It was as easy as reformatting a usb stick, changing the boot order and turning off bitlocker, which was on for some reason?? but i havent used linux since, i dunno Mandrake 10? I was a kid, and it has been ages. It changed to mandriva about a year or two after i bought their CD set.

anyway I’m decently competent at computers i guess? i occasionally do stuff in powershell on windows, and the terminal or w/e seems neat. I used to do more coding, a skill i refreshed and picked up during quarantine. I’m mostly familiar with Microsoft’s .net stuff though.

i shoved vs code and some stuff on it, but like, what’s needed to kind of, well, replace a windows desktop? I gave it a 300gb partition, which is 30% of my available space, so i need to use this thing.

I am mostly getting peeved as shit and annoyed by Microsoft’s increasingly aggressive “we gotta force people to upgrade, gotta shove horseshit AI nonsense on our stuff, gotta re-enable ads on the desktop” bullshit. I even paid for windows 10 pro, this isn’t a free license, and it’s still a nightmare in this way and frankly i’m done. the appeal of starting with a fairly barebones OS (i’m aware i can go much more stripped down with OSes like this, not the point) is intense right now.

but i realize now i genuinely know jack shit about dick outside of microsoft and android environments and i want advice.

The laptop itself is mostly a niche use laptop, but while I’m not an advanced dork in these matters, i probably know enough to leverage it to replace windows if i can know what the strengths of this platform are, what the good software is for software development (is Code gonna be it?), whether Wine is still the emulation software of choice, that stuff.

One thing I’d really like to do is learn what the default install of Mint+Cinnamon is doing, how to go over the different components, how to pick and choose what i want this thing doing. I didn’t find the official documentation overly helpful, troubleshooting the install aside, so i wanted to ask here

If i can get there, and get some windows based software running that I need, i’ll ditch the windows partition entirely, and i’d like to get there.

  • imikoy [she/her, comrade/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
    8·
    6 months ago

    Wine is the only way I know of to run Windows stuff on Linux, other things build on top of Wine (Proton is based on Wine and is oriented for game support, Lutris is a game-oriented launcher that helps with using Wine, etc).

    A bit of pedantry: Wine is a compatibility layer, it captures Windows calls and makes them happen using its own libraries and capabilities of the operating system.

    Documentation: I recommend Arch wiki - it is one of the best wikis and (mostly) works for non-Arch distros, too

    I recommend getting comfortable with the terminal, and after that - understanding how to troubleshoot an unbootable system (for example if GRUB goes oooaaaaaaauhhh) using livecd environment. And also try to learn Vim on comfortable pace, if you happen to like it, it’ll be great. Also make sure you have regular backups of important data.

    • RiotDoll [she/her, she/her]@hexbear.netOPEnglish
      4·
      6 months ago

      the software is niche hobby stuff, i guarantee there’s no substitute on linux, it’s straight up esoteric. getting it to run via whatever process is the practical solution, if there is one.

      • Llituro [he/him, they/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
        5·
        6 months ago

        if it’s possible to share the details of what you’re trying to find, you can try making a post on c/libre about it. you’d be surprised the amount of relatively niche software goals that there exist linux open-source solutions for. depending on what exactly it’s doing, you also might find that you can get a wine prefix to work. googling around about “X software run on linux” might turn up relevant results in various linux/programming forums like distro forums or stack overflow.

      • FunkyStuff [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
        4·
        6 months ago

        Check out Lutris, I use it to run a lot of programs that I can’t just run through Steam. You can set up an environment called a prefix and it acts a bit like a Windows virtual machine, which can run any Windows program you throw at it.

    • Programmer Belch@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
      1·
      6 months ago

      If it’s her first time with Linux, I don’t think going full vim will be useful.

      Something with a GUI might be better like gedit for simple text editing would be enough.

      For coding you can use VSCodium, it’s a VSCode replacement that’s compatible with the majority of VSCode plugins.

      If you want more information about a package or program, you should go to the wiki page for the package on the debian wiki or the archwiki. Your Linux distribution (distro) is based around debian so most packages will be avaliable in mint.

  • unperson [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
    2·
    6 months ago

    One thing I’d really like to do is learn what the default install of Mint+Cinnamon is doing, how to go over the different components, how to pick and choose what i want this thing doing. I didn’t find the official documentation overly helpful, troubleshooting the install aside, so i wanted to ask here

    It sounds like, as soon as you get half-comfortable, you should install Arch.

    This is not a meme, your question is exactly what archlinux exists for.

    Don’t use the installer, follow the good old https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Installation_guide

    Good luck, don’t take Arch too seriously.

  • trompete [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
    2·
    6 months ago

    Since you say you want to go over the different components: You can get a list of installed packages with dpkg -l, which includes a short description.

    If you want a long description, use apt show $package. If you want to see a list files included with it, use dpkg -L $package. That’s only system files obviously, any program that runs as your login user will have its configuration files and stuff somewhere in ~ and that will not be listed by dpkg.

    Also protip: if you want to see only, say, binaries included with a package, do dpkg -l foo | grep bin.