Running Linux: terminal commands, more terminal commands, constant troubleshooting

[kratosgodofwar]

Hello,

 

When running Linux to do basic things like install apps you must use the terminal. Unless you’re installing from the store, to install things like Notepad++, Java IDEs it’s a painful process of having to use the terminal. Why is this the case in 2020? Why doesn’t Linux take some notes from Windows and MacOS and implement a fully graphical interface for everything if they’re trying to make people migrate from Windows? In the past few years yes they’ve slowly been making Linux distros more user friendly but it’s still the case that doing things like updating the OS and apps requires the terminal, installing apps requires packages and so on. I know that some people enjoy using the terminal but for 99% of people they don’t want to go through numerous hoops with the terminal and go through dependency hell for which doing the same task in Windows or MacOS would take 1 minute. 

[Master Disaster]

Simply, because that's how Linux works. Its not Windows or macOS, its Linux and that incredibly fine grained control is why Linux powers the vast majority of servers around the globe.

 

The "99% of people they don’t want to go through numerous hoops with the terminal and go through dependency hell for which doing the same task in Windows or MacOS would take 1 minute" probably should just switch over to Windows or macOS. Nobody is forcing them to use Linux.

 

Also Linus Torvalds is pretty militant about Linux never turning into Windows or macOS. Perhaps if/when he steps away from the kernel other users might start to add some simplification to things but as long as he's in charge it'll never happen.

[benitiv]

Linux requires the user to know what he is doing. This is just it's character.

Being more transparent also makes troubleshooting and customization much easier.

Linux is limitless. You theoretically can do anything you want without restriction and without any costs. 

People are so familiar with windows-ish operating systems that they might find the idea of using the terminal intimidating. On the other hand, terminal usage is actually really just required for administrative tasks.

Also on windows  and  mac, many administrative tasks are more easy / efficiently made by using the command line.

 

Like if you set up PC for like your mom it will run _FOREVER_ without any trouble. So there is a more sharp line between administrative tasks and just the user layer. 

 

Also i feel packet managers make linux distribution to such a great tool that they are. It's simple  _SECURE!_ and just so easy to use. Usually you only run into dependency issues if you have goofy updates / program versions what usually only happens if you install software _without_ the package manager.

 

p.s. why would you want to run notepad++ on a linux system? 

[Kilrah]

Windows and Mac OS are commercial programs. MS and Apple pay people to do what they want done to appeal to their target customers.

 

Linux GUIs are mostly developed by people "for fun" and potentially on their free time so they do what they like, they're "not paid enough" to do stuff that doesn't appeal to them. And since most distros are free their creator organizations also have little to no financial incentive to increase the user base.

 

Also nothing would need "deep changes to the kernel" or anything, everything can be done on top already. Just no one has enough interest to do it.

[Master Disaster]

1 minute ago, Kilrah said:

Windows and Mac OS are commercial programs. MS and Apple pay people to do what they want done to appeal to their target customers.

 

Linux GUIs are mostly developed by people "for fun" and potentially on their free time so they do what they like, they're "not paid enough" to do stuff that doesn't appeal to them. And since most distros are free their creator organizations also have little to no financial incentive to increase the user base.

Yep. Android is essentially running on Linux but because it has a paid team developing it and they're targetting a mass market they've taken the time to develop a platform that is user friendly. Ditto for DSM. The PS4 runs on BSD which is spun from Unix.

 

It can be done, its just that there's no incentive to do it and if we're being honest, the hardcore Linux guys (typically the same ones writing code for the OS) don't want it to happen. Their mindset is "Gotta maintain that level of exclusivity" and unfortunately, Torvalds is one of those people.

[TheFlyingSquirrel]

1 hour ago, kratosgodofwar said:

 

What you have mentioned isn't entirely accurate you don't need terminal, you can use things like package managers,  these are search and install, 2 click is updates.

 

Linux leaves you alone, it won't tell, hey update now, click here and click update.  That is package manager specific. 

It also requires you to understand installation thought process, you aren't looking for notepad++, you are looking for a text editor, you aren't looking for a Java ide, you want an ide, so on and so forth.

 

Your post reads like someone who hasn't taken the 10-15 minutes to click around their distro and see what is actually installed.

[TheFlyingSquirrel]

6 hours ago, Master Disaster said:

Also Linus Torvalds is pretty militant about Linux never turning into Windows or macOS. Perhaps if/when he steps away from the kernel other users might start to add some simplification to things but as long as he's in charge it'll never happen.

This statement is factually inaccurate, the kernel is the hardware support. 

