A long ramble from a newbie Mint user considering Endeavour and seeking advice

[Zircon34]

@SimplyTadpole

sudo pacman -Syu, right? Does it really let me know what packages will be updated? I thought it was automatic ^^’ Either way, I actually thought that updating it so often would actually be risky due to me potentially ending up with broken or glitchy updates

Yes, update with sudo pacman Syu it will show you the packages to be updated and confirm the update with yes or no.

The updates are not glitchy, dependencies are well managed on arch. I use eos at work everyday, update on weekend, and never had a breakage except for proprietary Nvidia driver on one laptop because the was a major driver upgrade.

The forum people are amazing and help you out of trouble within often 5-10min, it’s pretty amazing here, and you are surrounded by knowledgeable people that make your Linux experience even better!

Just FYI, despite being rolling release, eos is quite stable. I have no crashes whatsoever. The key is to have compatible hardware.

[Scotty_Trees]

@SimplyTadpole

I actually thought that updating it so often would actually be risky due to me potentially ending up with broken or glitchy updates

I update a couple of times throughout the day. Haven’t had any major issues. Arch is very good about bugs. Packages are always tested before released, but when a bug makes its way through, you can rest assure that there is a fix (or workaround) that day or in a day or so. It’s recommended to update once a week or so, ideally when you have the time for it, just in case it requires your attention. I personally have had a super stable experience with EndeavourOS, and I’ve got the “problematic” Nvidia/Intel hybrid system on my laptop

Also, to quote people, you can use the “@” and the user’s name, OR you can highlight select the users text you want to quote and a “QUOTE” bubble will popup in grey that you can click that with quote it as well, I found this one very useful.

@SimplyTadpole

Thank you for the kind words, really. I appreciate that

A kind community is a thriving community in my opinion. Great support and encouragement are just one of the reasons I’ve become a part of this lovely community.

@SimplyTadpole

layout were super confusing

This just means that perhaps the Gnome desktop environment is not your cup of tea and that’s okay. It can be configured with extensions to look and feel however you want, so it can even look like Windows or MacOS. It’s rather simple to do, but a little bit time consuming perhaps.

@SimplyTadpole

I had a few issues with the Pop Shop (I don’t really remember what happened, sadly

One good thing to know, is when an issue happens, where do you go to report it or find answers? In most cases, besides this forum of course, you’d want to look at the projects Gitlab or Github pages, and check for any recent issues there, if not you’ll have to report it so the maintainers are aware of the issue. It’s a good idea to create an account for Gitlab and Github for these reasons in my experience. If the software in question came from say the AUR, then you’d want to check the AUR page of the package, post a comment or email the maintainer to let them know there is an issue to see if they can resolve it or update/fix a dependency issue.

@SimplyTadpole

I don’t think I’d be happy if I remained in Mint.

I don’t know about that. Every Linux distro uses the same Linux kernel, albeit different versions of it, and every distro has their own unique package manager used to install/remove and maintain your system. Some just go about things in different ways than others and some options have a GUI method, while others are strictly terminal based. If I setup PopOS, or Solus, or EndeavourOS, once the initial set up is complete and I’ve installed all my software, it’s all same really. I can use my favorite web browser on any of them. I can use my favorite desktop environment on them.

It really just comes down to the differences that really start to set them all apart, but for day to day things, Linux is Linux. Now I’m vastly over simplifying this, but the point I want to drive is IF you use EndeavourOS, once it’s all set up, there’s not much work you’ll have to do, things will just work. The only real caveat is the work to get EndeavourOS up and running is a lot more so than say the work required to get PopOS or Solus up and running in a similar fashion.

@SimplyTadpole

I admittedly did not know that using too many packages from the AUR was risky.

Anything can be a risk if a user doesn’t know what they are doing. But using the AUR responsibly is not risky at all in my experience. I’ve got about 40 AUR packages (which is a lot compared to others here at least), but I’ve not experienced any issues. I’m only using popular AUR packages or packages I know are updated and actively maintained. Using an AUR package that hasn’t received updates in years is probably not a package you want to install anyways. There’s always flatpaks and snaps to install for software as well, but in my experience the AUR is fine to use so long as you know what you are doing.

I’ve taken too long now, I think others have already answered everything already, but I’ve typed this much already, so I think I’ll just send it anyways

@dalto

I don’t think this is the case. We have a topic here where people list how many AUR packages they have and most people have less than 20 I would guess.

Don’t ask me how many I have then!

[jonathon]

@Scotty_Trees

Don’t ask me how many I have

You’re not “most people”.

[ricklinux]

What more than the Gnome extensions you got?

