My first time using LInux as someone who's not a computer aficionado - It's perfect
To clarify I'm not incompetent at computers, I'm sure people don't tend to install Linux if they aren't familiar with technology in a decent capacity. But for instance I can't code, can't operate the command line short of copying and pasting command, and don't really know what I'm doing with the technical aspect other than following online guides. I have used windows all my life. I'm Linux illiterate for lack of a better description.
I decided I wanted some form of USB bootable computer, i'm familiar with chrome books, enjoy the light weight OS, and am bed bound to the google ecosystem so I when I saw how you could plug in a USB and have the computer boot into Chrome OS running off the USB I thought that sounded perfect. But during my research of discovery I found that Linux seemed like a very good alternative, I had always had it in my head that it was very technical and finicky system where to do a simple google search you had to code in half a dozen lines into the control terminal in some bizarre 2018 text adventure to use the web, I do exaggerate of course but the image I had conjured up over the years was of a very non-user friendly experience and a system made for those running technical aspects such as web servers and system management.
I decided you can't knock it to you try it and besides turns out you can't get chrome OS on a 32GB USB it has to be 8GB or 16GB apparently. So I installed Ubuntu on my USB, no clue if this is some snooty distro, or a version of Linux that's mocked in the community, or the perfect distro but after minimal research it seemed the most popular and well received version to put it on a USB and booted into it.
Instantly all my preconceived notions we're erased. It's clean, modern, simple, light weight, and easy to use with a very intuitive and familiar UI. It's pretty much a more open and degooglified (That's a nice word) version of Chrome OS. Since Firefox Quantum was released I emigrated over to try break some ties with google for privacy reasons like it's some pervy conjoined twin of mine, I know it's not good for me, I don't want it there but I can't get rid of it without harming me.
It's got a simple UI that's familiar to windows albeit without all the bloatware and ads spread everywhere, it doesn't track you like window does (that's as far as I'm aware it did ask to collect anonymised telemetry data which I opted out of). With windows I'm so used to having to go through 3 different pop up windows to change a setting that in Ubuntu it feels like I'm missing features although I'm yet to find one that's not there. The best bit about Linux, is if theirs a setting you want to change and can't find, than someone online has wrote a guide giving you a command line code to copy paste into the terminal to fix it.
Although to me it feels more on par with Chrome OS than Windows as a bare bones OS with simple apps and a web browser to use the internet with, in this regard Linux wins easy, way more open, no profit based motivation, and more accessible allowing itself to be used anywhere.
All though that comparison holds up for the normal user and if you are someone who just browses the web and uses apps like Spotify than Linux is amazing it's not complex or difficult, truly wonderful.
What makes Linux even better is the fact it's not a fair comparison, sure to me it's like Chrome OS due to the simple purposes I use it for but what's truly great is all that nerdy technical stuff I thought Linux was for you can do, if you are hosting a web server than linux gives you a free platform to do it, it feels like you are directly modding the PCB of the computer it's that open.
In retrospect to typing all that I feel I've just blurted out a generic description of Linux and for those that use it I'm sure they just think I was naive, but this is more aimed at the average user, Linux, or at least Ubuntu, is great, it's: simple, easy, fresh, clean, open, modern, intuitive, versatile, multi-purpose, and free. It's not some difficult to use system, it's alarmingly simple, but infinitely useful
It's easy to learn and difficult to master.
Welcome! :) You'll be in for the long haul.
I don't have any advice on the linux side and a little off topic but for breaking ties with google and using Firefox I'd say definitely look into the Containers extension by Mozilla themselves. In short you can compartmentalize websites into different "containers" to help aid privacy.
It's a little difficult for me to explain right now but their description is pretty good.
For example I have a social media container, a shopping container, a banking container, a job searching container and an entertainment container. So like linkedin, facebook reddit, tildes and twitter are logged in on the social media tabs but they can't see anything going on in my entertainment tabs where I'm logged into Netflix. And all of that is separated from my normal tabs where I can do google searches and misc internet things.
Atop to the container extension, I'd like to recommend uMatrix. It's like adblock, noscript, privacy badger and mozilla tracking blocker in one extension! It might seem complex, but it allows you to block certain things. For example by default it blocks all requests going to ad or tracking domains, so no javascript/css/images gets loaded. It's really customizable, it doesn't eat loads of RAM like Adblock and it actually speeds up websites, because it blocks requests instead of already downloaded elements.
I even have it on my mobile phone and where I have poor connection (so regular websites don't load), I globally block all images/css/js, so I have just HTML version of the websites, which is loaded really fast.
I have to second your recommendation of umatrix, and I want to reiterate that it might be a little bit daunting at first, but it really isn't that complex to use. Using the extension really opens your eyes to some of the crap that websites load, I've found news websites to be the worst.
I love gorhill thanks to uBlock Origin! Had no idea this was a thing though! Thanks for this!
