Newbie here looking to try EndeavourOS, it’ll be my first time using a more minimalistic distro and it looks a bit daunting.
I am looking to install a fully featured KDE Plasma desktop with all the bells and whistles which I will use for gaming, media, web browsing and video/photo/audio editing. I have a NVIDIA graphics card.
Did I find the right guides? Anything wrong or missing in them? Did I forget any? Can you share better ones if you know any?
The newbie phrase - what does it mean in your case?
Newbie to computers?
Newbie to Linux?
Newbie to EndeavourOS?
Newbie to Arch?
If the answer is any of the latter three options you really need to learn what differentiates Linux from Windows. If you are a Windows poweruser - remember - none of this knowledge is valid on Linux.
There is no drives - there is no drivers (except for obscure wifi and Nvidia and printers which in some cases is a pain) to install - there is no writing to disk outside your home - permissions are completely different - btrfs is a nice filesystem but it may puke with no warning so I’d recommend using ext4 unless you really want to live past the edge.
Arch based distributions is incredibly simple to work with - BUT - only if you know what you are doing.
If you have no clue on what Linux is and don’t how many problems you can get from a Nvidia card or how many issues Plasma generates on sync from the Arch repos - you should really think twice.
Gaming is another area which is likely not to be the smooth path with no obstacles you imagine.
If however you are up for the challenge EndeavourOS is as stable as you make it and when you master it - it is a very rewarding place to be.
It requires persistance and willingness to learn - and if you are that kind of user - then welcome - we will provide you hints and possible solution to the issues you bang your head against.
Been a Windows user for most of my life, I have been using Linux for a few months, but only easy distros like Mint, Manjaro and Ubuntu.
BTRFS seems like a nice idea on rolling distros because of the GRUB snapshots, there’s distros like Garuda and OpenSUSE that make it the default file system, is it really unstable?
I wish I had an AMD card instead, but unfortunately I didn’t build this PC with Linux in mind.
I understand the limitation on gaming, but that’s fine because the games I like are all single player and relatively light.
There’s really nothing post-install you have to do. It’s all going to depend on what you want to do or accomplish. As an example, installing Nvidia drivers if you’re not a gamer, or need the compute functions, nouveau drivers work just fine. But, also, if you installed from the live iso with nvidia proprietary already loaded/installed that might not be necessary.
If you installed with btrfs it’s fine and btrfs snapshots can be useful. There are plenty of articles explaining pros and cons so I won’t get into that. Personally I opted for ext4, I didn’t need anything btrfs offered shrug
Finally there are a lot of “tips and tricks” out there and as far as that goes I’d just say before you go just installing a bunch of software and making a bunch of config changes make sure you read up on what it is they are telling you to do and decide if it makes sense for you to do it. Maybe it’s telling you to fix something that’s not even a problem for you.
I’d just start using it the way it is before making changes, and when you do, make them incrementally as you discover how you use your system. Or wait until something is not working the way you think it should, or want it to, or more efficient, then make a change for that particular thing.
I like your explanation very much.
The flexibility to do what you want is excellent, yet it begs the question
Once each of us decide what we want to do with our systems then we can begin to explore the numerous methods and technology (and techniques) to create whatever we want.
We are also free to experiment and free to change our plans as our needs and the available software changes!
It mostly depends on your hardware. Nvidia graphics (closed source) is always looking for trouble on Linux.
If you’d consider other DEs or WMs you’d be safer I guess. But beware of Gnome, reducing itself of features every 6 months, not always for the better…
I don’t want to talk you out of btrfs - just pointing out - if it fails - it does so profoundly.
btrfs is a stable filesystem - it used by many, many users and praised for it’s features - but it is not a set-n-forget like ext4 - it requires regular maintenance.
If you schedule such maintenance your may never see any issues.
@dalto created the btrfs-assistant - a great tool for btrfs - and there is others as well.
I use btrfs on encrypted laptops - works fine. I also tested it on my desktop - I have taken several rounds with btrfs - but I had these annoying delays occasionally - like the system froze for a short while - I couldn’t find any reason for - if I had patience 40s-60s they would go away - I suspected btrfs was the cause and reinstalled my desktop to use ext4 and the lockups went away.
This is likely unique to my desktop but it serves to me as a reminder that filesystem has to be chosen with care.
So if I run the live ISO with the proprietary drivers and install the system, I will also have installed them (and not require to install them post-install)?
This is my first system with a discrete NVIDIA GPU…