 

Linus has NO control over how distributions are made.

 

Debian create their package managers, same as Canonical creates theirs, Arch creates theirs.

 

Open source is non competitive, but there are a lot of gold standards around application processes if you are willing to take 15minutes to read.

[TheFlyingSquirrel]

1 hour ago, Kilrah said:

Windows and Mac OS are commercial programs. MS and Apple pay people to do what they want done to appeal to their target customers.

 

Linux GUIs are mostly developed by people "for fun" and potentially on their free time so they do what they like, they're "not paid enough" to do stuff that doesn't appeal to them. And since most distros are free their creator organizations also have little to no financial incentive to increase the user base.

 

Also nothing would need "deep changes to the kernel" or anything, everything can be done on top already. Just no one has enough interest to do it.

This statement isn't entirely accurate.

Distros have 2 main financially support models, donations, and commercial services. E.g. Canonical, Redhat, Fedora etc..

 

Distributions live and die by their user base, donations, market dominance equals commercial awareness which inturn equals revenue, which is why a lot of spins off from mainline Linux distros close down fairly quickly.

 

Think of distributions like a trickle down economy, certain companies get the lion share of funding, if they have a GUI colloboration eg. KDE or Cinnamon or Gnome they supercharged, with updates. 

 

 

 

 

 

[Sauron]

 

6 hours ago, kratosgodofwar said:

Unless you’re installing from the store, to install things like Notepad++, Java IDEs it’s a painful process of having to use the terminal. Why is this the case in 2020?

I wouldn't say copying and pasting a couple of commands in a terminal is painful. With that said nothing stops developers from releasing an installer for Linux, some of them do like, for example, vmware; most simply don't bother because the repository model is superior in almost every way.

 

Regardless, this doesn't depend on the developers of the distribution. And why oh why would you install notepad++ on LInux? There are so many superior alternatives...

6 hours ago, kratosgodofwar said:

Why doesn’t Linux take some notes from Windows and MacOS and implement a fully graphical interface for everything if they’re trying to make people migrate from Windows?

"Linux" isn't one monolithic body that decides a common course of action for everyone involved with it. There are hundreds of separate distributions that do things differently because they aim for different goals and they have no obligation to "make people migrate from Windows". Many of them exist just because a handful of people came together one day and thought, "I don't really like Debian, let us just make our own distribution to suit our needs".

 

Most distributions are not trying to be Windows but free. Windows is bad and being like Windows often makes a distribution bad. If you disagree, that's fine - Linux is probably not for you. You need to realize, however, that it's not as simple as saying "hummm let's add more gui" and magically you'll never need to touch a terminal again and the gui will just work and be well designed - that's hardly the case for Windows, too. The gui in Windows is extremely clunky and rigid with half a dozen different design philosophies clashing together to make your life harder.

 

Besides, 99.9999% of what a "normal" user might want to do on a distribution like Ubuntu can be done entirely graphically.

6 hours ago, kratosgodofwar said:

I know that some people enjoy using the terminal but for 99% of people they don’t want to go through numerous hoops with the terminal and go through dependency hell for which doing the same task in Windows or MacOS would take 1 minute. 

That's a gross misrepresentation of what installing things with the terminal is like. In 99% of cases the experience for me has been 1) run the install command 2) use the program, which is infinitely better than scouring the internet for a dodgy executable to install a program and having to rinse and repeat every time you want to update it.

 

As for MacOS, if you think the experience of installing something that isn't in the store is better than what you get on Linux then you clearly haven't used MacOS for very long at all. Homebrew works almost exactly like repositories except you have to deal with a non-native way of installing programs.

 

Of course, with all of this said - if you really want this and have a specific idea of how to accomplish it (rather than a vague gesture at "more gui") then you can always go and do it yourself. The beauty of foss is that you can literally do whatever you want with it so long as you publish your modifications.

5 hours ago, benitiv said:

People are so familiar with windows-ish operating systems that they might find the idea of using the terminal intimidating.

Mainly because the terminal on Windows is pure garbage.

[benitiv]

Well guys i think he's had enough at this point 

[kratosgodofwar]

Wait... did you guys think I was trying to annoy you? No I was just curious as to why Linux does things this way. Got my answer it’s because they want it to be an elite hax0r OS not for normies to use. Funnily enough I’ve been using Linux for over a year now. I don’t hate Linux I just wish it were more intuitive to use. I went through such a hell with Debian you would not believe. I spent 12 hours waiting for it to install and then another 2 days trying to get it to work. Even with the correct root password which I wrote down it would not let me install anything. Even after making my user root, contrary to Linux Mint that immediately lets you be root it still wouldn’t let me do anything. I think the key is to being less salty and hearing me out first before raging. Believe it or not I really couldn’t care what OS people use all OSes are equal to me. 

