I’d rather have 5GB of binaries than deal with unmet dependencies one more time (despite many people claims, it is still easy to fall into), my only criticism for flatpak though, is that any kind of modification for a file requires you to navigate through at least ten directories.
Directories are probably the most offensive thing about all package management. Developers are happy to throw their files in .hidden directories anywhere they please. No real standards for that.
I don’t know what principles people are adhering to when it comes to the ideal computing environment, but having to deal with the minutia of installation problems to meet some kind of criteria is just not interesting to me either.
I was in that same boat about a year ago and I switched to pop_os as a trial for a while before fully committing to it. Works well with Nvidia and steam and I know for sure Dota works on it. I have found that any game that is steam deck verified (or even playable) works on pop_os without issue.
It’s not this significant (3x). it should be closer to 7%. My guess is that OP is using something like btrfs, whose data used is calculated differently due to the CoW nature, and btop++ is using using a generic tool to estimate disk usage rather than the btrfs utility that DUA is almost certainly using.
I would suggest Linux Mint Cinnamon. It’s very Windows like, and just works. It’s a great distro to get started. I started on it, and many others have. Non-techy relatives really took to it also.
To understand why you might want to use tmux try the following:
Open your terminal
Start editing a file with vim or nano but don’t save the file
Close then re-open your terminal
You will have lost your progress, next we can repeat but this time using tmux so you don’t lose your session:
Open your terminal
Start a tmux session using tmux
Start editing a file again using vim or nano
Close and re-open the terminal
Type tmux a to re-attach to the existing session
Note that this time none of your progress is lost.
Aside from enabling you to have a persistent session, tmux also allows you to have multiple terminal panes open so you can do more than one thing at a time in the window, to see what I mean try this:
Open your terminal
Start a new tmux session using tmux
Type top to begin listing processes
Press ctrl b then % to make a new split pane
Enter ls or other terminal commands
You will see that you can use more than one panel to do things. This can be useful for example if you want to watch run tests and also run other commands.
openSUSE is one of the old desktop oriented distros. I find it somehow similar to the old glorious Mandrake (r.i.p.). Like it it’s a European distro and both of them are relatively KDE centric and so also somehow similar to Windows. So the philosophy behind both of them is to be user friendly in the way you can do relatively much with the central configuration panel.
I think so. GNOME is more an American thing what you can see from its similarities to the Mac OS desktop layout which is still not that popular in Europe. KDE is also a German project and more similar to the Windows layout. And Windows in the last time often steals ideas from KDE^^
People always say GNOME is more like macOS - but as someone who really likes the macOS UI I really cannot stand GNOME3. I’ve tried but I just can’t do it
Man Mandrake brings back some memories. It was my first linux install solely because they had the fastest shipping time for install cd's and at the time I was on dialup so I couldn't just download anything I wanted. I ran it for several years and ended up on a few different distro's and freebsd for a bit.
Start with something like Pop!_OS and learn by working out how you do all your daily tasks. Once you are competent with that, try tweaking a few things to run how you want, or try new technology. Enabling wayland for example. Then before you know it you’ll have a large beard and preach the benefits of free software
Companies like Red Hat, OpenSUSE and Canonical are not only trying to sell support but also convince others that they are innovating. Red Hat kickstarted Flatpak and then Canonical, who didn’t want to “lose” decided to push their own thing, Snap with the strength of ten thousand suns. Naturally, this is a simplified explanation, Snap already was in development at the time but if we truly followed the spirit of open source, Canonical would have dropped it and adopted Flatpak instead.
OpenSUSE has quite a few products in the kubernetes sector, even Oracle has its own things they can brag about. Canonical has basically nothing and this is why they’re pushing snap as if their lives depended on it.
Remember, Linus didn’t write an OS because the GNU folks were writing one, GNU didn’t write a new kernel after theirs failed, because Linus had a working one. This is the nature of free software, Canonical has completely forgotten about it. Red Hat now too.
I don’t think consolidation, compromise, and coming together in one common direction are the hallmarks of open source at all!
Filesystems, service management/startup, audio output, desktop environment, package formats/management/distribution, programming languages, shell, and so on, and so on - all have many, many options.
Open source is, if nothing else, fractured… it’s about choice, flexibility, and re-inventing the wheel not because it really needs to be re-invented, but because it’s fun to do so and useful to have something that perfectly fits your requirements.
