hey just wanted to say, i jumped to Mint today after building my first pc! I’m a super ultra noob and everything is scary and unfamiliar and I don’t know who to trust online when looking at stuff.
It makes me nauseous worrying about doing something that hurts my pc. Do you have recommendations on public resources and guides? (the first thing I read was one of those “things to look into after freshly installing Linux” and it really emphasized to not give other programs root access or something and now I’m unsure how to even safely install steam. is root access analogous to admin on windows??)
signed, a deathly anxious cat guy who is still too scared to download optifine because there’s too many download buttons everywhere
so root is the linux equivalent of admin for windows. but usually to install programs you do have to you have to install it as the root user so it installs system wide, can interact with core system components and edit configurations and stuff. it might have been saying not to do that if you dont trust the software youre installing? honestly im not sure because of how common it is to install stuff with root in linux tutorials.
theres a few options for knowing youre downloading the official or verified version of certain programs. the main two would be to use the software manager (/mintinstall, im not sure what itll pop up as). or you can use the terminal:
# Update the package list sudo apt update # Install a package sudo apt install <package_name>/ sudo apt install steam
they both pull from the linux mint repository so you know the program is verified/safe.
if youre looking for help or have problems id say the linux mint forums should be pretty safe. i also used LinuxVox a lot when i was first getting started, they have pretty good tutorials while explaining what youre actually doing while making changes to your system.
