Ok, let me see if I’m starting to understand.

If something is packaged for a disto, then I can download it using the package manager and it should theoretically be compatible with the distro and the other packages available through the package manager. But if something isn’t available via the package manager, I could still find it online and download and install it, but it might cause issues because it hasn’t been verified by the people who maintain the distro’s package manager accessible repositories. Or I could still install it with flatpaks or snaps and something something container and it should still work? Or might cause compatibility issues?

And you’re saying that AUR has more packages that have been verified for arch than OpenSUSE has with Yast?

Did I get all that right?

Thanks, that’s a lot of really helpful info.

What do you mean by this though?

If you’re curious where a command lives you can use which cmd or type cmd from the command-line and it will show you (something I often wish Windows had).

A command can ‘live’ in different places? And this might be a dumb question…but what is a command in this context?

I don’t understand the issue here. Does that mean I can kill my BIOS bootloader somehow? Or the display driver? And how would screwing up drivers on one SSD with Linux affect my other SSD with Windows? Sorry if these are dumb questions, I’m just trying to get my head around as much of this as I can.

I keep hearing good things about both of those. They’re the first two distros on my list to try out after OpenSUSE.

Why would some software not be available on OpenSUSE? Would it be available on other distros due to a different way they handle packages, or do you mean in comparison to Windows?

Thanks for the advice. I plan on adding another internal SSD and installing Linux on that. I should have been more specific in my original post.

You’re saying I can access the filesystem on my windows drive from Linux? So I could directly copy files back and forth? I thought I’d have to copy them onto an external drive, reboot, and then copy to the Linux drive.

I have an SSD I’m using for windows and a separate one that I want to install Linux on. I want the ability to remove one of them and keep using the other. From what I understand I can set the BIOS boot order to load Linux first and use the Grub to select which OS to boot?

I realize now I should have been way more specific with how I worded things in the beginning.

Is a home directory similar to the users folder in windows, or like the program files folder? Is it ‘everything but the OS’? I’m still trying to get a grasp on how the OS operates conceptually.

That makes sense, thanks!

deleted by creator

Yeah. I probably should have been more clear about that.

Thank you! I’d welcome advice on any of the other replies I’ve made so far, and if I have any more specific questions I’ll give you a shout!

I’m a student, and I play games. So mostly I’m doing MS Office and Steam, but I’ve got a lot of random niche stuff I do too. Like I’m using Unity to develop a HoloLens app for a research lab, and I just use VSCode as my IDE. I use Bitwig Studio for audio production, Blender, Freetube, and some proprietary software from my University.

I guess I’m just wondering about compatibility issues I might face, and how to approach those. Are there just some programs that I won’t be able to use on Linux? I’ve heard about Wine, but it all feels conceptual. Like you ‘use’ wine to run windows programs but what does that mean? Do I run it like a VM? But it’s not an emulator?

I’m used to going to the internet, finding an .exe, and installing programs. But Linux has a package manager that you should do that through instead? But I’ve also seen a bunch of download links for Linux software online, so is there a difference in downloading something from the internet and installing a ‘Linux’ version of it, or installing that through a package manager?

Sorry I’m all over the place, i think my brain is a little scattered trying to figure everything out at once haha

I want to maintain my Windows 10 install for now as a sort of fallback. I have a lot of random software installed for my university classes, and I don’t know about all the compatibility issues I might face with those. And letting it sit there in the background in case I need it for something feels safer than jumping head first into a new OS.

Trying out liveUSB or VM stuff seemed like it would be an extra hurdle in transitioning to Linux. Like, I want to get settled in and actually use it as a daily thing, not just browse the internet a bit here and there. If I don’t like the distro I choose, I can always just install another one, right?