Just in case the search algorithm points people here:
“What distro is best for gaming?”
Most of them are fine these days. Bazzite, CachyOS, SteamOS, and Nobara are the ones everyone seems to be talking about, and the differences between them all are probably going to come down to which games you want to play and your specific hardware.
“Will linux run on my (insert random PC specs)?”
Almost certainly yes. I don’t care what the specs are, and you might have to try more than one distro for it to nail down the most performant one, but if Windows runs on it, some flavor of Linux almost certainly will too. Even Nvidia isn’t a dealbreaker these days.
“Why does (insert Windows/MacOS program) not work on the linux? Linux is crap then!”
It probably does, and you just need a good installation guide. The only applications I’ve heard of that reliably fail to usably run on Linux with some combination of Wine tricks have been Adobe Creative Cloud and online multiplayer games that use kernel-level anticheat. You may be able to get away with using some other FOSS software replacement, or using a virtual machine to emulate Windows and run it in there, or you might find dual-booting Windows a reasonable compromise. But in any case, those applications don’t work on Linux because the developers explicitly chose to make them incompatible with Linux, and continue to patch the application so that community workarounds are broken. Adobe decided you couldn’t use their software on Linux, this isn’t a failure of the open-source community.
“Recommend me a free antivirus software for linux”
Linux. You’re probably fine; not because “nobody writes viruses for linux” (as some jokes online suggest) but because the way Linux is set up is at odds with the idea of computer viruses. Linux has a much more robust permissions system enabled by default which will prevent random programs from running without your consent. Of course you still need to be careful not to install shady packages, but that’s true on Windows too.
Hundreds of millions of websites run on Linux servers. The community is very invested in making sure that they can’t be exposed to viruses.
“Why does Arch not work on my PC from the early 2000’s?”
Most of the time, the golden move is to not engage at all when you aren’t motivated to help. It’s either that or newbies asking LLMs instead, and right now LLMs are probably winning.
I actually blocked someone over something like this =w=
An ex friend that kept bothering me for linux help, and would refuse to look at or read any source. Literally got so annoyed of them asking something, me telling them what to do, telling them the tools that can do it, and even linking sources that explain the tools, and they still message me with some rudimentary thing that’s literally in the first paragraph of the step by step guide breaking down each argument etc.
Some people just don’t want to try or be competent, they just want to shout “I don’t know computers” and make you read out the same steps you just sent them
There’s a phenomenon called “learned helplessness” where people simply don’t realize they’re capable of doing such things for themselves. They hit the limits of their knowledge and instinctively look to another human for answers, failing to realize they’re capable of taking the very same steps as the person they’re asking.
I’m not making excuses for them, just telling you so you know what to research to understand it better. It’s one of those things, once you know what it is, you start to notice it everywhere.
Im very aware =w= I just got tired of putting on with it, especially with the way they were treating me like on call tech support expecting me to forego my plans or use my free time to assist with whatever, whenever
At some point even if you know why someone acts they way they do, you just have to throw in the towel and look out for your own health
They were on mint lol. They just wanted to do a bunch of random specific stuff like transferring their entire setup from one drive to another, and then transfer the windows to a drive their linux was on, or installing windows apps that require pretty specific setups (which usually had install scripts made for them, but even reading the guide to how to run those was something they were struggling to do) etc.
I mean, I did mention a lot of alternative solutions and all that, but they weren’t always accepted
I just get annoyed with questions that a simple 5 minute search will solve.
“What distro is best for gaming?”
“Will linux run on my (insert random PC specs)?”
“Why does (insert Windows/MacOS program) not work on the linux? Linux is crap then!”
“Recommend me a free antivirus software for linux”
“Why does Arch not work on my PC from the early 2000’s?”
Just in case the search algorithm points people here:
Most of them are fine these days. Bazzite, CachyOS, SteamOS, and Nobara are the ones everyone seems to be talking about, and the differences between them all are probably going to come down to which games you want to play and your specific hardware.
Almost certainly yes. I don’t care what the specs are, and you might have to try more than one distro for it to nail down the most performant one, but if Windows runs on it, some flavor of Linux almost certainly will too. Even Nvidia isn’t a dealbreaker these days.
It probably does, and you just need a good installation guide. The only applications I’ve heard of that reliably fail to usably run on Linux with some combination of Wine tricks have been Adobe Creative Cloud and online multiplayer games that use kernel-level anticheat. You may be able to get away with using some other FOSS software replacement, or using a virtual machine to emulate Windows and run it in there, or you might find dual-booting Windows a reasonable compromise. But in any case, those applications don’t work on Linux because the developers explicitly chose to make them incompatible with Linux, and continue to patch the application so that community workarounds are broken. Adobe decided you couldn’t use their software on Linux, this isn’t a failure of the open-source community.
Linux. You’re probably fine; not because “nobody writes viruses for linux” (as some jokes online suggest) but because the way Linux is set up is at odds with the idea of computer viruses. Linux has a much more robust permissions system enabled by default which will prevent random programs from running without your consent. Of course you still need to be careful not to install shady packages, but that’s true on Windows too.
Hundreds of millions of websites run on Linux servers. The community is very invested in making sure that they can’t be exposed to viruses.
Have you tried plugging your computer in?
First page of results:
Most of the time, the golden move is to not engage at all when you aren’t motivated to help. It’s either that or newbies asking LLMs instead, and right now LLMs are probably winning.
It probably does though.
I actually blocked someone over something like this =w=
An ex friend that kept bothering me for linux help, and would refuse to look at or read any source. Literally got so annoyed of them asking something, me telling them what to do, telling them the tools that can do it, and even linking sources that explain the tools, and they still message me with some rudimentary thing that’s literally in the first paragraph of the step by step guide breaking down each argument etc.
Some people just don’t want to try or be competent, they just want to shout “I don’t know computers” and make you read out the same steps you just sent them
There’s a phenomenon called “learned helplessness” where people simply don’t realize they’re capable of doing such things for themselves. They hit the limits of their knowledge and instinctively look to another human for answers, failing to realize they’re capable of taking the very same steps as the person they’re asking.
I’m not making excuses for them, just telling you so you know what to research to understand it better. It’s one of those things, once you know what it is, you start to notice it everywhere.
Im very aware =w= I just got tired of putting on with it, especially with the way they were treating me like on call tech support expecting me to forego my plans or use my free time to assist with whatever, whenever
At some point even if you know why someone acts they way they do, you just have to throw in the towel and look out for your own health
I bet that person is best friends with ChatGPT now.
That person was in fact an LLM user. And I do believe it was specifically chatGPT =w=
What source do/should you ever have to read though?
There’s probably an easier distro and solution for them
They were on mint lol. They just wanted to do a bunch of random specific stuff like transferring their entire setup from one drive to another, and then transfer the windows to a drive their linux was on, or installing windows apps that require pretty specific setups (which usually had install scripts made for them, but even reading the guide to how to run those was something they were struggling to do) etc.
I mean, I did mention a lot of alternative solutions and all that, but they weren’t always accepted
Sounds like they should migrate to NixOS, they’ll get exactly that, but then they’ll message you every time they want to change anything.
If I ever meet them in the wild I’ll suggest they try nixOS x3
Oh, no! That’s terrible.