Basically, a “handcrafted” cmatrix with compilation flags focused on optimization and the musl library (which is “technically better” than glib, a standard library on most distros).
Do feel free to try it out however, its only 139KiB – click here.
tl;dr guide on how to get it running
1- Install docker (docker on most distros – docker.io on ubuntu and friends)
2- sudo usermod -aG docker (addyourusernamehere)
3- reboot
4- run it with “docker run -it --rm --log-driver none --net none --read-only defnotgustavom/cmatrix:marchedition”
My advice is to restart with Arch (I use Arch btw). Not Manjaro, I’m talking Arch.
I think using/installing Arch as well as its barebones nature FORCES you to understand how Linux works differently than Windows with concepts like root, bootloader, terminal emulation, and disk partitioning, just to give you some examples. At the same time, Arch has excellent documentation, a great package manager in pacman, and rolling release model that greatly simplifies maintainance during daily use so you can tune it to exactly how you want it.
I believe doing it the hard way at first will make it easier for you in the long run if you really want to understand Linux, and Arch is just the right amount of difficult to make you learn Linux, whereas Gentoo would be too hard and you don’t learn enough from using Ubuntu/Debian/Mint.
But yeah, if you just want to use something that works well out of the box, then Ubuntu is great, there’s nothing wrong with using the more user friendly distros.
I tried that after already having about 2 years experience with Ubuntu desktop and an Ubuntu server (but still mostly a Windows user). I’m also a software developer.
And I failed to install Arch on a laptop the last time I tried it out. Ubuntu ran flawlessly, trying to go step by step through the Arch installation I hit a random error (at a step that was very straight forward and easy in the documentation) and got stuck. Messed around with it and at some point gave up.
I mean that’s years ago, it probably works a lot better nowadays and especially on more modern hardware, but even so for someone new to Linux I’d never tell them to go with a do-it-yourself install. Slap Ubuntu on that bad boy, let them install a few packages, do a handful of terminal commands and they’ll get much farther. Instead of giving up three hours in because a random command (that they still don’t understand) is broken.
If you look at the original post, his goal is to learn and understand Linux and he is on his third attempt after already trying Ubuntu remix, which is why I made this suggestion.
Again, if he just wanted to use Linux on his computer, then there is nothing wrong with using a more user friendly distro at all. But for his particular needs he described, then Arch is a better distro for learning how Linux actually works.
But as OP said, they already failed several times. That’s like telling someone who nearly drowned in the shallow end of a pool to go jump into the ocean.
See here:
So what would be a good distro to look into for a novice and where should I look for a tutorial?
For me it feels like they do want to learn, but aren’t comfortable yet as a day to day user. They want to use Linux, but struggle with commands and how to use it. Having a stable and easy to use system you can use each day without trouble would probably be a better start than telling them to fiddle with Arch. Give them an easy distro and when they want to learn more they can use the crappy old laptop and try to install Arch on there (while leaving their daily driver alone).
I think I learned the most when using Ubuntu for school, 90% of it was easy and straight forward. 10% of it was hell, like back in the day getting HDMI or audio to work. But because the 90% were there I just dug in and spent a dozen hours to troubleshoot the rest.
Well, I think “drowning” could be a bit much. Don’t want to make Linux sound that scary now.
I think there is a reason why “Learning Python the Hard Way” is so popular, because although it’s harder, it leads to learning better fundamentals which makes things easier in the long run.
So, I think OP should still give Arch a try, maybe he (they?) will be more receptive to this method, and there’s no harm in trying.
I’m a long time Linux user but I’m really lazy. I recently installed Arch to try it out again as last time I did it was maybe 2012. Personally, manually setting up the hard drive partitions on initial install is just annoying enough to be too much work (I have a lot of drives) but luckily there’s an installer that does that part for you. Everything else you have to do is sensible and easy and actually ends up being less work in the long run. The wiki is also extremely informative, helpful and correct.
