Glad I could help.
I run into the issue that after using Linux for so long, I forget that the basics of using the system aren’t just common knowledge. Telling someone to cat a file sounds like gibberish to most people and that’s easy to forget.
There are also a lot of people out there who want to be hand held through every little thing which is the worst way to learn anything. A calm sea never made a skilled sailor, some stuff you gotta just figure out on your own.
“Anyway, here are terminal commands you don’t understand.” and after asking for clarification on said terminal commands, you are quite rudely told to read The Manual - which seems to be some kind of a holy book for these bizarre creatures - without explaining in any way whatsoever which part of which manual you should be “reading”. Thankfully, only every command ever created by anyone since the very conception of these systems - which was some 50 years ago in the seventies, in a university of a country you don’t live in, written in a language you don’t possibly even understand all that well, possibly by someone who also didn’t know the language all that well - is discussed at length and in an impenetrably obtuse manner by many different parts of many different manuals, with helpful references to other commands and concepts you also don’t understand, but which are all varying levels of essential knowledge for understanding some of these commands, while different levels for others. Also if you do not grasp the essential knowledge, you might completely fuck up your system. It seems that the philosophy in playing Dwarf Fortress is found in trying to use certain types of Linux distros, mostly frequented by massive nerds with hugely inflated egos: losing is fun! Because why else would I still be using Arch (btw)? But in any case: Read the Fucking Manual (rtfm to you as well, brother)
My ego isn’t that big…
I chose Arch (in 2011) because
- Terminals make me look like hackerman
- I wanted to nerd out and learn the Linux ecosystem
- My engineer friends were Arch evangelists
I do catch myself saying “just read the manual”, but not in a hostile way I think. When you’re already in a terminal, once you get used to manuals, it’s very accessible and it’s quick to get what you need.
However, that usually requires you to know what you’re looking for quite specifically, and that is something you can only learn through experience and study.
I’m very happy with my choice and the whole “you can easily fuck up your system” thing also works in reverse - you can just as easily fix your system. I’ve made a few mistakes over the years but nothing that I couldn’t reverse. Just make sure you’re not fiddling with partitions and boot loaders during work hours…
Preach. I don’t regret the whole “diving into Arch” part, but I feel like I spent a lot of hours doing things that were pointless, nonsensical even. But then again I’ve spent most of these years since I started this journey struggling with and rehabilitating from various mental health problems (correlation=causation???) so I haven’t had much anything better to do than pointless and nonsensical things, on and off the computer.
Just make sure you’re not fiddling with partitions and boot loaders during work hours…
Ain’t that the truth. Just recently I had invited my friend over for a coffee and such, and when he came I noticed my computer wouldn’t want to boot because I had fiddled with something too critical. Sorted it out eventually, but I feel like it kinda crumbled the foundation of my whole “Linux is superior to Windows in every way” line of thinking I have been trying to bring to life among my friends…
I was around 18 when I started, so doing nonsensical things was my area of expertise at the time. That helps a bit with the feeling of time waste.
Still, it was not a complete waste, because now I can fix any such problems in minutes, and I always carry an archiso drive on me (which I used maybe once in the past 5 years to fix somebody else’s PC which wasn’t even running Arch).
I will say, without exaggerating, recovering from Windows boot issues has caused me WAY more issues over the years. It doesn’t tell you what’s actually wrong, you don’t get much in terms of tools, and so it’s much harder to fix unless you want to completely reinstall Windows (which apparently is a good idea to do regularly too…).
There is a manual pre-installed on your machine for most commands available. You just type man and the name of the thing you want the manual for. Many commands also have a --help option that will give you a list of basic options.
I should point out this isn’t Linux specific either. Many of these commands come from Unix or from other systems entirely. macOS has a similar command line system actually. It’s more that Linux users tend to use and recommend the command line more. Normally because it’s the way of doing things that works across the largest number of distributions and setups, but also because lots of technical users prefer command line anyway. Hence why people complain about Windows command lines being annoying. I say command lines because they actually have two of them for some odd reason. Anyway I hope this helped explain why things are the way they are.
