where should i start with linux? i really want to jump ship, but i've been on windows since 2000/xp and really don't know were to start. i want to be able to customize my desktop gui, use video editing software (it's for work), and still play my video games. i've been looking into Nobara and it seem like a good place to start. Should I dual boot it on my main OS, or put it on my old labtop to get use to it?
>where should i start with linux? i really want to jump ship, but i've been on windows since 2000/xp and really don't know were to start.https://www.linuxmint.com/ - if you want GUI options for pretty much everything you might need to do
https://ubuntu.com/ - you install this thing once and forget about it for years until you decide to upgrade to the newer release, also if you're using commercial software 11 times out of 10 it targets and supports ubuntu
https://fedoraproject.org/ - if you want to stay on (almost) the latest version of software without all the headache of rolling release distros like arch
>Nobaradon't use that, if you think nobara looks cool just install fedora instead and learn how to make it behave and look like nobara if that's what you want, that way you'll learn how things work and you'll get some experience on how things can get fucked and how to unfuck things
>i want to be able to customize my desktop guithat's easy, any distro/DE will let you do that
>play my video gamesrequires some setup but most games work, use flatpak for steam and lutris and you should be good on any distro
>use video editing software (it's for work)uh oh…
y-you can get your job done with kdenlive right anon? if not m-maybe you can buy a license for davinci resolve and y-you'll be all set to start working…
who's gonna tell him? :'( https://distrowatch.com/dwres.php?resource=majorXfce and KDE Plasma are good customizable desktop environments
DaVinci Resolve has a Linux port
Wine sometimes works for running Windows games:
https://www.winehq.org/Wine can also emulate a bunch of other Windows specific software to varying degrees of success
>>22291IDK if you need to use specific video editing software, but DaVinci Resolve isn't standard GNU/Linux fare
It's actually been used for artistic media
>>22294MX Linux is also another "beginner-friendly" desktop-focused distro that should be shared more often
The people behind it were basically the first people to make live and installation images for any Linux distro
They also work on antiX which is a good old computer revival distro
>>22362I trust you already understand why not to touch virtualbox with a ten-foot pole. I don't know much about vmware, only that it uses os-specific virtualization (paravirtualization), which is heavily dependent on the version of the guest os or may need special drivers. Xen and qemu are the best hypervisors for linux (apart from various ones for running dos) AFAIK.
Xen is "the open industry standard for virtualization" developed by the linux foundation, supporting both full and paravirtualization. It is also used in qubes for its secure separation architecture.
Qemu/kvm is markedly less secure than xen, but apart from a few very specific usecases it is faster, so you probably want it. You can launch qemu-system-x86_64 –accel kvm directly with a preallocated hdd image, an install cd, and other command line options, which is what i do. Most people configure qemu with virt-manager though. Besides supporting various common hardware, qemu also provides the virtio drivers for guests.
>>22278If you want to learn the insides of Linux - Slackware.
If you want to use a distro that makes sense and is easy to use - Void Linux.
If you want to use it for audio/video editing - Ubuntu Studio.
All of those have Steam and you can customise your desktop.
Apropos customisation, don't go with a Desktop Environment, you will be forced to use their tweak tools and everything will be weird. Use a window manager, like awesomewm. Awesome is easy to customise (one .conf file written in Lua), comes with sane defaults and while it is a tiling window manager, it does have a floating layout (it's the default, actually).
>>22371>If you have integrated graphic doing nothing because you have a graphic card you can pass the integrated graphics to Windowsthat isn't as easy as just that, but it depends what kind of graphics card, how old, whether your motherboard supports multiple IOMMU groups. if it's just one IOMMU group then you have to hope the two graphics cards you have are different manufactures, so you can blacklist one of them on host and a different one on client machine.
Anon is going to spend hours wracking his brain for something that might not even work, he's much better off dual-booting (or using something like wine) if he needs a windows-only application or just wants to play a windows-only game from time to time.
>>22372I wouldn't bother with dual-booting. Reserving the right amount of disk space is hard (you don't want to share a huge fat partition) and unless you're chainloading the table with the windows partitions, windows updates will overwrite your bootloader.
Wine is a good option though. Remember to always install all fonts, codecs and directx dlls with winetricks, allow your window manager to control the windows in winecfg and try graphics applications with and without dxvk.
>>22376>NVMe and SATA ports are limited on even high even motherboards what? my cheap-ass mini-ITX motherboard has 4 SATA and 1 nvme port.
>and you still need to utilize the BIOS boot select as Windows loves to mess with UEFI boot partitions you don't need UEFI. I turn that shit off and use legacy boot.
>as its updater can think the Windows booter is corrupt since it has a different checksum and nuke your boot loader unless it is on a totally different drive.you can have two hard drives easily. there isn't a motherboard out there with a single SATA port.
you're making up convoluted, unrealistic scenarios.
