Beginner questions for people with Linux experience
by Dstar22 from LinuxQuestions.org on (#5E1J2)
Hello all, I have an older laptop (Windows 8) and planning on upgrading in the next year or so. I first had an interest in learning hacking thus downloading and playing around with Kali Linux. I learnt that there is a lot of learning to do before I can feel comfortable using Linux. I am now thinking I will buy a new laptop and I will download and run Ubuntu or Linux Mint as the primary OS. But I just can't justify switching from Windows to Linux. I do realize it will take some time to learn and I do not find it difficult to learn Linux but it does take some comittment and seems overwelming at first. I have no problem using some basic commands in the "terminal" at the moment.
I mostly use my laptop for browsing the net (Google Chrome/Firefox), using Open Office Spreadsheet to calculate my hours for work, and other misc. things.
Would Open Office work with Linux?
I was able to sucessfully download and install Firefox on Kali Linux... Today I downloaded and installed Google Chrome and I was able to use it, however when I closed the Google Chrome window I couldn't figure out how to open it again (there was no icon on the desktop like the Firefox icon that I can click on) and I got frustrated. I followed some instructions online on how to install Google Chrome mostly by copy and pasting specific commands into the "terminal".
Would an experienced user of Linux just know how to install Google Chrome or other software/programs? Or would they have to do what I did and look for the specific commands from another website and copy/paste into the terminal (example: wget https://dl.google.com/linux/direct/g...nt_amd64.deb)? I'm not sure how I would find this without first downloading an internet browser.
I've also heard of how customizable Linux is. Could someone give me some examples of what sort of things are customizable? Is it just desktop colours and font? What could someone like me potentially do in Linux to make my everyday life easier than if I used Windows?
Sorry for the long post and the noob style questions haha. Hopefully someone is willing to give me their advice and convince me to switch to Ubuntu or Mint.
I mostly use my laptop for browsing the net (Google Chrome/Firefox), using Open Office Spreadsheet to calculate my hours for work, and other misc. things.
Would Open Office work with Linux?
I was able to sucessfully download and install Firefox on Kali Linux... Today I downloaded and installed Google Chrome and I was able to use it, however when I closed the Google Chrome window I couldn't figure out how to open it again (there was no icon on the desktop like the Firefox icon that I can click on) and I got frustrated. I followed some instructions online on how to install Google Chrome mostly by copy and pasting specific commands into the "terminal".
Would an experienced user of Linux just know how to install Google Chrome or other software/programs? Or would they have to do what I did and look for the specific commands from another website and copy/paste into the terminal (example: wget https://dl.google.com/linux/direct/g...nt_amd64.deb)? I'm not sure how I would find this without first downloading an internet browser.
I've also heard of how customizable Linux is. Could someone give me some examples of what sort of things are customizable? Is it just desktop colours and font? What could someone like me potentially do in Linux to make my everyday life easier than if I used Windows?
Sorry for the long post and the noob style questions haha. Hopefully someone is willing to give me their advice and convince me to switch to Ubuntu or Mint.