I’ve been using linux for ~17 years or so and I just realized the other day that there can be multiple “pages” in a manual
No, I don’t want to talk about it
Indeed, well explained. Though I think I should mention that I’ve been using Linux in general for some 12-13 years, since from somewhere around Ubuntu 12.04 to 13.10. I did make the error of overestimating my own skills and abilities regarding “figuring it out” when I dove headfirst into Arch, so basically I was a self-proclaimed massive nerd, but I didn’t even realize how inflated my own ego was. I don’t think the archinstall script/library even existed back then, and I also had no clue about the man-pages, or how anything really worked.
So my comment here was more along the lines of embellished musings on my own past experiences trying to learn things while I was doing them. Through these experiences what I have learned though is that the Arch Wiki is an invaluable source for most Linux users.
You don’t need too much GUI, it’s usually just bloat. A lot of race cars have their interior ripped out for less weight, I consider using the terminal as much as possible the same vein. The terminal also acts as a gatekeeping mechanism in Linux, I don’t want normies ruining the Linux ecosystem, all the problems of tech blamed on unmanaged capitalism by Ed Zitron and Cory Doctorow are actually all the result of woke DEI Code of Conducts, go watch Brian Lunduke to learn more.
Yes, it’s going to be uncomfortable for a few months, maybe even a few years. You might get called a lot of bad words along the way, maybe even get doxxed and harassed IRL, but it’s just normal human behavior. Nowadays I’m writing my Python and Javascript code on Arch Linux using neovim, on a 65% artisan mechanical keyboard, and I’ve set my own custom shortcuts for everything. In my free time, I harass Rust, Swift, Go, D, etc. developers, and call them weak and pathetic for wanting to do system development using a language with both memory safety and janky design that made sense on an old mainframe with limited memory. You either use C/C++, maybe assembly, for system development, or a bloated scripting language for memory safety on top of a C/C++ system!
I saw this other day and this happened with me too. I was having issues with brave and someone really asked why do u need brave
Brave aka the Nazi Browser…
Lmao bro where did it come from?
Removed by mod
Idc any of these but I use zen
GUIs are just terminal wrappers. Idk what to tell you, man
I have no idea what this mean is even trying to say, but as someone who is trying to make the switch to Linux, it is a steep learning curve, even for the most “user-friendly” distros.
A lot of the information in forums assumes some sort of basic knowledge of code and processes which aren’t readily available. I’ve asked a few noob questions and while there are some helpful people out there, there are also a fuck load of assholes who seem to think they walked out the womb speaking Ubuntu.
So my message to those people is, if you’re not gonna be helpful, kindly keep your snide comments to yourself.
If gou have an issue shoot me a message, I can’t guarantee anything but i’ll try to help
Shoot me a message too. I don’t know anything about Linux but I’m lonely.
Username checks out
Yeah, I can confirm this. I’ve been using Linux for around two years at this point and having a Linux-using friend made the transition at the start way easier. Now I’m the Linux-using friend for all of my Linux-curious friends and it’s great.
If you’re getting coding advice, you might be on the wrong forums, which can explain the snark.
You don’t need to do code to use Linux. You can use Bash if you want, but it’s not a necessityToo many people expect you to know and understand gnu-utils and all the common config file, filesystem and folder structure paradigms though. Which is the problem.
The problem is that Linux nerds, myself included, are too deep in the knowledge to even think of sth. You might not know. And my way to learn the basics of Linux was breaking 3 installations and running random scripts from stack overflow without really knowing what they do.
I don’t want this the way for new people to learn Linux. There must be a better way. But I don’t know which one. People who think you can’t ask questions because your basics are missing should shut the fuck up and go to 4chan or so.
None of that is code.
It’s possible that when you ask for help you don’t even use the words correctly, like you demonstrated here, so you expect people to help you without doing a bare minimum of even understanding the terms. If this is true, it’s on you.
So many times I saw people comming hot, asking for help, and when given a command to run, getting angry that it’s some words they don’t understand, and asking for a different solution, one that doesn’t require commands.
