Don't make these 7 mistakes when you're starting out on Linux!

[@TheLinuxEXP]

CHANNEL IS BACK! Leave me a day or two to get my bearings and I'll treat you to a non destructive livestream with some explanations and some thanks for all the amazing people who helped

[@lillywho]

Is the winner still being announced?

[@sk.sourov]

And what about the winner?

[@crobes4155]

What a relief! :)

[@franciscoromero7386]

I love your content 😄 Nice to see you back

[@MauricioPaim]

Great Nick, good to have the channel back.

[@Diolinux]

Welcome back my friend! :)

[@softwarelivre2389]

Glad to see our community united, and man I'd like to see a Diolinux Experiment collab, I remember to get very exited when you did one with The Linux Gamer a while back and it was pretty neat! And man I'm glad to have Nick back too! A big thanks to Dionatan and Nick!

[@GabrielM01]

I support Pedros idea

[@gtPacheko]

Feliz 7 de Setembro Dio! Não gosto desse país, mas pelo menos tamo em casa 😎

[@yzapre]

linux brasil huehuehue

[@oimateusaqui]

Não esperava encontrar vc por aqui 🤔😅

[@danieldiaz143]

Funny story, I got into Ubuntu when I discovered Linux and got so accustomed to the “unity” layout, that I had to “customize” the laptop I was given at work running windows by moving the taskbar to the left of the screen because the muscle memory would keep me looking that part of the screen for my apps. Great to see the channel back!

[@DarthGTB]

Funny story², I started using my taskbar on Windows on the side as soon as I started working with wide-screen monitors to save vertical space. Recently I decided to start using Linux more frequently and chose Ubuntu. Good surprise for me that it was like that already!

[@cmyk8964]

Not-as-funny story, I kept my task bar on the bottom on Ubuntu until I needed juuuust a bit more vertical screen space :c

[@christopherfortney2544]

I think Ubuntu went downhill because they were just starting to get unity right then slopped onto crappy new gnome at the time.

[@myself50094]

Are you still using Ubuntu?

[@danieldiaz143]

@@myself50094 No, i use manjaro KDE now

[@chrisradtke]

Welcome back man! I was worried, starting to really hate KZbin, but I'm glad you got it straightened out.

[@GimblyGFR]

Man, it is great to have your channel back. Yours is my favorite Linux content on KZbin. Your perspective on the Linux community and ecosystem is refreshing and very realistic. On the video subject, you are 100% right, specially on the "giving up too easily" part. Linux takes time and work, but in the end is totally worth it.

[@kote315]

I completely agree with the essence of the first mistake. When switching to other OS, people often try to do the same things in the same way, but it doesn't work that way on a completely different system. In fact, this also happens when people switch from Linux to Windows. But this just happens not so often. As for the change of distributions due to the appearance - a controversial issue. In theory, I can install debian and make it look and feel like ubuntu or manjaro. But it will take so much time and effort that it’s easier for me to completely reinstall the system. Any system can be customized to suit your preferences, but sometimes it makes no sense to do this, since most likely there already exist a distro configured that way. Another beginner mistake is using unpopular distributions. Their repositories often lack the required software packages. They also contain many bugs that cannot be fixed due to the lack of developers. It is difficult to fix such problems on your own due to the fact that there are no ready-made instructions, and instructions written for other distributions often do not work (you already mentioned that).

[@prakhars962]

I personally had lots of bugs on Ubuntu 20 LTS in 2021. Your PC won't shutdown unless you change from no splash to force acpi. If I switch from Nvidia driver to Xorg, boot ends up with a black screen and I had to use cheerooted env to fix things.Do you expect regular users to fix it on their own?

[@palemink]

@@prakhars962 Yeah I get you. My first linux was LXLE which I had to manually boot through grub everytime. Not the best first impression.

[@fordprefect859]

As someone who came to linux from mac os and had to use windows at school, I can totally verify that it's just as confusing going from linux to windows. The first thing I did was spend a few hours trying unsuccessfully to make the windows command line use bash. The second thing I did was bring a persistent live usb drive with linux on it to school.

[@VoidlessOne]

I can't believe you got punished for doing something good, I'm glad you're back!

[@AshishKumar-qi5gk]

What happened?

