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

hey guys this is nick and today we're going to cover a bunch of mistakes that linux beginners make when they first move to linux so you're all happy about making the switch you're willing to discover and learn a whole new world of computing and then you ruin it all by making these stupid mistakes now do you know what's not a mistake though using today's sponsor so lenode is a fantastic way to get your own linux server up and running it was rated the easiest cloud provider to use on g2 and it has been voted top infrastructure as a service provider by g2 and trust radius linoid offers a ton of one-click deployable servers like owncast for example which lets you run your own twitch-like streaming service complete with video broadcast and chat or apache guacamole what's that you ask well guacamole is a fantastic way to get your own linux desktop in the cloud that you can access from anywhere you want and basically you can host that on linux and get to any other computer and get access to that linux desktop it's pretty amazing if you're more into gaming you can also deploy your own valheim or minecraft server in one click blind has a ton of these one-click deployable apps i use linux to run my own lex cloud server which i use to run this whole channel so i can't recommend them enough especially since you can now create your account easily using google or github and in the future if you don't have a credit card you'll be able to sign up using google pay as well so that's one less barrier to get started so if you want to get a free 100 credit to start your own linux server well head over to the link in the description below and click it now the first mistake that linux beginners make is trying to apply the concepts that they already know to linux itself it's understandable you're coming from an other operating system you know a lot of things you have plenty of experience and you've read a bunch of articles telling you that linux can do anything that windows or mac os can do and while that is true it doesn't mean that linux will do these things in the exact same way as what you're used to for example drivers on linux there is virtually no driver installation apart from the proprietary nvidia drivers either your devices drivers are in the linux kernel and it's supported out of the box or the drivers are not in there and chances are it won't get supported you can compile some third-party drivers for a few very limited set of peripherals but generally your drivers are in the kernel you get newer drivers when you update the kernel and that's it the file system will be different and the location of files will also be different installing applications isn't hunt online for an installer it's a one-click install from a graphical store or package manager you don't need an anti-virus unless you're looking to grab files from windows users and passing them on to other windows users or you can make windows users pay for their life choices by downloading files and passing them on to other windows users without using an antivirus at all you don't need to defragment your drive it does so automatically you don't get automatic updates you decide when you want to apply these you don't use backslashes when typing a file's path you use forward slashes there is no c or d or e drive now all these pre-existing concepts are different on linux you can just move to a new system and expect all the things to work in the exact same way so your pre-existing knowledge won't be completely useless but it's not going to give you any superpowers either there will be stuff to relearn now the second mistake most people make is getting hung up on distributions what a distribution is is basically just a way to package the linux kernel some system tools a graphical desktop manager some drivers basically a few packages and that's it what users generally think when they see a distro is the look they retain the look and feel of this distribution and what they really want is something that looks like that not specifically the distro itself hey man could you tell me what this row you use it looks so cool it's manjaro kde you liar i tried this subscribe mention arcade doesn't look anything like that beginners will tend to install or gravitate towards a specific distribution because of the way it looks and feels and they tend to forget or not know that you can replicate look and feel on virtually any other distribution linux is customizable you can grab the theme and the icons and do that exact look somewhere else what users should really look for is desktop environments not distributions when you're a beginner you need to look at a distro that you like you like the way it looks then you just take a look at what desktop environment it uses is it gnome is it kd is it xfc is it pantheon cinnamon once you know that you pick a linux beginner-friendly distribution like for example kubuntu ubuntu zorino s linux mint and you replicate the look and feel of the distro on the right desktop environment you don't have to use garuda linux if you want something that looks like garuda you can have the same thing on kubuntu with organia with a more stable user-friendly base the mistake here is picking a distribution just because of the way it looks and ending up with something that is either too complex too easy to screw up or with too little user-friendly documentation or communities now this all goes nicely with mistake number three which is getting stuck on the default i often get comments from users telling me oh i used to use this distro or i used to use this desktop but then i couldn't do this and so i moved to another distro entirely like seriously i had users telling me that they moved distributions because the close button on the windows was on the left instead of on the right seriously and that all comes from the fact that proprietary oss that people are used to generally aren't very customizable out of the box you can tweak a little bit of things in mac os or on windows but that's very very limited or you could use third party tools and break your system that's not the case on linux here you can virtually tweak or change anything without even changing desktop environments basically every desktop there is has a plethora of options either hidden or super visible to make everything look like what you want if you don't like the theme the window button placement the icons the fact that the taskbar is on the bottom on the right the fact that it's a dock or it's an icon list the fact that altab works in a certain way you can change all of that regardless of the desktop environment on xfc cinnamon or kde you just have to dig through the settings on gnome you have extensions and gnome tweaks and you can really make this thing your own users coming from windows or mac os generally expect things to stay the way they are out of the box and so if something doesn't work for them they will just move house completely on linux you don't have to stick with the default you can tweak virtually everything to make it look and feel like what you want now the fourth mistake that linux beginner make is installing without trying out there is a reason why linux has live usbs with live sessions it's so that you can make sure that everything that