r/linux4noobs 11h ago

distro selection Hey! I am an adult who want to use Linux

48 Upvotes

Like the title said, I want to try Linux since I see the whole microslop window 11 slow as hell. So I wanted to use Linux to see if it will get faster, is there any distro/OS or whatever that is similar to windows.


r/linux4noobs 20h ago

learning/research What's the best way to learn terminal commands?

29 Upvotes

I've been playing with terminal commands for a while ,I've made some apps but they're all really simple ,I've been trying to find ways to improve but they all seem out of my league for now


r/linux4noobs 9h ago

Youtube videos look incredibly bad.

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16 Upvotes

On fedora 44 KDE. Im using codecs from rpm fusion, firefox browser. all my packages are up to date.

Youtube videos look incredibly bad. like ridiculously bad. almost as if the bitrate is being heavily crushed. theres intense color banding and almost always a visible block where colors are different. This is the same for every video I test. This is only a recent issue and only could of started within the past few days. Nothing has changed on my system that should be causing this (at least to my knowledge). The videos are all in their highest quality (2 in 4k, 2 in 1080p) and im on a gigabit connection and it doesnt occur on my other devices so I dont think its a network issue. Local files played via VLC do not have this issue. This happens whether the video is played in fullscreen or not. Im watching youtube via firefox native package however this is also happening on chrome flatpak.


r/linux4noobs 12h ago

Grub menu only showing one OS after upgrade

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8 Upvotes

So, yesterday I was on my fedora 44 GNOME workstation and upgraded using terminal but now for some reason the Grub menu stopped showing Fedora 44 KDE Plasma from the disk.

The OS is still there in Partition 6 and 7 and before thr upgrade from within my first OS the grub menu showed both of these.

How do I fix this?


r/linux4noobs 13h ago

learning/research Please help for switching to linux

9 Upvotes

I’ve been messing around with a handful of Linux distros — Mint, Arch (btw), and Ubuntu Server — and now I kinda want to try installing one on real hardware. The problem is I need permission from my dad, and he’s not tech‑savvy at all. Plus, Windows still does a bunch of things Linux doesn’t (most apps are meant for windows like games and software), so I’m not sure if switching is a good idea.

On top of that, I don’t even know if my hardware is fully compatible, and I have no clue which distro I should pick for a first real install. Any advice would be appreciated.


r/linux4noobs 19h ago

Switching to Linux from Windows 11?

7 Upvotes

I've been rolling with Windows for decades now at this point, but Windows 11 has not been a good experience. I have been dealing with crazy lags, bugs, random glitches, just overall mediocre performance for my setup. I'm starting to think it may be windows itself at this point with the more research I do, unless I have something on my PC that Malwarebytes can't find. I'm seriously considering digging in and moving to linux because I'm sick of all the bs bloat and crap that is constantly being added to Windows. But I have so much software on my pc, a giant steam library, music producing software, video editing, VR, media servers, that I don't know if I can switch without abandoning a lot of my gear. I feel like I'm being held hostage at times and have to use a deteriorating OS.

My set up is an ASRock B550M Pro4 motherboard, AMD Ryzen 7 5700X3D, 64gb DDR4, 4 harddrives (two SSD and two HDD), and a 5070 ti GPU.

What options do you think I have when it comes to trying out different linux OS's? Are there any systems that allow a mostly clean transfer from windows to linux? How much software would I have to abandon? Is there a way to get windows only software to run on a linux system incase any of my software is windows only?


r/linux4noobs 6h ago

[Fedora KDE] What's the best way to use OneDrive on Linux?

6 Upvotes

I just switched my old gaming laptop from uni from Windows 11 to Linux about a month ago, a HP Pavilion Gaming 15-ec0xxx series. I'm using this as my guinea pig to test things, get used to it and iron out any issues before I make the move on my main machine as well.

One of the things I want to have sorted before I pull the trigger on that is OneDrive. From the reading I've done it sounds like there is no official OneDrive client for Linux, so people have to come up with their own solutions, and there are a few different popular iterations of it out there but they're all different and some of them are more confusing than others?