[@nqtural1322]

@@AshishKumar-qi5gk I wonder too

[@ArtixBTW]

@@AshishKumar-qi5gk His channel got taken down for a couple days

[@ccroy2001]

Glad you're back. About that terminal.... :-) I got the most out of the Joe Collins videos about Bash commands. He goes really slow and just walks you through each command. Pause and do what he's doing and make notes. At 1st I found the terminal frustrating and scary, but once you know a few commands It's actually a very easy way of doing things and it makes Linux so powerful.

[@TheLinuxEXP]

I’ll check that out, thanks!

[@fuseteam]

there's a core of truth to unchangeable defaults btw; some operating/desktop environment are less customizable than others

[@laurinneff4304]

But the DE can be replaced

[@fuseteam]

@@laurinneff4304 yes you can but even that can depend on the distro, not all distros support all DEs either :3

[@re.liable]

I've read that some distros work well with specific DEs too

[@fuseteam]

@@re.liable yes because they are optimized and often integrated to work with specific DEs such as, i dunno, elementaryOS and pantheon?

[@alkaupadhyay7650]

@@fuseteam well, i would use linux mint and cinnamon, because linux mint uses a fork of Ubuntu, which changes unity (or now gnome) as a requirement to cinnamon/xfce/mate

[@sickmind33]

I've been dipping my toe into linux with my decade old laptop with Zorin OS Lite. The wifi sucks because 10 year old laptop, but it's still nice to get the practice in

[@thejoneseys]

So pleased you're back 🤗🎉

[@Jacksaur_]

The 5th tip was certainly something I wish I was told when I started. I went in thinking I'd be using Wine for everything and just carry over everything I used on Windows. I spent two days trying to get one program working and was *very* quickly sobered in the end. Wine is an amazing project, but it's absolutely not a magic bullet. Sacrifices need to be made.

[@Jacksaur_]

@Bolivian-Lament I've considered running a VM, but don't they take ages to boot up each time you need them? I play a lot of games, so I'd want to shut it off for resources whenever I'm not using the programs I need from Windows.

[@carlosjunior2313]

We're on your side, Nick. Count on us. Thanks, for everything, dude.

[@somekool]

I'm a pretty hardcore Linux user since 1996, and your video is perfect. I'm going to share it with so many people. I wish there was a French dubbed version. Every pitfall and bad mistakes beginners do, you have mentioned. Thank you.

[@sridhartn83]

Welcome Back Bud, I missed you and felt bad, I am a new member but watched a lot of your videos in recent past. Its nice to see you back.

[@gertjanvandenbroek1620]

I do think that choosing the right distro is the first step into really getting into linux. More specifically, the right base-linux. Not so much when just starting out. And with choosing distros, the most important question (I think) you should ask is which linux base you think you'll want. There's waaaaay too many distros to choose from imo. Chances are you'll get recommended Ubuntu, Elementary, Mint, Manjaro or Fedora, those seem to be the big ones atm. But that's still way too many to choose from if you don't know anything about Linux. Granted... I suppose you'll quickly find out more about your preferences, but distrohopping is a scary thing to do, especially when you've just succesfully switched the very first time. "What is debian? What is Arch? i've heard that debian is old and that arch crashes all the time and you'll have to build everything yourself" That's not helpful to someone new at all. And then there's the looks, which Nick very clearly points out that mislead a lot of people. Going for Mac or Windows at least saves you the hastle of that choice, it's their way or the highway. Then again.. that's one of the big reasons people want to get away from Mac & Windows in the first place. But I digress, I propose giving this bit of advice to people that want to start out with linux. 1. Specific Distro's don't matter, pick one you think you like and give it a spin. Bonus points for picking a popular & beginner friendly one. 2. Don't worry about 'old & stable' vs 'bleeding-edge' if you don't know for yourself. You'll find out your preference as you go. 3. Try sticking with linux for 3 months/6 months/ 1 year. 4. Don't be afraid to switch distros if you can and want to.

[@siddharthasarmah9266]

I grew really morose seeing your channel was down. But really good to see u back ☺️

[@yamitvargas8065]

Welcome back, KZbin and Linux community is not the same with you. Great to have you back.

[@sujeetkumarsinghmath]

its gud to have u back man, the community including other creators were fighting for u against youtube, its gud to see u got ur channel back

[@Mustyval]

Oh you’re back! Awesome I’m glad to see you back :).

