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first time using linux, how screwed am I?
(lemmy.world)
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this post was submitted on 11 Aug 2025
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if you're a first timer and already got arch with kde set up you're pretty fucking tech savvy ngl
But that doesn’t mean it’s a good place to start.
Try Linux Mint, Ubuntu, or Fedora. Any of these will be easier than Arch and offer point and click installation for steam, drivers, and just about anything else.
When you get some more experience, instead of arch you can try endeavourOS. it’s basically arch with good defaults and has a fantastic KDE implementation.
For gaming focused PC I'd look at Bazzite. OP wants it to be like the Steam Deck, it's just perfect for that.
I almost always advise against atomic distros for noobs. They are extremely limiting, add multiple complications to otherwise simple tasks, and the padded cell of immutability means you can’t really fuck around and learn how traditional Linux systems work.
I’m usually distro agnostic and just happy to see people use whatever Linux they like, but immutables have issues.
Assuming you're referring to Fedora Atomic, your statement is extremely exaggerated. Out of the top of my head, the current limitations are iffy akmods and UKI/systemd-boot. The latter of which is being worked on currently and might arrive rather sooner than later. Neither of which I'd assume 95% of Linux users ever engage with anyways...
I feel like you don't know what you're talking about. Please be explicit; which tasks are made more complicated on Fedora Atomic?
It's true that you aren't supposed to "fuck" around (most of)
/usrduring runtime. Furthermore, I agree that the existing ways to circumvent/bypass this leave much to be desired. But, again, most peeps use perfectly fine systems without ever feeling the need to tinker with/usr... And if you absolutely must..., well..., Fedora Atomic doesn't actually stop you. It just wants you to adhere to its ways of achieving it. Making it more of a paradigm shift, rather than outright limiting the user.If your criticism basically boils down to "I can't make use of my preconceived notion on how Linux works.", then "Yes."; that's exactly the point. Granted, it wouldn't hurt if Fedora Atomic allowed conventional methods to continue working. But as it's currently in the middle of a architectural shift (going from
rpm-ostreetobootc), I'd argue they've got more important things to work on.I would say the greatest limitation would be repos and your ability to build whatever software you want from source. Having access to the AUR allows me access to much wider array of software. Can you run Hyprland and all of its companions like hyprlock, hyprpaper, etc on bazzite? That’s the setup I prefer, and I’m fairly certain it’s not possible in a Fedora based immutable system.
I don’t want or need guardrails to keep my system running correctly. If you do, or just enjoy the stability, cool. I’m just glad you’re not running windows. I don’t think bazzite is bad. I just don’t think it should be the go to for welcoming newcomers.
Thank you for the quick answer and for providing clarifications!
What do you mean? What's wrong with Fedora's repos? Apologies if I sound obtuse*.
There's nothing preventing you from doing this within a container created by Toolbx/Distrobox. I can attest to this. You can even build it natively. While I haven't personally engaged in building it natively, I can't imagine it would cause any problems. But please correct me if your experience (or otherwise) is different.
Fam, break your leg. Nothing is stopping you; someone else has already done just that. And you can just piggy-back of their effort. In case you'd like to see other (successful) attempts at making Hyprland work on Fedora Atomic: consider taking a look at wayblue and hyprland-atomic.
Huh. Well, today I learned.
You do sound obtuse, but thanks for the education.
I still think bazzite is the wrong suggestion for newcomers, and I don’t care if you like my opinion.
~~Hehe :P . Please feel free to clarify what you meant with the repos being limiting (or something). I'm genuinely interested to know.~~ See Edit down below
It's your absolute prerogative to believe/think/state whatever you wish. However, I don't think you've yet made a convincingly compelling case. You absolutely don't have to, but if you've got more to say on the subject matter, then please do so for the sake of (potentially) enlightening others.
Good.., I suppose. Neither should you care anyways 😜.
Edit: I only now noticed that you had edited your previous post. My apologies.
Agreed. I also occasionally access stuff from there through my dedicated Arch distrobox. I occasionally make use of my Ubuntu distrobox, or Alpine distrobox as well. Thanks to Distrobox (and similar technologies), it has become an absolutely glorious experience to not be limited by the distro's repos. Instead, I can make use of whatever repos are out there. Granted; Distrobox is not exclusive to Fedora Atomic, but you'd be hard-pressed to find another distro on which it works as well as it does on uBlue's offerings.
