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. Do you know what's not a mistake though? Using today's sponsor. So Linode 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. Linode 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 Linode 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. Linode has a ton of these one-click deployable apps. I use Linode to run my own Nextcloud server, which I used 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 another 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 MacOS 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 device's 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 antivirus 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 distro you use? It looks so cool. It's Manjaro KDE. You liar! I tried to subscribe. Manjaro KDE 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 KDE? Is it Xfce? Is it Pantheon? Cinnamon? Once you know that, you pick a Linux beginner-friendly distribution like for example Kubuntu, Ubuntu, Zorin OS, 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 or KDE Neon 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 OSes that people are used to generally aren't very customizable out of the box. You can tweak a little bit of things in macOS 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 isn't on the bottom, on the right, the fact that it's a dock or it's an icon list, the fact that alt tab works in a certain way, you can change all of that regardless of the desktop environment. On Xfce, 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 macOS 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. The fourth mistake that Linux beginners 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 open, 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 where you regret only having two USB-C ports because dongle life 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 encounter. It's way better to know beforehand what will work, what will need a solution, and what can't work, than 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're 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 GIMP or Krita instead of Photoshop. You're gonna waste some time learning OnlyOffice 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 macOS. You can install GIMP or LibreOffice or anything else basically on Windows or macOS. 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. Now, 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. 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. Engagement is views. Views is money. Maybe I should do some fake tutorials. Now, as practical as it can be for the tutorial's writer, 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 some things. 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 distro 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 your needs. There are plenty of choices on Linux. 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 Slimbook. If you don't know about Slimbook, they are 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!