I heard about distro chooser sometime last year so I went to check it out. There is a mini test/survey there to help choose a linux distribution that suits the user. I have used it a few times since I first heard about it but I have not gone further than playing with the survey. Linux seems so much more technical when everything I see about it is discussing using the command line. That is something similar to windows command prompt. The videos also sometimes talk about desktop environments but not as often.
Distro chooser gave me a list of a lot of distributions to choose from, starting with those that those that are closer to what I am looking for. Mainly easy to use everyday, that has the ability to allow me to choose software over what a lot of people have come to call bloatware. I made a quick note of the top three and then a handful of others I may be interested in.
--Top three in order are Open Suse, Zorin OS, and Linux Mint
--Other distros of interest are Kubuntu, Xubuntu, Ubuntu MATE, and Pop!_OS (from system76)
This is what I got as my first choice and the needs/wants it meets. Of course I do not believe this is what I got the first time I did this survey yesterday. I was not thinking of doing a copy paste. I did all this on the compaq laptop I rescued from being trashed so there are some things I have been unable to work out. Namely how to do screenshots. On windows 7 I should be able to hold the windows + print screen buttons then paste it into an image editor but that does not work.
openSUSE aims to deliver a stable and user-friendly distribution, mostly for end users
-Scope of pre-installed programs is decided by user
-There are tutorials for troubleshooting and problem-solving
-User has to select the software to use
-Suitable for beginners
-Has default settings
-The installation uses a installation 'wizard' with default settings
-Updates are mostly stable when published
-Suitable for daily use
-Software installation can be done using an app store
-Usable without fee
-Installs all needed programs
-We cannot recommend this distribution for you because:
-Installs a range of programs by default
-The following criteria were not factored into this
-Programs for anonymization purposes are available
-May require additional configuration for gaming
After choosing the linux distribution I then need to go to the open suse web site. There will be two choices given. My suggestion is to choose Leap. I will go into why in a bit.
Remember this set up is to install Linux from a usb drive or sd card. Since I am a beginner I am being cautious. Maybe too cautious. But is it not better to be overly careful than to rush in and make a mess that will take longer to figure out and fix?
I am unsure of any specific order to download the distro and the tool (etcher is the one I see most recommended in the last year), although I see a lot getting the distro first and then etcher. What etcher does is it turns the iso (image) file into a usable file. I want to warn anyone who is curious and wants to try this make sure your drive is big enough. The iso may be small but it is kind of like a zip file in that there may be a MUCH larger file inside it.
Now that I have both open suse and ecther on my thumb drive I have to figure out how etcher works. I started on my compaq windows seven machine. With the portable etcher all I got was a blank pop up. I switched to the installer and got the same thing.
I switched to my Lenovo (which is my newest machine with windows 10). Since I have never done this before I was afraid etcher would try to install on the machines hard-drive. I have less then 2 gigs of space left on it so I switched to the desktop (HP Envy 700 series with windows 8.1).
Since I seemed to have so much trouble trying to get the etcher portable to work, after switching to the installer I stayed with that. The thing was that I either did not have enough room on the usb or that I could not have the iso on it in order to install to the usb. I ended up temporarily moving the iso to the downloads folder in order for etcher to work.
Even after all that work I was still uneasy about this. I put the iso file into etcher and etcher did its thing.
After all was done I wanted to see how it worked. One video I watched mentioned that the usb is disconnected once linux has been installed on it so I was already prepared when I checked and found the drive unavailable.
I shut the computer down. I then restarted and booted to bios/uefi to change the settings. The machine needs to recognize a boot order. There were two choices for usb, usb floppy and usb hard-drive. I moved usb hard-drive to the top and exited the bios. I was booted right into the usb drive.
Now I feel like I am getting into even more difficult territory. If I follow the procees set before me I could wipe windows off this machine (HP Envy).
After seeing this and the following images I do not feel like I can go any further.
I have not done a software install since the early 2000's when I had to reinstall windows a handful of times and the internet was still fairly new at the time. I am assuming at the time internet was something that was programmed in for windows to automatically recognize. I will continue to work on this and will write another post about this once I figure it out.
And now for the reason to choose Leap over the Tumbleweed installation. While learning how to install linux I came across an article on tumblr about how a developer sabotaged the project he was working on by injecting a back door that would tamper with the ssh. I have not seen anything about how this affected personal machines. It appears, from what I have read, that it was mainly on the machines of developers but was also rolled out in open suse tumbleweed. That is suse's rolling updates. Red Hat and Debian reported that beta releases used one of the two compromised versions of the xz Utils tool (5.6.0 and 5.6.1). XZ Utils has since been rolled back to the 5.4 version release. I am not sure whether I should be nervous about this or be glad that linux developers are on top of things preventing bad actors from destroying such a great open source project.
Now if you have read this far (in my LONGEST writing piece yet) I thank you and end this here as it is already over 1000 words. I look forward to engaging with you in the comments.
All images where snapped with my Revvl V cell phone