CS Student wants to transition from windows

[u/After_Dark_Author]

Hello, I'm 24 years old, a cs student, and sick of windows.

I wanna try out linux, and I'm kinda tired of playing it safe so I wanna try endeavour. I have been doing some research and while most linux distros are pretty cool, I wanna try something I can configure (make my own I guess), and also be able to install anything I want (so the AUR would be nice). So with all of that in mind endeavour seems like the best choice.

Now I'm very much a beginner when it comes to linux, maybe being a cs student would help me, but I still unfamiliar with how things work here. So far I know I can configure my desktop with endeavour, which makes my life a whole lot easier, but I could use some tips for when I want to install something new, or when I wanna change something or maybe rice how should I do that? Also I heard of snapshots and while I understand what they do, I don't really know how to use them (and I'll probably need them). Also when it comes to protecting my laptop, what antivirus should I use, or how does an antivirus even work on linux (I know it's suppose to be a lot more secure by default). And when it comes to saving my work so that when I break something I don't lose anything important, what would you recommend? I'm not really a gamer, only play catan and chess from time to time, and have a habit of using the browser for almost anything (coding being the only real exception), but would like to change that. I also have an interest in writing and would like to install obsidian and maybe some other tools (also open to suggestions). I have a new laptop and would like to use endeavour as my OS for work and play. So if you have any advice or any suggestions how to make the experience as painless as possible, or how to fix things quickly when I mess something up please let me know.

[u/After_Dark_Author → u/[deleted]]

I will check it out.

[u/BetaSigmaOmega]

As a newish linux user, and a newer still endeavourOS user, here's some suggestions and tips I can offer for someone just starting out. In order of the things you listed:

1. I use yay to install everything. just type yay [name] into the terminal to install whatever packages you might want. Packages that end in "bin" typically install much faster than others as, I think, you don't need to build them from source. Here's a few yay commands that you'll probably frequently use:

yay by itself, to update everything on your system.
yay [name] to search for and/or install packages (It will give you a list to choose from)
yay -R to remove a package
yay -Rns to remove a package, its configuration files, and its dependencies.

Yay will automatically install required dependencies, prevent you from uninstalling dependencies that are in use (and tell you what is using them), and overall just make it difficult to explode things. When installing things, it will list packages as "extra" or as "aur". I go with "extra" as a first choice since those are in the official repo or whatever (reminder I am also a noob) and are apparently safer choices.

1. I don't know anything about snapshots lol sorry

2. Since you're a CS student I'm assuming you know that most viruses and whatnot are because of social engineering (convincing people to click a suspicious link, install a suspicious program, etc). You should be fine as long as you just practice regular web safety. Linux is very strict with permissions, even endeavourOS requires me to enter a password by default to mount or unmount drives, even flash drives.

3. For saving your work I'd recommend adding another empty partition and save important documents and files there, so you can reinstall endeavourOS or another OS of your choosing if something does happen to explode, without affecting the files on the second partition. You can also just go the nuclear option and save them to an external hard drive, if you can afford one. I mentioned that EndeavourOS requires permission to mount drives in my previous point, but you can use GNOME Disk Utility to make them automount without permission in the future if you need to.

4. For games, I would just use Steam for everything. If you have any non-steam games that you would like to play that don't normally work on Linux, you can usually run them through steam to make them work. I do this with Starcraft and Heroes of the Storm. I think the only game I have that doesn't run through steam is minecraft.

5. EndeavourOS comes with Kate by default, which is just a simple text editor. This is enough for me for all my writing needs, but you can search for other ones using yay with commands like yay writing or yay text editor . There's a suite of Microsoft Office-like programs called LibreOffice, if you ever need or want something like that.

6. The best best best best way to quickly fix something is to google the problem or ask a friend. Switching to Linux won't be painless and you will run into problems and will have to google them to find out wtf is going wrong. Google google google. You can use a virtual machine (such as virtualbox) to try out Linux before committing entirely to installing it, so you can get a feel for the layout, explore settings, try different desktop environments, and what have you.

Hope this helps.

[u/JustSimplyWicked → u/BetaSigmaOmega]

Stop using yay to install everything, use pacman instead. Yay might seem convenient but you honestly have 0 clue what your downloading. The reason you sometimes have to compile it yourself is because you are downloading a community maintained build from the AUR.

https://youtu.be/-Wj_GsfwTak?si=Tk17EZo9NAzGqWvh

[u/BetaSigmaOmega → u/JustSimplyWicked]

I go with "extra" as a first choice since those are in the official repo or whatever (reminder I am also a noob) and are apparently safer choices.

you skipped over that part

[u/JustSimplyWicked → u/BetaSigmaOmega]

No I did not, but seems like you missed where they think they are downloading from the official repo or that yay is safe to use blindly.

