unix like operating system lovers

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This is a community that is only for nerds jk. everyone who doesn't scare when seeing UNIX terminal welcome! rules:

don't make comments that branch out from the main topic too much, at least please somehow relate to it.
retro operating systems, e.g. discussion about them, is strictly forbidden, please make a retro community instead.
please be nice for others.

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I have no idea what I'm doing, help! (self.unix)

submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by tempestuousknave to c/unix

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Every other forum has rules about these posts because there's such a glut of them, and yes, I could go read a stickied thread elsewhere, but here I am not doing that.

How would someone with no computer skills get acquainted with the OS? What version would you recommend to the hopeless novice? Can I keep windows on my PC and run the new OS or a practice version of it in a partitioned space while I learn? Can someone with minimal skills/time/patience be happy with a unix-like OS?

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[–] The_Hideous_Orgalorg 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I moved my tech-phobic mother's laptop from windows to Ubuntu and the support calls went from several a week to a couple a month. The type of calls changed from needing me to do something, to asking how she could do something. I would suggest Ubuntu to anyone looking to get started with an ULOS.

[–] tempestuousknave 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

That's heartening. Got a project for the weekend!

[–] Barbarian 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

This used to be pretty prevalent, I don't know how often this happens now, but anybody telling you to run the following command on the command line is a troll and to be avoided:

sudo rm -rf --no-preserve-root /

What that does is delete everything on your hard-drive, including the OS. To break it down:

sudo will prompt you for your password and run the command as a superuser (admin).

rm is the command to delete files.

-rf tells it to do it recursively (include folders and target every folder in those folders, etc) and to force through, as in not prompt the user for anything it can't delete, just delete everything it can.

--no-preserve-root disables protection that was added to stop shenanigans like this.

/ is the target: the root of the file system, vaguely equivalent to "C:" on a Windows machine.

[–] tempestuousknave 2 points 1 year ago

Thanks for the heads up and the breakdown. I'd like to think I'm clever enough to avoid inputting what is a obviously nefarious command, but I don't think I've fully plumbed the depths of my foolishness.