The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly Side of Linux - Linux Challenge PT. 2

[Bramimond]

2 hours ago, LinuxTamingTrips said:

On top of it I also can open a file with a specific application with double-click or with another application with middle-mouse-click. To my knowledge KDE is even working towards to make a third application binding possible without "open with" context menu

With ranger you can do this not only with two or three, but as many applications as you want. If you already heavily customized Dolphin switching might not be worth the hassle, though.

 

2 hours ago, LinuxTamingTrips said:

I just don't know how this could be improved.

Usually by doing the same things, but faster. Because you don't have to drag the mouse around to do things, but can do everything with the keyboard. There's also no need for having many cluttered views just to drag and drop files between directories. Instead you can navigate via bookmarks and move files using the built in commands. 

 

But then again, if you already are used to a GUI and have lots of customization it's likely not worth the hassle. I switched because after trying ranger for a bit I realized that it would hugely simplify and speed up what I need to do in a file manager. 

 

4 hours ago, GarlicDeliverySystem said:

but it seems that the wide range of choice in DE/GUI flavors means that ironically you need to learn and interact with the CLI much more, simply because it is the one thing that is constant.

To an extent... 

 

If your OS goes back to Debian you can install software with apt or aptitude. For arch you use pacman. Fedora uses yum. Gentoo probably also has a different way, but I never used it. And that's just off the top of my head. 

 

That's the great thing about Linux: you do have the choice. If you don't like something you can change it. There are very few things that absolutely every Linux user uses. 

[LinuxTamingTrips]

1 hour ago, Bramimond said:

There's also no need for having many cluttered views just to drag and drop files between directories. Instead you can navigate via bookmarks and move files using the built in commands. 

There is also no need on GUI to use mouse and sometimes I do keyboard only actions. It depends on what I feel is more straight forward or comfortable in this situation. 

 

Can you drag files into other applications with ranger? And how do you select files faster than moving the marker over every element (is there something like a grid-mode to take shorter ways)? "Jump to the begin/end" doesn't help if you want to select something from the mid of the list. Just curious. 

 

Bookmarks is something I never really use, not even in browsers. I have the feeling to bloat myself with it, so I don't want it.  But I see it can be a nice feature of Ranger, if used correctly. 

[Bramimond]

17 hours ago, LinuxTamingTrips said:

Can you drag files into other applications with ranger?

There is no drag and drop in the CLI. But you can open files with other applications.

 

17 hours ago, LinuxTamingTrips said:

And how do you select files faster than moving the marker over every element (is there something like a grid-mode to take shorter ways)? "Jump to the begin/end" doesn't help if you want to select something from the mid of the list. Just curious. 

If you want to select everything inside directory, press "v".

Selecting a single file is done by pressing space. 

 

If you have lots of files, but want to only select one, you could mindlessly scroll down one file at a time. Or you could mindlessly scroll down half the screen or so at once by pressing Ctrl+d (down) or Ctrl+u (up). You could also just press "/" to open a search and type the first few letters of the file you want to go to and then you jump there immediately. Press "n" to jump to the next match.

 

You could also type a number and then press either the down or up arrow key (or j/k if you prefer the vim way) to move exactly as many lines up/down as your number. 

 

(You can also use the mouse to scroll in ranger and just click on what you want, but I don't really use the mouse.)

[GarlicDeliverySystem]

19 hours ago, Bramimond said:

23 hours ago, GarlicDeliverySystem said:

but it seems that the wide range of choice in DE/GUI flavors means that ironically you need to learn and interact with the CLI much more, simply because it is the one thing that is constant.

To an extent... 

 

If your OS goes back to Debian you can install software with apt or aptitude. For arch you use pacman. Fedora uses yum. Gentoo probably also has a different way, but I never used it. And that's just off the top of my head. 

 

That's the great thing about Linux: you do have the choice. If you don't like something you can change it. There are very few things that absolutely every Linux user uses. 

