A 50-something French dude that’s old enough to think blogs are still cool, if not cooler than ever. Also, I like to write and to sketch.
https://thefoolwithapen.com/
I must be older and even more out of touch than you are, as I only use the default Terminal that came with my distro and I had to do a search to check what were Ghostty and Terminator (I know about the movie, obviously, but I’m also old enough to have been watching it in theatre the year it was first released ;)
s that no longer pre-installed, at least for camera imports? It was on 17-20.3 but I don’t think I’ve done a clean (re)install since.
I could not swear, one or the other. Let’s just say I make it my default viewer instead ;)
Jesus that explains why I’ve never used this. Pip is a security issue.
Not sure to understand your remark: I don’t use pip and have no idea what risks it could represent or not.
Apps I replace with newer versions (on Mint too):
This is really good advise and it all boils down to one attribute. Patience.
Thx. Yes, patience is key. As is the ability to
Take a step back.
Failing is fine because it’s not about us, it’s not personal. It never is. It’s about learning something and about the process.
Many thanks to all those that maintain FOSS.
Amazing.
+1. That’s amazing to see people working together like that in order to develop and maintain a fully working set of tools for anyone to freely use.
I guess my end goal is to be able to comfortably install and use arch Linux with my own customization’s and be able to fix it when things go wrong.
What tips/ideas do you have for getting better at navigating the terminal, and getting a better understanding of how the os works. What is a good roadmap to follow? And how did you, advanced Linux user, get to the stage your at now?
You learn by doing and by failing. Like we learned to walk, to write, to drive, to kiss, to speak a foreign language, or even to lace our shoes (and, yep, even that was a heavy trial and error process for toddler-us back then).
Learning takes time and efforts. Perseverance, and humility. There is no shortcut to learning anything that is worth learning, not just Arch. But the reward is also so much worth it. Einstein had to learn calculus, Da Vinci had to learn how to hold a paint brush, and Tolstoy like Flaubert had to learn to write and I’m willing to bet they all made mistakes while they were learning their respective craft.
Even without referring to geniuses: the first time I tried to install Arch I ran away screaming and swearing I would never touch that thing again. The second time, I had already managed to read a good chunk of the relevant part of the wiki and used it constantly at each step of the process. I still failed at it but at least I understood why I failed and I felt incredibly more… in charge, despite me failing. The third time, I managed to have it running, and to install most the packages I wanted. That was great. There was no fourth time as, as much as I love Arch (which is a lot), I quickly realized using it that constant updates were not what I wanted from my OS and apps (I’m an old-ish user with very basic needs, I’m not even that much of a geek to be honest). So, I switched to the complete opposite of Arch (Debian, another great love of mine I must say). Still, learning and using Arch taught me a lot about Linux in general and about… myself.
I don’t distrohop but I do backup my home folder which also contains most of my settings & tweaks. I also keep a simple list of all the apps/packages I have installed in a text file.
I had to reinstall a few weeks a go (new SSD) and it took me maybe 10 minutes to make the base install + all my apps ( ‘sudo apt install’ with a copypaste of my list of apps), and then the time required to copy my home folder too (which was fast). Add to that the couple apps I have to manually install (like Filen for the cloud, Bitwarden for passwords) and that’s it. It’s really one of the things I appreciate since I switched to Linux (coming from Mac where a fresh install now takes… a lot of wasted time).
Without knowing what you have tried already:
Do you guys have higher tolerance to buggy bs? Are you all gaslighting people to get higher adoption? Does it just work? If so… How??
I’ve tried about every distro in multiple different laptops/desktops, amd gpus, basically every possible idea and there’s always weird ass bugs and issues and a ton of involuntary learning involved.
Your question is a bit like asking ‘why do you guys all have a perfect spouse while I only get to live with that stupid creature?’.
Obviously, you would be wrong in considering both your and our own relationships like that.
As far as Linux goes, nope, we’re not more tolerant to BS or gaslighting anyone. That said, maybe you’re the one gaslighting here (yourself, at least) if you’re saying there is such a as a perfect OS?
My Linux machines (Debian/Xfce and Mint/Cinnamon, if that really matters) both have issues. Exactly like, what not-a-surprise, my Mac and my iOS devices have. They’re different issues, but they’re issues.
I don’t know, say, I can’t run Affinity Designer on Linux like I easily can run it on my Mac (‘what a shitty OS that Linux is!’). But then I also cannot change all text size on the screen as easily on the Mac as I can do it on Linux (‘what a shitty OS that macOS is!’). Or have a Windows laptop with as good a battery life as a M Mac (what a shitty… you get the idea).
The only serious question to ask should be: which issues are deal breakers for you, and which are not?
It’s a relatively simple checklist to do. Then, it’s a matter of asking a few questions around to confirm there is no solution available. Problem solved, you will know for sure if you can use Linux or if you cannot. No drama, no existential crisis. And, as a nice bonus, no need to question anyone else intelligence and/or honesty, not even your own.
edit. Any chances you guys could suggest me one setup that “just works” no ifs and no buts? Or does it not exist in the Linux world?
‘Could you suggest a Mac that will just works? Or does it not exist in the Apple (or Windows) world?’ You can’t? And, no, you can’t, don’t believe the marketing. Because if you could Apple would certainly not need to spend the fortune it is spending on customer support and warranty repairs, and the repairman/right to repair advocate Louis Rossman would never have become the influencer he is. Macs and iPhone too have issues.
