Introducing Myself

The Water Cooler
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Hello Fedora Community!

I’m completely new to Linux and have just started my journey with Fedora 42 KDE Plasma. After years of using Microsoft Operating Systems, I’m excited (and a little nervous) to dive into something brand new.

I’m looking forward to:

  • Learning new things (and probably breaking a few things along the way!)
  • Facing some frustrations, overcoming them, and coming out smarter for it
  • Exploring all that the Linux/Fedora/KDE world has to offer
  • Never having to return to Windows

I’ve managed to get Fedora installed and “running” with a lot of help from Google and Perplexity AI.

What I’m Looking For

Are there any helpful tips, tricks, or resources you’d recommend for newcomers like me—besides just “use Google”?

Anything that made your early days smoother, or something you wish you’d known when you got started?

Thank you for having me, and I look forward to being part of the Fedora journey with all of you!

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Welcome to Fedora and the Linux community! :waving_hand:

Some things to explore as you work through the initial learning curve:

  • The Fedora Documentation is great place to look when you want to configure something out of the box on Fedora (say, adding your Windows install to the Grub boot menu).

  • You’ve probably already noticed, but most software on Fedora comes in two flavors:

    • A native RPM package, or
    • A Flatpak

    Flatpaks are nice because they are portable, easy to install and update, and are readily available on Flathub. That being said, sometimes you’ll find some software works better installed as a native RPM package or vice versa. Don’t be afraid to switch how you’ve installed something if you find it not behaving the way you would like.

  • The terminal isn’t scary but it is powerful. Take some time to get familiar with how to navigate it with commands like cd, ls, and other basics. There are likely lots of Youtube videos/text guides covering the most commonly used ones.

  • Try not to blindly copy/paste things into your terminal if you have no idea what they do. Again, the terminal isn’t scary but it is powerful. Try using man <command> when you encounter a new command and want to learn more.

  • As you learn about things and experiment, you’ll inevitably break something and end up in some state where you either can’t boot, or things just aren’t working correctly. If you’re using btrfs as your filesystem (default on Fedora Workstation), take some time to set up snapshots using Btrfs Assistant so that you have something you can rollback to quickly. These are not backups, but they are helpful for undoing issues after an update or software install (think Windows Restore Points perhaps).

Some of the above is more technical, some is less, but you seem excited to learn so I opted to throw a bunch at you in case you find any of it helpful. That being said, enjoy the learning journey and don’t beat yourself up if you break something or feel stuck. The folks on these forums are generally great sources of information and more than happy to help out, so never hesitate to ask questions here.

Happy computing! :party:

3 Likes
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Thank you for the valuable info, I have noticed the RPM / Flatpack repositories as well as there are some other that i tried to install from (but noticed they didnt work and some RPM’s that ended up not working due to being depreciated due to a lower plasma version i think). I have used the cd command a few times installing things so far i have noticed that some things i have installed then inevitably forgot where it was installed to that prevented me from using the cd command untill i could figure out where i installed the package too. That man <command> is a lifesaver thank you for that. As far as the btrfs i am using it on my fedora 42 kde plasma install i have not yet figured out yet how to do the snapshots might jump into that tomarrow. Thank you again for the helpful insights for this head scratching journey of mine but so far I am surviving.

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Just two advices, really:

  1. Don’t assume that something “just works”, there’s always a catch on Linux.

  2. Don’t use LLM-G_AI to “get a magic answer”, because that AI takes the first 8 Google results and either vomits back a patchwork of meaningless text, hallucinates something that doesn’t exist, or takes an obvious joke from a 14yo reddit post about “how eating glue will help you with skin collagen” or whatever.

Also for something which WILL DIRECTLY help you, here’s a guide:

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My advice is there are two ways here.

If you want to learn how things are put together and how they work, be ready to get your system destroyed and to reinstall everything again and again. That means either to play with a spare computer (not the one you really need) or to backup often and on a safe external device (so that you don’t lose your files).

If you just want to use your computer with the minimal effort, don’t do anything. Like you install the system, install the programs that you need and aren’t included in the default installation, apply updates once a week and nothing else. Backups are still a good idea then because you never know.

On a side note: as an old Windows user I was conditioned in thinking you must constantly maintain your system to keep it working. At first you fall in the trap of “utilities” that are the worst thing ever in the Windows world. Then you learn to stay away from those but you look at the system log and fix errors manually (mostly from the Windows updates but some other things like database or software development are quite problematic). Using Fedora you don’t need to touch anything, it doesn’t require any maintenance, fix or change.

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While many people can just install and use Fedora, Linux is a communal project. Many updates address issues that affect a few users, security, less common hardware, and newly introduced hardware or external changes to the internet. There are community benefits when a majority of users share the same software configuration. Troubleshooting is easier when you don’t have to consider whether you are chasing a problem solved with an update. If you do encounter a problem with an update, you can report it, collect some data, and contribute to a solution.

You should give some consideration to disaster recovery starting with backups and Live USB bootable systems. I have found it important to have external USB network (ethernet and/or WiFi), Bluetooth, and audio adapters because new Linux kernels sometimes don’t support internal devices at first appearance. Since I have several systems, I can install updates earlier than I would if I relied on one system. That way, if an update has issues, I can contribute to a solution that will help others.

When getting started, it is worth reading Wikipedia History of Unix and some of the early Unix papers.

Since you are interested in learning, I recommend the book from [https://LinuxCommand.org] (https://LinuxCommand.org) for an introduction to command-line tools written by a human. The book can also be helpful when trying to understand “solutions” generated using a AI (you should never run a terminal command until you understand what it does).

Teaching Linux to new users, I have found that a buddy system with one person checking what the other one is doing helps avoid confusion due to typos or clicking the wrong button.

One of the benefits of the Linux community is the wide range of experience and knowledge that you only get when many people are working on an issue. This works for online forums is you develop skills at finding an presenting relevant error messages.

Many large organizations and cities have active Linux user groups that run regular “bring your broken system” and we will troubleshoot sessions. These are great learning experiences even if you are just starting and don’t feel confident about contributing.

Finally, as you use Linux, you will find things that can be improved. You can discuss such things in relevant online forums and then report them to the upstream developers. It will take some time to understand how to determine who the upstream developers are for a given issue, but again, the community will help.

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My advice would be to keep asking questions here, and on Fedora Matrix, chat.fedoraproject.org

Fedora docs are often useful, if a little out of date and incomplete. I like Baeldung Linux for tutorials that aren’t in Fedora Docs.

It takes a while, so feel free to ask questions - even easy ones - I can even answer those l :wink:

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Welcome to :fedora: !

Here are just a few addons to what everyone else has mentioned:

  • This Linux Directory Structure guide is a helpful starting point to familiarizing yourself with your new file system

  • Get to know the how user permissions work. Using sudo mkdir isn’t the same as mkdir!

  • Adding the -h or --help flag to a program’s command can often tell you what options are available if you’re ever curious. Example:
    dnf -h or dnf --help

  • If you find something on Flathub and want to see if it’s available on RPM:
    dnf search <package-name>

  • Helpful users here will often ask what’s in your journal if you report an issue with a particular service. You can log that with: journalctl -u <service-name>

    • be diligent about redacting any sensitive information that may have been logged before sharing

Enjoy Fedora! It’s a great OS with a pretty wonderful community.

1 Like