The first thing we should figure out is why we need a system. For me, the operating system on a computer is a tool for performing certain tasks, work that needs to be done every day. Therefore, the stability of my system, ease of setup, in order to quickly return everything to its usual appearance in case of problems, performance and security are very important for me.
If the system breaks, it’s very frustrating, you can’t do your job, you lose data, and you get nervous. Therefore, I choose and recommend that beginners choose stable distributions. Not ArchLinux, which is not known how it will behave with the next update, but Ubuntu, Mint, OpenSUSE and other distributions of this kind. For experimentation, you can install an additional operating system or use a virtual machine, but the main system must be working. Always. And now let’s go through the points on how to achieve this, in addition, of course, that you will use a stable distribution.
1. System setup
Many users can spend weeks tweaking GUIs, configurations, and other settings for their system. I understand them, I myself was like that, remember the same work with Gentoo, when the first installation to the minimum working state with a graphical interface took up to two days with a slow Internet or my attempts to set up an awesome window manager. But it takes too much time. And if any unforeseen situation happens, then you will have to do it all over again, or you will just feel wild discomfort from the fact that you are working in an unusual environment.
If we give an example with the whole system, then an update can easily break all your developments, disabling support for one function or replacing it with another, the same transition to Systemd, or if we continue the analogy with Awesome, then the developers will update the version of Lua, the language in which you wrote config file and you will have to rewrite it again.
In short, the further you go from the default settings, the greater the risk that you will have to spend time maintaining your configuration in working order. No, of course, you can change the theme, icons, fonts, or even tweak a few configuration files, but without fanaticism. This is also the reason why I choose Gnome over KDE, the shell looks nice enough without any additional setup.
2. Update
Updates are also very important, with them you get new software (sometimes), and most importantly, fix security issues, and possibly system problems. But as practice shows, if you update often enough, even very often, then the risk of breaking the system when updating is much lower, especially in a stable distribution. And you don’t want to miss software updates, do you? So update your system as often as possible, you can even set up a Linux update using the ucare-systemcore utility if you are interested in using a Debian based linux OS.
3. Software and drivers
As you already know, Linux does not have such a huge virus problem as Windows. Of course, it is desirable to install programs from the official distribution repositories or third-party developer repositories. But you can also search for packages on the Internet. There are several dedicated sites for this, and all of them you can trust, these sites are described in more detail in the article where to find Ubuntu programs . With regard to software, it should only be noted that the less everything unnecessary is installed on your system, the better for its security, especially for services on a computer that are accessible from the Internet. Vulnerabilities are constantly being found in software and it is better that the program is not installed and run if it is not needed.
As for the drivers, the story is a little different. All open source drivers are already built into the kernel, so you don’t need to install them separately. But some hardware manufacturers don’t want to open source their drivers. These drivers are installed separately. Most of all, this applies to video cards. I must say that if you do not play games, then the open driver developed by the community will be completely sufficient for you. Gone are the days when you could notice the difference when using the system interface.
But to get the best performance in games, proprietary drivers will need to be installed. But then you need to forget about the newest core. If you are going to install fresh kernels from kernel.org or ppa or other sources, then note that they will not work with proprietary drivers, because the drivers are not yet designed for this kernel version. So either one or the other.
4. Cleaning the system
From time to time the system needs to be cleaned. Of course, it is not filled with all sorts of garbage, like Windows, but over time, the number of log files grows, the size of the package manager cache, the number of dependencies that are no longer needed, files that are no longer needed by any program, and so on. For each distribution, the cleaning process is different, because the package manager and other additional utilities are involved there. The main things you need to do:
- Clear the package manager cache;
- Remove redundant logs;
- Remove dependencies that are no longer needed;
- Delete unnecessary files.
If you are interested in cleaning Ubuntu , then there is already a more detailed article about this. How often should cleaning be done? Not good. The system clogs very slowly, I think once or twice a year will be enough if there is enough memory on the hard drive.
5. Backup
We want to make the operating system as robust as possible. Only then will the use of Linux be as pleasant as possible. But even on the most stable distribution, things can go wrong, so it’s a good idea to make a full backup of your system’s root partition. Then, in case of serious problems, you do not have to reinstall the system and all programs, or spend several days searching for the package that led to the problem. You can restore the previous state of the system in a few minutes.
There are many utilities for backing up, but it is best to use a tool that is independent of the system being backed up, such as Clonezilla . This is a live image with a pseudo-graphical interface that boots separately from the operating system and allows you to do everything you need. You don’t need to copy very often either, I think that one copy every few months is enough for a home computer. Another precaution, you can write the Grub bootloader to a USB flash drive if you are afraid that Windows will overwrite it during the update.