Do NOT add too many third party repos, they’re a pain in the ass to remove later.

Try distrobox.

Ctrl+R to search your bash history. I hate how long I went without knowing this, so I’ve always got to spread the word about it.

KDE is your friend in the trenches, Kubuntu > Ubuntu 100%

Regardless of whatever distro, definitely keep all your stuff backed up on an external drive. I had to “restart” my install a few times to get the hang of things. Yet I still keep all my info on an Vegacrypt encrypted external just in case to this day.

I do not know what sort of power management software exists by default on Ubuntu, but for laptop use I would strongly recommend getting a power management package like TLP to configure power profile settings for your laptop when on battery and on charge. It can greatly improve battery performance. Some alternatives like auto-cpufreq and powertop exist, but I have tried all 3 and found that TLP worked the best for me.

My big tip is if you haven’t already, switch to a local package repository. There are a lot of people mirroring the software packages for mint and you can switch to one that is geographically the closest to you for better speed and to spread out the server load.

I love Linux Mint and it’s what I install on all my decom-laptops turned servers. It will do pretty much all you want to do in Windows and then some. The only thing it probably isn’t the absolute best for is PC gaming but if you are just using a laptop it probably doesn’t make much of a difference either way.

If you like Mint then I also suggest PopOS. They are both based on Ubuntu so a lot of the paths and the package manager are the same. The killer feature there is auto-tiling Windows which is like the window snap feature in windows but happens automatically. It’s not for everyone but once I started using it, it changed my entire workflow.

Last thing is, if you haven’t already, familiarize yourself with running docker containers. A lot of stuff that’s complicated to set up is a breeze with docker and docker-compose.

Rather than Ubuntu Cinnamon, you’d be better off with Linux Mint.

do not copy paste commands you do not uderstand from shady forums in hope it will solve your problem :)

Unless you are looking to work on shared systems/servers as sysadmin or other jobs, explore shells like zsh or fish and customise them rather than stick to bash. A lot more user friendly and accessible advanced features. Helps with learning a lot. Zsh is compatible with bash but fish isn’t. So choose based on what your goal with learning shell is.

If you are sticking with debian based distros, try apt and synaptic(GUI) to install your software. At some point you might also need to install tar archives. Don’t get worried as most guides should be easy to follow.

First thing I’d do is ditch the GUI file manager: get comfortable with cd, ls, mv, rm, etc.

After that, maybe start with basic text manipulation, like grep, awk, sort, uniq, etc. This ties in nicely with IO redirection, which is essential for a “CLI based workflow.” Get comfortable with pipes and file redirection, it’s extremely powerful!

Writing shell scripts is another super useful exercise: any time you find yourself running the same set of commands multiple times, think about making it a shell script. You may end up with some really useful little custom tools that way.

Switch from bash to zsh and make it look nice – https://dev.to/abdfnx/oh-my-zsh-powerlevel10k-cool-terminal-1no0 Also replace ls with exa and cat with batcat. Remember you can set aliases in ~/.bashrc or ~/.zshrc.

If you like customization, I’d recommend KDE. If you like customizing keyboard stuff, you can customize your keyboard layout here: /usr/share/X11/xkb/symbols. Also look into espanso for text expansion.

If you have an Android phone, get KDE Connect.

If you need new software, check apt search if it’s in there.

My tip would be to try a few distros before you settle on one. Ubuntu was it for me about seven years ago, but I used mint for a few years and am using MX with xfce now.

Also, sudo !! is pretty useful when you forget to sudo the previous command. It means “super user do the last command I just boneheadedly forgot to do that to”

I think the two “major tips” that I can give you are simply

1- Package manager is your best friend.

2- Figure out the “know-hows” of Linux (i.e who “is responsible” for the video card, who deals with the cpu, how do i configure my sound card, how do i configure my video card, etc.).

Master those two tips and you can call yourself an average linux user.

My main recommendation is this - The more techsavvy you are, the harder a switch to Linux will be, because you know how to do some complex things on Windows, and now you’ll have to relearn it on Linux.

Take your time, Google lots, and just know the ceiling on Linux is much higher for power users, so getting over the initial hump will reward you greatly

I just started using Linux

Welcome!

I have not tried running WINE yet but I plan on doing so soon.

Don’t feel pressured in any way to use Wine. Sure; if you’re in need of certain software that’s only available on Windows, then feel free to engage with Wine to get said software working on your system. However, note that a lot of alternatives exist, so make sure to check them out through something like alternativeto.net before getting involved with Wine.

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?

Broad question; arguably it makes sense to start out with something like linuxjourney.com if you haven’t yet. After which, you might proceed to plunge deeper into some of the subjects that have been introduced through more expansive resources. Assuming that you might prefer something like a video guide of sorts; it’s worth pointing out that the videos made by the Learn Linux TV channel on YouTube are excellent. One might argue that the ArcoLinux distro might be worth exploring as a platform to learn Linux on; it’s literally one of its design goals. Though, once again, you shouldn’t feel pressured in any way to use a certain distro to learn Linux on. We’ll delve into distros later on.

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?

Cinnamon is just a Desktop Environment, and it happens to look and function close to how Windows does, which is one of the main reasons it is often recommended to newer users that seek a familiar experience. There’s nothing necessarily wrong with Cinnamon, really. Though, it’s worth pointing out that it’s not one of the top dogs in the realm of Desktop Environments; those would be GNOME and KDE. Those two have put in considerable work and effort to have proper Wayland support, which we’ll call the ‘successor’ of X11; this is a very oversimplified description and thus somewhat false, but it would be out of scope for this comment to delve deeper into this. What’s worth pointing out is that Cinnamon -due to its reliance on X11- is (very likely) to be deprived of features like HDR support and superior security standards as long as they don’t put in the necessary time and effort to get proper Wayland support for themselves.

In case your question was meant to ask if Ubuntu LTS is the best platform/distro to learn Linux on, then the only correct answer would be that it depends on your needs. Ubuntu is definitely a decent choice, but you’re not protected from unintentionally borking your system when you try to install Steam. Jokes aside, even though Pop!_OS is only based on Ubuntu and thus I don’t know for 100% sure if said bug stems from Ubuntu or Pop!_OS, it’s still worth pointing out that this is not necessarily a very bad showing for Ubuntu or Pop!_OS. Unfortunately bugs happen, though it’s great to have a system that might be better protected…, though unfortunately nothing comes without a cost… compromises… compromises…; moving on.

In case you’re interested to explore other distros, perhaps take a look at distrochooser.de. It’s not exhaustive by any stretch of the imagination, but it’s decent as a first orientation. If you share your result, then we might even give our opinion on the matter based on said results. If you do end up sharing the result, consider answering the following questions as well (feel free to give non-binary answers):

• Sane defaults or Blank slate?
• Full control or Little to no control?
• Secure or Convenient?
• Tool to get work done or Tool to explore/play around?

any great tips?

You might come across a piece of software that’s not available within the repo of your distro. However, if you know that it’s available in another distro’s repo, then perhaps you should use Distrobox (or similar container-solutions) to access said software. Refer to videos on YouTube if you’re interested to know how it works, though its documentation is quite excellent as well.

Be patient. Anytime you have to delete any system files just rename it with bak suffix. Have fun