I just installed Ubuntu 22.04.3 LTS (Cinnamon) on an empty laptop a couple days ago and have been experimenting a lot. I’m coming from being a Windows user since I was just a little kid playing old DOS games on my grandpa’s Win-98 PC back in around 2000. My daily driver is currently running Windows 10 but I am pretty adamant on not going with Win-11. I’ve been wanting to experiment with Linux for a while and Cinnamon so far seems like a lot of fun to navigate. Terminal is amazing. The fact that you can custom-write keyboard commands that can be hand-tailored to individual programs on your computer via the OS… that’s powerful.
I have not tried running WINE yet but I plan on doing so soon. I also have not done much of anything, honestly, except for learning how to search for programs with gnome-software --search=. I have also used sudo a couple times to download software here and there, but I know I am not tackling this in as systematic of a way as I ought to be to really figure this machine out.
What are some really important basic commands I can use to start branching out into Terminal command structures and learning more about how I can edit and customize my computer? And if Cinnamon has shortfalls or weaknesses that I may run into eventually, what are some good alternative distros that I could leapfrog to eventually? I do not have any coding experience (currently), but I do consider myself a semi-power-user on Windows, having messed with CMD many times and digging through all the damn menus to access drivers and alter ports.
Welcome!
Don’t feel pressured in any way to use Wine. Sure; if you’re in need of certain software that’s only available on Windows, then feel free to engage with Wine to get said software working on your system. However, note that a lot of alternatives exist, so make sure to check them out through something like alternativeto.net before getting involved with Wine.
Broad question; arguably it makes sense to start out with something like linuxjourney.com if you haven’t yet. After which, you might proceed to plunge deeper into some of the subjects that have been introduced through more expansive resources. Assuming that you might prefer something like a video guide of sorts; it’s worth pointing out that the videos made by the Learn Linux TV channel on YouTube are excellent. One might argue that the ArcoLinux distro might be worth exploring as a platform to learn Linux on; it’s literally one of its design goals. Though, once again, you shouldn’t feel pressured in any way to use a certain distro to learn Linux on. We’ll delve into distros later on.
Cinnamon is just a Desktop Environment, and it happens to look and function close to how Windows does, which is one of the main reasons it is often recommended to newer users that seek a familiar experience. There’s nothing necessarily wrong with Cinnamon, really. Though, it’s worth pointing out that it’s not one of the top dogs in the realm of Desktop Environments; those would be GNOME and KDE. Those two have put in considerable work and effort to have proper Wayland support, which we’ll call the ‘successor’ of X11; this is a very oversimplified description and thus somewhat false, but it would be out of scope for this comment to delve deeper into this. What’s worth pointing out is that Cinnamon -due to its reliance on X11- is (very likely) to be deprived of features like HDR support and superior security standards as long as they don’t put in the necessary time and effort to get proper Wayland support for themselves.
In case your question was meant to ask if Ubuntu LTS is the best platform/distro to learn Linux on, then the only correct answer would be that it depends on your needs. Ubuntu is definitely a decent choice, but you’re not protected from unintentionally borking your system when you try to install Steam. Jokes aside, even though Pop!_OS is only based on Ubuntu and thus I don’t know for 100% sure if said bug stems from Ubuntu or Pop!_OS, it’s still worth pointing out that this is not necessarily a very bad showing for Ubuntu or Pop!_OS. Unfortunately bugs happen, though it’s great to have a system that might be better protected…, though unfortunately nothing comes without a cost… compromises… compromises…; moving on.
In case you’re interested to explore other distros, perhaps take a look at distrochooser.de. It’s not exhaustive by any stretch of the imagination, but it’s decent as a first orientation. If you share your result, then we might even give our opinion on the matter based on said results. If you do end up sharing the result, consider answering the following questions as well (feel free to give non-binary answers):
You might come across a piece of software that’s not available within the repo of your distro. However, if you know that it’s available in another distro’s repo, then perhaps you should use Distrobox (or similar container-solutions) to access said software. Refer to videos on YouTube if you’re interested to know how it works, though its documentation is quite excellent as well.