By that logic you could say that all the GUI updates and changes between versions that move the icons around are not annoying, but simply enriching the experience as you can now enjoy rediscovering all of the functions again, as well as the fancy new look.

 

I get that freedom of choice and lots of customization is a feature and not a bug. What I am trying to say is that this feature has the inevitable downside that it makes things very challenging for new people to join, and that the technical solution to that (a more universal CLI) is pushing away new people even more. You might like that, I clearly don't.

But what really grinds my gears is when this gets disputed or sold as a positive instead of just a legitimate tradeoff. Just like Windows or MacOS made deliberate tradeoffs in their design philosophies. 

[Sho2048]

It's been many years since I ever noticed huge amounts of personalization on any mainstream distro. Fedora and Bazzite and Kubuntu and Suse all look and behave the same through a mostly plain KDE, and I even think they update the same way except for Bazzite having its own thing (a very plain and simple GUI still). Which distros are taking liberties with KDE nowadays?

 

  

12 minutes ago, GarlicDeliverySystem said:

But what really grinds my gears is when this gets disputed or sold as a positive instead of just a legitimate tradeoff. Just like Windows or MacOS made deliberate tradeoffs in their design philosophies. 

It is what it is. 

 

Do you ever complain about cars having infotainments all different from one another? Everyone has their opinion. Enforcing one opinion isn't happening any time soon. There is no solution to this, but also luckily a normal user never has to touch the terminal or deal with it. Funnily enough the last video that just come up proves that point: sometimes just sticking to the GUI a little bit more or a little bit more affordance will get you the result in a blink, without even any download.

[Bramimond]

1 hour ago, GarlicDeliverySystem said:

By that logic you could say that all the GUI updates and changes between versions that move the icons around are not annoying, but simply enriching the experience as you can now enjoy rediscovering all of the functions again, as well as the fancy new look.

I don't follow how this is a fitting analogy. 

 

Choice is great. You are in control.

Someone else deciding that the icons are now elsewhere is the opposite of that. You are not in control.

 

1 hour ago, GarlicDeliverySystem said:

What I am trying to say is that this feature has the inevitable downside that it makes things very challenging for new people to join

Why, though? Don't you like choice? Do you want someone else to decide how to use your computer? Then Windows or Mac might be more suited to your wants. 

 

Or you could get yourself an admin. I maintain a bunch of Linux PCs for family members that are not very interested in tech. If there's a problem, I fix it. Though, there rarely are. 

 

But if you are interested in tech I fail to see the issue with having choice. Isn't that exactly why you would want to use Linux? 

 

[GarlicDeliverySystem]

14 minutes ago, Bramimond said:

2 hours ago, GarlicDeliverySystem said:

By that logic you could say that all the GUI updates and changes between versions that move the icons around are not annoying, but simply enriching the experience as you can now enjoy rediscovering all of the functions again, as well as the fancy new look.

I don't follow how this is a fitting analogy. 

 

Choice is great. You are in control.

Someone else deciding that the icons are now elsewhere is the opposite of that. You are not in control.

The thing is that I don't see this as necessarily freedom of choice.

"Freedom" to me is not just being technically able to do something (pretty sure you can change a ton of stuff in windows/MacOS as well), but also being able to make informed choices, to know what it entails and so on. Choice without agency or knowledge is not freedom to me, just because I chose something does not necessarily mean I wanted the ensuing outcome or that I could even know what would happen. If you're at an event and get asked "A or B" without any context, would you see that as being in control or being meaningfully free?

 

Choice is great when you combine it with agency & knowledge, so that the outcome is an informed decision. Without being able to make an informed decision, your freedom does not help you nor is it any benefit (unless you guess correctly).

 

Someone who is new to all of this and has to make a bunch of choices with seemingly no safe default (just look how the distro wars are going in most comment sections on these videos) will not think "Yes, I am in control". They will think "I have to make a bunch of decisions I have no clue about, with ramifications I have no idea of", which is not great and definitely not control. 

