This is FINALLY Getting Easier... Linux Challenge Part 3

[James]

 

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Linus & Luke use their Linux desktops to complete a list of mundane tasks like printing and compressing files. Easier said than done?

 

 

[Lightwreather]

Can't wait for another 12-20 pages on this thread /s (I haven't even seen the video yet...)

[syborg64]

Can the taskmaster clear up if signing a PDF was about digital signatures or just adding text ?

[Lurick]

1 minute ago, J-from-Nucleon said:

Can't wait for another 12-20 pages on this thread /s (I haven't even seen the video yet...)

They are doing it wrong by not using old hardware and therefor should be sacrificed!!

 

 

It was interesting seeing the two different ways they interpreted signing a PDF. I think Linus should get the point as well.

[RejZoR]

Oh boy, the screenshotting part. I'd like to say a word about that and how absolutely idiotic it is in Linux. Manjaro at least. You know how PRTSCR works in Windows? You hit it and it grabs whole screen and stores it in clipboard as raw image. Or you press Alt+PrtScr and only capture active window, open ANY image editor and use Ctrl+V or paste the image and that's it.

 

Well, none of that shit works in Linux. You need to use tools and my god so many of them are absolutely bugged.

[syborg64]

1 minute ago, RejZoR said:

Oh boy, the screenshotting part. I'd like to say a word about that and how absolutely idiotic it is in Linux. Manjaro at least. You know how PRTSCR works in Windows? You hit it and it grabs whole screen and stores it in clipboard as raw image. Or you press Alt+PrtScr and only capture active window, open ANY image editor and use Ctrl+V or paste the image and that's it.

 

Well, none of that shit works in Linux. You need to use tools and my god so many of them are absolutely bugged.

All distros I've used have mapped the PRTSCR button to launch the default screencap app. The fact it has to go through an app is admittedly clunky but when compared to win10's snipping tool or snip & sketch it's far superior. Launching immediately instead of struggling for several seconds (even on an NVMe)

[WhitetailAni]

Just now, syborg64 said:

Launching immediately instead of struggling for several seconds (even on an NVMe)

What? I use Snipping Tool and it’s practically instantaneous, despite 8 of 12 threads on my Ryzen 5 3600 being pegged all the time. I’m running off a Crucial M4 128GB SATA III drive too.

What exactly lags about yours?

[Ultraforce]

6 minutes ago, r821e228 said:

I can't believe they took that long to install a font, what timeline is this lol 

I think it's understandable since when was the last time you had to install a font? I can definitely see how it would take a while to figure things out.

[Dex52]

Someone needs to clear up the misunderstanding about Challenge #2 Digitally Sign a PDF. What luke did is not a digital signature. You use certificates/e-ID's to digitally sign official documents.

[RejZoR]

6 minutes ago, syborg64 said:

All distros I've used have mapped the PRTSCR button to launch the default screencap app. The fact it has to go through an app is admittedly clunky but when compared to win10's snipping tool or snip & sketch it's far superior. Launching immediately instead of struggling for several seconds (even on an NVMe)

Or you just hit PrtScr, open Paint.NET and paste it with Ctrl+V. Or snap just Window without hunting its edges using Alt+PrtScr. Been using this for literally 25 years and it takes 5 seconds in total. By that time you only have snipping tool open... Oh and I had snipping tool too in Manjaro. And it was broken. You could set a hotkey that would literally not work and answer to it was "yeah it's been like that for ages, just deal with it" is not exactly the type of thing that will make Linux dominant OS next year. Or ever. Main issue why people don't like Linux is THIS. It's littered with bunch of dumb issues and when you want to do something stupid trivial for 50th time and it's a buggy mess you start to question the purpose of the OS and its competence. And being free shouldn't be excuse. What good is it being free if it's trash anyway. Time is money and even if I'm doing dumb things all day long with it, at least I'm doing dumb things all day long quickly and pain free. Usually not even that's the case on Linux. It really has to be just the level of "browse a bit in Firefox" and "make a document in LibreOffice" and it'll be fine. Do anything beyond that and you'll constantly have some small dumb things to deal with. Constantly! Not that Windows, especially 11 doesn't have bunch of that too, but faaaaaaar less than Linux and despite being dumb now, Windows will eventually get its shit together. That happened with Vista, that happened with Windows 8.x and it happened with Windows 10. Surely, it'll with Windows 11 too. I have same dumb problems with Linux for 20 years. That doesn't exactly infuse me with confidence.

