Linux Mint 17.1

[Anomaly1964]

My inlaws had a PC where the hard drive failed and they wound up getting a new one. I had an old hard drive lying around so I figured out how to partition it with gpart and installed Linix Mint 17.1...

As I am TOTALLY new to Linux, would love to hear some tips or tweaks I should use...

Thanks!

 

[screwd01]

Mint is a great starting place. I just started using it myself. I've never tried using Linux as a main OS before but Mint is extremely easy and has plenty of functionality out of the box.

If you've used OSX before you might feel right at home. I would dive into the system prefences and check out each and every one of them.

The Panel Bar ("taskbar") is customizable out the wazoo.

Also, if something hardware wise isn't working properly, you can most likely fix it with some magic using Terminal.

 

[danzigrules]

https://sites.google.com/site/easylinuxtipsproject/Home

 

[bbhaag]

Use the Software Manager to install programs. Don't go to the webpage and dl the installer unless you are confident in your abilities.

I know this may seem like a "duh" kind of thing to say but I didn't realize it when I first started because I was used to dl'ing the .exe like you do on Windows.

 

[Anomaly1964]

Mint is a great starting place. I just started using it myself. I've never tried using Linux as a main OS before but Mint is extremely easy and has plenty of functionality out of the box.

If you've used OSX before you might feel right at home. I would dive into the system prefences and check out each and every one of them.

The Panel Bar ("taskbar") is customizable out the wazoo.

Also, if something hardware wise isn't working properly, you can most likely fix it with some magic using Terminal.

It's my first experience with ANY type of Linux...

Seems very cool so far...

 

[Red Squirrel]

I recently installed Mint 17.1 Mate on my new machine and love it. It was incredibly easy to get going, I'm still in process of finalizing stuff but the majority of my every day stuff is working without much effort. All hardware is picked up too.

I want to see if I can get triple monitor to work but have not gotten to that yet.

 

[OBLAMA2009]

nowadays linux can pretty much do anything a home user would want to do, im surprised more people dont go linux at home

 

[BarkingGhostar]

nowadays linux can pretty much do anything a home user would want to do, im surprised more people dont go linux at home

Ignorance is a powerful force in the land of the stupid.

 

[Anteaus]

nowadays linux can pretty much do anything a home user would want to do, im surprised more people dont go linux at home

It all comes to legacy software as well as overwhelming commercial support. In the home environment where people have troves of software (mostly games) that still work fine on current Windows systems, it can be overwhelming to even think about leaving Windows behind let along actually doing it.

I love Linux and use it on my laptop and server, but using it on my primary desktop simply isn't an option. There are many good reasons to leave Windows for Linux, but giving up my Adobe photo editing software and games isn't worth it. Further, I get annoyed when people try to convince me that using software like Wine is equivalent. In spite of Windows 8's oddball interface design, under the hood it is quite competent and therefore makes the decision to give up Windows in favor of Linux even harder than it otherwise might be.

 

[OBLAMA2009]

It all comes to legacy software as well as overwhelming commercial support. In the home environment where people have troves of software (mostly games) that still work fine on current Windows systems, it can be overwhelming to even think about leaving Windows behind let along actually doing it.

I love Linux and use it on my laptop and server, but using it on my primary desktop simply isn't an option. There are many good reasons to leave Windows for Linux, but giving up my Adobe photo editing software and games isn't worth it. Further, I get annoyed when people try to convince me that using software like Wine is equivalent. In spite of Windows 8's oddball interface design, under the hood it is quite competent and therefore makes the decision to give up Windows in favor of Linux even harder than it otherwise might be.

<--not a game player, but yeah for those types, you right man