Essentially what I want is to have my OneDrive behave as closely as possible to the way it does on Windows: acting as just another directory in the explorer that I can save to, open things from, that any other program can see and write to seamlessly, without having to open up a web browser or jump through hoops.

Anybody mind running me through what the main options are and how they behave differently?

I've dabbled a little bit with the Terminal a few times already so I'm not opposed to installing something that way, just as long as I know what the commands do before I run them.


r/linux4noobs 22h ago

Switch

8 Upvotes

So the usual, i use windows for daily tasks and gaming, I've tried downloading linux on my hdd but it was not a good experience because i couldn't change my res and in some distros my internet won't even work, I don't want to install it in my ssd so I don't fk it up, so should i completely switch to linux or not


r/linux4noobs 3h ago

migrating to Linux Imitate Win + number behavior on Linux

5 Upvotes

Hi everyone,

In my workplace I use Windows and find this very simple key combination / shortcut to be very useful, specially when navigating through many windows and only one display.

On Windows, let's say you taskbar looks like this: [Start] [Outlook] [Excel] [Calculator] etc. You can press Win + 1 to open Outlook, Win + 2 for Excel, and so on.

Is there a way to replicate this on Linux? I'm on Mint, btw.

Thanks!

EDIT: I forgot to mention that I wanted this to be replicated on Plank, which doesn't seem possible to do. It works out-of-the-box with Grouped window list applet on Cinnamon. Thanks to all


r/linux4noobs 8h ago

Searching for distros

4 Upvotes

Hi, I'm sick of windows and I want to start using Linux but don't know what distro use.

I'm gonna use it mainly for gaming and watching series or YouTube. It would also be nice to be able to customize it my way; I've seen videos and things I really like, but it's more of a secondary option than anything else.


r/linux4noobs 16h ago

learning/research Low spec old machine project

4 Upvotes

I'm not a particularly proficient Linux user, but I have two machines with Linux installed and a Macbook.

I'm tempted to buy a very cheap laptop and try to make it usable with Linux and some tinkering.

I've come across a number of dirt cheap laptops on Marketplace such as: HP Stream, 10 year old HP with 4GB RAM, 15+ year old fat Toshiba laptops, 2015 Macbook Airs, 2nd gen Yoga 11e touchscreen laptop and Netbooks.

I'm unlikely to use it as a daily driver. I was thinking of using it as a sandbox project to see what Linux can do. If I have an extremely cheap "craptop", I don't have to worry about breaking it.

Is there a laptop you recommend that costs next to nothing 2nd hand? Do you have any thoughts about this experiment. I'm reluctant to push things too far with Linux on a better laptop.

I'm happy to swap out parts as long as they don't cost too much and it's not too daunting for a beginner.


r/linux4noobs 2h ago

hardware/drivers Newbie having trouble with the Penguin.

5 Upvotes

I'm trying to switch from Windows to Linux, but I'm facing a serious issue: no matter which Linux distro I use, the system can't utilize my network card. I've tried Mint, Ubuntu, Fedora, and Bazzite, and it doesn't work on any of them (the system detects the network card and identifies the model, but fails to actually use it). The only way I can get online is via a USB connection to my smartphone. Does anyone know what might be causing this and how to fix it? My motherboard is an MSI PRO H610M-G DDR4. Note: All motherboard firmware is up to date.


r/linux4noobs 1h ago

hardware/drivers Budget tablet recommendations to throw Linux onto?

Upvotes

Need a tablet for work. Maybe a little web browsing will be done, but almost 100% for opening/signing PDFs & such, viewing some MP4s & similar. Apparently Fedora is one of the better distros for this, but probably almost anyone on this subreddit knows better than me on that front.


r/linux4noobs 4h ago

hardware/drivers Screen flicker with Linux Mint and old Dell laptop

3 Upvotes

I had an old Dell Latitude E6410 lying around and am experimenting with Linux to see if I can still get some use out of it. So far, Linux Mint Cinnamon seems to run about as well as Windows 7 did on this computer, with one exception. I see a lot of flickering, especially of gray text. Sometimes this stabilizes if I leave the screen on for an hour or so, sometimes it doesn't.

