I want to do more with Linux as a new user

Ask Fedora
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1

I have Cosmic Atomic. I wish I could do more, but I am not techie. Still learning Linux. And since my former OS was wiped out by my VPN. I am scared to do anything. My nephew Installed my current OS. I have been looking into Kinoite and Silverblue. Not to sure.
What I want to do is use Flatpak to install. I don’t know how the updating is. I have to update in terminal currently, not to bad. I also need to be able to change my mouse cursor size and color. I would like to be able to put shortcuts on desktops, maybe. I love my Dock don’t like the Windows Taskbar. Left Microsoft/Windows Outright. Installing Linux from the Start wasn’t good for me. Nor losing my system. These are just questions right now.

Kinoite appeals to me:

The KDE Plasma desktop, in an atomic fashion

Surf the web, keep in touch with friends, manage files, enjoy music and video, and get productive at work without having to worry about breaking your system.# The KDE Plasma desktop, in an atomic fashion

2

How does atomic stop you breaking your system?
You still can put bad config in /etc and /home right?

3

Which left you as a novice Linux user with a desktop environment that is very young and under heavy development and an atomic distro that you need the terminal to maintain.

Frankly, I am not sure your nephew did you a favor there.

Kinoite and Silverblue come with KDE Plasma and Gnome, respectively. Both are solid desktops, though Gnome deviates more from the classic Windows desktop paradigm. It gets the job done, if you are willing to unlearn your Windows training. If not, you will likely hate it or use a bunch of extensions to make it more Windows-like, which IMHO defeats its purpose.

You can install Flatpaks on non-atomic distros, too. The reason I talked about Kinoite in your other thread is because there is a non-destructive way (rebasing) to switch between atomic distros, while switching to Fedora KDE or Workstation would require a reinstall.

I am on Fedora KDE (not Kinoite) and I have 46 Flatpaks installed.

Easy on KDE Plasma, not sure about Gnome.

Easy on KDE Plasma, requires an extension on Gnome. Frankly, after using Gnome for a few years, I see their point. I rarely ever stare at a desktop with icons, I work with applications, which cover the icons on the desktop and require additional actions to get to them. But I like that I can put things on the desktop in KDE Plasma, though I rarely do it.

Gnome requires an extension to get a dock, in KDE Plasma you can configure the bottom panel to behave like a dock.

I actually have mine configured as a mix of a dock and a taskbar. Because I have a large monitor, my bottom panel is centered and half the width of my screen (so 25% empty space, 50% panel, 25% empty space). The panel itself looks more like a taskbar, with the launcher icon on the left (think “start menu”), then a bunch of pinned applications, then some empty space for starting additional, non-pinned applications, then the tray icons (for which Gnome requires an extension, you might notice a pattern), then the current time and date, and finally a weather widget. And if the space for application icons isn’t enough, the panel will grow to the left and right as needed (up to around 75% the width of my monitor).

Installing, especially with the new Anaconda installer in Fedora KDE, is relatively straightforward. And it is IMO a good learning experience. Just make sure you backup your data somewhere safe.

Edit: The new Anaconda installer isn’t exclusive to Fedora KDE. In fact, it was used in the installer for Workstation a few releases before it arrived in Fedora KDE.

4

Well I don’t know all the details, my genuis nephew installed the system. But I did see a problem being installed. Then the system was having trouble. My nephew said it is just slowing down and not freezing or shutting down. It will drop it if the problem is effecting it. I did see this with my own eyes. I am 4-5 weeks off the Windows Boat. So still new.

I should add my nephew which I did not know was very very smart. For only being 6 months into 18. He got tired of Linux and made he own OS.

5

Doesn’t sound particularly wise to leave you with a system which prevents you from making such a fundamental change as increasing the size and colour of the cursor, to be frank. As a new user would you not be better off with a desktop environment which is a little more mature?

What’s it called? I’ll try it in a VM.

6

Actually, you can just download a live ISO for each and boot your system with them to try them out, to see which one is better suited for your needs.. I suggest you download the respin ISOs, which have just been updated with the latest packages yesterday, July 31: https://dl.fedoraproject.org/pub/alt/live-respins/

You’ll want the files with “KDE” and “WORK” in their name and you can use Fedora Media Writer (might not be installed by default in Cosmic Atomic) to write them to a USB stick.