Arch probably can be a beginner distro just because if you have a problem it’s so much easier to find out how to fix it on the internet thanks to the wiki and the forums. Something as mundane as installing nvidia drivers in Debian can be a massive ordeal and the minimum required skill level to fix it yourself if it doesn’t work on the first attempt is very high.
Arch is amazing for all of these reasons, and I agree that by design it’ll give you a lot of insight in to what’s under the hood that most other distos tuck away.
I’ve used it in the past and ended up moving away from it because it requires quite a bit more effort to maintain, which got tiresome.
Arch has an active and dedicated community, so obviously there’s a whole lot of people out there who feel it’s worth the effort. Maybe OP will too. But it’s not a distro to take on lightly.
I didn’t stick with Linux as a daily driver until I tried Manjaro. Learned enough to be comfortable installing Arch and ran that for a while, but after installing it a few times I was looking something a little bit simpler to setup. I now prefer EndeavourOS which is basically Arch with a nice installer and a few QoL apps.
Theoretically I like the idea but in practice too many bugs, too much disk space, not really clear how to change font size for example… and after all that, some apps are not in flatpak. It is not ready for me yet.
I must be lucky to not have run into drugs, but damn it is probably inevitable. Okay, I will find a better solution. Appimages are apparently the superior version of this concept.
Well… not really. I like them, but flatpak has sandbox and much wider scope. Flatpak also has official repository you can trust, while app images are usually created by random people. Use only ones from original developers or sources you trust.
I am definitely using Flatpaks for large, basically institutionalized programs like Blender, Godot engine, Cura, Prusaslicer… Still, I should double check.
Authoring seems very easy, and I have no idea if there is a filtering/auditing policy, so thank you. I will be more careful.
I used to have strong opinions on my OS. Then I got a job and all I use is outlook and excel. Now I don’t care about my operating system. I’m not even sure which version of windows I’m running without checking. 10 I guess?
Ubuntu my dude. I started fiddling with it years ago and it’s my go to when I need a good desktop / gaming system. Any distro is gonna be a steep learning curve and a great way to go about it is to get a crapola system and start banging Linux on it. You’ll be frustrated and then search and find that there is a massive amount of community support for most distros. I use a Raspberry PI 4 running Ubuntu 64 for all my AV needs… Drives the projector and stereo and also serves as a retro gaming over the projector deal. We’re all fed up with windows.
I dislike when documentations add sudo because what if I am root already or what if sudo is not installed on my machine and I cannot just copy and paste the lines because I have to avoid pasting sudo.
Quite the opposite, after fiddling with it for six months I fully uninstalled flatpak and deleted the directory to get away from the fact it kept downloading copies of nvidia drivers when I had moved to an AMD a year ago, and the drivers were locked from being manually removed even after I uninstalled all flatpak packages.
I’m an Arch user, trust me when I say I read the documentation.
Damn, alright. I am starting to get the hate for it. I think I am blinded by the sheer convenience of it. Also, I am probably sleeping on more up to date repositories that gets me what I want without using flatpaks.
Linux Mint has been babying me though. I love the comfort, and cinnamon is everything I need in a DE. I will need to see what I can do.
I have been using Linux exclusively for maybe 8 years now? I just never dived to deeply into power user territory. I can get around okay, and am comfortable with the terminal and all that, I was just never interested in spending too much time trying to customize everything.
For a period I was obsessed with alternative operating systems. I read that Haiku is basically ready for evey day use. I wonder how Redox is coming along…
Great news to have more options in the Enterprise Linux space in the future. Personally I’m going to keep running Alma at work since they’ve promised to keep working on security updates and watching the whole RHEL linux thing unfold.
Updating individual applications is a pain on NixOS. You’d either have to override the attributes of the package (which can get quite ugly and complicated and does not always work) or pull in a new commit of nixpkgs that has the version you want which requires the download of a ton of other dependencies that were compiled for that specific commit of nixpkgs.
Flatpaks solved this problem for me and helped reduce the download size every time I wanted to update something.
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