you own every file that you have everything that you rely on works on linux when you're thinking of installing linux you need to spend some time in the live usb session it's the perfect occasion to check that wi-fi works ethernet works that your file formats can be opened that the apps that you need can be installed how they look how they work that every single peripheral you own can work it's a good time to try and plug everything you own inside of your computer and check if that works and that's the moment when you regret only having two usbc ports because dongle live sucks in your testing if things don't work make a note of it somewhere and once you're done trying it out you can take some time to look it up online and see if you can find a solution for every single issue that you encountered it's way better to know beforehand what will work what will need a solution and what can't work then discovering that when you need that device to actually do something now the fifth mistake linux beginners make is expecting all of their programs to just work on linux linux doesn't run windows programs or mac programs you wouldn't expect windows programs on a mac you wouldn't expect mac programs on windows you can't expect windows or mac programs on linux some of them can work especially games through wine but most of them will not you don't get the adobe apps you don't get microsoft office you don't get the affinity suite you don't get autocad there are a lot of things that just don't exist on linux you have alternatives that are generally free and open source and they are generally free of charge as well but don't forget to toss a coin to your developer is that meme too old i can't really tell now if you're a professional and if most if not all of your workflow depends on a specific application you need to look it up beforehand check if it runs on linux and if it has the whole range of functionality that you would expect if you're an individual and you can learn new alternatives expect to waste some time you're gonna waste some time learning or kryta instead of photoshop you're gonna waste some time learning only office or libreoffice instead of microsoft office now this transition specifically can be eased if you're thinking of moving to linux and you want to try out alternatives most of these already exist on windows and mac os you can install gimbal libreoffice or anything else basically on windows or mac os so you can get used to the programs that you'll have to use later and then you can move to linux you don't have to get used to the system and to the programs at the same time you can ease that transition over time the sixth mistake linux beginners make is generally following command line tutorials online completely blindly most tutorials for linux are written using command line commands and that's because for the author it's way easier than trying to screen grab a capture of every single desktop environment there is and trying to explain how to do things graphically because generally you can do them graphically but it's way more complex than just typing a command hey if the user doesn't understand and if the tutorial doesn't really work then people are going to leave comments comments are engagement engagements is views views is money maybe i should do some fake tutorials now as practical as it can be for the tutorials rider it also means that basic beginners will just blindly copy paste these things into their terminal and that's how you end up with systems with 20 ppas that have completely no rhyme or reason and the system is completely broken people have followed these command line tutorials for ages they generally don't learn what the commands do and generally it creates problems so when you're thinking about following a tutorial try and learn what the command does what each verb or word of the command does it's cumbersome it won't let you just breeze through the tutorial but at least you'll be able to redo it yourself and you know what it's doing to your system now look at it this way if a stranger on the street just hands you a usb drive are you going to open all the files blindly trusting him or are you going to try and see what this usb drive is and learn about it before you use it it's the same with linux command line tutorials now the last mistake linux beginners tend to make is giving up too soon moving to linux from windows or mac os is not an extremely easy process you'll have to relearn something some things just don't work the same some things just won't work at all compared to what you're used to and it's normal you're moving to a new system it is not expected and it is not supposed to work in the same way as your old system did linux is super flexible but it also gives you plenty of opportunities to shoot yourself in the foot it's not going to stop you when you make a stupid decision and when you break something so if the district you pick doesn't work if some hardware isn't recognized if a specific application doesn't work for you or if the look and feel isn't right don't just give up you can try another distro for more hardware compatibility you can try a new theme for the look and feel you can try a new desktop environment if the layout doesn't work for you you can try another application if the one you tried just doesn't suit you your needs there are plenty of choices on linux that's that's the real strength of it and that's about it for the main mistakes beginners make when trying to move to linux at least those that i'm aware of or that i encountered in my own experience with linux when i started back in the days so i hope that people watching these will maybe avoid these pitfalls and have a smoother ride for their transition to linux that's about it so this video was made possible by slim book if you don't know about slim book they're a linux manufacturer and retailer they make linux laptops desktops they're based in valencia spain and they ship worldwide they have a whole range of keyboard layouts a whole range of devices for basically any use case and any price point i only use their stuff nowadays laptop desktop and keyboard i can only recommend them so if you need a new linux device just click the link in the description below so thank you guys for watching the video i hope you enjoyed if you did don't hesitate to like and subscribe and if you didn't you can also dislike and tell me why in the comments you can also watch all my videos on odyssey and if you want to support me and help me do what i do you can join my patreon subscribers and youtube members and you'll get access to a weekly patreon cast and the right to vote on the next topics i'll cover so thank you guys for watching and i'll see you in the next one bye [Music] you

Channel: The Linux Experiment

Views: 106,268

Rating: 4.9093413 out of 5

Keywords: linux, elementary os, open source, distribution, linux distro, linux help, linux 2021, linux tutorial, linux mistakes, don't make these mistake on linux, linux beginner mistake, how to use linux, how to move to linux, how to install linux, how to linux, linux mistakes to avoid, mistakes to avoid on linux, avoid these linux mistakes, linux beginner mistakes, linux noob mistakes, newbie mistakes on linux

Id: o2vkgVZvkVQ

Length: 14min 15sec (855 seconds)

Published: Tue Sep 07 2021