I just fucking can’t with windows anymore. I’d preach about it but I imagine you’ve heard it all. I have minimal computer expertise.

I use my PC mainly for streaming, downloading torrent files who’s copyright you don’t need to worry about, and light gaming. Usually just messing with New Vegas mods.

If someone knows of a good YouTube channel or guide or something written for andelder millennial caveman I would be grateful.

Edit: after having been recommended mint OS and giving it a quick Google, I got this! I haven’t fucked with anything linux scince the early aughts. And holy shit has that come a ways. Guess I remembered back and got a little intimidated. Mint is downloading now. As a small f.u. I booted up edge to do it. Ty you beautiful people!

  • neidu2@feddit.nl
    0·
    11 months ago

    Hallelujah, another soul saved!

    Personally I’d recommend Mint. It’s intuitive and things tend to work out of the box. There are many others that’ll do just as fine, but the large Mint userbase makes it easy to google any problems you might stumble into.

    I’ve been primarily a linux user for almost two decades now, and I still run mint, simply because I sometimes just want something simple that does its job without much hazzle.

    • MintyFresh@lemmy.worldOP
      0·
      11 months ago

      That’s exactly what I’m looking for. I don’t need much out of it. I just can’t take widows shit anymore. The latest update broke me

      • neidu2@feddit.nl
        0·
        11 months ago

        Then Mint is for you. No nagging, no AI search. It just… works.

        The only thing I have to do after first install is to get nvidia drivers running, which isn’t as awful as some linux enthusiasts might have you believe.

  • Panda (he/him)@lemmy.dbzer0.com
    0·
    11 months ago

    Saw the edits and I would like to congratulate you on the start of your journey.

    All of the stuff you mentioned works very well - OBS is native, (and if you miss the performance of ShadowPlay, somebody made a replacement!
    qBittorrent is native (and IMO the best) and the vast majority of games work on Linux now!(ProtonDB is a great resource for seeing what works and what does, and it even has a profile feature where you can plug in your Steam account username so it can automatically show you what’s compatible!)
    Mods are slightly finicky, but SteamTinkerLaunch will likely be able to solve all your problems, and r/linux_gaming has numerous discussions and workarounds, including this very recent and relevant one!

    Have fun, and try not to get caught up in distrohopping!

  • electric_nan@lemmy.ml
    0·
    11 months ago

    Yeah just boot it up and fuck around. You’ll eventually want to do something that isn’t obviously doable, and then you’ll look it up. A series of rabbit holes later and you’ll have learned a bunch of stuff. Maybe not the thing you originally wanted to, but some other stuff!

  • Corr@lemm.ee
    0·
    11 months ago

    Quick tip to add to all the other advice: if Linux give you a warning, please read it carefully. Its not windows where you can safely blow through warnings. Otherwise, use it and enjoy!

  • AnAnonymous@lemm.ee
    0·
    11 months ago

    You can use Copilot to ask about the problems you face after installing Linux, it will save you time instead of using normal search engines. Good luck!

    • ProgrammingSocks@pawb.social
      0·
      11 months ago

      “How do I remove a folder called root using the Linux terminal”

      “This task can be achieved with a simple command, just run sudo rm -rf / --no-preserve-root and the folder should be deleted. Hope this helps!”

      Don’t use copilot without checking another source.

      • AnAnonymous@lemm.ee
        0·
        11 months ago

        Actually that’s the way to remove the root folder, but obviously people should know if you remove the root folder you remove everything in the partition included the system and the files, it’s not a problem of the AI it’s a problem about dumb people.

        • ProgrammingSocks@pawb.social
          0·
          11 months ago

          The joke is I’m referring to a generic folder simply named root. Not the root folder.

          it’s not a problem of the AI it’s a problem about dumb people

          Hey, I’m not the one telling people to blindly follow an LLM.

          • AnAnonymous@lemm.ee
            0·
            11 months ago

            I didn’t said to blindly follow an AI, in fact, you should never follow anything blindly, I just said(supposing you have common sense) you can save some time using an AI to look for answers instead of using normal search engines.

        • vaionko@sopuli.xyz
          0·
          11 months ago

          No. That removes everything in the root filesystem. Very different from a “folder called root”. The correct command would be rm -r root

  • yo_scottie_oh@lemmy.mlEnglish
    0·
    11 months ago

    Since you chose Linux Mint—good choice btw—something to keep in mind is that Mint is based on Ubuntu. While you’re learning and searching the interwebs for how to do x, y, and z, if you don’t find an article or guide specifically about Mint, try searching the same phrase replacing “mint” with “ubuntu.” There’s far more content out there about Ubuntu than Mint, but since Mint is based on Ubuntu, 9 times out of 10 the same solution on an Ubuntu forum works in Mint.

    Good luck!

  • oo1@kbin.social
    0·
    11 months ago

    explainingcomputers on youtube.

    But really he just shows how there’s nothing to it these days.
    Probably easier than a windows install.
    Especially if you try to force your brain to read the windows user agreement - I tried to do a micrsoft virtual machine install recently, and got stuck at the EUA. My mouse just refused to click yes.

