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:
- GNU/Linux freedom means, among other things, the freedom to modify. This is why distributions exist. Someone had a strong enough preference to take on the burden of constructing an alternative which met those preferences “out of the box”.
- Everything you do in any GUI is executing commands for you.
- Everything in Linux is a file descriptor. Differing design philosophies are one of the reasons (among many) that Microsoft created the Registry for Windows. Warren Young’s response to a question about this topic on Stack Exchange is nigh exhaustive and well written. This might be the lightbulb you’re looking for?
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!
There’s so much possibilities in customizating your OS.
Not possible to create user guides for gui features mostly. although Ubuntu tries
Step 1: Chill
Step 2: Don’t try to run before you can walk. Adding or changing repositories is a bad idea 99 times out of 100.
Step 3: STOP reading up on all the Linux controversies online. It’s just an operating system.
Step 4: Stick with Zorin. Why? Simply because it’s the distro you’ve been using for a year. Almost all Linux distros can do what any distro can do. Which one you use generally doesn’t matter as much as you think. Stick with it until you run into something it can’t do, and you know enough to know which other distro could do it better. It doesn’t matter that it’s based on Ubuntu, and Ubuntu is kind of meh. Don’t worry about Snaps, Wayland or Systemd. Just install the programs you need and use your computer.Yeah. Stick with Zorin or maybe try Ubuntu. If you specifically do not want to learn, which is what your post makes it sound like, Zorin or Ubuntu will be your best bet.
Crack tip number 1: The desktop environment you use is independent of the distribution. You don’t have to switch to an entirely different distro if you don’t like Gnome or KDE or LXDE or whatever. On 90% of distros installing another desktop environment is one command away.
Crack tip number 2: If you want to know what a command does run
man commandor google that. Use the arrow keys to scroll up and down/searchtermto search for a word andqto exit.Crack tip number 3: Ask for help on Lemmy.
It sounds like youre causing yourself a lot of trouble.
Consider that all the distros are the same. Its a default config and a selection of packages.
Find a desktop environment you like and install a mainstream distro. Tweak/fix any things you consider to be an issue and then you’re set forever.
Soo you could just start a community called “Linux tips crack” or “crack colinux” and just start posting … hot tip, post some incorrect Linux tips and you will get the corrections pretty quick …
Being real, Linux without terminal is kinda impossible. That being said, assuming you test compatibility via a live disc/drive before installing, you shouldn’t need to use CLI often at all, and may never need to if you don’t want.
However, when trouble does happen, you need that kind of access. You do on Windows as well, so it isn’t like you’re escaping it if you jump ship.
Not having a terminal program would be mind-numbingly bad. Any situation that you would need to use it, installing it would be harder, and maybe impossible. So, just don’t open the damn thing if you don’t want to use it regularly. There’s a ton of gui options for almost everything these days. But you can’t escape command line entirely on any os.
Repos are essentially what makes the various distros what they are, to an extent. They’re curated software, and the address for whatever is maintained by the distro is already in there, and that’s how it knows. Someone put it in.
If you’re not comfy with CLI, you probably shouldn’t fuck around adding repos tbh. Again, that being said, you’d find where to do so under the software/updates menu in mint. You find the box, type the info in, give your password, and Bob’s your uncle. Thing is, that’s not a decrease in steps compared to using command line, it’s just different steps. The exact label to get there via gui may vary between distros, but it’s in the “start” menu somewhere.
Updates are just a matter of the software connecting to the repo, checking to see what’s new, then giving you the option to use them.
Legit, I totally understand the issue with using command line interfaces. My dyslexic ass hates trying to sort through the text. But it is a great tool. If anything every goes really wrong, you’ll be glad it’s sitting there ready.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_cracking
Software cracking (known as “breaking” mostly in the 1980s) is an act of removing copy protection from a software.
Instructions that start with “open terminal” are then followed by text commands to execute, all of which can be broken down and dissected to learn exactly what they are doing and why they are there. And generally, CLI tools, config files, etc have a very stable interface that doesn’t change much over time (generalizing broadly; obviously there are some softwares with major changes which this does not apply to). Ultimately, they can be replicated very easily with copy/paste by the end user.
Instructions that are just a bunch of screenshots are subject to user error and whims of the softwares UI designers and your own personal look and feel settings.
Instructions that are “download this file and execute it” are how you fuck up your system with a difficult, possibly nonexistent, path to recovery.
So, I’d advise to get comfortable with the terminal and accept those instructions as the blessing that they are
Not possible entire Unix was build in idea of terminal ,so just get used to it it very cool tool.
Fedora just works. Just do fedora workstation. Get on the current version, then always trail the new version by a couple of months, just so they have time to fix bugs.
The range of Linux is enormous. It is everything from small microcontroller-ish devices to cars, routers, phones, appliances, and servers. These are the primary use cases. Desktop is a side thing.
Part of the learning curve is that no one knows the whole thing top to bottom end to end at all levels of source. Many entire careers and PhDs and entire companies exist here. You will never fully understand the thing, but that is okay, you do not need to understand it like this.
The main things are that every distro has a purpose. Every distro can be shaped into what you want.
Fundamentally, Linux as the kernel is a high level set of command line tools on top of the hardware drivers required to run on most hardware. The Linux kernel is structured so that the hardware drivers, called modules, are built into the kernel already. There is actually a configuration menu for building the kernel where you select only the modules you need for you’re hardware and it builds only what you need automatically based upon your selection. This is well explained in Gentoo in tutorial form.
