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Tips for a new Linux user (kbin.social)

submitted 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) by Mawkey@kbin.social to c/linux@kbin.social

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Hello!

I've bought new parts and I am awaiting their arrival so I can build my brand new computer. I've decided to go for Arch Linux with KDE plasma or perhaps Gnome as my desktop environment but that's as far as I've come.

https://pcpartpicker.com/list/Xw4sRv

I figured I would ask the community if they have any tips or suggestions, thanks!

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[–] loopgru@kbin.social 5 points 2 years ago

My absolute, #1 biggest recommendation is to male separate partitions for / and /home.

What does this mean? In short, you're telling the system to treat different sections of the hard drive / ssd as entirely separate buckets. In this case, you're putting all of the operating system and programs in one bucket ( / ) and keeping all of your files and settings in another (/home).

Why does this matter? As someone learning Linux, you should tinker with things, learn what they do and how they work. Sometimes, that means breaking things, occasionally in spectacular ways. Having your files and your OS separate means that you can completely wreck your OS while you learn without losing your data in the process- you can reinstall from scratch or even distro hop (try out a new version) without having to stress over losing anything. In short, you can learn and play and blunder and explore without risking anything more than a 20 minute reinstall if you can't figure out how to fix it.