with AppImage.
I wouldn’t give up so easily, just come back to it every now and then even if you spend most of your time on the Windows partition.
Here’s another post of mine going into the ridiculous amount of choices that are made just to get to a desktop: https://lemmy.max-p.me/comment/3554906