Honestly it sounds like you’ve mastered a completely new kind of operating system, based on Linux but evolving in its own direction, and there’s probably only a handful of people using it at that level. It’s pretty cool to learn more about, so I appreciate what you’ve had to say.
I already know and love traditional Linux and don’t see a compelling reason to change, and as I’ve repeated, I don’t think it’s the way to point a newcomer.
Lemmy isn’t a courtroom sweaty, chill out.
FWIW, I have edited my previous comment.
Anyhow, if you wish to disengage, then I'd like to wish you a great day. If not, then I'm (patiently) awaiting your return 🙂.
Honestly it sounds like you’ve mastered a completely new kind of operating system, based on Linux but evolving in its own direction, and there’s probably only a handful of people using it at that level. It’s pretty cool to learn more about, so I appreciate what you’ve had to say.
I already know and love traditional Linux and don’t see a compelling reason to change, and as I’ve repeated, I don’t think it’s the way to point a newcomer.
Thanks for the compliment 😅. I do think there's some truth in it being a new kind of Linux-based OS. But it's not as big of a departure like say NixOS. Heck, I'd argue it's grounded within a relatively basic premise: What's the minimal amount of effort required to make our current Linux systems attain desirable qualities like being reprovisionable and anti-hysteresis? The whole
bootc-shebang is just leveraging existing container technologies (I'm sure you're familiar with Docker) to the Linux you run on your computer.If we would (perhaps arbitrarily) choose for "that level" to be "crazy enough to create and run their own image"^[As that's most likely my biggest Fedora Atomic achievement.], then it's true that our numbers are probably only in the order of hundreds. Though, the knowledge required to build your own image is (almost) equivalent to the knowledge one ought to have to create their own OCI image; you know, the very same used for Docker, the container technology that represents a billion dollar industry.
I appreciate it. I like conversing with you as well 😊!
That's perfectly valid.
Please allow me to explain why I differ on this:
The beginner has no preconceived notion on how Linux is 'supposed' to work. As such, they will adapt to whatever you throw at it. Be it Mint, Arch or Fedora Atomic. Heck, it's undeniable that out of these, Fedora Atomic works the closest like their phone. Which has undoubtedly become the most recognizable OS for your average Joe.
FYI, Fedora Silverblue was my foray into Linux. The first one or two weeks definitely gave me a hard time, but that was over three years ago. If I was able to survive in such a 'hostile' environment, then newcomers should have absolutely no trouble getting onboard with the introduction of Bazzite (and the other uBlue images).
This is what I ran into when I first decided to try a linux system desktop after ten years. I wasn't familiar with the new distros around these days, so decided to try Bazzite first. Immediately ran into a driver issue that was apparently not fixable until the (already released) fix made its way into their official repo or something.
Shelved that and gave CachyOS a try (made more sense anyway since I used arch in college and had a steam deck since day 1), and it's been my daily driver for 6 months now.
Agreed.
CachyOS has all of the gaming stuff (can be just point and click with their welcome popup/installer), is arch based so there's a ton of well made documentation.
Download yay and off to the races
Cachy is preloaded with Paru. Is yay the better option?
I’ve only used yay but afaik paru is very similar and well put together.
To be frank, I haven't used paru. I'm relatively new to arch but I've had nothing but good experiences with yay
I’ve been wanting to try Cachy, but my experience with Endeavour has been so good for so long that I’m not even feeling distro-hoppy. I admire Cachy from afar.
I used bazzite and I ran into the exact issues you described above. It worked, and it worked well, but anything extra that I wanted to do required jumping through a shit load of hoops and bouncing around between bazzite forums, fedora forums, and universal blue forums to maybe not even arrive at a reliable work around.
It was extremely valuable because I had to learn a lot, but it just wasn't nearly as seamless as cachy.
Bazzite will play steam games right off the rip and it will do it well, and is an easy install. Beyond that it can get harry if you're not just using flatpacks.
A lot of people will say "just use distrobox" if your solution to make something work in this OS is to download and use another OS, why wouldn't I just start there with the other OS?
Yeah, this is exactly the point I was trying to make. I want a system that is simple and straightforward, running primarily native packages and a small handful of flatpaks. I don’t want or need to emulate other distros because my own distro has its wings clipped.