I thought this was going to be a community for linux newbies, who come here and find little tips for how to better use linux. Like little tips and tricks to better use linux that are so addictive it’s like crack.
Alas, no. This is a sub on how to download pirated linux games.
Which I’m still all here for, by the way. I just wish the community I envisioned ALSO existed. It would be like the first time I ever found out about the registry editor on windows XP.
I need THAT moment, but for linux. The moment where I figure out how to take control, and understand what I’m doing.
Because right now, I’m just distro hopping, but hating most of these options. Right now I’m looking at LMDE which is Mint without ubuntu. Also looking at Fedora. Also looking at Bazzite. And I’ve been using Zorin for a year now.
Outside of those, I hate every option I try. MX Linux was kind of good…but also really really annoying. HATED PopOS.
I’m just looking for tips that will help me understand “OOOOHHHH!!! THAT’S how that works.”
Like right now, I have no idea how updates work. I know there’s repositories. I have no idea where these repositories are. I have no idea how my computer knows where these repositories are. I have no idea how to add or change my repositories. I have no idea what’s in them.
That’s just the tip of the iceberg of what I don’t know. Terminal is just…can we make a distro without the terminal please? Make it so you can download your own if you want to, but the culture around this distro would be terminal-less. That’s the distro I want.
I want to have issues, that have solutions online that don’t start with:
“Step 1, open terminal…”
NOOOOOOOOO!!!
With one hand you describe your desire to explore and tinker with the inner mechanics of operating systems (or at least your desktop environment). With the other your need for an OS to work just so without your configuration.
You can’t have it both ways.
Three facts which may help you if you’re able to accept yourself as the limiting factor:
My point isn’t to discourage you. I think almost everyone interested in exercising their agency in computing ought to be empowered to do so. That isn’t without friction and hurdles though and, at least as far as I can see, never will be.
Graphical Applications have to be built by people. Those people have to understand programming and the CLI/terminal because, again, every GUI interaction is issuing a command to the system it runs on. Not everyone knows how to do that well and those that do cannot program those applications for every concievable use-case. This is why you’re often instructed to fiddle with things via commands in a terminal. No one has built a GUI tool to help you with xyz yet so users have to issue the commands directly if they want xyz.
If you want that tool to exist then you’ll either have to build it yourself and share it with the world or pay someone to do that for you. This would likely be a pull request to add a feature to a program.
There is no world in which an operating system exists without a terminal, however; you might be able to help build one within which the average user never has to open one. That’d take a lot of education, hard work, and use of the terminal to accomplish and maintain.
To know what you’re doing: read the manual. To take control: exercise what you learn from reading the manual.
If RTFM is too daunting a recommendation to start off with (no judgement! I get it) then start here instead: https://tldp.org/FAQ/Linux-FAQ/index.html
The Linux Documentation Project predates the Arch wiki (and it shows) but that has zero bearing on its utility for beginners.
I hope this helps!