If you’ve installed fresh Windows off a usb then process is the same for Linux, and you don’t really need to mess with terminal by just using the Microsoft Store equivalent on the Linux distro you choose. I didn’t find it too different from using Windows or MacOS. I was able to download all my usual programs like Steam and Firefox off the Linux appstore.

But if I had to install a program outside of the Linux store they usually came as a sh or deb file.

If it was deb I’d open terminal where the deb file was and type in sudo dpkg -i filename.deb

And if sh I’d open terminal where the sh file was and type in sh ./name_of_file.sh

That’s pretty much the only terminal commands I’ve needed to know to get started.

When it came to drivers I was lucky enough to have it be pretty much handle everything for me on my old laptop out the box. Main reason I had tried Linux was because Windows ran slow on it, and also an old scanner I had didn’t have drivers that supported it anymore. But, on Linux the scanner just worked.

Syncthing has been so helpful in making me move away from cloud based options. And to think only reason I found out about it and gave it a shot was because I was trying to figure out how to easily sync my non Steam game save files between my Desktop and my Steam Deck. It’s been invaluable since then.

The US becoming a questionable country and people realizing how almost every digital service and product is US based also ended up becoming a huge incentive to start seeking out alternatives instead putting all their eggs in one country. If it hadn’t been for that I wouldn’t have been making so many product shifts and seeking out foss alternatives or at the very least nonUS alternatives.

It’s been very cool seeing lot of people making attempts to try out stuff like Linux too even if they don’t stick with it.

Is it finally the year of foss? I love LibreOffice and started using it years back for personal use not wanting to bother with buying another Microsoft Office version once the one I had stopped getting security updates.

Looks like I made a good decision deciding to move from onenote to obsidian last month. I like that it is a fancy mark down editor so I can just move my text files some where else if I decide to not use Obsidian in the future. When it comes to onenote functionality of being able to draw or paste where ever I want the excalidraw plugin which is open source has met my needs.

Been nice to move to something that is multi platform.