So, I had a laptop that had a dying hard drive (I couldn't read or write in multiple places on the drive meaning I lost a fair bit of stuff) and I decided that I could very likely salvage it and rebuild it.

I found a 1 TB laptop hard drive on sale ($20 off I think) which I swapped in and then I installed Linux (Mint) to the machine and have been messing around with it for the last few hours.

I haven't used anything linux related in about 20 years or so and it has changed a LOT. We have a Windows desktop computer that my wife uses for the most part but I've always wanted to try out Linux and this was a good excuse for it.

If anyone has any experience with Linux and has suggestions for programs that are really useful please let me know. I did a few searches for programs that are considered essential for Linux users and added a few but I'm just barely getting my feet wet at the moment.

Nice! I've been toying around with the idea of installing Linux again too. I still remember not properly partitioning my old laptop while installing Ubuntu and erasing Windows... good times.

Anyway, first thing I'd suggest is a good web browser. Personally, I'm fond of Vivaldi. Speedy, its tab stacking feature (and ability to view stacked tabs side by side), and its focus on privacy are all fantastic. It is very memory hungry though.

Beyond that for software, I don't know, but I'd say the most important thing would be getting used to terminal commands. Even though some distros have GUIs so nice that Microsoft and Apple are taking notes, at the end of the day, being able to use the terminal is a must. It's a pain in the ass to learn everything, but you get to feel like hackerman anytime you want to do something and know how to work the command line.

I did get to use the terminal since my latest post. I really like the Brave browser but it doesn't install automatically like a lot of other more common programs so I had to use their commands to get it to install. I just copied their text but I still got to use it which was neat.

I haven't gotten a ton though. I expect my wife will end up using the laptop more than me. She is doing a computer science degree online right now and I imagine she'll be more adventurous than me with the laptop. Plus, gaming seems to be better on Windows still so I'll likely stick with it.

I'm actually shocked that Brave has a Linux version. That used to be my go to as well until it was revealed that they've done some shady stuff. Anyway, I did a bit of poking around and this was the best terminal cheat sheet I could find

Your wife is doing compsci? That's awesome! It's a great field to get into, especially depending on where you live. I have a buddy who's around my age that finished up his degree about a year back and is already making damn good money at his first job in the field. How's she liking it so far? And yeah, Windows is the OS for gaming.

Strange. That does seem shady though I don't think it detracts much from the browser itself for me.

I don't know how much stuff I will actually do in terminal as the distro I'm using seems to have a decent interface for lots of stuff. It's not that I don't want

Yeah, she is doing CompSci stuff. I think her focus is more on web based stuff (HTML, some graphic design, databases and lots of other things I'm not too familiar with). Her hope is to be able to work from home building websites or design stuff. She also is really enjoying her most recent database class so she might delve into that more.

Mostly she just loves having skills that are likely to be in demand for a long time. And the most important thing is she loves all of it. She knows more about a lot of computer things on a software side than I do now. She couldn't put a computer together to save her life but she knows how to do things that I've never cared to learn so it works.

Yeah, can't blame you for not wanting to go all in with terminal if you've got a decent interface. I still picture Ubuntu from 09 when I think of Linux, and it looked pretty, but I'm pretty sure you couldn't even drag and drop files from one folder to the next using the GUI. Good times...

That's awesome! If there's a job out there ripe for work from home, it's definitely web development. I'm glad she's liking it so much and doing so well. It's important to find something that you actually like, and that makes studying and doing the work much easier. Helps keep the burn out away too. Sounds like with you on the hardware side and her on the software side, your family is set for any computer problems they run into lol

Yeah, I remember using Linux back in the early 2000's and I didn't have an interface at all. It was all terminal.

A friend set up a server that we used for IRC and a few other things so I had to learn a few commands to access and log in and use IRC. It was pretty limited. I definitely prefer that it's a lot more like Windows than I remember. Makes it a lot easier to use.

Yeah, she brought up the idea years ago that she was interested in learning more about making websites and found an online program and has been taking a few classes a year to get a degree. She's more than halfway done (I think she has 2-3 years left before she's totally done but she has a certificate in something and will get another certificate again soon). Still, she'll have a four year degree in about 8 years doing it all from home. She'll have a lot of freedom to work from home with what she has. She's already been using a lot of it to build websites for people and build up a portfolio. What she needs now is the more in depth and back-end stuff so she can do more business applications. She doesn't like relying on things other people build if she can manage it so she avoids the sites that let you make your own website.

I forgot Linux existed! I remember many years ago hearing a little bit about it but never actually saw what it's like. It's always really cool to be able to rebuild a computer! I remember when a neighbor did that for my family, and it was amazing to see our old computer work so well again.