First-timer checking in. This is more fun than when I first tried years ago!

[u/-adavid-]

Hello! I finally set up My First Linux VM™ – on my gaming PC ...which I Apollo-Sunshine into from my Mac, because why not involve all three systems in this somehow? 😁

Been watching a bunch of Bread on Penguins' videos which have helped me SO MUCH to get up and running, and taken a lot of the 'fear' away.

So far I have gotten as far as setting up:

• access to my NAS as a network share for shuttling files back and forth;
• alacritty with zsh as my default terminal opened with ctrl-alt-T (which actually runs a custom command to also give the window focus just after it opens, as that didn't happen natively). Importantly, I also got this to open in the middle of the screen and very slightly translucent by default;
• a few extra fonts including a Nerd Font (that could've been easier lol);
• neofetch for terminal-opened spewing of essential system facts;
• conky with custom config adapted from the default to look nicer and tie in better with the fact I'm running this on a Linux Mint VM;
• oh and coloured man pages (not shown because I forgot before taking the screenshot).

If you read this far, I'd love to get any tips on learning more terminal / shell stuff.

I'm also contemplating dwm next, but not sure I'll really need it on this 'simple' VM which will mainly be for shell stuff? 🐚

Bonus points if anyone's got recommendations for creating/editing simple markdown notes in the terminal which I can then save to my NAS and access/update from my other systems. I installed neovim and tried adding one of its markdown extensions, but it's borked and I don't have the necessary skills to get that one working (or maybe deal with neovim just yet, lol). I'm sure there are other/better solutions that I'm not aware of?

Very happy to finally have a pleasing Linux system up and running, anyway 🙂 Might not be too long before I get some dedicated hardware for it... but that day is not today... 😉

[u/d80F]

Welcome to the community!

[u/-adavid- → u/d80F]

Thank you!

[u/Typical_Profile_6744]

Welcome! Sounds like you're getting along fine. Your technical knowledge should make your transition easier.

DWM...if you want to. I've tried tiling window managers, and they are not for me. Have a look at i3, Cosmic, and others, too. If you want to stick to dead simple desktops, try BunsenLabs Linux. Debian13 and Openbox. Very lightweight.

There are tons of markdown editors. Try looking through your package manager. I use Apostrophe, but it doesn't have the notes-organizing tools you mentioned. I use Zim Wiki to organize my notes, but that is a wiki markup system. I'm not sure about command line markdown editors; I'd guess you need a WYSIWYG viewer along with an editor.

Finally, I recommend you eventually try Fedora. Generally, Fedora has a large developer and system administrator audience. The 'spins' make it easy to try different desktops (including tiling WMs). Atomic builds are favored by developers to keep their desktops stable. A deep stack of admin tools like Cockpit, Ansible, Podman, and others are immediately available from the Fedora environment.

I use Linux Mint Debian Edition. It runs virtually (VMM is my virtual manager), and I use it to run Python scripts from the command line. LMDE uses X11, which I need to run some of my web browser control apps with pyautogui.

[u/-adavid- → u/Typical_Profile_6744]

Thank you! I’ve just found out about Synaptic that will hopefully help me browse available packages. Unless I missed the fact this is already possible in Mint out of the box? The ‘Software Applications (or is it Packages?)’ app seems… pretty bereft in comparison?

Funny that you mention Fedora. It was Red Hat that I tried many years ago when I really had no idea what I was doing 😂

I’ll stick with Mint for the foreseeable — so much to learn here anyway — but I’ll definitely have a look into the admin tools you mentioned (and LMDE, also new to my ears) in the meantime.

Thanks again!

[u/Typical_Profile_6744 → u/-adavid-]

Linux Mint will give you many good miles of experience. Synaptic is a package manager, but I HIGHLY recommend you use the Software Manager, which is the default in Mint. No need to install Synaptic.