We’ve made room for many package formats for decades, and will continue to do so for decades to come I’m sure.
You got all the good infos already, but I’ll stress:
Get Linux preinstalled from a reputable vendor. Linux works on most devices really; but when buying new, you don’t want the hassle to even think about drivers.
If you cannot buy from a Linux-friendly vendor, buy an older model that’s VERY popular with Linux users (like the stereotypical thinkpad). Again, most devices will work, but you don’t want the hassle.
Intel everything just works out-of-the-box with Open Source drivers and is good enough for work. I’m not aware of the current state of AMD, nvidia drivers.
Choose a popular generic purpose distro. They are all good (enough) and should work out of the box. Popular for end users are Ubuntu (although hated by a vocal group) and related ones such Debian or PopOS; maybe Mint. I’d put Fedora/RedHat and Suse on the same level (but I wouldn’t know since I settled on Debian/Ubuntu long ago). Then, Arch adresses a different clientele who wants to tinker with there system; not my choice if you want a computer that just works, but great community. Anything else probably has too small of a user group unless it’s popular with your friends or line of work
I have been purposefully avoiding Intel for the last six years. AMD CPUs are great if you are not stressed on ultra low power consumption. More threads, less money. AMD GPU drivers are open source and well integrated into the kernel, unlike NVidia’s proprietary driver, which I will never go back to.
If you’re on Wayland, you’re probably on your own, but Xorg almost certainly can support anything except stuff like RGB lighting and DPI switching and that sort of thing. “Normal” mouse buttons should just be generating events that you can see with xev, and then remap them with xkbcomp or xmodmap.
I use a Razer Naga Trinity with the MMO buttons on the side, and I configure it exactly how I want with a script that calls xkbcomp when my window manager starts.
I did not know any of the programs mentioned in the post, but some of them seem really nice. Can someone who thinks aliases are a better solution please explain why they think so and what is their advantage over these projects? Do they have any pitfalls that you are aware of?
I believe that if I use a command sparsely enough, I will forget the created alias name just a few days later than the actual command.
I think that there are definitely valuable/valid use cases for the software in the OP, but I think that the built in bash tools can get most people most of the way there. And learning the common bash/shell conventions is way more valuable than learning a custom tool that some distros/environments won’t support.
If someone already uses aliases, creates some custom scripts, and sets some useful environment variables (along with effective use of piping and redirection) and still needs something more specialized, then getting a new tool could help.
The downsides are a reliance on another piece of software to use the terminal. So I would only use something like this if I had a really solid and specific use case I couldn’t accomplish with what I already use.
Bash is a shell but it’s also a programming language, so between functions, aliases and scripts you can do anything you want without depending on an external program that might break, not be maintained anymore and you need to install everytime you reinstall, a machine.
Most modern distros are either new distro trying to have more modern sensibilities, distros based off of Debian, Arch, or Fedora, or occasionally original things that are okay with being superficially similar to one of those while doing things differently at lower levels. OpenSUSE is one of the few remaining distros from the olden days that has been independent and doing their own thing for decades without spawning a bunch of forks or dying off. If you want to try something even older and crazier Slackware is sure an experience.
Slackware’s package manager doesn’t even do dependency resolution. I respect the fact that it’s managed to keep existing this long and that so much of what it did inspired other distros, but I honestly have no idea why anyone would use it in 2023. Imo dependency resolution is the main reason to even have a package manager, without that I might as well install everything by cloning random git repos. If you want packages compiled from source, why not just use Gentoo (or Source Mage? Idk much about it, but I read through their website and it seems neat).
That being said, if anyone uses Slackware, I’d love to know why. It’s survived this long, surely it must be doing something right.
It’s completely surprise free. You’re not going to wake up tomorrow and find it’s dumped Systemd and Wayland on your front porch like some unsokicited car wreck.
I use Slackware because, in my opinion, it is simple, easy to understand, doesn’t get in your way, and strikes a good balance between being up to date, stable, and bug free. I also have it set up how I like it and don’t feel like installing something else. Honestly, the lack of dependency resolution has really not been a problem. By default, Slackware comes with a lot of libraries, and sbopkg (which builds SlackBuilds from slackbuilds.org) can do dependency resolution, as can some third party package managers. And with appimages and flatpacks, this is less and less of a problem.