I don’t know, for example, what problem you had that required you to “understand filesystem” whatever you mean by that, and if so, what solution to it you expected.You’re the only one rambling about coding right now, Apocalypteroid just used the word once; given he’s a self-described novice it’s safe to assume the word was used in a generalizing manner to describe any kind of bash, command line magic or config file syntax (as little as there is, there still is more or less basic syntax you have to adhere to. Enthusiasts might not even realize this anymore). Your comments do make a good example of the communication problem between novices and Linux/IT enthusiasts though. Your expectation towards people who aren’t into a topic to use perfect terminology in their questions is both naive and inconsiderate. It’s no wonder people got angry with you.
To answer your last question regarding “understand filesystem (paradigms)”: Coming from Windows people rarely, if ever, had to learn about any kind of filesystem; if they had to most people just right-clicked and formatted a disk. While saying that “ext4 is standard” would be rather straight-forward, more and more distros come with btrfs. Additionally it’s important to know about exfat to not let them run into awful situations with incompatible USB sticks and such. Of course this can and should be shown using their distro’s native Disk Utility, i.e. Gnome Disks, KDE Partition Manager or whatever comes with or at a minimum a common tool like GParted so they can safely interact with their own devices.
You can use Bash if you want, but it’s not a necessity
I would argue and say at minimum you should be comfortable with Bash and the file system , otherwise if you spend a year running Linux and encounter some obscure error you’ll be totally clueless troubleshooting wise and might end up breaking something else.
I’ll take it just one miniscule, slight iota further and say they should all go fuck themselves.
But that’s just what I think.
The thing is, though, that command line instructions work on most flavours of whatever distro you have running. If you have an xfce problem it’s fair game to tell you where to click, but if your issue is not related to your desktop environment, giving a solution that works on most, if not all, systems that may have the same issue, is actually a good idea. No?
And many folks have headless setups — raspberry pis, home servers, VPSs, etc. It’s kinda overkill to install a desktop environment on a headless box if the only reason you need it is so you can VNC into it for a simple task that could be done over ssh.
Yes! Command line instructions are often universal instructions. This is imho a huge boon for Linux.
I use xfce and i like it so far, though it would be good if i could increase the minimize/maximize/tray toolbar’s size
As long as I’m mocking help forums, I might have a stupid solution for your window decorations, which you can follow at your own risk. I saw your comment and, just out of curiosity, started playing around in a VM with imagemagick, a program I’ve never used before, but that might be useful for you. Here’s what I did:
1.) I copied a theme I liked, in this case “Sassandra”, from /usr/share/themes into ~/.themes.
2.) I renamed Sassandra (in ~/.themes) to Sassandra2 and switched themes to Sassandra2.
3.) I opened up some of the images in ~/.themes/Sassandra2/xfwm4/ and made note of the geometry of the buttons. In this case, they were 24x17.
4.) I opened a terminal in ~/.themes/Sassandra2/xfwm4/ and ran a command I got from an AI chatbot and fiddled with it blindly like an idiot until it ran:
find . -type f -exec magick {} -scale 12x17 {} ;
In this case, I wanted to use magick to shrink the icons from 24x17 to 12x17 (though you could just as easily replace “12x17” with an increased size instead), and I wanted to do all the files at once, using the find command as suggested by my robot overlord. It didn’t work as I intended. I never bothered to read any docs. I’m not even sure I put the “{}” in the right spot. But it did shrink the images, preserving the aspect ratio. It also threw up a couple errors because I forgot about the readme and themerc files in that directory. Speaking of which, you can fiddle with the themerc file to make any minor adjustments, like offsetting text.
Edit: In retrospect, the original image files were actually all different sizes and now Sassandra2 looks like crap, but you can always run magick on files individually.
There must be other ways to do it
What are these “solutions” you speak of? All help forum posts must follow this format:
“I want to do x.”
“Why would you want to do x? Don’t do x.”.
In many cases that kind of answer is correct though. People ask for things that aren’t a good idea on a regular basis. Sometimes what they want is correct for their circumstances, but often not.
