Hi, i am using using linux daily since about a year and a half. Currently i am using kubuntu. However i had some problems with snaps and the way that certain applications are launched and accessible in my own system (kinda sucks).
After looking for alternatives i found EOS and was directly intrigued. However i also have to admit that i have never done anything with arch based distros. And more importantly:
I am kinda an idiot.
As i want to use my current laptop as my main workstation for my pdh i want to able to tailor the system to my workflows to ease my upcoming day to day work. My current worklows can be optimised (i am using the mouse way to much) in my job as a software engineer (not a real software engineer, just a dude solid in applied math that can kinda code).
I am mostly concerned about stability as i don’t want to have my system break and have my research lost so i would like to hear some recommendations from more experienced user to help me get into the finer ways of using linux.
For this i would like to quickly summarize what i actually want to do with my machine:
-Coding (C++, C#, Python, Latex)
-Simple Simulations in OpenFoam (the true simulation bulk is done on a high powered machine)
-Gaming to undwind after work (Steam [older single player games], gba emulator, Lutris)
I saw on some arch related content that there is a distinct difference between the AUR and installing packages with pacman. What are some of your recommendations regarding the installation of packages?
Are there any good maintance plans to ensure smooth running of the machine? If no, what would you do, if you were to formalise such a plan?
For further information some specs of my machine:
Lenovo ThinkPad P16S Gen 1
Intel i7-1270P
48GiB Ram
NVIDIA T550 Laptop GPU
I hope my question doesn’t promote any unwanted redundancy and i also hope your help can make me a happy EOS user.
I would say try, and also look at what @dalto mentioned. EOS has been by far my best experience with Linux, not only easy to install but easy to get involved and learn about through the forums.
Learning and also having a distro that i can make “my own” is really a motivation behind trying EOS. If only i wasn’t way to scared to break things
I was like this at first, best advise I can give here is backup (or learn how to backup).
EDIT I think I had to revert to a snapshot once and that was due to me
Use btrfs as your filesystem so you can use the snapshot feature to roll back if needed, together with btrfs-assistant and snapper. Be sure to configure btrfs-assistant to your liking as well when it comes to what volumes you want snapshotted and how often.
aur/btrfs-assistant 2.1.1-1 [+52 ~7.04] [Installed]
An application for managing BTRFS subvolumes and Snapper snapshots
It’s a great site, just remember to ask if you have trouble understanding. Another thing I do is look at most posts asking for help (like this) to see where I can improve my knowledge
I don’t make things of relevance (that I need to keep) very often. When I do, I guess I do backup by storing them off my system. Handled individually.
I have a NAS and I use flash drives, portable hard drives (almost never), and cloud storage.
I use systemd-boot because I like it’s simplicity compared to Grub and I can count on one hand and one finger how many times I actually restored from a snapshot and that was to test out if it works which is 1. So unless it starts becoming a regular thing I don’t plan to switch back to Grub.