My current addon setup is just EFF's privacy badger, https everywhere, ublock origin and mozilla's containers. I really should but I don't block any JS right now.
I think Linux is fantastic. A little frustrating at times. But definitely better in most regards than the alternatives.
This thread also needs some Stallman love.
Sorry
You can tell how old this copypasta is from their mentioning of "XFree86" (it hasn't been used in any mainstream Linux distribution in over 10 years).
I take umbrage with the claim that XFree86 (now Xorg) is more important than GNU, though. I've used many GNU/Linux systems that did not have any X server or GUI software, and it all felt very comfortable. Conversely, I have never used a Linux system that was missing GNU software (fileutils, binutils, gcc, gdb, bash, glibc, etc.) that I felt comfortable with. The closest you can get is a BusyBox/Linux system, but it feels like a Fisher Price knockoff compared to GNU.
In most modern Linux systems though, systemd is surely a more integral component than the GNU userspace? I don't think there's any reason to elevate GNU in importance above the other userspace components these days, even if that was a reasonable thing to do in 1994. If we're slash-adding userspace components, Poettering/Linux is probably the most accurate description!
Yup. It may seem like you are self-important if you are inserting your organization's name into someone else's project, but in reality the response is the more senseless statement. GNU's work is an undeniable achievement, and Linux would be nothing without them.
Some history; GNU didn't write those utilities just so they could continue using proprietary UNIX forever, they wrote it so they could have their own OS. There is a GNU kernel called Hurd that was supposed to be the backbone of GNU's OS. But Linux got popular faster, and it quickly got better hardware support. When Linux was new, GNU was basically their entire userspace.
GNU's software is still a foundation to any Linux system. Countless other programs depend on them. And while the layman may never touch them, they are vital for more advanced users.
I agree with the point here about how saying GNU/Linux might require you to then list even more software included in your OS like X/GNU/Linux (however many Linux operating systems do not any graphical windowing system at all). But I think the author's definition of an Operating System is very close to my definition of a kernel.
I know I'm reviving basically a dead thread, but this is perhaps one of the worst technical arguments I've seen in a while... Time spent in code is a good metric for finding bottlenecks, exactly the sort of thing coders of critical system components called by tons of code (like glibc) try to prevent.
That was Stephen Fry, actually. Though the blurb could have been written by RMS.
One need not fear the command line. Lesson one with linux is RTFM.
To get the full linux experience, though, you really want a command line reference book sitting on your desk. Something simple, like the one page linux manual or your favorite cheat sheet. Once you learn the basics, you'll know how to ask linux about the things you don't know yet. The 'man topic' and 'apropos keyword' commands can explain/find what you're looking for. Just about every command out there takes common terms like '-help' or '-version' to explain themselves. You shouldn't need google - ask the OS, it'll teach you as you go.
The linux command line is like a library of thousands of tiny little programs that all do one simple thing obsessively well, and you can chain them together like legos and drive them with scripts and timers to do whatever you want.
The unix filesystem is rather... non-intuitive for the windows crowd. It might be the oldest data structure in the computing world, 40-odd years old, so it comes from a time when a single computer was the size of a fridge, and it was designed around that sort of old school technology. It's a good design, you just need to read a little primer like this for it all to click.
Eh, just
sudo chmod -R 777 /*and you're good to go.... for the less experienced in the audience, don't actually do this. It's a terrible idea.
Also, avoid
sudo rm -rf /*as well as:() { :|: & };:.On that note, avoid any command that involves
ddunless you're trying to write an iso image to a usb drive or something. And if you're doing that, pay very, very close attention to what you're doing, make sure you haven't swappedif=andof=(input file, output file). Also be very sure you're targeting the correct device. In fact, don't useddat all. It is a silly program. Usegnome-disksor a simliar GUI program instead.Strange. I have no experience using void linux, so unfortunately I can be of no help. I know on debian-based systems if you have gnome installed it'll already be there and work, and if you don't have gnome installed,
apt install gnome-disk-utilitygets all the necessary prereqs.I personally don't use it. I just recommend it for noobs because it's really easy to use. I also use
ddfor writing images, though I'm keenly aware of its destructive power. Then I use gparted for most other formatting/partitioning tasks.I got curious so I looked at the ubuntu package for gnome-disk-utility and it lists
libudisks2-devas a dependency. Perhaps this package is what you need.Edit: Off topic, but every time I read your username I somehow but think it says apetor. Maybe it's really mild dyslexia or something, but either way, I can't help but envision you as a crazy drunken Nordic person when I reply to your comments. I hope you don't mind :)
I've never seen the command with the star at the end. I know just
sudo rm -rf /. Are the commands the same, or does the star at the end do something? I don't want to test it on my computer :-)GNU
rmactually doesn't allow you to delete/without specifying--no-preserve-root. But since/*gets expanded by the shell to every subdirectory of/(/bin /etc /home /usr ...),rmnever sees/as an argument and thus deletes everything just fine.It's also super easy to inadvertently type that instead of
rm -rf ./*when you're trying to delete everything in the current directory (best to cd up one directory instead).Also a good one: trying to delete all hidden files in working directory using
rm -rf .*. Including.., oops.Just FYI, ChromeOS is actually Linux. It's based on the Gentoo distribution due to its extremely modular and bare-metal design, allowing fun things such as using Chrome for basically the entire UI and even lower parts.