[creesch]

15 minutes ago, J-from-Nucleon said:

Can't wait for another 12-20 pages on this thread /s (I haven't even seen the video yet...)

Not so much for the fanatics to get offended about. Although maybe we get some Dolphin fanatics that will get offended about Linus ranting about it, although I doubt it as even within the linux community Dolphin gets plenty of flak. 

 

16 minutes ago, RejZoR said:

Oh boy, the screenshotting part. I'd like to say a word about that and how absolutely idiotic it is in Linux. Manjaro at least. You know how PRTSCR works in Windows? You hit it and it grabs whole screen and stores it in clipboard as raw image. Or you press Alt+PrtScr and only capture active window, open ANY image editor and use Ctrl+V or paste the image and that's it.

 

Well, none of that shit works in Linux. You need to use tools and my god so many of them are absolutely bugged.

Yeah. Also not as good on MacOs is what I recently discovered, the PrtScr doesn't even come on mac keyboards and while screenshotting itself works it is a bit austere. For Linux the challenge for me a few years ago was the X to wayland transition causing half the apps out there to sometimes work and sometimes not. On windows there are a ton of great screenshotting apps available (sharex being my personal favorite) next to the snipping tool in windows itself which is already okay. 

 

2 minutes ago, Ultraforce said:

I think it's understandable since when was the last time you had to install a font? I can definitely see how it would take a while to figure things out.

Also Linus figured it out right away. Luke just made the wrong assumption about the font name but also basically was on the right path right away. 

[syborg64]

13 minutes ago, FakeKGB said:

What? I use Snipping Tool and it’s practically instantaneous, despite 8 of 12 threads on my Ryzen 5 3600 being pegged all the time. I’m running off a Crucial M4 128GB SATA III drive too.

What exactly lags about yours?

I launch it once through the start menu, sometimes it's instantaneous but often it'll idle for a bit, start showing the icon in the taskbar with no window. Out of frustration I launch it again and it finally shows up.

For snip & sketch, I once experimented with the PRTSCR mapped to launching it instead of copy to clipboard. It would flash pretty quickly but then take a few seconds to bring up the HUD. I did not keep with it very long

 

3 minutes ago, RejZoR said:

Or you just hit PrtScr, open Paint.NET and paste it with Ctrl+V. Or snap just Window without hunting its edges using Alt+PrtScr. Been using this for literally 25 years and it takes 5 seconds in total. By that time you only have snipping tool open... Oh and I had snipping tool too in Manjaro. And it was broken. You could set a hotkey that would literally not work and answer to it was "yeah it's been like that for ages, just deal with it" is not exactly the type of thing that will make Linux dominant OS next year. Or ever. Main issue why people don't like Linux is THIS. It's littered with bunch of dumb issues and when you want to do something stupid trivial for 50th time and it's a buggy mess you start to question the purpose of the OS and its competence. And being free shouldn't be excuse. What good is it being free if it's trash anyway. Time is money and even if I'm doing dumb things all day long with it, at least I'm doing dumb things all day long quickly and pain free. Usually not even that's the case on Linux. It really has to be just the level of "browse a bit in Firefox" and "make a document in LibreOffice" and it'll be fine. Do anything beyond that and you'll constantly have some small dumb things to deal with. Constantly! Not that Windows, especially 11 doesn't have bunch of that too, but faaaaaaar less than Linux and despite being dumb now, Windows will eventually get its shit together. That happened with Vista, that happened with Windows 8.x and it happened with Windows 10. Surely, it'll with Windows 11 too. I have same dumb problems with Linux for 20 years. That doesn't exactly infuse me with confidence.