7

Well in Fedora atomic desktops the state of /etc is preserved with each new deployment. So assuming one puts some bad config files in /etc, there is still the possibility to boot into the previous deployment.

9

Indeed, although there’s still the homedir to worry about. For example I got into a kwin crashloop because of a bad ~/.config/kwinoutputconfig.json, which would have been unpleasant for an inexperienced user to diagnose and recover from.

10

Does that take /etc back to the state it was on upgrade to new deployment?

11

Yes, that’s why it’s only my home folder that I still back up.

Presuming one has two deployments (as standard) : current deployment (say based on yesterday’s OSTree image), and a previous deployment (based on an older image, let’s call it the rollback deployment). Presuming I am booted with the current deployment, and perform some config changes in /etc, then perform an rpm-ostree upgrade, which creates a new (staging) deployment with today’s image provided by OSTree, then the changes performed in /etc will be present in the current deployment (the one booted when performing the changes) and in the staging deployment (since /etc was based on the booted deployment). But the changes didn’t affect the rollback deployment.

That means that if one fails to boot with either of the 2 most recent deployments (current and staging), one can still boot with the rollback deployment, and perform an rpm-ostree rollback which basically sets the booted deployment as default, and new upgrades will be based on the configs from this working deployment.

The only risk would be to do the bad config changes in the current deployment, then successfully boot with the previous one, and there perform the same bad config changes and reboot. But that’s just bad practice that can easily be avoided.

EDIT: One more detail: by default rpm-ostree keeps only 2 deployments (unless manually pinned), and when a new (third image) is deployed, then the oldest one gets removed. But that only happens after being successfully booted into the staging deployment. So in the above example the “good” image won’t get marked for removal, since the staging deployment is unbootable.

12

I think you are saying that the /usr tree is rolled back but the /etc changes are not. Is that right?

Which means that an edit in /etc that breaks something will not get fixed by a roll back. Is that right?

13

He told me it is completely off grid. To be unhackable, not know to the outside world. And unhackable to the future of Quamtum Computing. He and his team took 3rd place in the nationals with Cisco testing Tech Students.

14

Not exactly. Each new deployment is based on the OSTree image, then locally “patched” with layered (or removed) packages. And when the system saves a new such deployment, it also saves a copy of /etc from the booted deployment, with its state at the time of deploying the new image.

That means that if my system has at a certain point in time three deployments, then each of the three deployments has its own /etc folder tree. When a certain deployment is booted, its corresponding /etc structure is mounted rw.

The user can also perform a diff between the “booted” /etc and the template /usr/etc, the latter holding the default version provided by the system, using the command ostree admin config-diff.

15

That usually means: no network, no internet, no email.

16

I rather suspect he’s pulling your leg.

17

@l-c-g I have researched the rebashing best I can. I get some conflicting information about it. But I think if I would to rebash from Comsic Atomic to Kinoite. That is a try only? Then I saw that I could install from Cosmic Atomic to Kinoite within Terminal. Like I said conflicting.
I found this video. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YJSypfW6Oho

Kinoite seems like the Zorin Core that I had. All this talk is over my head. Maybe my story would help. Bear with me it is a long one.

I would say about 7 weeks ago, I started researching Linux to move from Windows. My brother had Red Hat many decades ago. I thought Linux, but what seemed like Linux has improved over the decades. So, I watched countless videos over a couple of weeks. Learning. Boot drive and what OS. I settled on Zorin OS Core. And on to the boot drive. I was going to use Rufus. But everybody was talking about Ventoy.

I watched videos about Ventoy and how to use the thing. I thought this was not bad. So, when time came. I went with Ventoy. Made a boot drive had my ISO on flash drive. Knew about the secure boot in Dell. “Did not know about, using USB drive first.”

Then the issue. Nothing. And I do mean nothing. Once I got Ventoy to load after 20 minutes. I loaded Zorin. Got in. I did try. Liked it. So I went to Install. Wiped my drive. Nothing. Then I did a reboot. Nothing. Then I had a nervous break down. Chanting something like “Open Ventoy, Open Ventoy” My brother came out. He was a former computer programer. Once he got in. He told me that Ventoy had no boot file. He used Rufus. That is would he knew. He got me installed with Zorin OS Core. Then left me high and dry. No calling me to see how I was doing.

