I’m a 20yo, Hella Autistic, ADHD-riddled spaz that likes to tinker with programs and software settings alot. I’m building a pc for the first time right now, and while I am tech savvy; or more tech savvy than most; coding, programming, tech engineering is complete and utter gibberish, and it seems like the only people that use Linux are HEAVILY experienced with those things I just listed… HOWEVER… I’m not. I just like digging around various program settings or messing with things, or personalizing them as much as I can.
The more I delve into tech or tech related spaces; whether its through building my pc or just- using this website; the more people wont stop yapping about “OOH LINUX, I LOOOVE LINUX.” and every time I ask about it and why I should use it, they make it out like its an absolute godsend piece of technology (im sure it is tbh… it does look nice)
But then looking into it myself, all I see is a bunch of technical word vomit that makes no god damn sense to me. and the more I ask for people to explain this to me, the worse my confusion becomes. now I’m learning there’s like 40 different “Distro’s”… Someone else told me about Linux Mint, which looks nice, but again- I DO NOT want to be forced to use a terminal just to get the most outta my operating system. I like having some kind of UI to use.
idk man… from everything they say I can do with it, ESPECIALLY in terms of customization, I’m so tempted to use it. But my mental understanding of whatever tf Linux is, is at best a toddler’s.
There’s nothing stopping you from making a boot key and messing with Linux or making a partition of your storage. Nothing ventured, nothing gained.
That said, as someone who is also very visually inclined, I’ve tried a couple of different distros over the years and always bounced off. I kept encountering the dumbest little issues that most people didn’t get, and it always required Terminal to fix. It’s those moments when you get to learn how obtuse and unwelcoming some of the Linux community can be.
and it seems like the only people that use Linux are HEAVILY experienced with those things I just listed… HOWEVER… I’m not.
Nah. Or at least, it should just work if you boot from your USB.
Just try it.
I switched to Linux mint maybe 6 months ago and it’s been great. Just a bit of adjustment for which programs I needed to get some things done. Also turns out some stuff was WAY easier to get running such as my JavaScript twitch chat bots, I didn’t even need a tutorial and I got it running in terminal. My wife also using mint at the same time I switched and she has been liking it too. Good luck and know there’s a ton of people here that can help you out.
If you do decide to do it, use an LLM. That shit will turbo charge your learning curve.
As side note, you can start learning now or later, choice is your. This is just an opinion tho
whats an LLM?
ChatGPT
LLMs are really good at dumping a big ass error log on them and saying “what’s wrong” and it will find the issue, and probably point you in the right direction.
Large Language Model - the ai search stuff that will give you answers that are mostly but not always accurate but can be very helpful in figuring out how to ask the right question. So if you don’t really know what you are looking for, you can ask it to tell you how to do what you want to do and it will either answer or answer in a way that is close enough to use the terminology in a web search for the right answer.
I don’t use it myself, but it sounds a lot like how google used to work up to about a decade ago.
People say that a lot, but I used ChatGPT as a math tutor and it couldn’t figure out the first goddamn thing of algebra. It spit out incorrect answers, and when I asked about them, it’d flip the answer. I’d ask again, and it’d flip it again.
I’ve used it as IT help to fix a computer that wouldn’t boot and it hallucinated hard enough to make it worse.
The point i am getting is the learning process.
It will provide quick snipa on any term or definition.
It can read error logs and provide inputs, right or wrong, it is still learning
It can generate linux commands from plain english.
Also context matters. Linuxnis open source inherently online topic.
LLM was trained on it so this is likely one of its strongest domains
Strongly disagree with you that “right or wrong” instruction is “still learning.”
Start w Linux Mint, one of the easiest to dip your toes into the hellscape that is Linux. One of us! One of us! 😈😇
Personally, I would not recommend diving into Linux headfirst by installing it as your only operating system. If you can afford an additional small drive (128GB should be plenty), I would suggest buying one and installing something like Linux Mint on that, while putting Windows on your main drive.
That way, you can switch between them whenever you want to (when you turn on your computer, you can just use a menu to choose which drive to boot to), and get somewhat familiar with Linux before deciding if it’s worth your time to really dive in.
(There’s a way to put both operating systems on the same drive, but it’s really easy for something to go wrong and end up with one of the operating systems inaccessible. Since you’re inexperienced, I would avoid going that route for the time being, and just keep both on separate drives.)
Don’t over think it, Mint will be fine. Modern Linux is very user friendly, and you can do almost everything with some form of UI.
It does sound like you’d really enjoy the tinkering. When I switched (also to Linux Mint at the time), I spent the first few days figuring out how I could hide the window titlebars, because I realized I could set keyboard shortcuts for minimize/maximize/close.