Linux is my daily driver, and it's simple and clean. Obviously there are a lot of different distributions focusing on different things. (Mine would be Linux Mint, a prettier, simpler distribution based atop Ubuntu's simplicity, which is itself based atop Debian's rock-solid stability).
The only real difference I find, is that when something goes wrong, or I don't like the way something is, I can fix it. The settings are right there, to do anything I want.
And when something goes wrong that you can't intuitively fix there's usually some people on the internet who have already solved the problem in several different ways and have posted the solution on places like askubuntu.
I also use Mint (at least, for everything aside from gaming), and I love it more than Ubuntu. I'm generally averse to switching my OS unless I need to, though, so I probably wouldn't have found or tried it at all if Ubuntu hadn't tried to force that godawful new UI down our throats a few years back.
My only gripe with Ubuntu is that it comes with an Amazon app. In previous versions they actually sent your searches for system applications and files to Amazon so that they could inline ads for music and videos alongside your local search results. Thankfully that stuff has been scaled back, but there's still some Amazon advertising built in.
I'm glad that you were able to try Linux and had a good experience! Ubuntu is a great choice of distro for a beginner (and pretty much any other level of Linux user), as you seem to have discovered. Polished but powerful.
If you ever need some help or would like to learn more, there's a ton of users around here who I'm sure would be happy to lend a hand.
Happy Linuxing :)
Thanks, typing this out on Ubuntu as we speak. It seems really robust. I feel it is just unknown amongst the general masses. It would be great if the companies making cheap laptops/chromebooks pre installed Linux on it.
It took me a while to get proficient with it, but no time at all for it to feel familiar. You'll end up searching for open source alternatives to things you used to use on windows, and then stumbling across an old github repo with something that sounds perfect. Then you'll start to really want to dive headfirst into the command line trying to figure out how to compile it.
Also something that took me a while to get used to was the notion of "installing" things. On windows it's this clearly defined separate thing for the most part, but on linux it's a little different. Everything is always installed, a program is a program. You just run it. But I might be butchering that a bit.
It's not perfect, and be careful thinking it is - it's ok that it isn't, but I've seen quite a few people fade out of the honeymoon period and toss it away after hitting a wall or 2.
There are things in Linux that are goddamn infuriating, but for the most part they're all things you can either fix or work around, and each time you do you're better equipped to do it faster and easier the next time. Depending on exactly what it is you're doing, there should hopefully be less of those infuriating blocks than you get on Windows or MacOS.
The only other thing I'll point out is that anyone who champions a distro or gets uppity about one or another (or anyone who thinks in terms of distros in general, really) is flat out retarded. Besides the crucial (in terms of the required syntax more than anything a general user will actually care about) difference of DEB (Debian/Ubuntu and co) vs RPM (Fedora and co) and some quirks regarding GUI, you honestly shouldn't give two shits what distro you pick, so long as there's a large enough user base that you have the necessary level of newbie support.
There’s a lot more differences than that. There are different init systems, core utilities, etc., and the differences between package managers can be a lot bigger than “DEB vs RPM” (see, e.g., NixOS). Here’s an overview of some unique distributions that I wrote on Reddit.
P.S. I hoped that terms like "flat out retarded" wouldn't get thrown around in Tildes. :/
Ubuntu used to get flack for including an Amazon search engine that some people considered spyware (not sure if it actually was, or if it still does), but aside from that it's always been a decent distro in my book. The fact that it's "for noobs" is a good thing, that just means it's built to be as user friendly as possible and actually allows you to get things done rather than spending hours or days tinkering with things to get something to work.
That site is great.
It was an icon in the Unity Dash that could be easily removed (right click, remove), it was immediately removed in Unity 8
This has been my experience as well.
When my Windows 8 desktop started dying I really wanted to avoid 10 because of the advertising and privacy issues. Apple wasn't an option due to cost, so naturally I started to consider Linux. I spent a few weeks mentally preparing myself, as I was expecting to be tinkering with configurations and fixing things via command line.
I downloaded Mint, installed it, did updates, and well... It just worked. It's been six months now and all my computers(and the girlfriends laptop) are running Mint. I was actually slightly disappointed that it's been so trouble free as I was ready to get my hands dirty.
Unfortunately I think Linux still has this stigma attached to it, so it won't be 'the year of Linux' anytime soon.
There are still plenty of distributions where you can get your hands dirty (and screw everything up). At least for tinkering in a VM they can be a lot of fun :)