I was on the Zorin Forum talking to many different people. About different things. After about a week. I became Un-Windowsfied. I saw a distro setup in DistroSea. Didn’t look like a windows setup. I wanted that. So I reached out. I wanted the Dock. Got the Dock. Then I was told about the “Extension Manager.” Started to do some more reading. Had a world clock. Wanted a extension for time zones in the panel got that. Panel World Clock (Lite) Had Clock on desktop wignets. Desktop Clock. Also in that extension had a weather option. Loved it. I also had NordVPN at the time.

Being new and not know anything. I followed instructions from NordVPN. Had me download from “Snap”. Didn’t work. Installed thourgh Zorin Software. Flatpaks. NordVPN installed no problem.

After I had World Panel Clock installed I started noticing my system wasn’t operating right. I was getting better results in Xorg. instead of Wayland. I had to switch to Wayland to even do anything.

Then 28 days later about with NordVPN. I researched maybe a issues with the browser extension for the VPN. Told me to remove it. Did that, then something funny happened. I don’t remember the details. I rebooted. Then things got much worse.

After boot. I had the logos of Dell and Zorin. Then nothing. Had something called BusyBox. I think. That happened on July 24th. I called my brother. Asked “you said Tanner installed 4 distros. He said yes.” I told him what I was going through. This time he (brother) listened. He said that he would talk to Tanner. A couple days later. My brother called and asked again what I did. Then Tanner confirmed it. 2 NordVPN installs and not knowing about it. The installs started talking then miscommunicating. Caused many problems.

My nephew came out. He had notes on his phone. Then He saw what it was. He said oh this. He was in a matter of minutes. Tanner later told me he was a little rusty with Linux. That he got tired and made his own Off grid OS. Nobody knows about. I was blown away how smart this “Kid” was. When Tanner got in. He told me well your system is there, but it is not there. It’s gone, gone. He could put Zorin back on, but? I told him I had my files in the clould. Then he brought up Fedora. He listened to me about what I was trying to do.

So he installed the Cosmic Atomic version. Nephew was here 3 hours. Installed my printer/scanner in 10 minutes flat. Which I had a terriable time doing before.

Then a few days later. I started looking into doing things. Then I couldn’t do things I wanted. Now I am very grateful to my nephew. Now maybe he didn’t have the other Atomic versions. He had 25+ Distros with versions and recovery tools on a flash drive. I was systemless. I needed a system. Never again Microsoft.

So, everybody maybe this may explain. Why I am overly caustious of doing things in terminal and Installing.

18

It is called rebasing, as in, your system gets a new base.

I am not sure what you mean with “a try only”. It is not like booting a live system, which doesn’t touch your installed system. Rebasing changes the system on your disk.

But, after rebasing to Kinoite, this will be a new deployment and you still have the old Cosmic Atomic deployment, which you can go back to. Or you could choose to rebase to Silverblue next, if Kinoite/KDE Plasma isn’t your cup of tea. In that sense, it is a try.

That is how rebasing is done, in the terminal. AFAIK there is no graphical tool for it. As I wrote in your other thread, the command to rebase to Kinoite is:

$ sudo rpm-ostree rebase fedora:fedora/44/x86_64/kinoite

Kind of. Zorin is known for offering four(?) configurations that users can easily switch between. These emulate other common OSs like Windows or MacOS. KDE Plasma out of the box is Windows-like, but can be turned into almost anything (for a while, I had a MacOS-like top panel with a global application menu).

Hard to tell from your story what the issues were. But I can understand that it is difficult to deal with something like this when you do not have the experience to diagnose and solve it yourself.

Frankly, I am not sure what to recommend to you. I think a KDE Plasma system would work, since you are coming from Windows and Zorin. But I wouldn’t necessarily recommend Kinoite, I have seen a number of reports of Discover (KDE’s graphical software store/manager) having issues updating Kinoite. Which means that you would have to use the terminal for some maintenance tasks. But you already have to do that with Cosmic, too, so you aren’t any worse off.

Then again, Kinoite is the most direct way to get your system to KDE Plasma without a reinstall. And since you wrote that your files are in the cloud anyway, it could be worth a try if Cosmic isn’t for you. If anything goes wrong, you might need help reinstalling anyway to get away from Cosmic Atomic.