How to install Xubuntu

Xubuntu is a good starter Linux OS for people that are totally new to Linux. It easy on the system resources and the interface of the desktop it uses is similar enough to the Windows desktop that anyone coming from Windows would adapt somewhat quickly.

This is a tutorial telling you  how to install it. 

The first thing you need is a USB flash drive with at least 8gb of space. You can get one of these at an office supplies store fairly inexpensively and you probably have one lying around. Make sure you dont have any files you want to keep on it. 

Download Refus. It's an easy to use tool to install the ISO you downloaded to the flash drive which you'll use to install Xubuntu to your PC.

I wouldnt worry too much about verifying the ISO, but you should do it anyways because occasionally someone tampers with linux ISO's though it happens very seldomly so I wouldnt worry about it now if you just want to try out Xubuntu for the first time. Though in the future if you really want to use it, Id just suggest verifying your ISO.

Download the ISO from the Xubuntu website. 

CAUTION: Make sure you have any USB drives, such as hard drives or any flash drives, external drives unplugged from your PC before you follow  the next step so you dont accidentally format the wrong drive.

Plug in the flash drive you want to put Xubuntu on into an USB port. 

Browse to where you downloaded the Refus exe file probably in your downloads folder. Run the program.

Click through the things that say "do you want this program to make changes to your PC" the refus program is only going to put the ISO on your flash drive. Windows says this when ever a program needs administrator privileges regardless of what the program is doing. Though you probably knew that already.  

Click where it says boot selection and then find your Xubuntu iso. It's probably in your downloads folder. 

After that click the start button on the program itself and let it format your flash drive. 

When it's done, shutdown your PC, and then start it up again. And press the key quickly that's for your  system UEFI menu. You can find this googling the  model or brand of your computer with search terms like "HP laptop bios setup key" or something like that depending on what PC you have.

on some PC's it'll even tell you on the splash screen briefly before your computer boots.

Once the system is booted into Xubuntu it's pretty self explanatory.  Depending on the age of your system you may have some trouble getting wifi to work. 

Though that doesnt happen that much unless the hardware is fairly new. Though you might want to have your computer plugged into ethernet (the cable that looks sort of like a fat telephone cable) It'll save you time in case your systems wifi card isnt detected by the Linux kernel. 

Xubuntu will give you an option to keep your Windows install or wipe the system. I suggest you keep your Windows install if you decide to install it, just in case you get confused and want to go back. 

The rest of the process is fairly straight forward and is actually easier than the Windows install. 

reboot your computer. If you decided to leave windows there a menu will show up when you boot your PC. It'll be a prompt for what OS you want to boot into. Just let it boot into Xubuntu. If you ever need to go into windows just select windows from the prompt with the arrow keys on your keyboard and hit enter. 

The next thing you'll want to do is open the xfce terminal emulator and enable the firewall. Click the button where the start menu in Windows usually is. (looks like a mouse face in Xubuntu) and open the terminal emulator. 

type into it the follow command to enable your firewall. 

sudo ufw enable

It's not usually enabled by default because some people want to configure it themselves. Enabling the firewall will block any unsolicited connections to your computer. 

The next thing you'll want to do is update the packages on your computer  so everything is up to date. With the following commands

sudo apt update

sudo apt upgrade

I suggest you read the manual page of apt and ufw. you can do  this by typing in the terminal

man apt 

For any command that you dont understand you can do this but also typing --help after the command gives you a less verbose explanation. Sometimes I joke that the man pages are written in the language of neckbeard because they can be hard to understand. 

If you ever have any trouble just google. There are support forms on the internet which you'll probably find. Though make sure you try your best to solve any issues yourself because some Linux users have a chip on their shoulder. Dont let it discourage you.

Installing Arch Linux with the archinstall command in install ISO

Even though it's cheating because you're not doing everything yourself. You can easily install Arch Linux using the included script called archinstall. But dont do this the first time you install Arch Linux. 

Only do this to save time once you understand the system well, because you'll need to know a few things to fix any problems that happen. In fact, if you ever need help the official Arch Linux support forums explicitly state they wont help you if you used that script or followed any other guide than the Arch Installation guide wiki. 

The first thing you should do is connect to the internet if you arent already. For wifi you can use iwctl. It's very straight forward. As for ethernet it's probably already connected anyways. I dont know what to tell you if you're tethering with a phone I never used that.

At the iwctl prompt(after running the command) type station list to find the device name of your wifi card, usually wlan0. It's not always wlan0 of course so substitute it for what one you think it is. 

Then once you found which one you want to use type station wlan0 get-networks to see a list of wifi networks nearby. After that type station wlan0 connect "your wifi network here" Remember it's case sensitive and it'll error if you type it wrong. Then type quit after you're done.

Type ping archlinux.org to verify that you are connected to the internet. 

Next you'll want to update your mirrors to something geographically closer to you so you're packages download quicker. 

First you'll want to type reflector --list-countries to find your country.

Once you got that type for example reflector --country canada --save /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist

you'll want to open that file and figure out which one is closest to you and move the instances of the server to the top of the file. It's not always clear where the server is, so you could google it i guess I am not sure. The server itself may have a website if it's a university, which a lot of those mirrors are universities.

After your done editing the file type pacman -Sy to update pacman's cache. 

Choose each setting the way you like it. Though remember to set a root password when you're done and still in the chroot. Otherwise you could lock yourself out if you didnt set your user to have sudo privileges.

Getting started with IRC using Hexchat

Discord glows in the dark. You shouldnt use it even if you're average joe. I suggest you learn IRC and use it instead. There are several different IRC networks. It's in decline but people still use it and it's still very usable. You can make your own channel easily for all of your friends. 

There are other better alternatives to Discord, such as the Matrix protocol, but I dont know much about that. IRC is just easier to get into. Though there are some things you need to learn first before you dive in.

Even though Weechat is a better IRC client, Hexchat is okay and great for newbies and people running Windows which i imagine a lot of people are. 

First thing you'll want to do is Download Hexchat and install it from their website. Which is here. 

Note: Dont use the client from the Microsoft store. Use the stand alone Windows 10 executable. They'll try to get you to pay for it if you go to the Microsoft store. Also even though I'm far removed from Windows these days as I dont use it much anymore you shouldnt use apps from the Microsoft store because it's just awful.  You shouldnt be using Windows for personal use anyways for different reasons(but that's a different thing)

Then before you do anything close the client. The default theme is awful you might want to get a different one which you can download one clicking the themes button on their website. Find one that you like. I suggest Matrixy. On Windows it's very simple to install a theme, you just open the file and it themes it for you. However on Linux you'll need to extract the files in the package you downloaded into the .config/hexchat folder in your home directory. 

Also read these blog posts about IRC and Hexchat listed below:

Newbies guide to hexchat
How to use nickserv on IRC

If you're looking for an IRC network to chat on I suggest Rizon. They're okay. If you're interested in Linux and open source software you'll probably like Libera, though if interested in those you probably already know about that and IRC anyways.