Linux for Idiots, By Idiots

[Etern4l]

47 minutes ago, Eban said:

 

I think it was ZorinOS 16.1  base, I tried on my Panasonic Toughbook cf-31 but nothing I could do to make it recognize the touchpad. Nothing in Zorin's forums or Ubuntu help pages would make it go....I finally gave up and installed windows 7 

 

Sounds like some really custom tough touchpad there. You could get Panasonic to release the docs, and write your own driver :)

[raptorddd]

why cant linux be as easy as windows

i have only tried mint long time ago for a few hours.

will it ever be like windows.? i mean as easy to use.

can you play games.? no steam account.

cant run windows programs right.? no microsoft programs just any program. i wish it be as easy as windows then people would make the switch. 

i have beed watching videos and threads on reddit ive read that it has lost of problems. didnt read thru just browse notreally reading all 500 messages.

[Aaron44126]

22 minutes ago, raptorddd said:

why cant linux be as easy as windows

 

I've been looking at Linux for a long time but the "laundry list" of things that I'd have to tackle to switch from Windows is too much for me to handle given my current level of "free time".

 

But getting games to work is honestly among the things that I am least worried about at this point.  With Steam+Proton you can play most Windows Steam games with little configuration effort needed (a lot of games are running on Steam Deck this way), and something like Lutris can get you easy access to non-Steam Windows games.  Windows programs can run under Wine (with varying degrees of success or tweaking required, depending on the app) — Wine is actually the base that both Steam+Proton and Lutris use to do their thing.

 

But generally I see Linux as a good choice two classes of people at sort of opposite ends of the computing spectrum:

• Lower threshold — Those who have very limited "computing needs" and can mostly get by with a web browser and basic apps.
• Upper threshold — Those who have more advanced computing needs and also don't mind spending time learning, experimenting, and tweaking to figure out how to make everything that they need work.

...For people in the middle, they're likely to just end up frustrated.  There have been strides made on lowering the "upper threshold" in the last few years but still a long way to go, I feel.

[Etern4l]

3 hours ago, raptorddd said:

why cant linux be as easy as windows

i have only tried mint long time ago for a few hours.

will it ever be like windows.? i mean as easy to use.

can you play games.? no steam account.

cant run windows programs right.? no microsoft programs just any program. i wish it be as easy as windows then people would make the switch. 

i have beed watching videos and threads on reddit ive read that it has lost of problems. didnt read thru just browse notreally reading all 500 messages.

I don't think it's realistic to expect Linux to be as easy as Windows for someone migrating from Windows (sort of by definition of migration, and again, mind you: many people find Windows confusing, or certainly aren't super-comfortable with all the features).  Using Linux is not necessarily that much more complicated, were you to start from scratch, just unfamiliar if you are coming from Windows. A newcomer needs to learn to do things differently, same as they would if they were getting started with MacOS. Here are some examples:

 

Windows -> Linux

Windows window manager - > one of several window managers available on Linux: KDE, Gnome, Mate, Xfce etc. (pretty straightforward except for maybe KDE) 

Windows filesystem layout -> UNIX/GNU/Linux filesystem layout (and filesystem features such as links and symlinks which are very rarely used on Windows)

Drive letters -> C: is the root "/" + flexible mounting of drives/volumes anywhere you want

Registry -> Config files

Devices in device manager -> Devices in /dev

Windows app store -> Linux Software Manager apps (generally distro specific) + package managers, flatpaks etc. if you want to understand what's happening under the hood

 

There are also things which will be largely alien to an average Windows user, but are not uncommon on LInux (although a new user can certainly do without):

* Building software from source (after all most things are open source) - doesn't really require any programming knowledge, usually just one command copied from README file

* Using shell/terminal on a regular basis (so one needs to learn the GNU system commands and basics of say bash)

 

If I were to start now, I would probably read a book, or at least google and go through some tutorials. People with more of a tech background, might be tempted to do a short course, e.g.: https://www.coursera.org/learn/linux-fundamentals#syllabus

Trying to wing it might prove frustrating.

 

So the question is why, and here are several benefits to be realised, depending on one's priorities:

* Much improved privacy (although Windows can be hacked to somewhat mitigate privacy issues)

* Improved security

* Lower software cost

* Supporting the idea of an open system

* Improved system/application performance (more of an advanced topic - it's not a given that things will just run faster on any Linux distro, however, in certain domains pretty much a guarantee)

* Not supporting MS and its direction of travel under the current leadership, if that's an attractive proposition 

* Access to native GNU environment

* Developing new tech skills around Linux

* Reduced RAM utilization / making some older hardware (think a <= 4GB RAM laptop) great again - something like Ubuntu MATE requires about 1GB of RAM after boot while looking like a Mac pro (and there are even lighter options)

 

 

[Eban]

 

Command line 

 

 

 

 

I'm a WIMP!!!