[fbodymechanic]

He did a post recently and if the AUR went down, they could just make a backup from his computer. It was a very impressive list.

[ricklinux]

I think it’s all twaddle.

[Stagger_Lee]

Poppycock.

[Scotty_Trees]

Not sure if you’re referring to me or not but…

[scott@endeavourOS ~]$ yay -Ps
==> Yay version v11.0.2
===========================================
==> Total installed packages: 1298
==> Total foreign installed packages: 42
==> Explicitly installed packages: 324
==> Total Size occupied by packages: 11.3 GiB
===========================================
==> Ten biggest packages:
linux-firmware: 731.2 MiB
rust: 459.3 MiB
nvidia-utils: 436.9 MiB
libreoffice-fresh: 419.0 MiB
noto-fonts-extra: 340.3 MiB
vivaldi: 286.9 MiB
spotify: 279.0 MiB
firefox: 224.5 MiB
discord: 181.4 MiB
paper-icon-theme: 175.3 MiB
===========================================
:: Querying AUR...
[scott@endeavourOS ~]$ 

[fbodymechanic]

I was. Yes.

[Joseph]

I believe in you.

If you can edit conig files and the like then you will be fine when/if the time comes for repair work.

Your cautious approach is understandable, however as others have suggested the way forward is really to just jump in. I would spend some time configuring things when your first install and then, consciously if needed, neglect any attempts of system improvement. When/if things break you will naturally find what needs improving for you.

Good luck

[pebcak]

Welcome to EnOS’ forum @SimplyTadpole

[zoli62]

I was in exactly this shoe, maybe three years ago. I had been using Linux Mint back then for years, which I liked for its stability and simplicity. I wanted something new and exciting that is updated frequently. That’s how I got to Antergos (before it was even Manjaro) and then to EndeavourOS. I have to say that this distribution is perfect for both novice, intermediate and professional users as long as they have some proficiency in Linux. You don’t have to be afraid to use the command line, Arch Wiki is one of the best in the world, and if something isn’t going well, it’s worth turning to the helpful and friendly community here. That’s all I can say in short, I’ve been using both distros in parallel with satisfaction ever since.

[NX-01]

[quote=“SimplyTadpole”]

• How does EndeavourOS handle sound and wifi drivers? My wifi antenna is from TP-Link but sadly appears to use a Realtek driver (R8188EU); it worked out of the box in Pop!_OS and Linux Mint’s live environments, and in bare-metal after I unplugged and re-plugged it, but I’m not confident they may work in EndeavourOS or anything Arch-based since Ubuntu-based distros probably already include those proprietary drivers by default for convenience. Meanwhile, I have audio issues in Mint that cause the system to blare heavy static noise every time I access some websites (one of them being AMD’s), forcing me to run “pulseaudio -k” on the terminal to fix it, and I don’t know whether this issue will still be present or not in EOS.[/quote]

I don’t think anybody answered this yet. R8188EU should be supported natively in (the current) Kernel 5.15. So you should be fine.
See https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/8188eu-dkms/

edit: Quoting on Android is a PITA

[blusser]

Distro doesn’t matter.
It matters how much time you want to put in. I am on EndevourOS after Half a year of “linux experience”.
It just depends on how much time you want to spend learning about Linux and if you like using the command line.

If you want to get some work done and work efficiently don’t switch to Linux as a Daily driver at all.
In most regards linux is treated poorly by big companies like zoom or Discord or Microsoft and your life will be harder by using Linux.
If you like fiddling around in the terminal and enjoy learning about linux switch right now.
Although the workload could probably be quiet high for you.
And most of the Questions you asked only you can answer them for your self by trying it out.
Some things could be supported, but do they work how you like? Or are they missing key features with your configuration? You will only know if you find out…

My Tipp: Get a second machine with linux where you can learn about linux but you are not dependant on it. This also saves a lot of stress.
I bought a

Edit:

cheers

[Kresimir]

Installing packages from the AUR requires you to know what you’re doing. It’s not newbie friendly, even though AUR helpers like yay deceptively make it seem that way. Anyone can use yay it’s super easy and convenient (and you should use it, because of that) but if you are careless, it can potentially be unsafe.

That said, AUR is a fully transparent repository and if you know what to check, it is actually the safest way to install software, apart from the official repos, of course, which by using Arch or an Arch-based distro, you implicitly trust without reservation.