Well, neither can we help you find the perfect setup for Linux that is guarantee to work without issue ;)
edit: typos
Thx for the info, I will look at that.
Issue with these updates is they happen “behind” and may need a reboot ; this is the only moment I found Debian to misbehave, decide to reboot & I get it when I see the machine updating some component before rebooting again
I don’t think I have that many reboots but I should also say that I will turn off my computer every time I’m not in front of it, which happens multiple times a day. You know, save power and stuff like that. It just boot so quickly it’s not an issue.
I think gnome is perfect in that context also, the lack of Menu is just one hit on the Meta key away, which, if you trim down the install to their exact need will be accessible, confortable.
For me, with Cinnamon and with Xfce, the only real issue was that I had to spend some time tweaking (and searching online) how to make the desktop behave exactly like I wanted it to. But since the OP will be installing it for them, they won’t even have to bother. Which is great.
If I was to suggest anything to the OP, which seems to know much more than I ever will about Linux, it would be to set up an automated backup of their home folder on an external drive (I would go SSD, because I would not fear bumping it or even dropping it), so they will not lose anything even if some serious shit was to ever happen (this is not at all based on my own personal experience as a beginner that may have done some stupid mistakes. No, not I ;)
As a 50-something non-geek that searched for a zero issue distro himself, I can tell you I settled on… Debian (and I love it!) on my desktop and, on my laptop, it’s Mint (which I like a lot too).
I tried and kept Mint because, unlike Debian and a few other Distros I tested, Mint was able to connect to my Airpods out of the box. Like I told you, I’m not really the most extreme geek ;)
The funny thing is that, as much as I was happy with Debian/Xfce, I also quickly learned to appreciate almost everything else with Mint/cinnamon and how it… just works (coming from a 35+ years Mac user). It’s like they made it for ‘mere’ users like me.
Debian and Mint share many things, but the two I appreciate the most on a day to day base (beside the utmost stability and snappiness, even more obvious on Debian as far as I’m concerned) is
Hope this can help.
Does it have problems? I mean, some may prefer other distros to Ubuntu or may not like some stuff that come with Ubuntu, that doesn’t mean Ubuntu has any issue ;)
I don’t like bananas, no issue at all with bananas. I prefer Debian (on which is based Ubuntu) and I prefer Mint (based on… ubuntu) because they suit me much better, that’s all. At least for me. edit: one thing I don’t like for example are snaps, me not liking them does not mean they’re necessarily bad.
Yes, I could have mentioned it too. It’s such a neat feature to have.
There are probably other things worth mentioning. And then a few others that have become a real pain under macOS, imho. For example, the new settings app has morphed into a Windows-like mess ;)
The problem of unintuitiveness is sadly very common in Free software, but it’s getting better… in a few spaces anyway.
It is getting better and even if it was not, I would still be ok with it: I may have been slow but I learned to favor my privacy/freedom over comfort ;)
That said, I know from talking with people around me (and from myself) that it can be a huge obstacle, no matter if they’re older like I am or much younger people. If it doesn’t just works, it plain sucks.
Thx for the suggestion ;)
All those apps are very different but they share one thing: they are not complex and unintuitive apps (I reckon it’s at this point I should get flamed to death, so be it).
I mean, even the most ‘complex’ apps I mentioned (like Antidote or, say, Affinity Designer) most users should be able to start using them quick (not master them, but start using them) because they’re not that complex and not that different. Mmm, I’m not an expert UI designer, it’s difficult to explain my feelings around that notion: many things are familiar if not similar between those apps, heck some are even so simple that there is no such thing as a ‘save’ button. I know it’s also very much a question of education and of acquired habits, but still this matters a lot to me and probably to other people like me. I’m getting old (and I’m not in good health) and I want to spend as little as possible of the time I have left learning new apps, to tweak them, or search for workarounds just so I could do what I’ve known how to do for many decades already. If I was to summarize what I failed to say: I switched to Linux not because I’m interested in learning new apps or in changing my desktop look (it’s really cool, I just don’t care much). I switched because I worry about the lightning fast erosion of our privacy in this digital world. It’s the ideology that attracted me to GNU/Linux. I have no major issues using apps under macOS/iOS, I only have major issues with Apple (and MS, and Google, and Facebook, Twitter, and so many other corporations) acting like assholes willing to destroy our societies and even the world itself so they can make a few dollars more during the next quarter. F. that, that’s my motivation to use G/L ;)
Also, thx for reading to that point without burning me (you will find a box of matches in the second drawer over there, you know where to find me) ;)
Then, I would do as I suggested: either install Windows +Office in a VM on your PC, or find a dirt cheap used one with its windows license, do a clean reinstallation of Windows (to be safe) and then only use it when you need to run Office.
Sometimes, it’s not worth the time to try to find workarounds.
Hi,
I was a Mac user for 35+ years (still am, partly). It took me a little while to get used to new names/commands in Linux but that’s to be expected. And it is not much an issue anymore ;)
What kind of commands exactly? I mean, I don’t know that ‘commands’ are different from one distro to the other’ as they all use the same apps. So, beside the name of a few specific ones (like, maybe the app installer).
My two sole advice:
How do I do? I keep a text files in which I store all the stuff I seldom use but still want to be able to find in case I need it someday. To make finding them easier, I put descriptive titles and comments with each command. And that’s what I’m searching for, not the command name ;)