99
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 23 Aug 2023
99 points (91.6% liked)
Linux
48214 readers
734 users here now
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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.
Rules
- Posts must be relevant to operating systems running the Linux kernel. GNU/Linux or otherwise.
- No misinformation
- No NSFW content
- No hate speech, bigotry, etc
Related Communities
Community icon by Alpár-Etele Méder, licensed under CC BY 3.0
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
As others have said, Linux Mint is probably the best distro for absolute beginners. You'll have several desktop environments to choose from (the software suite that gives you things like window frames, the taskbar, the application launcher...). I like KDE Plasma and Cinnamon - Plasma is a lot more customizable, but Cinnamon is more robust and (IMO) better suited for beginners.
You'll have to unlearn a lot of Windows habits.
:q!is very important, remember it.C:\on Windows), and every other partition has to be mounted somewhere within that filesystem. Most graphical file manager applications take care of that automatically.sudo(eq. run as admin), how to manage running processes (top,kill/pkill/killall), and how to use the package manager.mancommand. The Arch Wiki is an invaluable tool for every distribution.I swear to God this is my biggest gripe with Linux, not being able to choose where stuff gets installed. Like yeah cool I want to have the OS on a SSD but that doesn't mean I also want my packages to go to it too, the HDD is for that
You could set it up so that your root is on one drive and your home directory is on another
But doesn't APT or Pacman install to root folders? Like when I say I want just the OS on the SSD I really mean it.
Usually each distro decides which packages go in / and which in /usr based on how critical, more or less, a package is to the system. It's often not very easy to configure these choices because it affects other distro decisions, including filesystem structure and paths, and boot sequence. Beware that "just the OS" on a typical distribution is usually a lot less functionality than you get with "just" Windows NT.
There's also /usr/local for packages you install on your own, apart from the distro package manager, and /opt, for closed source binary only packages or for anything else that doesn't want to conform to the bin, lib, include, share schema.
What are you trying to separate from the OS files? If it's just personal documents and stuff like that, I don't see why you can't just keep those in your home directory. Or are you saying you want your installed programs separate from the Linux kernel? Then you can just put the boot partition on one drive and have the root partition on the other (including home). I guess I'm just a little confused as to what it is you're trying to separate here. What do you mean when you say "separate from the OS"?
Yeah, they’re installing software.
Everything below / is the OS. There isn’t an analog to C:\Windows in *nix-like operating systems.
The closest thing to a pure separation would be an immutable distro like Silverblue or MicroOS.