Closed as Duplicate.(the post pointed to as the original is a post from 2013 deleted in 2018)
I want to shoot myself in the foot
Why would you want to do that? Don’t do that?
Why are people so rude to me? I asked a question and they won’t answer it. The Linux community sucks
Yeah it sucks.
If I wanna shoot myself, let me shoot myself. Maybe I’m into that. Who are you to judge whats good for me?
Why would you want to shoot yourself? Don’t do x.
If you so desperately want to shoot yourself in the foot, put some effort into it and figure it out instead of asking strangers on the internet for free advice because you’re lazy. Not everyone is into enabling people mutilating their bodies.
I want to make a sandwitch and I know I can do this by shooting myself in the foot, no i don’t care this is bad practice just tell me how to make it work.
doesn’t tell them how to make it work, does not give enough instructions to make it work the “right” way
installs windows again
The Linux Community does suck…
Just give me your rdp access. I promise I will not abuse it.
*Advice
No wonder OP is afraid of the terminal, you can’t misspell left-click.
I’m dyslexic and the terminal can be a challenge some days
Now that’s a better reason for looking for a GUI solution than the OP had. I hadn’t really considered how dyslexia would affect CLI usage.
Just to give you some extra impressions:
My brain mixes up all letters with the same/similar form (regardless of rotation or flip) - so I often mix up [d, b, p, q] or [a, e] or [u, n] when typing. And then I read the command 20 times over until I find which letter got mixed up, because my brain autocorrects to the right command when reading.
It helped to use the Dyslexie font in the terminal, because it makes those shapes more unique distinct. (not to be confused with open dyslexic which did not help me at all).
Also asking an AI to correct the command is huge, but takes time.
But man GUI has none of the hassle, it says what the button will do when you click it, so you click it and it does that. How wonderful is that, ay?
It’s not a universal effect. Some dyslexics or people with related challenges like dysgraphia will find the CLI easier.
That’s interesting. I’ve often wondered what it must be like programing or using the CLI if you aren’t familiar with the English language, but I hadn’t considered the dyslexia/graphia type issues.
I just have really bad memory from a combo of ADHD and weed. Remembering where in the GUI to fix something is a lot easier than remembering commands. Especially when if I fuck up said command I could make the problem worse or make a whole new problem. GUI gives me visual landmarks that stick in my memory, and thats something the terminal doesn’t. Like navigating a city via landmarks vs via street signs. Tell me directions via streets I am lost, but tell me to go left after the walgreens on the river and now I know.
The ADHD aspect of computer related stuff is something I wish more people understood, Linux and beyond. I have about 45 seconds before I get distracted, that’s if I’m lucky and my phone doesn’t go off or a neighbors dog starts barking or I hear strong wind and decide to check the weather or I suddenly remember I need to mop the floor of my bathroom and a near infinite set of other possibilities. If I need to spend 15 minutes reading man pages about what arguments actually do or searching online for it and getting a short list of links dating anywhere from 2 to 20 years ago or a forum post with a dozen pages of comments then I… I… shit. What was I doing?
Interesting, also ADHD but for me it’s the opposite. I can get in a deep state of hyperfocus doing computer stuff and I mostly forget the world around me exists. Which of course is not ideal either lol.
Me too. Just use tab and complete commands that way. Fish or zsh with oh-my-zsh is your friend.
Ha ha, even tab complete isn’t enough to help me some times
Copypasting a term command vs. 20 pages of “click here, now click there”. Which is more efficient?
The one enabling people to understand and use their devices on their own. Once you can use a mouse or touchpad, you can navigate the UI. Good UI/UX conveys function. Checkboxes insert the correct configuration in the background without possibly hazardous typos.
The CLI does nothing of this for the user, to understand it users have to invest tens, if not hundreds of hours before they get a hang of all essential commands, paradigms and tools to help themselves. They have to become IT intermediates just to use their computers.