[@user-rx3ny9ji8i]

Coming here from the deleted announcement, I got from the Linux community and I'm happy to see you back and without any deleted backlog ! I hope it did not carry over some burden like ad sense shenanigan Great video for newbies, the Windows 11 and Steam Os might be a great season for Linus newcomers ! Keep it up

[@gallienus172]

Dude!!! You're back! Welcome back I'm glad you got your channel back.

[@pavlospilakoutas]

Welcome back my friend and i would also like to thank CT & DT for their yesterday's videos supporting this channel.

[@jrizmalj]

The “drivers are preinstalled on linux” argument always baffled me. Whenever I tried switching to linux back in the day (couple years ago), some stuff never worked. For example webcam and printers.

[@jrizmalj]

Also installing apps in just “one click”. A lot of programs I wanted weren’t in the app store and you have to install through terminal, which is just very unfriendly in my opinion. I think I haven’t yet seen a linux desktop vs everything video that isn’t biased.

[@TheLinuxEXP]

How long has it been? It’s really not the case anymore

[@laurinneff4304]

About the driver thing: it's not just Nvidia cards that require manual driver installation, some other devices (like Razer devices, or my laptop's 2nd screen) require it as well for full functionality

[@LWolf94]

Honestly, most of the common Windows software I threw out the window whilst I was still using Windows 10. Most open source alternatives worked much much better and were more comfortable to use. And they were free on top of it a all.

[@alessandrozigliani2615]

Which software are you talking about? Free software that work better than proprietary one is not THAT common, we must be honest now. Btw, gentoo-only user from 2006 to 2017 here so elaborate if you want but don't point fingers.

[@AlaKernel]

i wish this video was available before ... it would have saved me a looooot of time and energy.

[@natoutete]

By far one of the top Linux Dedicated Channels. I appreciate your content.

[@TheLinuxEXP]

Thanks :)

[@rafaelpalmalima]

Thank God you recovered your channel. Welcome back

[@ericerqueiira]

We are happy to see you back!

[@RealMazharHussain]

Happy to see you back on KZbin

[@anb1142]

I literally switched yesterday

[@nerdnotawheep5474]

Glad to have u back. My notification bell icon was feeling lonely already. Have a good one, Nick.

[@sinpi314]

Glad you got your channel back!

[@lucmorvan1867]

Good to have you back!

[@ionamygdalon2263]

By the way, I really liked your final point "Giving up to easily"! Merci beaucoup!!

[@nostradumbass4984]

Fantasic video! I tried Linux several times over the yeras,and always returned to windose. The last time I stuck with it. Now, I NEVER want to go back to windose. I still have a LOT to learn, but Linux is great, fun, and FREE!

[@1pcfred]

With Linux you gotta wanna run Linux.

[@michaelgreaves2375]

Thank you for mentioning the Plethora... It means a lot.

[@im1random263]

If your Linux PC is slow just enter 'rm -rf /' in a terminal. Just joking, pls don't do it, it will delete your entire system

[@linuxnoodle8682]

It needs to be run as root, and you need to explicitly allow deleting root. So the command would be `doas rm -rf / --no-preserve-root` or `doas rm -rf /*`

[@mihailmojsoski4202]

@@linuxnoodle8682 you are implying that most people use doas lul

[@linuxnoodle8682]

@@mihailmojsoski4202 Lmao just remembered that people actually use sudo

[@alessandrozigliani2615]

@@linuxnoodle8682 People are lazy, myself included. Doas is less fluid to type on a qwerty keyboard. It is a fact: it's... backward. Besides habit, that is seriously why I am reluctant to use it. Ok I could make an alias all right but... Didn't I mention I am lazy?

[@linuxnoodle8682]

@@alessandrozigliani2615 Eh, just a matter of opinion. I actually prefer how doas is typed, but they are barely different im the first place.

[@sbooder]

Welcome back. Cracking video to come back with, helping n00bs.

[@paullafleur6112]

Good to see you are back! Keep up the good work

[@Cristiancr1ogenMachado]

Could we say that thanks to KZbin I got to know your wonderful channel? Greetings from Argentina

[@Pietreszcz]

It is SO good to see you back on YT Nick!