That was kind of dumb, but no regrets. 🙃
I will give somewhat of an unusual recommendation for the distro, based on what you wrote: openSUSE with KDE
KDE is a desktop environment (basically the OS GUI), which has a ton of customization options, certainly more than the default desktop environment on Linux Mint.
KDE is probably going to be overwhelming at first, but on the other hand, hiding those window titlebars on KDE would’ve been a matter of minutes rather than days, because it’s just a built-in feature, not something I need to achieve with weird workarounds.And openSUSE, because it works well with KDE and because it comes with a system settings GUI, called “YaST”, which covers a lot of the settings that you’d usually need to crack out the terminal for.
openSUSE isn’t as mainstream as Linux Mint, and not often recommended to newcomers. There’s certainly more guides and such for how to do things on Linux Mint. But yeah, I do think it’s a fine choice for newbies nonetheless and you do get that extra GUI.To conclude my autistic ramblings, one more point, you could totally throw Linux on there for now and if you don’t like it, then buy the Windows license and go that route.
I’m both experienced and know jack shit because there is just too much to learn. I just started using it (1998ish) to make cool looking UIs. Its been my daily driver for 15 years now.
You will never learn it all. Over time you may become more familiar with the terminal or you may not. Doesn’t matter. You do you.
Its pretty easy to test drive. Grab a distros “Live CD” version, put in on a thumb drive, reboot and play around. This wont be persistent. When you’re ready, install it on an external SSD. Play around some more now that your edits will be persistent. You’ll mess up. Take notes. Start again once you’ve hosed your system.
Oh don’t worry. There’s not 40 different distros…there are thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of distros!
As for terminal? Linux is terminal. There is no getting around it.
Now I’m sure SOMEONE will chime in, and say “Uhm actually, I set my 90 year old grandmother up with linux, and she’s blind. It’s not hard to use.”
And they’ll claim you don’t need terminal. But the SECOND even one little thing goes wrong? The online tutorials all start the same way.
Step 1 - Open terminal.
Maybe there is a way to do the thing without terminal. Maybe technically that’s true.
But if you don’t know how, and the tutorials all resort to terminal as step 1, then functionally speaking? Linux requires word code diarrea that is terminal.
You will get comments both ways on this, but I have put lots of people on Linux Mint and they never once had to use a terminal unless they wanted to. Make no mistake, what you can do in a terminal is magic compared to what you can do without it, but you can survive just fine without it. I would suggest also looking at Zorin, and if you really want something different I strongly recommend Bodhi. Most of the distros which are easy for new users are on a Debian or Ubuntu base (Ubuntu is on a Debian base, but a lot of people forget that).
Just by reading the first sentence I can tell you that you will enjoy Linux. Don’t worry about all the technical stuff it seems complicated because you don’t know it. Just install Linux and use it and you will learn what all that stuff means. Since you’re building a new PC you got nothing to lose from trying out a few different Linux distros.
Very concise answer. Linux was intimidating for me aswell when I first dual-booted it, and I didn’t understand it the first time around. But getting started in it was a lot of fun, and every time I came back, it got easier, until eventually it was the same for me as Windows
You can install Ubuntu (or many other Linux distros) to a bootable USB drive. Restart your computer, press F2 or whatever it says to open your boot menu, and then boot from the USB drive. This will let you run a full version of Linux, which will let you experiment around with it so you can get some experience and see if you like it or not, without having to uninstall your current OS or repartition your drives and mess around with dual-booting. It’ll run a bit slow since it’s gotta come off a USB drive for everything, but that should at least give you a good estimate on whether or not Linux is right for you.
As a casual user of Linux (no strong inclination or skill in coding), I tend to veer towards distros that minimize the Terminal usage in favor of graphical user interfaces for accomplishing most changes. Modern Linux distros are a lot friendlier in terms of installing Software from a distro store and graphic drivers via a graphical interface. You won’t ever fully be able to eliminate the terminal usage, as it’s inevitable for certain tasks like adding PPAs on Ubuntu for example. It was honestly word salad for me during my first foray into the Linux world; but now I have a basic understanding of the Linux kernel and how it functions on a very surface level. I know enough to string commands together and understand the reason why it’s necessary to do things in a certain order.
I’m not sure if you’d have a good time with Linux, I’m hesitant to tell you to take the plunge because you will have to faff around with the terminal and use commands at times to accomplish certain things. That requires both focus and patience, which is not something which is naturally difficult for those with ADHD (unless a hyperfixation is quite strong). I’d give yourself time to think about switching for a while, ultimately you might be better sticking with the current OS that you’re using.
Get a live version of any distro burned into an USB.
You can give it a try this way without compromising anything.
