This is a little guide made for people who want to give linux a try, maybe because of bad experiences with other operating systems, in search of freedom with free software or if you already got annoyed by linux people and want to try what they talk all day about.

This guide just has the basics, in linux you need to learn to search by yourself.

Free software advantages

  • Free: As in free speech.
  • Private: You can disable telemetry or even compile entirely without it.
  • Security: There are lots of people searching for bugs or CVEs, if found, it will be fixed.
  • Freedom: You dont have to agree to anything, your binary, your responsability.

Terminal

Lots of people are scared about the terminal but in most cases you do not really need it. The only thing you have to keep in mind is the manual for all commans, for example:

man git

And to move across the directory structure usage of cd, mv, ls, rm, cat.

Remember, do not run everything with sudo, only if it is the only option or you know what you are doing.

Software management

Package manager

Linux main way of getting software installed is through package managers.

You can think about them as a librarian. Suppose you want to install git, you ask the package manager if the package is in the database, if it is you can then install it, as a library, you trust that the package is build from trusted sources.

In fedora for example, dnf is used.

For updating:

dnf update

For searching:

dnf search

For installing:

dnf install <package>

Alternatives

As linux is open source, there are more ways of getting software. For example:

  • Executable: The plain executable in a static compilation.
  • Appimage: A executable like way, is basically a compressed program that auto decompress itself and executes the binary with the needed library from memory.
  • Flatpak: Another way of having repositories but with the advantage of partial isolation from the main package. The main advantage, this is the easier way to get non-free software.
  • Compilation: Free software? There is a way to build it yourself. But keep in mind you need to have the knowledge, don’t destroy your OS in the process.

Some interesting places to find information about linux usage are: