this post was submitted on 13 Jul 2023
33 points (90.2% liked)

Linux

48145 readers
908 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

Related Communities

Community icon by Alpár-Etele Méder, licensed under CC BY 3.0

founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
 

I have an old Subnotebook (at least 10 years old I think) which runs Windows 7 atm. I would like to run Linux on it. I‘m a Linux noob, but would like to try and learn a few things. Any recommendations?

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] Dirk@lemmy.ml 2 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I have successfully run Arch with Openbox as WM on machines even older than that. Arch has a learning curve, though.

[–] ArmoredGoat@feddit.de 7 points 1 year ago (1 children)

And therefore it should not be recommended to Linux beginners... It is not a beginner distro.

[–] Dirk@lemmy.ml 1 points 1 year ago (4 children)

There is no such thing as a "beginner distro". There are distros that need little to no intelligence to set up and maintain. Arch needs you to read and follow instructions. It is a myth that it is impossible for beginners to use Arch. There are several good installations instructions in the wiki, select one and follow it till the end.

There are also plenty of Arch derivates that preconfigure the system for you.

[–] ulu_mulu@lemmy.world 5 points 1 year ago

There are distros that need little to no intelligence to set up and maintain

It's not a matter of intelligence but prior knowledge, Arch wiki is the best thing ever for everyone, even if you don't use Arch, BUT you need some Linux knowledge - at least Linux "lingo" - to be able to understand it.

That's something a Linux newbie doesn't have yet, exactly the reason why Arch is not recommended for newbies.

[–] Double_A@discuss.tchncs.de 5 points 1 year ago

It's not impossible, but it's unnecessarily tidious... Especially when with other distros you can just follow a 4 Step wizard and get a similar result.

[–] ArmoredGoat@feddit.de 4 points 1 year ago

I beg to differ and say, even when the Arch wiki is a great source of knowledge, setting up own Arch system and maintaining it requires keeping on track with updates, to understand what is wrong with your system to look up the right keywords and so on. In my opinion it is better to stay on a stable, periodically released distro with tested repos like Debian, Mint or Ubuntu at first. Afterwards, you can still switch to Arch.

[–] mrXYZ@mas.to 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

@Dirk @Fungus
Arch + aur is a little bit too much in my opinion. Old PC = old slow hardware. Some of aur pacages are basicly compile instructions. Also you won't benefit as much from rolling release.
For GUI stay away from GNOME as it is resource hungry. KDE claimes to be a lot better but honestly it is still a very polished flashy expirence out of the box.
Learn using KDE, atempt to replicate using window manager like AwesomeWM.
You will "waste" resource only for what is a mass have for You.

[–] dpflug@hachyderm.io 1 points 1 year ago

@mrXYZ
Unless you're doing something very unusual, you're not going to end up with many AUR packages. I've run Arch on SBCs without much trouble.

There are severely steps in between Gnome/KDE and Awesome. XFCE and Enlightenment are more user friendly options that are still quite lightweight.
@Dirk @Fungus