[@Ltulrich]

Thanks. I'm moving to linux but I need confidence. This helps.

[@MauricioLeonCalvo]

Hello Nick! Glad you're back!

[@justfoxxo2924]

yay

[@arunkumar3441]

Glad you are back. You are the only Linux channel I follow on KZbin. I am happy for you.

[@gert9537]

Great summary of starters mistakes ! You mention that the user should explore the linux-live-cd first to check that all drivers work That is of course a good point, however you can NOT be sure that the network driver works ! I helped a friend install linux mint on a very slim laptop, that did NOT have an RJ45 cable connector, only a wifi The live-cd-worked perfectly, however when I booted after the install, there was NO WIFI DRIVER for the R8125 used by the pc :( I had to find a driver on github, compile it on another linux pc, transport it via a USB , install it and boot in order to make it work ! Later I found out that the problem was that Linux mint comes with a 5.4x kernel, but the driver for this particular chip was first introduced in 5.10 A normal user would not be able to manage such a case :( Regards from Denmark

[@wingandhog]

Excellent video. So true! I am a former Microsoft MCSE,…….and …. Let’s go way back…. Former Novell MCNE. When peeps ask me for recommendations on how to tweak their devices for speed. My one and only suggestion is to transition to Linux.

[@thessalonikiosmusv]

I've been thinking about most of these points for several months but never bothered to write it up. But finally now I can just refer to this video when about to explain about transitioning to linux.

[@jonosphere]

Happy the channel is live again!! 🥳🥳🥳

[@kamolhengkiatisak1527]

Excellent and comprehensive as well as easy to understand from someone like me who has yet to install Linux while having experienced windows since 3.11, over even before that DOS. I am thinking of install Mint on my 12 years old laptop soon. It presently runs win 8.1 which is still fine but I want to muck around now that I am retired.

[@MrTurbo_]

7:35 from experience this is not always true, often the live environment can lack a lot of packages that would be installed with the os, so trying out any devices that might require some more configuration or different packages to work correctly can be a lot harder or plain impossible to get working without installing, so what i usually do is shrink the main partition on the drive and create a new partition to install and try out the Linux distro i want to use on that device, also being able to reboot the installed os can be good to check if it doesn't just work once but will consistently work as expected, i had a touchscreen driver that would work in the live USB and spaz out after install

[@AstraPlanetshine]

I have been using Mint for two years now, i am very much an amateur Linux user. most of my computer time is spent working in art software, or using the internet. as far as UI goes, sure i could play with it and customize it more then what my distro offers by default, but honestly, basic cinnamon mint was easy to get used to. and i really don't feel like playing around with new UI and stuff at the moment, and i don't feel like i need to. i just wanted an OS that worked nice out of the box for what i need and know. and i am happy. maybe i will play with different environments and UI one day, but for now, im happy things are working fine. i totally understand and love the power that GNU Linux as a whole offers, but for me personally, i am simple, and i know my way around cinnamon mint enough to live day to day. ^^

[@ericon.7015]

It's been 6 years since I've moved from Windows to Linux. I've never regretted and now I usually hate using Windows.

[@johnstath9666]

This is one of the best most common sense videos I’ve watched. And KZbin tried to boot you off? What the f&$k were you thinking YT. This is exactly what you’re about!! Thank you Nick. You e created some work for me but I reckon a hell of lot less pain.

[@patrik5123]

When I started using linux, some 20y ago, it took me a week to even get X up and running. And another month to get most components working. Luckily I had a realtech NIC which was supported by the then Linux 2.x kernel out of the box. But it still took another week to even get an internet connection working properly - I had to read sooooo many man-pages before anything worked. I don't think I have ever learned so much about how computers worked, that I did the first month on linux.

[@ashish_prajapati_tr]

i am so happy your channel is back.

[@georgecagle3829]

Great video. So glad to see the channel is back!

[@TheLinuxEXP]

Me too!

[@grahamarcher2729]

I'm so glad that your channel is back! Your videos are always well produced and interesting, and your enthusiasm about Linux is admirable. Thank you!

[@cipherxen2]

The common mistake made by this kind of videos is that, they think everyone is an engineer and know how to tweak everything in Linux. Most people won't even have time to learn or don't even care to learn.

