I hope this post is appropriate here… I’m a Linux noob. I tried installing arch linux (which i managed to get working with just the terminal and the guide xD) It was my first time installing linux. I’m trying to be more privacy friendly and I’m really being done with Big Tech.
So i was wondering I’m new to Linux, I am really interested in Linux so far and the cachyOS project did seem really interesting to me.
Do you guys have any recommendations to learn Linux/cachyOS thoroughly?
Eventually I hope I could get rid of windows and all other big tech.
Sorry for this nooby question and hopefully you guys could help me a little bit
Yes Stick to one repository, which in this case is AUR. For now, don’t install Flathub, because that’s one of the easiest ways to break the system or cause issues with a program, especially when you’re just starting out. CachyOS also has guides on its wiki for gaming and various other settings.
You need to be careful with the AUR and vet the packages you want to install. If you are not comfortable doing that, do not use the AUR.
To learn more about linux, a great resource is the arch wiki, and the CachyOS wiki.
Always use the man pages for the commands you want to run to learn what they do especially if you are using an llm for assitance.
I wouldn’t use AUR either before getting comfortable with how package building works on Arch and learn to read and understand what a PKGBUILD does.
Remember, Arch User Repository is not an official repository and it is not endorsed by Archlinux.
Also, I would recommend to adhere to Arch’s KISS philosophy.
Keep your system simple. Don’t tweak/tinker much, at least in the beginning. Document your changes to know what you exactly did so it would be easier to troubleshoot and reverse if something goes wrong.
ArchWiki has a wealth of information. It can be too technical and overwhelming for new users. Read a little at a time and if you don’t understand ask questions here. Be patient.
Hello and welcome. I started my “real” Linux journey about a year ago. Although I must admit that I dabbled with some Live ISOs and Linux installations in VMs every now and again since like 15 years.
With the end of Windows 10, the pain was finally big enough for me to take the leap of faith. And as I had (and mostly still have) zero knowledge of all things Linux, I joined this forum and read basically every post for about 3-4 months. That helped me to get a feeling on what might happen, how people solve problems and so on.
Over time, I got more confident and by now I feel pretty at home in Cachy (and started to dip my toes into Endeavour because I could not get Cachy installed on my laptop).
Oh yeah one more thing: write a “diary”. Just a simple text file where you write down
the changes you did to your system
the problems you encounter and how you fixed them
the things you want to try out in the future
the things you miss
and so on
This helped me very much in figuring things out and retracing my steps.
Don’t be shy to ask questions, there is no thing as a stupid question and the people here are generally very nice and helpful.
PS: be very distrustful on answers given by “AIs”, especially ChatGPT. These answers will lead you into trouble when you do not have the background to decide whether the answer is actually valid or not.
PPS: and stay away from AUR unless you are a little more comfortable with what you do and after reading this.
First of all welcome to the exciting and, I think, very rewarding road to computing independence with Linux! While it may seem daunting at first, Linux these days “just works” for the most part.
While Arch is a great distro, I don’t think it’s very friendly for “Noobs”. Cachy is basically Arch with a nice installer and optimized software and kernel. I’d start there. One of the best things you can do for yourself when installing CachyOS is to use BTRFS filesystem for your disk partitions and Limine for the bootloader. These are defaults for the install and will make your system a lot more resistant to breaking changes by giving you an easy and automated way of rolling back to the prior working state.
While it may be fun to break things and figure out how to fix it, that learning should not be done on the machine you rely on. It can be done in a VM or a “burner PC”.
Also, take @HardCode4All advice and watch YouTube to get comfortable with Linux. Arch wiki is a great resource as well albeit a bit technical. It is the gold standard in Linux documentation even if you are not running Arch! And, of course, this forum has a lot of friendly and helpful people as well.
Lastly, I have been running Linux on my personal PCs exclusively for over 2 decades and still consider myself a bit of a Noob. The Linux ecosystem is evolving very fast and it may be difficult to stay ahead of it. Don’t fret about it and just dive it.
PS: I would also advise to be careful with AUR. While it is rare to have an issue with the packages there, there’s an increased chance of them breaking things, especially if they rely on a newer/older versions of libraries that they install as part of the build. Unless you need some fairly uncommon piece of software, most things can be installed from the main CachyOS repos.
Also I don’t agree with @petrus803 statement about staying away from flatpacks. They are easy to install, don’t modify system libraries and, other than using up more disk space, generally a good way of getting software installed that can’t be found in the official repos.
Stick to one repository, which in this case is AUR. For now, don’t install Flathub, because that’s one of the easiest ways to break the system or cause issues with a program, especially when you’re just starting out. CachyOS also has guides on its wiki for gaming and various other settings.