 

From what I can tell, the fragmentation and competing philosophies among all the distros and DEs is usually just increasing the barrier of entry, not reducing it. I understand that this is maybe a mindset thing, but with great amount of choice comes great responsibility of choosing correctly; thus choice paralysis.

[Sho2048]

53 minutes ago, GarlicDeliverySystem said:

The thing is that I don't see this as necessarily freedom of choice.

"Freedom" to me is not just being technically able to do something (pretty sure you can change a ton of stuff in windows/MacOS as well), but also being able to make informed choices, to know what it entails and so on. Choice without agency or knowledge is not freedom to me, just because I chose something does not necessarily mean I wanted the ensuing outcome or that I could even know what would happen. If you're at an event and get asked "A or B" without any context, would you see that as being in control or being meaningfully free?

 

Choice is great when you combine it with agency & knowledge, so that the outcome is an informed decision. Without being able to make an informed decision, your freedom does not help you nor is it any benefit (unless you guess correctly).

 

Someone who is new to all of this and has to make a bunch of choices with seemingly no safe default (just look how the distro wars are going in most comment sections on these videos) will not think "Yes, I am in control". They will think "I have to make a bunch of decisions I have no clue about, with ramifications I have no idea of", which is not great and definitely not control. 

 

From what I can tell, the fragmentation and competing philosophies among all the distros and DEs is usually just increasing the barrier of entry, not reducing it. I understand that this is maybe a mindset thing, but with great amount of choice comes great responsibility of choosing correctly; thus choice paralysis.

Ok, where else are you taking the goal post now?

 

Is people supposed to "just know" things the very first time, every single UI has to be perfect out of the box, everyone must stick to rigid conventions out of nowhere?

 

You know people sometimes can't even figure out how to make coffee. 

 

[LinuxTamingTrips]

12 hours ago, Bramimond said:

There is no drag and drop in the CLI. But you can open files with other applications.

Too slow. That is no efficient work any longer. If you just have to edit endless amount of files each one by one you don't want additional steps to open a file and want to do it as quickly as possible. Nonetheless I probably install it for improving terminal navigation itself. This could be useful for other tasks. 

 

12 hours ago, Bramimond said:

You could also just press "/" to open a search

"Just" means not available on non English keyboard layouts (probably another shortcut) or a combination of modifier plus key. 

 

12 hours ago, GarlicDeliverySystem said:

I get that freedom of choice and lots of customization is a feature and not a bug. What I am trying to say is that this feature has the inevitable downside that it makes things very challenging for new people to join, and that the technical solution to that (a more universal CLI) is pushing away new people even more. You might like that, I clearly don't.

People are different, indeed. But you still have to do a lot of decisions every day. Or do you say "I am going naked out of house, because I don't know what to wear today"? You also managed to decide what kind of PC you want to buy, what kind of game you want to play, what kind of hair style you want to wear etc. Why is it a problem to decide how often you want feature updates or what kind of UI you want? 

 

It is a pure mindset thing. Instead of "mimimi, okay I stay with Windows" people just could ask others what they should chose. They have either to answer a few questions and get one or two distros with desktop environment recommended that probably fit their use cases best or if it is already too much work they will probably get answered "just install Linux Mint, it is the right choice for people like you". To have the choice also means there is something that fits your kind of user.

 

And btw, you also have to make even more decisions on Windows. In example what Office do you install? If you don't want to make this decision, on Linux there is usually one suite preinstalled. Or if you want to edit your photos, what kind of software do you want to use? Adope? GIMP? Afinity? Why choices are only bad when it comes to Linux, but not to Windows? You always have to make some kind of research to chose what to install, but on Linux it is somehow bad while on Windows nobody ever complains about. 