Gentoo is the true realm of the masters. It has tutorial documentation, but is written for people with an advanced understanding and infinite capacity to learn. The reason Gentoo is special is the Portage terminal package manager. Gentoo is made to compile the packages for your system from source and with any configuration or source code changes you would like to make. This is super complicated in practice, but if you have very specific needs or goals, Gentoo is the place to go. Arch is basically Gentoo, but in binary form for people too lazy or incapable of managing Gentoo, but where they either already have a CS degree level understanding of operating systems or they are the unwitting testers of why rsync works so well for backing up and reloading systems. It is the only place you will likely need and use backups regularly. The other thing about arch is that the wiki is a great encyclopedia of almost everything. It is only an encyclopedia. It is not tutorial or ever intended as such. Never use arch as a distro to learn on. It is possible, but you’re climbing up hill backwards when far easier tutorial paths exist.
Godmode is LFS, aka Linux From Scratch. It is a massive tutorial about building everything yourself. No package maintainers for you.
Redhat is the main distro for server stuff. It is paid. The main thing it offers is zero down time kernel updates. You never need to reboot. It transitions packages in real time. Most of the actual kernel development outside of hardware peripheral driver support happens at Redhat. Fedora is upstream of Redhat. They are not directly related, but many Fedora devs are Redhat employees. Fedora informally functions kinda like a beta test bed for Redhat. Most of the Redhat tools are present or available in Fedora. This is why the goto IT career path is through Fedora using The Linux Bible. So if you want to run server type stuff or use advanced IT tools, maybe try Fedora.
Here is the thing, you do not need to use these distros. They likely are of no interest to you. All of this bla bla bla is for this simple point, distros are not branding or team sports. They are simply pathways and configurations that best handle certain use cases. The reason you need to understand the specific use case is because these are like chapters of Linux documentation. How do I configure, schedule and automatic some package? Gentoo probably has a tutorial I will find useful. How do I figure out the stuff going on prior to init? LFS will walk me through it. What is init? Arch wiki will tell me.
On the other hand, there is certain stuff to know like how Debian is for hardware modules development, and mostly unrelated to the latter, building one off custom server tools. When you see Debian like on some single board computer where no other distro is listed, that means it probably isn’t worth buying or messing with. It means the hardware is likely on an orphaned kernel that will never have mainline kernel support so it won’t be safe on the internet for long.
That’s another thing. Most of what is relevant is keeping a system safe to be online, meaning server stuff.
OpenWRT is the goto Linux for routers and embedded hardware. You can easily fit the whole thing in well under 32 megabytes of flash. It is a pain in the ass for even a typically advanced Linux terminal user, but that is Linux with a GUI too. The toolset is hard, and has little built in documentation by default.
With very early early 1970’s+ personal computers, crashing and resetting computers was a thing. Code just ran directly on the memory. The kernel is about solving the issue of code crashing everything. The kernel creates the abstractions that separate the actual hardware registers and memory from the the user space tools and software so that your code bug does not crash everything. It is a basic set of high level user space commands and structures to manage a file tree, open, edit, and run stuff. In kernel space, it is the scheduler and process management that swaps out what is running when and where for both the kernel processes and separate user processes. The kernel is not the window manager, desktop, or most of the actual software you want to run.
The other non intuitive issue many people have is sandboxing and dependencies. Not all software is maintained equally. When some software has conflicting dependencies with other software, major problems arise. How you interact with this issue is what really matters and one size does not fit all or even most. This issue is the reason the many distros actually exist. Sandboxing, in almost every context you will encounter, is about creating an independent layer location for a special package’s dependencies to exist without conflicts on your base host system. It is not about clutter management or security, just package dependencies. That is the main thing that each distro’s maintainers are handling. The packages native in the distro already have their dependencies managed for you; they should just work. Maybe you want to use more specific or unrelated things. Well then you need to manage them. Nix is designed especially for this in applications where you need to send your configuration sandbox to other user. Alternatively, people use an immutable base like silverblue and run all non native software from sandboxed dependency containers.
Can confirm, fedora workstation is the best out of the box option 99/100 times
OP, I have two things to consider:
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Your aversion to the terminal will make it extremely hard for you to learn linux. The point of the terminal is to tell the computer exactly what you want it to do. If you don’t know what you want it to do, you probably shouldn’t do it. As such I’d suggest you either buckle down and learn the hard way with something like Arch installed manually, or just stick with what you already know and let the knowledge be drip fed as time goes, using something that mostly just works. The tool is there, its meant to be used a certain way. Sometimes you can’t treat every tool like a hammer.
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It sounds to me like you don’t want to be on Linux. Maybe MacOS would be better suited for your taste if you really want to be on something unix-like instead of NT.
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Bonus round: Eyes are slower than fingers, eventually you’ll be wishing there were a more efficient way, an easier way than fumbling through menus to hope you stumble upon the setting you’re looking for. That way is the terminal.
Bread on Penguins just posted a really great resource for newbies to understand what they’re doing better. Some of it is arcane, some of it will be super helpful for you. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jllnhid7O7w
Edit: I used the wrong the(ir/y’re/re)
Ignore this person OP, they’re basically lost to the Void Linux, not understanding the whole world doesn’t necessarily want to spend countless hours tweaking every little thing or even more hours troubleshooting. Sure I like it and have an Arch based laptop, but I’m still same enough to know that most people don’t find that fun or nice &tc.
Just go with Bazzite if you want something easy to use that’s hard to mess up with gaming, and use the Flatpaks. If you ever do one day feel like having a bit more control and tinker power though, I learned today Cachy is a good next step, since it’s still very easy to use for gaming but is based on Arch.
CachyOS is butter smooth. And you could potentially never have to open the terminal
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