Planning to switch to Linux for my next PC
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Yeah I think makes sense thanks!
Basically Linux mint or bazzite is the system and how it’s organized while plasma is how I’m seeing that system represented and interacting with it in other words?
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Sorry but what’s a flat pack? Is that like an installer?
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A whole bunch of software goes into making a distro a distro, and the desktop environment is a major component.
If you were to compare, say, Kubuntu to Fedora KDE edition, they would look fairly similar because both are using the KDE Plasma desktop environment. On Kubuntu you'd have the APT package manager, on Fedora you have the DNF package manager.
In a lot of cases, a distro will have their underlying tech, "We use this package manager and this feature and that feature, and we publish versions with the Gnome desktop, KDE desktop, xfce desktop and i3 window manager." Or some combination thereof. Linux Mint for example offers their own Cinnamon desktop, MATE, and xfce.
If you've ever used an Android phone and swapped out the launcher, it's kinda that.
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Ah well windows XP is before my time so I think I’ll look at mint and bazzite for now but at least you gave me another name to look into. The more the merrier!
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I made the mistake of trying Debian on a new system. While I will eventually transition to Debian for it's stability, it's glacial speed of change means that new hardware isn't very compatible. I tried the half-step that was LMDE (Linux Mint Debian Edition) and even that was missing some support for my hardware. Not until I moved to Ubuntu-based Linux Mint did I finally have everything working, after some poking and prodding. I'm guessing once Debian Trixie comes out, I can test again.
You have to have more mature hardware if you go Debian. It's not something I'd tell anyone to install on a new build.
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As for you android analogy I’m locked on iPhone since I’m not the one paying the phone bill lol
As for the rest of the stuff I feel like that’s gonna make more sense once I actually use Linux cus I see the concept of ideas here lol
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I run Linux Mint for years and years, I think you will be happy with it.
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Yeah I’ve peeked into some Linux threads from time to time to see if I can even understand what’s happening (spoiler alert: I could not) and I’ve gotten the impression Arch is great for tinkering and experimenting and tweaking which is great, just not the entry point I want lol
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The various versions or flavors of Linux are called "distributions" or "distros." There are several that are intended to be ready to go out of the box. Linux Mint is a pretty good one for general desktop use though they're kinda behind the times with Wayland and such. I see a lot of folks recommend Bazzite but I personally know nothing about it. I'm using Fedora KDE, Fedora is meh, KDE is pretty good.
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If you're building a gaming desktop specifically for Linux, I recommend going with AMD GPU and an Intel wi-fi adapter. There are some Wi-Fi adapters that don't play nice with Linux but Intel's drivers are pretty good. AMD releases their drivers right into the kernel, there's nothing you need to do at all to get AMD GPUs working on Linux, Nvidia is a bit more of a pain. Also, with desktop peripherals, avoid anything that needs one of those configuration utilities, they tend not to be available for Linux. I use a Coolermaster MasterKeys Pro M keyboard which all configuration happens on the board, they don't offer any software for it. Highly recommended.
Oh also: Asrock's RGB lighting weird and non-standard. If you want to use open source stuff to control your RGB lighting and that's important to you, I recommend against Asrock. Just so happens my build's RGB is controlled via a controller built into my case.
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Yeah mint and bazzite are gonna be the ones I check out and I was leaning towards bazzite at first but now I just need to do a bit more research and figure out what the heck it what but at least I have a starting point now
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Thanks for the info good to see another point for point mint haha. But I was gonna get a prebuilt rather than build my own
But some other comments and my own y point towards getting a Pre-built with an AMD, as for the WiFi thing is there anything in specific I should be looking for while shopping
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Mint is another good one, I would probably recommend against their Debian Edition(LMDE 6) though, it sounds good but, it's their newer system so it doesn't have all the bugs ironed out yet. I struggled with LMDE when I tried it last summer, which granted a lot of time has passed, but I rarely ever have an issue with their standard Linux Mint releases.
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Once you get into the ecosystem it probably will, yeah.
If you think of the Linux ecosystem as a whole, it's like a big salad bar. There's a bunch of stuff to choose from, several kinds of each thing. An individual distro is a salad made from that salad bar, you might have romaine lettuce, tomato slices, onion, green pepper and thousand island dressing and that's Fedora KDE, change the thousand island to ranch and that's Fedora GNOME. Switch out the romaine lettuce for spinach, switch the onion for cucumber and go with raspberry vinaigrette dressing and you've got Mint Cinnamon.
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Yeah someone mint really holds your hand, which is kinda what I’m looking for so I’ll probably just stick to something basic
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I just make sure that the word "Intel" is used somewhere in the bullet point about the Wi-Fi. If it's built into the motherboard or on a separate card.
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Ah i like that analogy, basically a lot of interchangeability with each part so you can make your perfect system that works for you
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Basically Linux mint or bazzite is the system and how it’s organized while plasma is how I’m seeing that system represented and interacting with it in other words?
Yup, seems like you got the gist of it!
Obviously once you start reading documents on software you’ll start to understand it all better. Suggest reading into the Docker engine for self-hosting software on your network!
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Practice in a VM. Go from the base install to setting up all the apps to customizing the look of everything (commonly called "ricing"). That should give you a sense of what to expect.
When you think you're ready, maybe give a few Live ISO's a demo to see if there's any immediate glaring issues when it's running on bare metal. If not, then proceed to install when you've picked the one you like the most!
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So basically look for intel when talking about WiFi
I’ll probably make a follow up post specifically for hardware once I saved up some money and decided on a distro
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Yeah once I got a bit more research I was gonna get some vms and play around a bit but that’s a thing for future me