[Kilrah]

1 hour ago, TheFlyingSquirrel said:

This statement isn't entirely accurate.

Distros have 2 main financially support models, donations, and commercial services. E.g. Canonical, Redhat, Fedora etc..

Well yes my point is that the real money is with the commercial services, but those don't care much about giving a basic home user more GUI, so that's not where dev resources it funds will go...

[benitiv]

1 minute ago, kratosgodofwar said:

Wait... did you guys think I was trying to annoy you? No I was just curious as to why Linux does things this way. Got my answer it’s because they want it to be an elite hax0r OS not for normies to use. Funnily enough I’ve been using Linux for over a year now. I don’t hate Linux I just wish it were more intuitive to use. I went through such a hell with Debian you would not believe. I spent 12 hours waiting for it to install and then another 2 days trying to get it to work. Even with the correct root password which I wrote down it would not let me install anything. Even after making my user root, contrary to Linux Mint that immediately lets you be root it still wouldn’t let me do anything. I think the key is to being less salty and hearing me out first before raging. Believe it or not I really couldn’t care what OS people use all OSes are equal to me. 

I'm sorry I was just kidding while having my after five beer. Dont you worry. I still love you

[Kilrah]

4 minutes ago, kratosgodofwar said:

I think the key is to being less salty and hearing me out first before raging.

People can't hear you out if you don't give context - you just did but going from the first post alone there isn't much to go with.

 

If you want as user friendly as possible go with something Ubuntu-based, not debian.

[kratosgodofwar]

17 minutes ago, Kilrah said:

People can't hear you out if you don't give context - you just did but going from the first post alone there isn't much to go with.

 

If you want as user friendly as possible go with something Ubuntu-based, not debian.

I don’t know I just felt stuck and felt like I needed to act immediately out of frustration hence the post without context. I now get that doing so causes people to hate you because they feel personally attacked if you criticise Linux. 

[Kilrah]

Not just linux. if you criticise anything in just a rant without context people who like that thing will come at you regardless of the topic.

[Nayr438]

5 hours ago, kratosgodofwar said:

When running Linux to do basic things like install apps you must use the terminal.

Not Necessarily, There are package managers. The biggest thing will just be what is made available in the default repos.

Pamac mixed with the AUR can provide nearly every package you could probably want without ever touching the terminal.

 

5 hours ago, kratosgodofwar said:

 I know that some people enjoy using the terminal but for 99% of people they don’t want to go through numerous hoops with the terminal and go through dependency hell for which doing the same task in Windows or MacOS would take 1 minute. 

I am not sure what you mean by dependency hell, I have personally never had an issue. Everything from the repositories I use, just pulls in the required dependencies and leaves optional ones up to you, usually with a general description of what that dependency would add support for.

 

I personally run Arch, I have my install done up in such a way that I don't really need to ever touch the terminal anymore.

 

I however prefer using the terminal most of the time, especially yakuake, the drop down terminal. Seems simpler to push a hotkey and use yay to search for or install packages and update, than to go through the pamac GUI, which just seems more time consuming. The terminal is just a more efficient way of doing things imo.

 

The biggest thing is just going to be how your Distro decides to do things and what Desktop Environment and Packages they decide to go with. There is a GUI for almost everything now days, its just a question of whether they made it easily available to you or not.

[Dutch_Master]

50 minutes ago, kratosgodofwar said:

Wait... Believe it or not I really couldn’t care what OS people use all OSes are equal to me. 

Well, there's your problem. They are not equal. That's why they exist in the first place.

 

As for the problems you encountered, as much as you may not want to know about it, from your description I have to conclude that the root cause isn't Linux, but you. Or more precisely, your perception of how an OS should work. You've been educated on that by others already, so no further lecture from me required Linux is known for its (mostly) friendly community where help is always just a question away. So, had you asked, you would have received help with your installation issues. Probably with recommendations on trying a different distro.

 

Free tip (aren't we a generous bunch ), Linux will run on old(er) hardware, but only if you take into account its age and thus don't ask it to do something it wasn't designed to do in the first place. Like, running systemd on a P4

[Sauron]

2 hours ago, kratosgodofwar said:

they want it to be an elite hax0r OS not for normies to use.

Who does? Who is this "they"?