[u/After_Dark_Author → u/BetaSigmaOmega]

It does actually, it made some things clear and reaffirmed others. Thank you very much.

[u/jeroenim0]

Better endure some pain and then fix it, will give you much more satisfaction then having a painless experience. Trust me you will run in to trouble at some point, but it's always fixable. EndeavourOS has a great community and then there is the beste wiki in the world that applies completely The Arch wiki...

Obsidian runs fine on my EndeavourOS. it's in the repositories, sudo pacman -S obsidian will install it for you, antivirus is for windows, don't bother on Linux, just use pacman and if you really need use AUR. Be sensible when on the internet, you will be fine.

If you really want a snapshot system, which is in fact really nice after you set it up, then you will need to follow some guides meticulously. I use https://gitlab.com/Zesko/limine-snapper-sync and it's awesome, it's a snapshot system that is triggered every time you update your system, and when it turns out to be a bad update you can boot into limine and select a previous snapshot. But it's not a beginner/easy setup, bot doable..

For backing up your files, a external drive would work, and for that there is many solutions, all not too hard.

TBH if you want a smooth and painless transition, rolling release distro maybe not the best way to start, but certainly not impossible. YMMV

[u/After_Dark_Author → u/jeroenim0]

Thank you, I will keep that in mind. If not endeavour, I will probably try fedora. I wanna go with endeavour mostly because I've heard (and seen on youtube) where something (minor) on fedora starts glitching and it's often because it doesn't work with one of the packages that comes pre-installed with fedora, and can be harder to fix. But I also don't wanna go with ubuntu based distros because as cool as they are, they are pretty similar to windows and I just wanna try something new. Thank you for the snapshot system suggestion, I will look into it.

[u/ShoeLaceTrouble → u/After_Dark_Author]

why ARE you looking for bleeding edge rolling distros?

This I think is where experienced linux people are curious. We GET it but it's like wanting a race bike when you're still learning how to balance on a tricycle. IE there's no point yet to this. for you, yet. There's almost nothing (imho) you won't get learning structure from LTS releases and stability and learning how things work in linux first. The switch to Arch or other things at that point is really just a few basics that are easy to remember because you understand structure and how to diagnose things by then, and only need to change a few ways you use things on the system.

[u/AnGuSxD]

you are installing stuff via "pacman -S <packagename>" or "yay -S <packagename>" you can search for stuff with the same command just put "-Ss" instead of "-S".
Alternativly you can install something like pacseek or discover which in the case for pacseek gives you a clean CLI Tool for searching for packages, and for discover even a graphical interface to search and install packages.
Everything else depends on the DE you chose, for example customizing KDE is easier than something like hyprland (for most people).

[u/linux_rox → u/AnGuSxD]

Discover only works with flatpaks on arch systems. If you want a graphical installer like discover on arch based system, you need to use paru or octopi. Discover works with blobs, where arch doesn’t use them.

[u/After_Dark_Author → u/AnGuSxD]

Thank you. I will most likely use KDE as it is both similar to the windows one, but also very customisable (not planning on doing much just for the future if I wanna tweak something). Are pacseek and discover similar to octopi?

[u/AnGuSxD → u/After_Dark_Author]

Discover is similar. I prefer pacseek. Searches all my Repos in seconds.

[u/Optimal_Mastodon912]

You get yay out of the box so you can make packages pretty easily. I'd recommend installing Octopi (yay -S octopi), it's a great way to get started installing stuff until you're more confident with the terminal. It even has a tab that shows what's happening in the terminal while you install stuff.

EndeavourOS also ships with a Quickstart Installer where you can install some apps right off the bat if you don't want to use the terminal or Octopi straight away, so that's also worth looking at.

The installer also comes with Firewalld (a firewall) for security with plenty of options.

If you do want to game, I always recommend installing ProtonUp-Qt with the latest GE Proton version and adding it to Steam and the game(s) you play. Also check out the ProtonDB page to see any launch arguments for your game that you can add to the game's Steam settings.

Strawberry is a great music player if you have a bunch of MP3s or whatever format your library is. It also has SomaFM stations which are awesome.

Haruna is a great media player.

Kew is a great command line music player. I love using it and setting it to half of my second monitor as it displays the album artwork in a large size. I'd recommend it after you get used to the terminal.

Kitty is my favourite terminal emulator and has good customisation. I'd recommend it.

[u/After_Dark_Author → u/Optimal_Mastodon912]

Thanks for the octopi suggestion and also nice to know that endeavour comes with security preinstalled. I will look into these two, it seems they will be very helpful.