That said, I use Manjaro on my Pinebook and am perfectly happy with it, and I’ve used Debian in the past too.
<rant> I use RHEL at work and it’s not bad, but I don’t really care for it. It feels overly complicated in terms of configuration and daemons running, and I don’t know systemd that well. Although I think this is mostly the fault of our satellite server, “dnf update” breaks on me at least once a month. Also, some packages are just plain archaic, and didn’t even update from RHEL 7 to 8. And I can’t seem to wrap my head around source rpms or how to make rpms. Slackware and Manjaro use straightforward build scripts. </rant>
Overall, pretty good considering it’s low price. It is a bit quirky, kind of like running Linux on a laptop 15+ years ago. Hardware support is somewhat lacking because it’s all pretty new. That said, the default Manjaro that ships with it works pretty well out of the box. It struggles a bit with video conferencing, in my case, roll20. It can play Minetest and Supertuxkart on minimum settings.
The Slackware community has produced about 8 package manager front-ends that handle dependency resolution, so it’s not an issue at all and hasn’t been for over a decade. The big thing with Slackware is an emphasis on simplicity of design over ease of use and an expectation that the user will make all the decisions regarding how their system is maintained. I love it, use it on my main machine (Void on my laptop, Ubuntu on my server). It’s taught me a lot about operating systems in general and Linux in particular, and it lets me do whatever I like. I use sbotools and flatpak for my 3rd party software, the former being a ports-like interface to slackbuilds.org (like the AUR for Slackware, but far smaller and with a lot more quality control). Works great, no surprises, boots fast, rock solid and dependable.
I use it because 22 years ago it was more appealing than redhat or Mandrake. It forced me to learn more about Linux because I had to resolve almost everything myself than any other distro. I was using before it had a package manager and honestly after the dependency hell of rpms in 2000s it just seemed more problematic to use one that resolved dependencies than not. Usually I used to and sometimes still use it for a nice base to compile everything on. I dunno. It's my Linux equivalent to my first car that I loved.
It’s a wonderful distro that will teach you a lot about how Linux works. It’s weird, and beautiful and you might brick your system or an essential component (why the heck would I need groff?), but you’ll come out the other side knowing more and appreciating how things work and how easy they’ve become.
Check your games’ compatibilty first on protondb if they’re not specifically made for Linux, so you know what to expect.
If your mind is set for Arch, go for it, it has an installer these days, but consider some other distributions of Linux that are easier for a novice user. Reserve some time to install a few, if you don’t like the first one or it’s not working out then you can just move on to the next.
Stick to the big ones, because you’ll be able to get the most support for then and find the most information about them.
Linux generally works with software repositories that will contain most of the software you’ll ever need. You rarely need to search for software on websites to install manually.
If you like to get the latest versions of software as it is released, consider OpenSUSE Tumbleweed or Arch Linux. They are so called rolling releases. They are not tied down to versions, like Windows, but perpetually update their building blocks as time goes on. Your version is always the latest version.
If you like a more traditional approach with stable releases, consider distros such as Ubuntu or Fedora. Twice per year they bring out a new version (with software updates regularly still) but they tend to stick to large point releases of the software they are built on. You can expect things to work as they are until you install the next version of the distro. In this sense stability means that features generally don’t change. You still get security patches nevertheless. If you don’t like to update the entire system every 6 months you can choose to use their “long term support” versions instead. This will feel the most like new Windows versions, only you’ll get to see the rolling distros on newer cooler stuff, “beta-testing” all the things before your distro’s next LTS rolls them out. I’m starting to digress here.
I never bothered with distros that are built around specific niches, like “gaming distros”. If that maintainer stops you’ll need to switch distros anyway.
I can recommend rolling releases, always have the latest version of everything, as far as the maintainers of your distro can keep up (in which case it helps to go with a large well known distro with lots of maintainers).
Flatpak is fast, lightweight actual open-source and provides security via isolation. Snap is the usual BS Canonical tries to get people to use, has a ton of bloat.
Personally I’ve had zero issues with Flatpak under Debian for desktop usage. It integrates nicely with the GNOME Software “store” and allows you to get the latest and best of everything you might need without polluting your system. Flatpak solves the usual complaints about Debian only having “old” software - allows you to run the latest and greatest while keeping a clean and rock solid Debian system underneath.
linux
Hot
This magazine is from a federated server and may be incomplete. Browse more on the original instance.