You're coming from a workaround meant for windows. The workarounds will be different because the problems are different. You're really just used to one more than the other. It's not far less you've just gotten to be good at dealing with it.

[hyperactve]

This is my summary of the series so far.

 

 

I use Mint in my Laptop, Ubuntu in my Deep Learning machine and Windows 10 in my Home Gaming Machine. I probably use the Windows 10 machine the least, once a week may be.

 

Edit: Just saw Luke and Linus getting some unnecessary hate. That's unwarranted. All of the stuff they faced and did are normal. Even in windows people use vastly different softwares to do the same stuff. Linus few months ago covered a story about how a snipping tool that uplaoded pictures in some website is a security risk. It wouldn't happen if people used default tools available in windows.

 

Edit2: Just FYI, unless you are using sftp protocol to browse server filesystem, linux is auto refresh. For sftp protocols you get a reload button in the explorer (gui) which works as refresh button.

[Waltz157]

Thought the video was pretty good - overall this challenge has influenced me to start using Linux myself and I've been enjoying it. The only thing that I thought was silly was Linus not realizing that the extra letters at the end of the zip file extension were because it's a temporary file, especially as he could see the size of that file growing. Feel like it was something Linus would easily be able to deduce, but if you've never seen it before, eh, I guess I can see how he was confused.

[KaitouX]

Linus not pressing F5 to refresh was quite surprising, also at this point I would've thought that he had understood the KDE mentality of being able to customize everything and as such going to Dolphin settings would have presented some way to add a refresh button. He seems to really dislike Dolphin and didn't try to tweak it to fit his needs and the default settings seem to really not fit him.

For the desired "Show desktop" function that Linus wants, I believe it's under another name, the "Show Desktop" does only what the name says, but I there is a "Minimize All Windows" that does what Linus wants, you just need to right-click the "Show Desktop" icon and go in the alternatives submenu, it should be there.

 

I personally think that both of the issues that I mentioned shouldn't exist and the refresh button and Minimize all windows should be the default as both are things I also use, but at least both are pretty easy to solve and shouldn't take more than a few minutes to find out if you google it or just try to look around the settings. After getting used to the KDE mentality the first thing I do when something doesn't work the way I want in some KDE software is to right-click the thing to see if there are options to change or to look around in the settings.

[DrSparklegasm]

Wow. Wasn't sure what to expect after part 2 but this was a great video. As a person who was miffed by part 2, I found this one to be a lot more balanced with a lot of valid criticisms. I know the community was kinda hard on that video, but it did have some rather laughable suggestions to someone who understands more about linux. This one was pretty much 95% on point, and in general much more entertaining to actually watch their journey, not just be told how terrible it was.

4 minutes ago, hyperactve said:

This is my summary of the series so far.

 

 

I use Mint in my Laptop, Ubuntu in my Deep Learning machine and Windows 10 in my Home Gaming Machine. I probably use the Windows 10 machine the least, once a week may be.

Yeah this is the exact thing. I use Manjaro now, after getting a good chunk of Linux experience and knowledge under my belt. I really wish Linus had stuck with Pop or Ubuntu. I'm sure most of Linus's gripes about Dolphin are not present there. This is really the only criticism I have, is that they say to make the desktop more inviting, but also to leave the advanced ones advanced. Well, in my opinion manjaro or other arch-based ones are advanced. So I'd rather see Linus do an evaluation of Pop or Ubuntu, because I think some of the nitty gritty stuff would be gone.

 

Also would be great if maybe they do this again in 6 months to a year to see what changes are made. Thats how my linux journey went. Use it, get frustrated, come back much later with more experience and stay for longer. It really is, though, dependent on how willing you are to get your hands dirty.