    • theshatterstone54@feddit.uk
      0·
      11 months ago

      The mention of the EULA brought back bad memories.

      That was not a joke. I’m the guy that reads the Terms of Service and especially the Privacy Policy. I’m not a lawyer, but the more of these you read, the easier it gets to weed out the good ones from the standard (read: terrible) ones, and the absolutely monstrous ones. The Windows EULA is among the worst ones I’ve read (though I admittedly did a skim read of that one). As I was writing this, I decided to actually read the EULA and found a grammatical error in it lol.

  • Footnote2669@lemmy.zip
    0·
    11 months ago

    Can’t recommend channels or guides of the top of my head, but maybe search Linux Mint beginner guide or something. Linux Mint is recommended everywhere for people who are new to Linux and should have plenty of guides and answers

  • Nibodhika@lemmy.world
    0·
    11 months ago

    Hey, others have already replied to a lot of things and you’ve already downloaded Mint (which is what I would have recommended also), so I would like to point out some things I always tell newcomers and some specific things for what you said.

    First of all: Linux is not Windows is the hardest lesson to learn, there are a lot of things you’re used to doing one way, but that doesn’t make that way correct. The main example is installing software, looking on the internet and downloading a binary from a website is NOT how you do it, the example I always give is that of a smartphone, it’s just as ridiculous to do in Linux than on a smartphone and for the same reasons. Instead use the package manager of your distro, that should work like the play/app store (except it’s free), and if something is not there maybe you can add a repository to it, or maybe the program doesn’t exist on Linux, only as a last resource should you do it manually.

    Partitions and drives: Linux doesn’t have the concept of a C: or D: drives, instead drives/partitions are mounted onto regular folders, so navigating through them is seamless. This means that if for example you were t mount the folder that contains all of your personal user data (/home) into a different partition from the root of the system (i.e /), you could format and change the system entirely without losing any personal data. This is very useful because it’s very likely you will poke something and break stuff, with much freedom comes much power to break things, so being able to reinstall your system without worrying about your personal data is a good thing.

    Drivers: mostly you shouldn’t worry about drivers on Linux, unless your GPU is Nvidia, if so you should worry about drivers a lot. Nvidia’s work best with the proprietary nvidia driver (instead of the default open nouveau driver), but the fact that the driver is proprietary makes it a pain in the ass to deal. You should 100% use it since you’re gaming, but you should steer away from distributions that use Wayland (nevermind what this is for now) instead of X11 (Mint so far uses X11). If you have a Radeon you shouldn’t worry about this.

    I use my PC mainly for streaming

    Be careful, afaik not all streaming software/sites are compatible with Linux. But that’s not a world I dabbled much, I know OBS works excellently, but other than that don’t know much.

    downloading torrent files who’s copyright you don’t need to worry about

    We all have torrent downloaders, for our Linux iso which are distributed via torrent of course

    and light gaming. Usually just messing with New Vegas mods.

    Iirc new Vegas is not on the supported list on steam, so you need to go to settings and enable Proton compatibility for all titles. I’ve never put mods so not sure how to do that, but you might need to read something before because the game is being run through a compatibility layer, so the files are not exactly where you would expect, and if you need to run a binary to find those files it needs to be in the same profile as new Vegas (each game creates their own profile based on steam ID, and each profile is in a different folder). Other than that New Vegas works perfectly on Linux, I’ve played it a long time ago, and now with the TV show I’ve started again.

    Last but not least: Welcome!

    • TheLugal@lemmy.world
      0·
      11 months ago

      Excellent reply!

      I just want to add that partitioning your drives is not backups and can never replace backups. It just increases the likelihood of making it easier to fix should you fuck something up with your install.

      Also, if OP means “watching streaming services” and by “streaming”, there should be little to no setup. Mainly the browser might ask you to enable DRM for the service to work.

    • SquirtleHermit@lemmy.world
      0·
      11 months ago

      Piggybacking on to this excellent comment to elaborate on modding New Vegas. Everything except NVR works great! I’d recommend using this to install MO2

      4GB patcher has a Linux specific version on the Nexus Mods page.

      You can run most tools like the BSA decompressor or the TTW installer using Protontricks.

      xLODGen can be added as a tool to MO2 and just works.

      edit: Forgot to mention, Wabbajack doesn’t work. Best just to run it on a Windows VM and move the files. Also, the current working version of MO2 doesn’t support Root builder. So just move any files that need to be in the game folder directly to the game folder.

    • TheHarpyEagle@lemmy.world
      0·
      11 months ago

      Proton is a godsend. Some games can be a little unstable, but I’ve yet to find one that doesn’t work at all. Even was able to install and mod a game from 2000. For what doesn’t work on Proton, Lutris can hopefully handle. Takes a little doing sometimes but I got Battlenet/WoW working almost prefectly with CurseForge.

      Nvidia drivers are a huge pain in the ass, though, and haven’t played nice with Wayland in my experience.

      • Nibodhika@lemmy.world
        0·
        11 months ago

        There are games that don’t work with Proton, but at this stage is 99% games that are actively trying not to work with Proton, e.g. DRM infested games.