 

Windows Icons Menus Pulldowns 

 

[Etern4l]

26 minutes ago, Eban said:

 

Command line 

 

 

 

 

I'm a WIMP!!!

 

Windows Icons Menus Pulldowns 

 

 

BTW -h on commands such as ls, df, du shows file sizes in human-readable format, e.g. 2KB,  5MB.

 

Also tne above is the results of ls -al, which is verbose. ls just prints file names by default :) 

[Sandy Bridge]

17 hours ago, Eban said:

 

Command line 

 

 

 

 

I'm a WIMP!!!

 

Windows Icons Menus Pulldowns 

 

It never occurred to me until seeing your annotated screenshot, but `ls` really doesn't label anything, does it?  You're just expected to read the man page to figure out the output.

 

Which is fine if you're in that "upper threshold" that Aaron mentioned, but I can see how for the average user very little would make sense out of the box, maybe they'd guess what the timestamp column meant, and the file name, but that's probably it.  I've used `ls` for years and didn't know what the "Number of links or directories inside this directory" meant, and still don't know what the number next to the "total" means.

 

If I were the UX designer for `ls`, I'd add a header column.  Privileges/???/owner/group/size/modified date/name.  Other than the # of links it seems like it would all fit.

 

I also never knew I could use -h on `ls`, as I can with `du`.  That's kinda neat, I have learned something useful.  And now I see that the "total" appears to be "total size of this directory (without subfolders)".  Well at least on my system, which is an oddball as Windows running `ls`.  I'm not sure it jives with the "88" in your screenshot.

[Aaron44126]

10 hours ago, Sandy Bridge said:

It never occurred to me until seeing your annotated screenshot, but `ls` really doesn't label anything, does it?  You're just expected to read the man page to figure out the output.

 

I mean ... I poked around with Linux as an alternate OS back in the 2001-2003 range and was generally confused by everything.  I'm really comfortable with it now — despite not using it as a "daily driver" OS, I interact with it regularly on servers/VMs/WSL.  (I actually pretty frequently pull up a WSL bash terminal on Windows to handle some sort of work that is just easier to do on Linux.)  What made the difference was I took a class on it in college and learned all about navigating the terminal, bash scripting, grep/sed/etc., file system permissions, doing compilations (gcc, makefiles, etc.) and writing some simple C programs that use regular Linux system calls (rather than the C standard library) to just get a feel for the mentality behind how everything works.

 

I'm not really sure what the starting point would be without some kind of base like that.  It's easy enough to install Linux and get a desktop with a web browser and "app store", but as soon as you want to do anything even a little bit complicated, you're going to be hitting the terminal, and nothing is really explained for you.  Finding a book, course, or some YouTube tutorials like @Etern4l mentioned would be critical.

[Etern4l]

All that said, Linux distros are quite different to what they were 20 years ago. A user with basic requirements such as running off the shelf apps will rarely, if ever, need to tinker. I would think about something like Ubuntu or PopOS as unlocked ChromeOS. Yes, you can dive in deeper, but if all you need is a ChromeOS experience + games via Steam then you are unlikely to ever need to touch shell. I have family member who uses Ubuntu this way, the only questions I get are "hey, do I upgrade the OS as per the popup?" 

[Linux]

On 2/20/2023 at 3:57 AM, Reciever said:

I guess I may try Pop! again, last time I did it was with modded laptops and it didnt like the touchpad I had installed at all (still doesnt)

No issues with my Clevo model there. Everything works.

[Reciever]

6 hours ago, Linux said:

No issues with my Clevo model there. Everything works.

That doesnt corelate to my upgraded t440p, touchpad doesnt work regardless of driver, kernel, distro. For that system I have long since given up trying to use Linux with it.

[Eban]

On 2/23/2023 at 12:07 AM, Aaron44126 said:

 

I mean ... I poked around with Linux as an alternate OS back in the 2001-2003 range and was generally confused by everything.  I'm really comfortable with it now — despite not using it as a "daily driver" OS, I interact with it regularly on servers/VMs/WSL.  (I actually pretty frequently pull up a WSL bash terminal on Windows to handle some sort of work that is just easier to do on Linux.)  What made the difference was I took a class on it in college and learned all about navigating the terminal, bash scripting, grep/sed/etc., file system permissions, doing compilations (gcc, makefiles, etc.) and writing some simple C programs that use regular Linux system calls (rather than the C standard library) to just get a feel for the mentality behind how everything works.

 

I'm not really sure what the starting point would be without some kind of base like that.  It's easy enough to install Linux and get a desktop with a web browser and "app store", but as soon as you want to do anything even a little bit complicated, you're going to be hitting the terminal, and nothing is really explained for you.  Finding a book, course, or some YouTube tutorials like @Etern4l mentioned would be critical.

 

I think your 100% right and a course would solve most of my issues. Good advice!

 

I'm watching this guy's videos on youtube because

1. I'm in Japan and attending a course presented in Japanese for linux just adds so much more complexity and

2. I'm a computer geek, why wouldn't I