 

[DrSparklegasm]

7 minutes ago, Waltz157 said:

Thought the video was pretty good - overall this challenge has influenced me to start using Linux myself and I've been enjoying it. The only thing that I thought was silly was Linus not realizing that the extra letters at the end of the zip file extension were because it's a temporary file, especially as he could see the size of that file growing. Feel like it was something Linus would easily be able to deduce, but if you've never seen it before, eh, I guess I can see how he was confused.

What's funny is Windows does the same thing, only the file is hidden. If you have hidden files showing, it shows up there but the WHOLE filename is randomized.

 

Also regarding the refresh button... don't those windows update in real time on mac/linux? MacOS does, which is why im not sure why there's a need for a refresh button. I have a feeling Linus is seeing an issue of NTFS file system on windows being garbage, and thinking its also garbage elsewhere, but with btrfs or hfs+ (or apfs) I think those windows update in real time. The issue was the files weren't done being copied or zipped. Anyone else have thoughts on that?

[RejZoR]

53 minutes ago, syborg64 said:

I launch it once through the start menu, sometimes it's instantaneous but often it'll idle for a bit, start showing the icon in the taskbar with no window. Out of frustration I launch it again and it finally shows up.

For snip & sketch, I once experimented with the PRTSCR mapped to launching it instead of copy to clipboard. It would flash pretty quickly but then take a few seconds to bring up the HUD. I did not keep with it very long

 

You're coming from a workaround meant for windows. The workarounds will be different because the problems are different. You're really just used to one more than the other. It's not far less you've just gotten to be good at dealing with it.

It's not a workaround. And it's so practical it's absolutely idiotic that Linux just stubbornly refuses to accept or use it. Instead of opening extra app and juggling with image file on drive around, you literally feed it to WHATEVER app via clipboard. Paste it to image editor. Done. Paste it to e-mail. Done. Paste it to Word document. Done. No browsing and chasing for image files that you had to save through bunch of unnecessary hoops. Windows Snipping tool has been around for ages and I haven't touched it ever. I even have capture tool in Firefox just disabled because it's slower and clumsier and I just don't think about it when PRT SCR is just there directly at all times.

[illuanonx]

2 minutes ago, DrSparklegasm said:

The issue was the files weren't done being copied or zipped. Anyone else have thoughts on that?

In the video you clearly see the file size going up. So it is auto refresh. Linus did not see that or he maybe wanted to make drama, I do not know for sure.

[DrSparklegasm]

6 minutes ago, illuanonx said:

In the video you clearly see the file size going up. So it is auto refresh. Linus did not see that or he maybe wanted to make drama, I do not know for sure.

Yup, that I did see. It was more the file copy I'm referring to here. The zip file is an example of dolphin updating in real time. I have a theory this is because of NTFS being the outdated piece of crap that it is, but I'd have to do some testing to see.

[Waltz157]

11 minutes ago, DrSparklegasm said:

What's funny is Windows does the same thing, only the file is hidden. If you have hidden files showing, it shows up there but the WHOLE filename is randomized.

 

Also regarding the refresh button... don't those windows update in real time on mac/linux? MacOS does, which is why im not sure why there's a need for a refresh button. I have a feeling Linus is seeing an issue of NTFS file system on windows being garbage, and thinking its also garbage elsewhere, but with btrfs or hfs+ (or apfs) I think those windows update in real time. The issue was the files weren't done being copied or zipped. Anyone else have thoughts on that?

I've run into that a number of times with hidden files enabled. I've also seen, when connected to a slower network drive, that some of those spare temporary files get saved as permanent folders and not hidden. Something that's super annoying in File Explorer and confuses the hell out of my older coworkers.