2 hours ago, kratosgodofwar said:

I went through such a hell with Debian you would not believe. I spent 12 hours waiting for it to install and then another 2 days trying to get it to work.

I have so many anecdotes of poor experiences using Windows I could tell you if that's all you need to judge the quality of an operating system...

 

There's nothing inherently less intuitive about using (most) Linux distributions, it's just that people are not used to it. If you use A for 20 years then start using B it's inevitable that it won't feel familiar at first.

 

Also by the way if you needed help with installing Debian you could just have made a post about that.

2 hours ago, kratosgodofwar said:

Even after making my user root, contrary to Linux Mint that immediately lets you be root it still wouldn’t let me do anything.

Not to mention it seems to be you have a problem with Debian specifically here and not "Linux" as a whole. Debian is targeted more at servers and systems administrators than regular users.

2 hours ago, kratosgodofwar said:

I think the key is to being less salty and hearing me out first before raging.

Salty? Raging? You're the one who posted a rant full of half baked complaints and factually wrong statements. I feel like we all heard you out and put in our best effort into explaining what you got wrong and why things are the way they are. On the other hand you instantly took it as a personal insult.

[TheFlyingSquirrel]

2 hours ago, Kilrah said:

Well yes my point is that the real money is with the commercial services, but those don't care much about giving a basic home user more GUI, so that's not where dev resources it funds will go...

I see where you are coming from, at the moment it really is a mixed bag.  Gnome and KDE are currently getting alot of funding from Redhat, Canoncial, Suse, Google, and Debian.  The reason is to solidify the desktop experience.  Everything aside from cinnamon(linux mint) and mate(strong following and stable) will be dead on arrival.  This is actually good for Linux; KDE, GNOME and Cinnamon are all solid desktop environment, and offer very different experiences.

 

3 hours ago, kratosgodofwar said:

Wait... did you guys think I was trying to annoy you? No I was just curious as to why Linux does things this way. Got my answer it’s because they want it to be an elite hax0r OS not for normies to use. Funnily enough I’ve been using Linux for over a year now. I don’t hate Linux I just wish it were more intuitive to use. I went through such a hell with Debian you would not believe. I spent 12 hours waiting for it to install and then another 2 days trying to get it to work. Even with the correct root password which I wrote down it would not let me install anything. Even after making my user root, contrary to Linux Mint that immediately lets you be root it still wouldn’t let me do anything. I think the key is to being less salty and hearing me out first before raging. Believe it or not I really couldn’t care what OS people use all OSes are equal to me. 

 

Please accept my apology if you felt that I bundled on top of you, I thought this was a Linux bashing thread, not someone struggling with how Linux works.   As the others have said feel free to ask questions, this is for the most part, a very friendly community. 

[kratosgodofwar]

I’ve reported this thread to the mods. Enjoy. :)

[kratosgodofwar]

2 hours ago, jdfthetech said:

 

Don't like it?  Write something for free that does the things you want.

 

3 hours ago, Dutch_Master said:

Well, there's your problem. They are not equal. That's why they exist in the first place.

 

As for the problems you encountered, as much as you may not want to know about it, from your description I have to conclude that the root cause isn't Linux, but you. Or more precisely, your perception of how an OS should work. You've been educated on that by others already, so no further lecture from me required Linux is known for its (mostly) friendly community where help is always just a question away. So, had you asked, you would have received help with your installation issues. Probably with recommendations on trying a different distro.

 

Free tip (aren't we a generous bunch ), Linux will run on old(er) hardware, but only if you take into account its age and thus don't ask it to do something it wasn't designed to do in the first place. Like, running systemd on a P4

Maybe Bill Gates and Steve Jobs and all of the talented multi billion dollar tech companies over the years like IBM and Google that have been working for 30+ years before you were born need to lecture you on how an OS works because clearly you have no idea 

[Sauron]

Just now, kratosgodofwar said:

IBM and Google

Funny you'd mention these since the most recent OS IBM developed was in partnership with Microsoft and failed spectacularly while Google based its operating systems on Linux.

 

Also Steve Jobs had no direct involvement in the development of macOS. He paid people to do it starting from a *BSD system.

1 minute ago, kratosgodofwar said:

need to lecture you on how an OS works because clearly you have no idea 

They're not the ones losing their minds over the Debian installer.

 

I'm sorry if this thread felt like a personal attack to you but you need to realize you're being very confrontational and you're getting worked up for no reason.

[kratosgodofwar]

Lol

[Kilrah]

So the issue isn't linux, it's your current situation. Sucks, but yeah there's not much people here can do about it. Agree with the above.