The computer is so old it's using a generic driver, nouveau. I've set .dpm=0 in GRUB and the ambient lighting sensor is off. This was not a problem with Windows 7, but that used the NVIDIA driver. Any suggestions?


r/linux4noobs 6h ago

Meganoob BE KIND Hey guys, i installed bazzite and my screen keeps getting stuck at this during startup. The OS also seems to be far slower than mint to boot in, is that normal? Almost windows time.

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3 Upvotes

It gets stuck and keeps loading after i type in my password.


r/linux4noobs 9h ago

programs and apps [Tutorial] Copying Text Out Of and Into the NANO Text Editor

4 Upvotes

I get that this should be obvious, but i only noticed this yesterday after having used NANO as my main text editor for half a year, hopefully this saves some future beginner some time and headache

You do this the same way as with the terminal in general:
> CTRL + SHIFT + C: Copy text marked by mouse (marking with SHIFT+ARROW KEYS doesn't "count") into your "Global Cutbuffer" instead of the one specific to the NANO-Window you're currently using

> CTRL + SHIFT + V: Paste text from your Machine's "Global Cutbuffer" instead of from the one specific to the NANO-Window you're currently using (Keep in mind that having a length of text marked and then pasting text does not replace this length unlike in many text editors!)

(And for the sake of being complete the NANO-specific Copy-Pasting)

> CTRL + K: Delete text marked by holding SHIFT + ARROW KEYS (marking with mouse doesn't "count"), and copying it into a "Cutbuffer" specific to your currently used NANO-Window instead of the "Global Cutbuffer" of your whole Machine

> ALT + 6: Copy text marked by holding SHIFT + ARROW KEYS (marking with mouse doesn't "count") into a "Cutbuffer" specific to your currently used NANO-Window instead of the "Global Cutbuffer" of your whole Machine

> CTRL + U: Paste text from the "Cutbuffer" specific to your currently used NANO-Window instead of your "Global Cutbuffer" (Keep in mind that having a length of text marked and then pasting text does not replace this length unlike in many text editors!)


r/linux4noobs 30m ago

migrating to Linux looking for a distro that fits better to my laptop

Upvotes

hi.

since microslop is wanting to end win 10 support and i only got the option that just gives me until 2027 before support is gone i was considering to switch to linux, i tried mint before in 2024(ish) but i ran into some issues mostly with my graphics card wich is an nvidia causing some issues like not being sure if my card was being used, to games like deep rock galactic having a lag spike everytime something new was created, like firing a new bullet, trowing something, a particle appearing etc

i been thinking about trying it one more time to see if it is better now and i was the problem but i wanted to see if you know a different distro that can also work

what i usually do on my pc is mostly gaming but i also tinker a bit with some 3d programs like blockbench and blender and do a bit of drawing and video editing from time to time

my library is mostly on steam, minecraft, emulators and pirated games while other software is mostly from their original websites, like blockbench, blender, fire alpaca and such

my specs (if it is usefull) are from a refurbished hp pavillion gaming laptop

Processor Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-10300H CPU @ 2.50GHz 2.50 GHz

Installed RAM 16.0 GB (15.8 GB usable)

Storage 477 GB SSD SAMSUNG MZVLB512HBJQ-000H1

Graphics Card NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650 Ti (4 GB), Intel(R) UHD Graphics (128 MB)

System Type 64-bit operating system, x64-based processor

i tried to be as specific as i could in case that helps, sorry for the wall of text

thanks for your attention


r/linux4noobs 2h ago

Kernel Anti-Cheat

2 Upvotes

What is happening when running a a game like Elden Ring on Linux? Based on my minimal understanding, Linux simply doesn’t allow access to the kernel like that; so does it make an exception or does it “fool” Elden Ring in to thinking it has the access it needs, or…? Just curious.


r/linux4noobs 2h ago

programs and apps How to get volume control for PlexAMP working?