[@humberabdulah4733]

this is my first time to use elementary os and its amaze me how good it is but still a lot of thing need to be learn as simple as install application

[@trashbeansoup2467]

"You can virtually tweak or change anything on lInux..." ...except what YOU want. 8th mistake: Believe what _Linux users_ say.

[@keilmillerjr9701]

What do you want to change that you can not? 8th mistake: Don't switch to Linux and expect it to work exactly like Mac or windows. Don't be afraid to try a different workflow. Linux is highly customizable.

[@trashbeansoup2467]

Why are my replies deleted? There is nothing in them that is censorable. Questioning Linux claims is not a reason to remove them. Is this going to be deleted also?

[@trashbeansoup2467]

@@keilmillerjr9701 5 attempts at posting the reply and every single one deleted for no good reason that I can see.

[@trashbeansoup2467]

@@keilmillerjr9701 Your "8th mistake" was 1st on the list that Nick gave and in itself demonstrates that the claim that Linux can do anything the others can, is false.

[@erikdila2921]

So happy to see you back, you literally my favorite linux based channel, and probably the only one on youtube i disable my adblocker on... Love the vid as aways, and hope you come back even stronger... Wish all the best to you, sir

[@grayghost832]

Trying Linux distributions in a virtual machine can be good too. Basically you can make "screenshots" which are save states of sorts in case you actually screw something up.

[@abhijitgupta90]

I have made each and every mistake numerous times. I wish this video had been made about 10 years back. Kudos to the creator!

[@TheLinuxEXP]

Thank you :)

[@furiousfellow1583]

We might yell at each other over which piece of software we dont even fully understand we use, but linux community can be suportfull when times are needed, welcome back nick!

[@TheLinuxEXP]

The community has been so nice to me, I still can’t get over it!

[@KarlRichard2]

I'm glad you're back!

[@dumb5308]

WELCOME BACK TO KZbin!!

[@udittlamba]

saw your tweet. welcome back!

[@jamochl]

Welcome back!!! Love this channel

[@JeffGila]

Glad you're back! Nice video :D

[@SansDev]

Happy to see you back !!

[@thetargos]

Nice to see you back!

[@andrewbocho3896]

Mint has a lot of help and a good community.

[@billysherman2702]

Hello LE my old friend, it's good to see you here again...

[@nemo7061]

Would love a series of beginner howto showing everything from start to finish on what to do and whatnot to do in detail i mean. Im stil confused about some things anyway keep up the good work from a newbie who hasnt installed a linux distro yet but wants to did try some out using a vm. Greetings from the netherlands

[@nemo7061]

@F99 Crafter Thank you for your reply I wasnt clear maybe but i did try several using a vm and ended up deciding i want a linux distro that needs araund a minumum ram of 128mb to squeeze out more preformance out of my dying old laptop. I checked this fedora u mentioned but it needs 2gb ram wich is comparable to w10 i have also for your information i have 3gb ram. Also if u dont mind me asking theres seems to be somekind of split between distros not sure why though also dont understand do linux distro all use somekind of app store ? the ones i tried i didnt find any so i just searched ddg for a program but wouldnt install for some reason does it mean theres some kind of security thing that prevents me from doing that like on android orsomething ? to clarify this is a personal laptop i just use it for web browsing and adb/fastboot to unlocking bootlaoder and flashing custom recovery and custom roms for my phones. Theres one program i would also like to use on a linux distro it is called idm or internet download manager hope theres some kind of alternitive for it havent looked yet but i also find out about something wine wich lets run windows app in linux asif it was a linux app pretty cool i wonder if i then can just use the idm using wine to install and link it with the firefox that is imbedded or maybe thats not possible also need to install a ff.exe file. Tried looking for the fedora with lxqt thats the same one form lubuntu right ? i cant seem to find the mimimum requirments for it fedora lxqt. kind regards Nemo

[@samsum4525]

I remembered when i was knew on linux and tried to install the Wifi Dongle driver I messed up multiple times I probably installed the same driver 5 times How do I delete the others?

[@b1oh1]

Great content as always Nick! I just wanted to say I still blindly follow command line guides and I've been Linux only for over 5 years now. Does it mess things up sometimes? Yes. But I learn by doing. If all I do is read, I'll never get anything done. It's a personality flaw I'm very aware of. But by blindly following these guides and messing things up, it's taught me so much. It's literally how I learned about Linux directory structure, the way the kernel is built and updated, how drivers work, a ton of terminal commands etc.

