If you are the “computer person” in your family, you probably have experience screwing with, breaking, and fixing whatever OSes you have used over the years.
The refreshing difference with Linux is that the software and the people who created it are not trying to prevent you from doing what you want with your computer.
Same with arson
What’s the Venn Diagram of “childhood pyromaniacs” and “Linux users” look like?
It’s just 1 circle with both labels in it.
Over the years of using Windows (2010-2023), I don’t remember learning anything at all, only using the command line twice, once to check the hard disk and once to clean the registry… I’m in love with Linux terminal.
This is why you have to switch to more and more difficult distros over time, to keep yourself on your toes
Me going from Mint to Ubuntu to Kubuntu to Neon to Arch. My experience with the Arch installation process is just the command
shutdownSomeday I’ll be comfortable enough with this nerd shit to trust myself with unsupervised access to a CLI. Until then I’m happy just knowing what a DE is
next step is nixos! holy fuck transitioning from arch to nixos was hell, i did like 10 years of arch.
Or Gentoo? I haven’t used nixos yet so cant speak on it but Gentoo has been awesome to tinker and learn with.
I think nixos is harder than gentoo, plus you can do all the gentoo compile from source stuff on nixos
Genuinely curious cause i don’t know much nixos, does it support an equivalent to USE flags or slots?
I don’t know much about gentoo, but use flags sound a lot like overlays to me, but like I said, i’m not familiar with gentoo.
nixos allows the install of various versions of software by default so slots are definitely a thing. It’s one of the main things nix wanted to fix.
I ended up installing the nox package manager on my gentoo machine, and it’s been useful so far. Got some packages installed that aren’t in the native Gentoo repo
I’m still gonna have to dual boot for the foreseeable future, but I force myself to usually boot mint unless I want to play any vr/multiplayer/racing games (which is often, unfortunately). But I do really enjoy how much you can do in linux and learning it.
I’m sure this will draw some criticism but I’ve found duck.ai to be extremely helpful in troubleshooting minor issues with my Linux mint installation and recently with accessing and understanding SMART hard drive diagnostic data. It’s very helpful in figuring out which commands could be useful in the terminal and in understanding exactly what each terminal command is doing. Of course finding answers in forums and manuals is still relevant and important but as a beginner, this has been a fast and easy way to get advice.
Good point. I don’t know why I didn’t think about this sooner, i literally use it for other programming stuff.
That makes sense. It cuts through the RTFM bullshit, and gets you a clear answer without unnecessary ego.
Wait, you guys are getting better? /j
im still stuck in vi hell… help… cannot exit program
All jokes aside, why do people even bother with vi?
It’s powerful, lightweight, and ubiquitous. If you do sysadmin work, remote into a random machine, and need to update a config file, it probably has vi installed already. It’s also extensible enough to use as a full IDE.
Personally, I like it because of how fast it feels and because I can do everything while keeping my hands on the home row of the keyboard.
Software developer here.
I only recently switched from vim to VSCode and I refuse to use any editor without vim emulation.
Regular expressions for quick and efficient and precise search and replace, modal editing which allows me to type di" to ‘delete inside current double quotes’ (needs vim-surround plugin), typing 123gg to go to line 123, press % to switch between any pair of marching braces, brackets or parentheses, and all sorts of such efficient goodies.
It’s not only efficient, vi has a whole concept, a philosophy how you can build quick editing commands. It’s not like remembering random shortcuts like Ctrl-C Ctrl-V. Once you understand the language, it becomes second nature and you can translate something you want to do into 5 key strokes which would need 100 otherwise or would involve the mouse and clicking and selecting etc.
I’m not even that good at vim, I’m just using the surface features.
It has very good reasons why every notable editor provides some form of vi editing emulation.
And the less you use Windows, the worse you get at using it. Luckily the bar for Windows competency is pretty low, just basic critical thinking skills and Google get you far.
Honestly, potentially the more you use Windows the worse you get at it. You come to accept the garbage, but the more you try to fix it the more it fights you and the less stable it becomes. A user who just doesn’t touch anything is probably better off.
You can make that point for any operating system, basic critical thinking could mean anything
You could but you’d be drawing a false equivalency.
I got an equivalency for ya
Pb(s)+2 HCl(aq)→PbCl2(s)+H2(g)