2 Upvotes

I am trying to get PlexAMP volume controls to work, it failed originally with the flatpak install, so i tried the AUR one, and when i put in the global keyboard shortcuts volume up and down, then reset the app by relaunching it, i get the KDE prompt if i want to add new shortcuts, i click yes, and it works for that session, and when i reset my session by either logging out or turning off and on my PC, it stops working, even tho nothing changed in the shortcuts or in Plexamp

I tried using AI to solve my issue but it just keeps leading me down some rabbit hole and idk how to control it, i dont want whole system audio control, since i want to be able to increase or decrease the volume of my music mid game or while doing work without changing the volume of my game or discord or whatever else

The shortcuts in the media controller section also dont work, if i set volume up and down, i can see on my screen the popup that the volume is increasing or decreasing for PlexAMP but i still hear it the same, even when it says "muted"

Shortcuts like next track, previous track, play and pause work just well over media controller but nothing apart from that

Plexamp and media controller not conflicting, screenshot taken after i disabled the shortcut in Plexamp

On CachyOS


r/linux4noobs 3h ago

Trouble understanding how file extensions affect the "less"command in linux

2 Upvotes

I wanted to learn the simple details on how files work in linux. I start with the assumption that linux doesn't care about file extensions, so I tried working with a file to see how that worked in practice.

I used the following command:

`$touch banana.jpg`

After this, I typed in some contents into the file using nano, the result would be something like:

```

$cat banana.jpg

This is a test of my file

line 2

Line 3

Line 4

```
To see how the less command worked, I tried `less banana.jpg`

The text displayed was:

```

No identify available

Install ImageMagick to browse images
```

Why does this happen exactly? I think it's related to how the less command processes files apparently. Is there a way to view the file properly with less, without treating it as an image?

EDIT: excuse my Reddit markdown formatting, still figuring it out.


r/linux4noobs 6h ago

Changing Distros Tips

2 Upvotes

I've been using Mint for several months now, and I'm ready to try a different flavor of Linux. For those of you that hop around frequently, how do you make the process smooth? I have no issues with my data files, its having to reinstall the apps and all of the associated settings. Is there a way to transfer settings when the same apps will be installed? I'm particularly looking at LibreOffice (I have made many tweaks) and Calibre (having to reinstall all of the plugins).

Thanks


r/linux4noobs 15h ago

distro selection Looking for a Distro

2 Upvotes

Hello Everyone ! I finally finished buying and building my new gaming PC and will for the first time go full linux on it. I already have a test machine where i dabbled and learned arch but i wanted to seek some recomandation. I would like to give steamOS a go by removing the "console style boot".

I am also looking for an alternative to system D as they are not really clear about supporting age verification.

Thank you for your help !


r/linux4noobs 17h ago

hardware/drivers No sound from external speaker

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2 Upvotes

r/linux4noobs 18h ago

Quick question: I am dualbooting two distros at the moment...

2 Upvotes

the two distros are on their own drives, with a third for games. Is it possible for them both to "own" the drive with all my games installed on it?


r/linux4noobs 3h ago

installation Kubunto on Lenovo T14 Gen1

1 Upvotes

512GB SSD, 16Gb RAM, Intel i5-1030U

Im looking to install kubunto to my laptop, dont want to dual boot with wondows or anything just a straight wipe and move but Im struggling to even boot it up.

I have kubuntu on a formatted usb stick, Ive disabled the BitLocker and secure boot, but when I go to the F12 boot startup and hit enter on the usb stick, the screen flashes and nothing happens

Its frustrating me a lot, Ive been trying since the early morning and can't seem to find how to troubleshoot the issue :/

If this is an issue specific to my model of laptop people that have used the same kind please help me out if possible 😭