[GarlicDeliverySystem]

9 hours ago, Sho2048 said:

Ok, where else are you taking the goal post now?

 

Is people supposed to "just know" things the very first time, every single UI has to be perfect out of the box, everyone must stick to rigid conventions out of nowhere?

 

You know people sometimes can't even figure out how to make coffee. 

The goal post is where it has always been for me: If a free and open-source OS is to find truly wide-spread adoption, it needs to be usable by the average consumer. Who sometimes can't even make coffee.

 

The fragmentation in the distro space is a first hurdle in that, since there is not "Linux", there is dozens of that. I think we have also seen numerous times that in the past the choice of distro has not been without baggage, whether you knew it or not. What some consider as a safe bet, others see as a poor and outdated choice. This adds a barrier for people to 'just try linux'.

 

This is exacerbated by the large variety in GUI and desktop environments, which in part means the more experienced users default to the command line more often than not. Looking at the latest part of this series, maybe this one is finally coming around and the newer distros do have in fact addressed this. But in the past I have seen it plenty of times when I worked with linux that all the tutorials/help was in CLI only. Not a big issue for me personally, but I know people who would look at that and just nope out of the conversation.

 

A GUI doesn't have to be perfect, but it does offer advantages a CLI doesn't, being able to figure out things on the fly is one of these (see latest entry to this series). And vice versa, there is a reason CLIs are still around and preferred by some.

 

And when people can't figure out how to make coffee, giving them a DIY coffee maker kit or dragging them into the store to pick one they like more isn't magically gonna teach them how to make coffee. For that you would need need something like a dead simple, standard coffee maker. Or a pattern of coffee makers that almost every company follows so that any minor differences can be figured out on the fly.

Otherwise, gatekeeping coffee and hoarding more for myself is an option as always, of course.

 

10 minutes ago, LinuxTamingTrips said:

Or do you say "I am going naked out of house, because I don't know what to wear today"? You also managed to decide what kind of PC you want to buy, what kind of game you want to play, what kind of hair style you want to wear etc. Why is it a problem to decide how often you want feature updates or what kind of UI you want? 

You missed the "informed" part. You don't randomly select what you wear, you know what the weather is, you picked out stuff from the wardrobe among things you already bought. 

And maybe that also goes to answer this question: I tend to buy things in bulk, like T-shirts or socks, simply because I don't want to deal with having to sort them, think about odd combinations etc. I simply solved that issue for the next coming year or two at once and then never have to deal with it again.

12 minutes ago, LinuxTamingTrips said:

people just could ask others what they should chose. They have either to answer a few questions and get one or two distros with desktop environment recommended that probably fit their use cases best or if it is already too much work they will probably get answered "just install Linux Mint, it is the right choice for people like you". 

I simply encourage you to read the threads and comments in about the previous linux challenge videos.

 

13 minutes ago, LinuxTamingTrips said:

And btw, you also have to make even more decisions on Windows. In example what Office do you install? If you don't want to make this decision, on Linux there is usually one suite preinstalled. Or if you want to edit your photos, what kind of software do you want to use? Adope? GIMP? Afinity? Why choices are only bad when it comes to Linux, but not to Windows? You always have to make some kind of research to chose what to install, but on Linux it is somehow bad while on Windows nobody ever complains about. 

False dichotomy here. People very often complain about windows, especially when their previous choice suddenly gets altered or is no longer available. Or when new things are forced upon them, meaning they have to redo their choices. 

I doubt you have make as many decisions on windows though, at least not as a regular user new to the OS. Pretty sure windows comes with some 'strongly recommended' defaults from MS as well, so much so it got them into trouble in the past.

 

Again, it is not that choice is necessarily a bad thing, but that choice without information what you are choosing is worthless. But imagine you go into a coffee store and order black coffee, only to be scoffed at and made to answer twenty questions about the beans, degree of roasting, temperature of extraction, time of extraction, water to grind ratio, particle size distribution etc.? I am being facetious here, but what I am trying to say is that choice is only useful when you have preferences and knowledge to translate that into a decision. Otherwise, it is just random and more of a barrier than actual benefit.

