I just installed Ubuntu 22.04.3 LTS (Cinnamon) on an empty laptop a couple days ago and have been experimenting a lot. I’m coming from being a Windows user since I was just a little kid playing old DOS games on my grandpa’s Win-98 PC back in around 2000. My daily driver is currently running Windows 10 but I am pretty adamant on not going with Win-11. I’ve been wanting to experiment with Linux for a while and Cinnamon so far seems like a lot of fun to navigate. Terminal is amazing. The fact that you can custom-write keyboard commands that can be hand-tailored to individual programs on your computer via the OS… that’s powerful.
I have not tried running WINE yet but I plan on doing so soon. I also have not done much of anything, honestly, except for learning how to search for programs with gnome-software --search=. I have also used sudo a couple times to download software here and there, but I know I am not tackling this in as systematic of a way as I ought to be to really figure this machine out.
What are some really important basic commands I can use to start branching out into Terminal command structures and learning more about how I can edit and customize my computer? And if Cinnamon has shortfalls or weaknesses that I may run into eventually, what are some good alternative distros that I could leapfrog to eventually? I do not have any coding experience (currently), but I do consider myself a semi-power-user on Windows, having messed with CMD many times and digging through all the damn menus to access drivers and alter ports.
Do not expect things to work as they do in Windows.
While you can get most things done via a GUI option using the Terminal is much more powerful and gives more information.
This pertains mostly to Laptops and peripherals, but always do a quick Google search to check for any issues.
One of the big issues for people is sound, a lot of computer & parts makers like to use the cheapest no-name parts they can because Windows lets them require “drivers” aka software fixes for poor hardware whereas Linux tends to give unaltered output leading to complaints about sound quality.
You are not going to find software from Adobe, Microsoft office 365 etc running on Linux even using WINE.
Some games will not work on Linux even using the Proton compatibility software.
There is a lot of software made for Linux are made by devs who focus more on the under the hood performance than making the software GUI look pretty. So don’t be put off by the looks of a lot of Linux software.
I highly recommend Using the Alternativeto website to (as the name implies) find alternatives to software you use on Windows.
Setup an external device be it an internal hard drive, external hard drive or NAS as a backup target for your files.
You can use Timeshift to backup the entire drive (and it can reload a chosen backup directly onto the drive), Lucky backup to sync specified folders (either one way or both ways) to your drives or as I do use both.
And backup before doing major updates.
I have Timeshift setup to backup the entire drive (including $home) to a separate internal HDD and Luckybackup set to backup my important folders to an external USB HDD.
As you are learning how to use and navigate you will have accidents that will require a full reinstall, don’t fear this has happened to everyone else and why you backup your files so it’s an annoyance instead of the end of the world.
If you’re upgrading your laptop, find one with an intel wifi chip. Broadcom and Atheros may work, but be prepared for some headaches.
Intel and AMD video chips are also well supported. Avoid nvidia stuff.