Here is some info about how to install software on EndeavourOS:

Best way to install/uninstall programs

My advice, for what it’s worth: Look in the official Arch repositories (“the repos”) first for the software you want to use. A good way to do so is to use the website. All of these packages will work on an upgraded Arch system (assuming the hardware requirements are met). These packages are all trustworthy (at least as trustworthy as Arch Linux is), and are already built for your convenience, so you can just install them with pacman. If the software you want to use is not in the repos, loo…

And about the safety of the AUR:

AUR PKGBUILDs

The AUR is one of the safest ways to install software, just because it is so transparent. But it does not tolerate just looking up the package in Pamac and clicking on the Build button, or doing yay package_name blindly. It requires that the user knows what’s going on. That’s why I recommend trying to build at least one package manually, to understand what’s going on, before using an AUR helper like pamac or yay. yay has a nice feature that allows you to inspect a PKGBUILD file before installin…

And how to build packages manually from the AUR:

How to Install Apps from AUR

makepkg is a script that creates a foreign (i.e. non-repo) package, which can be installed using pacman -U. Before we can make a package, we need to have both base-devel and git packages installed: sudo pacman -S base-devel git --needed On EndeavourOS, these should already be preinstalled. Depending on the specific package, we may also need other programs, like compilers and build systems. These are called “make dependencies”. Typically, making a package from the AUR involves the following …

---

Welcome to EndeavourOS! The best way to know whether this is the right operating system for you or not is to install it and try it out for a couple of weeks on real hardware. The only requirements are being literate (which you have demonstrated superbly with your endless walls of text) and willingness to use that skill to learn, by reading the manuals, the Arch wiki, this forum, and asking questions.

To make your transition smoother, consider sticking to the same DE you used on Mint. If not, Plasma is super easy to get used to, it has its quirks but it is the most popular DE for a reason (with Xorg, not Wayland).

All tadpoles are welcome, and some grow up to be majestic frogs.

[dalto]

@blusser

My Tipp: Get a second machine with linux where you can learn about linux but you are not dependant on it. This also saves a lot of stress.

I did what you are suggesting for quite a few years and my advice is “don’t do that”. If you don’t commit to using Linux fully you will never actually learn how to use it. As a result, you will always see it as inferior. When you fully convert, you are forced to find ways to work through the issues instead of just using Windows because that is easier and already know how.

While it is true that some things are harder on Linux, it is also true that some things are easier once you understand how they work. I have to use Windows at work and I am much more effective on my Linux workstation at home. It is more customizable to my needs. If I could use Linux at work, I would.

[anon31549144]

I agree with dalto on this one, also this?

@blusser

If you want to get some work done and work efficiently don’t switch to Linux as a Daily driver at all.

With this I disagree. I get a lot more done on Linux than on Windows (except for procrastinating on this forum). It pretty much depends on what your work is. If you mainly work in Adobe suite, or some very specific Windows only software, then, yes, Windows is easier. My daily driver has been Linux for the last 4 years and I’ve been doing better without Windows (except for the occasional launch of a Win VM for the said Adobe suite, which is extremely rare for me). Gaming is another thing, but you mentioned getting things done, not gaming.

[Kresimir]

I completely agree. When switching operating systems, the easiest way to do it is “cold turkey”, “all or nothing”, “fully commit”…

The problem is not so much learning Linux, but unlearning windoze. Things are different on Linux, and thus the expectations have to be different.

If you dual boot with windoze, or have a second computer just for Linux, you always have a way to retreat to your comfort zone.

Unfortunately, all learning happens outside the comfort zone and under pressure.

For example, you can appreciate that on Linux, one uses GIMP for advanced photo editing, there is no Photoshop for Linux. Getting used to GIMP is slow, but you may even find it fun. However, when you have to do something, and you’re under pressure and maybe have some schedule to adhere to, you’ll say to yourself: “I’ll boot up windoze and do it in Photoshop, just this once”. Next thing you know, you’ll be using windoze for everything, just because you’re picking the more familiar (thus seemingly easier, but not necessarily so) route.

Switching to Linux can be frustrating (usually, that frustration lasts about 6 months), because everything is different, so tasks that you once found easy, now seem difficult (and you think to yourself: “this is unnecessarily difficult, Linux sucks, why can’t it be more like windoze?”).

The reverse is also true, however, after using Linux exclusively for just under a decade, I now have to occasionally use windoze at work, and I find it extremely difficult to adjust and, not to mention, I just hate it out of principle, so that does not help in the slightest. So the notion that windoze is easier is completely false, it’s just different, and for most people, unfortunately, more familiar.

@anon31549144

Gaming is another thing, but you mentioned getting things done, not gaming.

When it comes to gaming, the purpose of gaming is fun. Personally, I find it fun to get games running on Linux almost as much as playing them, so that’s not an issue for me.

[anon31549144]

@Kresimir

Personally, I find it fun to get games running on Linux almost as much as playing them, so that’s not an issue for me.

I guess anyone can find fun in anything

[ricklinux]