[Bramimond]

10 hours ago, GarlicDeliverySystem said:

Choice is great when you combine it with agency & knowledge, so that the outcome is an informed decision.

Which brings us back to the question of why you do not want to learn. 

 

10 hours ago, GarlicDeliverySystem said:

"I have to make a bunch of decisions I have no clue about, with ramifications I have no idea of"

If you are new, it doesn't really matter. Anything can work on the software side. You have to worry more about your hardware. 

 

Imagine you are a kid and it's your first time in front of a large ice cream shop. The choice might be overwhelming, but it doesn't really matter. Pick whatever. If you don't like it, pick something else later on. Yes, people will bicker over which flavor of ice cream is the best, but so what? Their opinions won't change what you like best. 

 

11 minutes ago, LinuxTamingTrips said:

If you just have to edit endless amount of files each one by one you don't want additional steps to open a file and want to do it as quickly as possible.

In ranger, opening a file in their default application is one button press. If you want to open a file in a different application, you need to press two buttons one after the other. 

 

Doing drag and drop from one application to another is (1) clicking on the file (2) dragging it to where it belongs and (3) releasing the button. I feel that three actions is less efficient than one or two actions, but you might do them faster if you cannot touch type.

 

13 minutes ago, LinuxTamingTrips said:

"Just" means not available on non English keyboard layouts (probably another shortcut) or a combination of modifier plus key.

If you can't touch type the terminal is not great, I agree. You can configure ranger to use a different key than / if you prefer. 

 

 

[GarlicDeliverySystem]

3 minutes ago, Bramimond said:

10 hours ago, GarlicDeliverySystem said:

Choice is great when you combine it with agency & knowledge, so that the outcome is an informed decision.

Which brings us back to the question of why you do not want to learn. 

It is not about not wanting to learn, it is about the fact that it introduces more stuff you have to learn. It makes things more complex for people who already struggle with this, so why add even more learning requirements?

3 minutes ago, Bramimond said:

Imagine you are a kid and it's your first time in front of a large ice cream shop. The choice might be overwhelming, but it doesn't really matter. Pick whatever. If you don't like it, pick something else later on. Yes, people will bicker over which flavor of ice cream is the best, but so what? Their opinions won't change what you like best. 

 

Hardly an adequate comparison, given that at least in the past some things (e.g. gaming, but also other software) did not work with every distro.

[Sho2048]

8 hours ago, GarlicDeliverySystem said:

The goal post is where it has always been for me: If a free and open-source OS is to find truly wide-spread adoption, it needs to be usable by the average consumer. Who sometimes can't even make coffee.

 

The fragmentation in the distro space is a first hurdle in that, since there is not "Linux", there is dozens of that. I think we have also seen numerous times that in the past the choice of distro has not been without baggage, whether you knew it or not. What some consider as a safe bet, others see as a poor and outdated choice. This adds a barrier for people to 'just try linux'.

 

This is exacerbated by the large variety in GUI and desktop environments, which in part means the more experienced users default to the command line more often than not. Looking at the latest part of this series, maybe this one is finally coming around and the newer distros do have in fact addressed this. But in the past I have seen it plenty of times when I worked with linux that all the tutorials/help was in CLI only. Not a big issue for me personally, but I know people who would look at that and just nope out of the conversation.

 

A GUI doesn't have to be perfect, but it does offer advantages a CLI doesn't, being able to figure out things on the fly is one of these (see latest entry to this series). And vice versa, there is a reason CLIs are still around and preferred by some.

 

And when people can't figure out how to make coffee, giving them a DIY coffee maker kit or dragging them into the store to pick one they like more isn't magically gonna teach them how to make coffee. For that you would need need something like a dead simple, standard coffee maker. Or a pattern of coffee makers that almost every company follows so that any minor differences can be figured out on the fly.