By providing a single CLI command (which, in the worst case, gets copied by a third user on an incompatible system configuration breaking everything) instead of pointing at the GUI tools most user-friendly distros already provide you do, in many cases, a disservice to the average user who just wants their problem to be fixed. They will not be able to help themselves next time for a similar issue.
The one enabling people to understand and use their devices on their own.
If you’re using a UI, and you have a question about something or don’t understand what you’re doing, isn’t that a sign that either the UI you’re using is insufficient, or your own knowledge is lacking?
Good UI/UX conveys function.
Exactly. By itself, a good UI should “enable people to understand and use their device on their own”. If you’re a UI user and you can’t figure something out on your own, maybe you need to use the terminal to accomplish whatever you’re trying to do.
I also think navigating is easy, doesn’t mean anyone asking for initial help using a GPS app to get on track should from now on use a book with relative directions explained in text.
You missed my point so bad that I’m unsure if it’s worth trying to re-explain myself
I was answering your last point. I didn’t react to the first one because implying the big Linux DEs of user-friendly distros (usually Cinnamon, KDE or Gnome) were bad is just utter nonsense. Incomplete at times in regards to very specialised administrative tasks, sure. But the features and menus that exist are generally well made.
Back in the day, I learned how to network winxp machines together, without a router, and without being able access the internet to find instructions, all because everything I needed to know about any given setting was in the gui where I could manipulate that setting. I had lan parties featuring dozens of pcs, all manually configured. Was this the correct way to do things? Fuck no, but it worked. I was able to make it work because I could see everything I needed to as I was doing it.
None of the above would have been possible if CLI was the only option.
Why does it have to be one or the other?
I, as someone who spends so much time in the terminal that I literally have a dedicated key to open it, would prefer a single CLI command. My grandma, who thinks the monitor is the entire computer, would do better with the “inefficient” GUI option
There can be more than one correct way to do something
Definitely the command. CLI commands are simple and portable. Asking the user what DE they are using for an extra round trip and then making a description of the pointy-clicky-ceremony has way to much friction.
Here is some :- :() :;: Please don’t try this at home.
I suppose I can try this at root.
Do it
It shouldn’t do anything on a properly configured system (so most systems are screwed)
“why don’t you just”
╭∩╮（︶︿︶）╭∩╮
It is always amazing how so many of them can’t help but prove op right any time this comes up.
“easier solutions”
No: pet solutions. Don’t let false consensus dictate the wrong labels.
pet solutions
I’ve never heard this term before. My searches online aren’t bringing up anything useful, it’s all stuff about literal pets. I can’t seem to wrap my mind around what it could mean or the right thing to search to find the answer. Could someone explain please?
It’s an expression coined by Corsican Guppy in the mid 2020s, referring to a solution to a Linux/Unix problem that uses a Graphic User Interface, as opposed to one using the command line.
That sounds awfully derogative towards the average user.
I hear the average small freshwater fish from a Mediterranean island feels nothing but scorn towards the average user.
I think it’s just a Name for some specific containers on Linux.
Im confident OP is using it wrong. Well, as confident as one can be that had heard the word the first time today.
I’m confused by this comment
Sometimes it’s easier to assemble what you need from parts than go adding/removing stuff from somewhat monolithic solutions, tho.
Most people just want a thing to work though. One member of my family has issues with her iPhone at the moment where the signal is just all over the place. Sometimes not able to receive calls, sometimes not able to make them, sometimes inaudible when the call is made. She’s googled and gone to apple tech support who have given her a list of basic troubleshooting tasks to do, stuff like checking settings. She said to me “I don’t want to go hunting for these things I just want to hand it to someone and they can make it work!”
Linux and computer enthusiasts are happy to assemble things as we need them because the problem solving stuff is satisfying to us, for other people it’s just a slog.
I guess I misunderstood the meme, then: to me it looked like a jab at nerds that ignore “simpler” solutions when they themselves have a problem, rather than said nerds giving overcomplicated advice
the problem solving stuff is satisfying to us
Yeah, that stopped being a factor decades ago. I now hate it just as much as any iPhone user. There are reasons beyond “I like how it makes my brain feel”.