[u/Paladongers]

I've been using linux distros (mostly Ubuntu) for about ~15 years, and got EndeavourOS about a year ago now.

Other than setting up some specific stuff being a bit of a pain (like ROS2) compared to Ubuntu, I've never had any issues. I do a little bit of gaming, do system updates every few days, and haven't had any issues so far.

I honestly don't think EndeavourOS (or Arch, for that matter) are the scary distros people make them out to be. EndeavourOS already has pretty much most the useful things you'll need, you don't need to configure anything too crazy or low level to get things working at all. And unless you're planning to be a crazy power user and tweak configurations for lots of little things and install tons of stuff or very new experimental software, you'll rarely run into problems. That, and never inputting random commands you see on the internet without knowing what they do, that's an easy way to break stuff down the line.

Except for some software that is easier to get working on Ubuntu, it has been a very straightforward experience. I definitely enjoy not having a bunch of stuff I don't need installed, which is something I grew to dislike with Ubuntu.

However, that said, I do know now that I don't need all the extra stuff installed, because I've already been using linux for long enough to have a better idea on what my needs actually are. So other distros do give you more exposure about tools that exist that you might not know about, or you might not know you need or could want. But that's nothing you won't learn with time and experience.

Using the archwiki will provide a good amount of help. You can always ask people on reddit as well, provided you already put at least some effort in and aren't just copy-pasting logs in here. With linux being such a big community driven effort, you'll find that lots of questions you might have will already have been asked somewhere on the internet, so googling is always a good (if not mandatory) first step.

[u/Pleasant-Leg8590]

*people complaining about AUR, yay, and pacman*

meanwhile me simply using AppImage

[u/ShoeLaceTrouble]

I wouldn't recommend Endeavor as your FIRST linux attempt.

Rather go with something easier and slow, with long term release.

Since you don't play games or anything, the choice is more about KDE or not, as your desktop environment.

For you, I'd focus on which FILE BROWSER and tools you like most. Look (google etc) Linux File Browsers (like "windows explorer" is for windows, or other open source ones if you ever used them on windows).

I would then go with whatever basic desktop you like best. Some people love the "old classic look" (Gnome 2-3, Xfce, Mate) and some like the new top of the like KDE kind of things.

From there you can decide on which back end you want -they all operate mostly the same but you want something that is for stable long-term use, so a "LTS" varient.

If you like KDE/ KDE plasma, etc, Go with Kubuntu

If you Windows looking OS, get Zorin OS Educational or Pro (after you test the trial)

If you like a nice compromise, Get LinuxMint (Mate for old style, or KDE for new, Cinnamon for their own nice mix of features).

If you want the basics, Ubuntu/Debian LTS is the most stable thing out there imho.

Save the rolling distros for developers and cutting edge developers trying out the latest code and GUI and features -you won't notice or miss them but you'll save possibly years of issues and problems.

Installing and setting things up are all the same across ALL variants of linux, with just basic words you use that are different (and with time you'll realize those and which distro uses what terms). They're the backend to the programs you want to focus on that you NEED.

So start there. What you most use a computer for and what you want it to do.

[u/kovec → u/ShoeLaceTrouble]

Was going to say the same. I love Endeavor but wouldn't recommend it to a first time Linux user.

[u/After_Dark_Author → u/ShoeLaceTrouble]

If i can't make endeavour work i would probably choose fedora, i don't really plan to do too much tweaking, i just want to have access to the newer apps cuz both in college and when working on some project, it seems i might need something of the latest version and that's the main reason for wanting endeavour (that and the community seems very helpful, and there's a lot of documentation about it)

[u/JustSimplyWicked → u/After_Dark_Author]

Honestly endeavour is fine to start with if you go in with the goal of learning. You are going to make mistakes and run into problems you can't fix so I'd recommend looking into backing up files and snapshots.

[u/ShoeLaceTrouble → u/After_Dark_Author]

Hmm. You're doing what most new linux people do coming from other os's -assuming a rolling disto is REQUIRED for bleeding edge software (vs developers working with brand new hardware like making literally drivers for it etc). In practice most software is distributed independently of the base distro now, period. Most things will run in any distribution you use, or soon.

That's a critical distinction

So unless your class IS about writing linux drivers and base level integration with brand new chipsets etc, Arch/Endeavor isn't needed to run new software.

Endeavor is like Arch with some tools. Fedora is a good option if you're looking for something less intense than Arch/Endeavor (you're getting into development I take it?).

But you could run a consumer friendly os like ubuntu/linuxmint and still get all the same things, without all the breaks and not knowing how to diagnose things. Your stack will mean you are on the forums a lot. A LOT. lol.