Otherwise, gatekeeping coffee and hoarding more for myself is an option as always, of course.

 

This is weird because 70% of your answer is "there are damn too many coffee machines" and the last 30% is "there needs to be an extra simple coffee machine" which really would amount to: there are now N + 1 coffee machines... Of which at least half a dozen are "extra simple coffee machines" like Mint or Fedora or Bazzite or Ubuntu...

 

Honestly the escape from this, to me, seems to just hope that producers like Valve and Framework popularize a set number of great options like SteamOS, and a set of pillars like always using flatpaks and doing all updates from Bazaar/Discover, and whatever more complicated thing not simply already inside KDE just stick them into a menu like Bazzite does. Normal people shouldn't even be expected to install operating systems. I have great faith in atomic operating systems and containerization, and hardware being supported directly, and I wish we all sent noobies that way.

 

As the latest video shows, there only needs some more finishing touches and some more professional tools (at least as good as Blender and Krita, I'm hoping graphite.rs comes out good as well) and the marketshare will bring everything else.

[LinuxTamingTrips]

2 hours ago, GarlicDeliverySystem said:

I simply encourage you to read the threads and comments in about the previous linux challenge videos.

You just could tell what you have to tell. I have no time to read a whole thread just to may or may not getting an answer. But I may know what you are trying to tell "a lot of comments, all are more confusing to new people to chose a distro". But why someone should chose a distro based on comments? Why not opening a thread "what distro should I chose"? It is a different thing if people randomly speak about their own experiences and needs than helping someone else. And I know on the first video I tried to help someone exactly how I described it here. With the difference, that this person had very special needs (unusually for new people), but was also willing to take the more advanced challenge.

 

2 hours ago, GarlicDeliverySystem said:

Again, it is not that choice is necessarily a bad thing, but that choice without information what you are choosing is worthless.

Where is no information about pros and cons about distros? You can search the internet, ask people, even ask LLMs (not recommented, but still better than nothing). It is very not like "chose A or B" (btw I would answer "D" or similar, because I have the choice not to chose from the given ^.^). I just see no big difference to Windows here. And just as you buy clothes in bulk for two years, you chose your distro once and can use it 10, 20 years until nobody maintains it any longer or until you die first. There is even a chance that Linux Mint will exist longer than Windows, if the company continues with its crap. 

 

 

8 hours ago, Bramimond said:

In ranger, opening a file in their default application is one button press. If you want to open a file in a different application, you need to press two buttons one after the other. 

 

Doing drag and drop from one application to another is (1) clicking on the file (2) dragging it to where it belongs and (3) releasing the button. I feel that three actions is less efficient than one or two actions, but you might do them faster if you cannot touch type.

That does not convince me. It is not even a full featured replacement, but as I said, it had to be better than the GUI alternative, otherwise I stick with GUI. And drag and drop is always fast. It can maybe 0.1s slower here, but will be multiple seconds faster there. And it also can be used to import files (not "open") into applications, which is usually the fastest method. 

[Mark Kaine]

On 5/28/2026 at 9:36 PM, Sho2048 said:

Do you ever complain about cars having infotainments

Yep all the time! Which is why I only buy cars with cd player or tapedeck...

 

I actually seriously want a TVR (Tuscan) as my next car , I think they don't have radios at all ...  (engine too frickin loud I guess!)

[Sho2048]

12 hours ago, Mark Kaine said:

Yep all the time! Which is why I only buy cars with cd player or tapedeck...

 

I actually seriously want a TVR (Tuscan) as my next car , I think they don't have radios at all ...  (engine too frickin loud I guess!)

Lol, I guess. My Toyota has the most basic one that basically only exists to show Maps and Spotify, though the 15 fps is super painful (I run 120hz almost everywhere). That's all I need.