>>22377There are AM4 motherboard that disables 2 sata ports (taking your down to 2 active on board with only 4) if you use both nvme slots. Windows can nuke the MBR too as the problem is Windows doesn't expect there to be any other boot able OS then it and if doesn't see its bootloader it will install it thus why you have to move the bootloader so that it jumps to Windows on a different drive so Windows can install its bootloader all its wants on its own drive yet this complicates the setup.
Having Widows just run on top of Linux makes things to much easier for power users. When Windows update bricks its system drive (happens) just roll back its disk image while with Windows on real hardware you have to actually go through the hoops of rolling back the update in safe mode like actual Windows users.
>>22378>There are AM4 motherboard that disables 2 sata ports (taking your down to 2 active on board with only 4) if you use both nvme slots.So that's still room for two SATA drives and two nvme drives. What was the issue again?
>Windows can nuke the MBR tooThen you repair the MBR with a bootable Linux distro.
>you have to move the bootloader so that it jumps to Windows on a different drive so Windows can install its bootloader all its wants on its own drive yet this complicates the setup. No, it simplifies it. One whole drive for Windows with its own boot partition, and having the MBR on the Linux hard drive that lets you select Windows or Linux. I've had this setup since 2004, you're inventing problems where there are none.
>Having Widows just run on top of Linux makes things to much easier for power users. No.
You talk about motherboards and compatibility, do all CPUs and motherboards have virtualisation? If you want peripherals, you have to bridge them, and only certain ones. Then there's networking to sort out.
>power usersIs OP asking as a "power user" or as someone new to the whole thing? For someone new, the easiest way is to install Linux on a separate drive with an MBR. This is a fact.
>When Windows update bricks its system drive (happens) just roll back its disk image while with Windows on real hardware you have to actually go through the hoops of rolling back the update in safe mode like actual Windows users.That's why you have Windows on a separate hard drive. This isn't the 90s, you can get a cheap SSD for like $20.
>>22402>It is like you haven't thought how a work flow between Linux and Windows would actually workFor good reason, because I'd never do it. I assume every file on a Windows installation is infected with a virus. I "dual boot" by unplugging all the hard drives and plugging in the Windows drive alone. There is no way I'd let Windows have access to any of my files, VM or not, nor would I let Windows have write access to any of my normal drives.
You're playing with fire and I hope you have a good backup.
>>22408>You do realize VMs treats the host as a file and print server to the client?I thought you were a power user? If you're gonna use the host as a glorified FTP server, then what's the point of a VM? You'll have slow read/write speeds, making the client unusable for things like music production, video editing.
The only way to get decent r/w performance is by giving the client access to the physical device.
>For the host it is no more dangerous that the sea of *nix serversUnless you run QEMU as root. Debian's QEMU documentation doesn't even discuss running QEMU as an unprivileged user (good luck, noobs!) Or if you give the client disk access, which you should if you want to use a VM for more than taking a screenshot of neofetch for internet points.
>>22437> If you're gonna use the host as a glorified FTP server, then what's the point of a VM? Not everyone has a spare computer they have sitting on the LAN they can use as a file server or a NAS setup. The problem this solves is that your data (not Windows binaries) that lives on Linux can be reached by Windows through its network stack so for example that Blender model you have living on somewhere on your home directory can be downloaded into the Windows disk image within the VM where if you dual booted you have to copy that data while booted in Linux and if you made a mistake it is faster with VMs to get corrected data into Windows.
>Unless you run QEMU as rootYou'd probably have more issue setting up your virtual network and device pass thorough yet once setup you can have Linux and Windows run side by side.
>>22278Install Linux Mint or Xubuntu. Both are easy to use.
I recommend dual-booting:
1. Use windows disk management tools to shrink a partition (reserve 60GB or more for GNU/Linux) or buy another SSD/HDD (Linux has good performance even on a HDD).
2. Find/buy an empty USB flash drive with capacity of 4GB or more.
3. Download Linux distro installation iso and download Rufus
4. Use Rufus to copy/"burn" the iso on your flash drive (use dd mode if you get errors). All data on the USB flash drive will be overwritten!
5. Reboot your computer and access the BIOS/UEFI boot menu
6. Select your flash drive and point the GNU/Linux installer to the free space (Linux only needs 1 partition called / aka root partition.).
>>22290The attached pdf is great for learning Bash and other CLI tools. Also, Arch Linux wiki is really good resource for all GNU/Linux distributions.
>>22486For the cancerous SystemD experience try Debian or Arch, depending on if rolling release appeals to you. Slackware is always worth considering due to its stability and sparing use of SystemD components.
If you don't mind using a less widely supported distro, go with Devuan, Void, Alpine or Obarun.
You should also be aware of Gentoo, SMGL, NixOS and GUIX in case you want that sort of distro.
>>22503Virtualbox often breaks after new releases or kernel upgrades, leading to relatively frequent crashes and file corruption.
Apparently Oracle only keeps vbox around as a legacy enterprise product and for gullible hobbyists, so stability and testing have suffered over the last decade.
>>22505I never claimed anything about VMs in general, only that Oracle treats virtualbox as a legacy and hobbyist product.
IIRC virtualization is indispensible in the server market; Xen, Bhyve and Docker in particular.
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