[@aymanibrahim9736]

I started recently getting into linux, I made mistakes 1,2 and ending with mistake 7 Will get back to it one day and try again, I'll dual boot on an old laptop that has windows 10 on it, and see how it works.

[@jcarney1987]

I recommend LinuxMint. Has a great desktop right out of the box. You can run any desktop you want and its based on a rebuild of ubuntu which is build on debian testing.

[@wii166]

To do much of anything for example something as simple as changing your bit rate for your audio you will be in config files and researching what to do instead of a simple GUI toggle that takes seconds to do.

[@sirbaconbuster]

I almost chose Garuda because of the looks. I ended up with Manjaro because I wanted the perks of Arch but I didn't think I had what it took to use Arch.

[@iarvi2989]

Bon retour parmi nous ! Oh la la tu nous as fait une grosse frayeur là quand j'ai vu la vidéo de Chris Titus Tech j'étais pas bien du tout. Ca fait plaisir de voir que KZbin a entendu raison !

[@TheLinuxEXP]

J’étais assez mal aussi 😅

[@Mickey_McD]

Glad you're back!

[@George-mk7lp]

We were getting ppl in Facebook linux group to complain youtube about banning you. This is insane, happy you are back. Let us know if you need help. Ypu have huge army of support here

[@sarimbinwaseem]

I made one mistake from this list... Not trying Manjaro before installing...hehe..but I am learning ..installed KDE... alternative programs and everything ..it is kinda good now... btw transitioning from Windows

[@alfistibrasiliani]

Wow, I never heard about this live usb feature...thanks!

[@maxsievers8251]

I don't understand why there are special GNU distributions for each desktop environment. You could install them all and run at the same time on the same machine.

[@aer0449]

OMG so happy you're back ❤️

[@DrevorReal]

Would have been nice if you mentioned that any new distro will involve you spending an hour copy pasting command prompts into a terminal window from youtube hoping that you're downloading the right codec packages. Like when I used Fedora and boy was it a mess

[@misterspitfire6564]

Great video - thanks! I've been a Linux user for many years and was intrigued when this video came up in my recommendations - glad I watched it, as it was entertaining. :)

[@TheLinuxEXP]

Thank you :)

One of my mistakes when I started using Linux was thinking there are distros for beginners and distros for advanced users. So I was trying to get up to speed with using difficult parts of Linux system. Later I realised there are beginner friendly and beginner not friendly distros and that there is no shame in using Mint or Ubuntu if you have plenty of experience in using Linux. Now I have 15+ years of experience in Linux and I am back on using Mint on all of my computers.

[@tibish]

Welcome back Nick. I'm glad it all got sorted out 🤗

[@PraveenPraveen-uq3lt]

Good to see you back

[@MysteryMan159]

You’re back! Our tweets and prayers worked! :-)

[@2amv685]

I tried linux once and I never came back to windows, the switch was easy for me because I enjoy the challenges, when I face an issue I enjoy fixing it, learned to use some alternative softwares like inkscape and gimp and I discovered some new usefull softwares

[@GafftheHorse]

distro hopping in oder to switch desktop...I figured, back when desktop flavour distros started becoming a thing, that this would be likely result. When I started using Linux in 1999 with Suse, I had Gnome, KDE and KDE2 installed all at once. Compiz, Windowmaker, Sawfish, FVWM and Enlightenment 16 joined the list in the next few years. Main thing that gave me problems as I learnt linux was permissions (mounting drives, editing files in root, dealing with FAT partitions), ideally the system should present a GUI dialog for the required privilege authorisation, but I don't think I've ever used a linux distro that managed to do that, help online at the time advised logging in to the desktop as root user or running the file manager as root.

[@martindjakovic7052]

Pretty much the only thing that matters when choosing a distro is if it's rolling release, or stable, the package manager, and which DE you choose. Everything else can be changed. Also if you generally want more cuatomizability, it's better to go for a more bare-bones distro, like Debian, Arch or Fedora because those tend to have less customizations to the default DE, so doing some big changes has less likelyhood to cause problems.

[@joseph-danielprevost6812]

Welcome back. Bienvenue et content de te revoir.