I am a software developer and am forced to have Windows on my work computer. WSL allows me to have a Linux terminal that I can use directly on my files without needed a VM.
But being forced to use a terminal to do anything is kinda hard to deal with if you’re not a developer. I’m probably guessing this didn’t bother you that much.
What are you trying to do on WSL? I think the whole point of WSL originally was to have a linux terminal on Windows, before they added graphics in WSL 2.
I was trying to run applications on it, similar to their Windows Subsystem for Android that they released as an update to Windows 11. I have to say, the latter is significantly easier to deal with imo.
Same. Well, not forced, but using Linux would just make everything more difficult. I like being able to drop to a shell and use a Linux environment with its useful utilities to manipulate stuff on my Windows PC.
Yeah, I could use mingw, but that is a pain, and I can’t just apt install stuff.
There’s also a package called gsudo which allows you to preface a PowerShell command with sudo to run it as an administrator. It will cause a UAC prompt.
<span style="color:#323232;">sudo choco update all
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Puppy Linux is mostly focused on tiny install size (<300MB), built from source and hasn’t had a new version in over 3 years.
Alpine is even more minimalist and designed to run on embedded devices or in containers.
Go with a desktop-oriented or general purpose distro instead.
My Linux knowledge isn’t what it used to be, but I believe you can easily make a thumb drive with a bootable distro. I would recommend taking whatever you choose for a test drive before you wipe a working system. That way you can see if there’s any weird stuff that doesn’t want to work.
It seems your machine has 4GB of RAM, in which case you can run KDE (for example) quite comfortably and don’t necessarily need a lightweight-focused desktop environment. So I’d say to go with a popular distro, as the other comment suggested, and not a niche one. Then pick the DE you like from videos/screenshots.
Microsoft has pushed OEM’s to stop supporting S3 in bios, instead wanting hybrid sleep. Microsoft wants this because hybrid sleep allows waking for sending telemetry to Microsoft all the dang time, like cell phones do. I curse the day they did this.
Since it’s your first time, my first suggestion is to try Xubuntu (Ubuntu with XFCE desktop) or Kubuntu (Ubuntu with KDE desktop and generally more popular than Xubuntu). Both distributions are lighter on resources and they have an Ubuntu base which means there’s a ton of documentation online so if you run into problems, you will have plenty of resources.
Alpine is small for sure but it is more niche and it doesn’t use systemd which most major distributions use which means if you happen to run into weird issues, your pool of resources will be smaller. Don’t get me wrong, Alpine is great but I wouldn’t recommend it for new users. I don’t know anything about Puppy Linux; maybe it’s fine?
If your machine can’t run Xubuntu or Kubuntu, then worry about trying more niche distros like Alpine or Puppy.
If you run into issues, feel free to ask questions. The community is generally nice but you’ll want to try fixing it yourself first and then including what you tried in your post to get a better reception.
Embrace the terminal. It’s daunting at first but it’s such a powerful tool. Don’t use sudo with every command. Don’t paste random command in the terminal without doing a little research to understand what they do. Again, ask if you need help, you won’t learn everything overnight.
Good luck!
Edit: Linux Mint is also probably a good choice. Never used it myself but I’ve heard good things.
I struggled with Kubuntu as newbie (coming from Windows) - Mint was easier for me and I sticked with it (Cinnamon in my case, but my laptop is more powerful)
I appreciate what KDE is doing with their DE, I’m glad it exists but it’s not for me either. I only suggest it because it’s surprisingly light on resources for the amount of customization options you get.
You might want to think twice before using unique, niche distros like GoboLinux, Alpine, or NixOS. PuppyLinux doesn’t look like a proper distro, more like the equivalent of EndeavourOS or Artix. Since you’re using Linux for the first time, why not use Linux Mint, Ubuntu or Fedora?
No not really. Gnome for me is about 2.5 gigs of Ram, XFCE 700 megabytes and the CPU load also is way lower. XFCE can be heavy or light depending on how you configure it
Heck ya to Fedora, glad to see it recommended for a first time user. It’s not much more difficult than Mint, but you can also get into the weeds instead of having to find a new distro after Mint. Mint basically has permanent training wheels, while with Fedora you can pop em off whenever it’s convient.
Edit: Fedora is also a more up to date Alpine and it’s not directly controlled by Red Hat.
As long as the laptop boots, you should be able to switch to a TTY console, where you have a complete shell interface to your system after logging in (in said TTY console). So, being greeted with a login screen or something is a win here - but you’re very vague in your report.
The GUI is only just a program and has nothing to do with your boot options in BIOS or bootloader (like grub).
Using CTRL-ALT-[F1-9/0] you can switch between your virtual consoles and on only one of them your GUI is running.
You can use any other one to change anything on the system from CLI.
You should also be able to stop the current GUI/X11 Session and directly start the window manager you wish - temporarily to fix your system, if you’re not confident in the CLI.
Does this apply to Proton as well, or have they had their own fixes for Vulkan or something? Cause I’ve been playing games on Wayland with Proton just fine for a good while now.
If you as a developer wanted a non-technical user to test a thing you fixed for them, you could ask them to try an AppImage from your CI pipeline and they would easily be able to install it. They’re great for that.
Also, trying out a package can leave unwanted system state around in traditional imperative system package managers. AppImages OTOH are self-contained and user-installable.
More important would be to have another device where you can go to internet to google or to download binaries for the time if you get stuck.
My first time I couldn’t connect to internet because I was missing firmware for the laptop. I had to use the computer at my work to troubleshoot it and download the necessary package to get it working. That took a lot of days.
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