[RollTime]

1 hour ago, RejZoR said:

Or you just hit PrtScr, open Paint.NET and paste it with Ctrl+V. Or snap just Window without hunting its edges using Alt+PrtScr. Been using this for literally 25 years and it takes 5 seconds in total. By that time you only have snipping tool open... Oh and I had snipping tool too in Manjaro. And it was broken. You could set a hotkey that would literally not work and answer to it was "yeah it's been like that for ages, just deal with it" is not exactly the type of thing that will make Linux dominant OS next year. Or ever. Main issue why people don't like Linux is THIS. It's littered with bunch of dumb issues and when you want to do something stupid trivial for 50th time and it's a buggy mess you start to question the purpose of the OS and its competence. And being free shouldn't be excuse. What good is it being free if it's trash anyway. Time is money and even if I'm doing dumb things all day long with it, at least I'm doing dumb things all day long quickly and pain free. Usually not even that's the case on Linux. It really has to be just the level of "browse a bit in Firefox" and "make a document in LibreOffice" and it'll be fine. Do anything beyond that and you'll constantly have some small dumb things to deal with. Constantly! Not that Windows, especially 11 doesn't have bunch of that too, but faaaaaaar less than Linux and despite being dumb now, Windows will eventually get its shit together. That happened with Vista, that happened with Windows 8.x and it happened with Windows 10. Surely, it'll with Windows 11 too. I have same dumb problems with Linux for 20 years. That doesn't exactly infuse me with confidence.

please god put some linebreaks in here.

 

Also, I don’t know what you’re smoking, but just because you’ve been using a shitty workflow for years doesn’t mean it’s good. What happens if you take a screenshot and then copy some text before you can paste it? Image is gone.
 

You mentioned how using a “tool” is bad as opposed to… I guess built in functionality? But paint is a tool, and crappy one at that. Let me introduce the alpha and the omega of screenshot apps: Flameshot.

 

https://flameshot.org

 

You can assign shortcuts for capture window, capture screen, and capture region. From there a menu shows up *around the screenshot* that lets you edit the image, add text or censor, and then choose what to do with it. You can save it, copy to clipboard, or even upload to Imgur in one click. No mess, no fuss. Integrated and slick GUI, yet very powerful.
 

Windows’ screenshot management was so bad not even Windows uses it anymore. You deserve better.

[DrSparklegasm]

1 minute ago, HSF3232 said:

In all fairness, there should have been a prompt that appeared after a couple of seconds. At least when I use Linux, that did happen. I have no ideas what's up with Manjaro for it to not appear. I did see the auto-refresh, but that's not as clear.

 

It actually does prompt, or at least it shows its running. In manjaro both for the file copy and the zip operation, there's a status popup in the lower right corner. Linus actually comments later on in the video that he noticed it (and saw the zip failures from renaming the temp files).

[RejZoR]

5 minutes ago, RollTime said:

please god put some linebreaks in here.

 

Also, I don’t know what you’re smoking, but just because you’ve been using a shitty workflow for years doesn’t mean it’s good. What happens if you take a screenshot and then copy some text before you can paste it? Image is gone.
 

You mentioned how using a “tool” is bad as opposed to… I guess built in functionality? But paint is a tool, and crappy one at that. Let me introduce the alpha and the omega of screenshot apps: Flameshot.

 

https://flameshot.org

 

You can assign shortcuts for capture window, capture screen, and capture region. From there a menu shows up *around the screenshot* that lets you edit the image, add text or censor, and then choose what to do with it. You can save it, copy to clipboard, or even upload to Imgur in one click. No mess, no fuss. Integrated and slick GUI, yet very powerful.
 

Windows’ screenshot management was so bad not even Windows uses it anymore. You deserve better.

Paint.NET is not MS Paint. But I guess it's so hard to read because I didn't put line breaks and you get confused so easily.

[Beerzerker]

1 hour ago, RejZoR said:

Oh boy, the screenshotting part. I'd like to say a word about that and how absolutely idiotic it is in Linux. Manjaro at least. You know how PRTSCR works in Windows? You hit it and it grabs whole screen and stores it in clipboard as raw image. Or you press Alt+PrtScr and only capture active window, open ANY image editor and use Ctrl+V or paste the image and that's it.

 

Well, none of that shit works in Linux. You need to use tools and my god so many of them are absolutely bugged.

Wrong - I do it all the time with mine and never had a problem over it.
Hit "Printscreen" and it's on my desktop for me to move, edit or whatever, no prob.