I thought it’d be a pain but installing programs through the terminal is actually so nice, I never would have expected it
Also, updates.
“hey computer! Update!”
“Sure thing, here is a list of 57 packages I will update, y/n?”
“y”
“ok… done!”
👌
But how do Linux users handle the crippling loneliness of their operating system not pestering them with ads on every update? How else can you know if your computer loves you? Where is the warmth of the corporate embrace?
They discontinued that native app and have a kinda broken pwa. But open-source community delivers.
We shitpost on Lemmy and start flame wars about vi vs. emacs, X11 vs Wayland, sysvinit vs systemd, snaps vs flatpak, etc.
All of those wars have long since ended.
Neovim, Wayland, Systemd and Flatpak have won.
Sometimes I run the update command and there hasn’t been an update since yesterday. I think that’s pretty close.
Guess what I did last night? I spent 4 hours working on getting PSD, XCF and KRA thumbnailers working in Mint. It took custom scripts to be written and each one required different commands because KRA files are just a zip file so you have to extract that and grab one of 3 possible preview files that might exist inside that zip and make that the thumbnail, while in gimp files you cant just use convert command, even convert[0] will only turn the first layer into a thumbnail and thats completely useless. And to top off all that, I finally got thumbnails working in gnome/nautilus but Only the XCF thumbs will generate in cinnamon/nemo (I still have no clue why that is) but I cannot just switch to gnome because there is technically no gnome variant of Mint so gnome doesnt work 100%… etc etc etc
Linux is still not there, this stuff should be simple and automatic. If a 20 year professional took 4 hours to get this far, the average user will give up immediately. Yes Mint is still my daily driver, but seriously thumbnails should not be this much work.
The Windows terminal has some very good commands. ‘ssh username@server’ can log you right into a Linux machine!
- tab completion works in more places than you might expect
- ctrl-a/ctrl-e for start/end of line
- ctrl-u to clear the command you’ve typed so far but store it into a temporary pastebuffer
- ctrl-y to paste the ctrl-u’d command
- ctrl-w to delete by word (I prefer binding to alt-backspace though)
- ctrl-r to search your command history
- alt-b/alt-f to move cursor back/forwards by word
- !! is shorthand for the previous run command; handy for
sudo !!
- !$ is the last argument of the previous command; useful more often than you’d think
which foo
tells you where thefoo
program is locatedls -la
cd
without any args takes you to your home dircd -
takes you to your previous dir- ~ is a shorthand for your home dir
- alt-. also pastes the last argument of the previous command (useful if you need to modify it a bit)
- instead of any shortcuts starting with “alt” you can also press “esc” followed by the second key, e.g. pressing “esc”, releasing it and then “a” is the same as pressing “alt-a” (useful if you have only one hand available, or if alt is not availalble)
- if you put a space before a command, it will not be saved in history (useful sometimes, e.g. if you pass a password directly as an argument)
I believe, these are Emacs shortcuts. There’s also set -o vi
in bash, but I’ve never used it, so can’t vouch for it.
That’s good to know. It’s interesting that the other commenter thinks emacs shortcuts are illogical. I’ll make my best guesses at the logic
- ctrl-a/ctrl-e for start/end of line
a is the beginning of the alphabet; e for end (of line)
- ctrl-u to clear the command you’ve typed so far but store it into a temporary pastebuffer
- ctrl-y to paste the ctrl-u’d command
No idea here. Seems similar to nano with k-“cut” and u-”uncut”.
- ctrl-w to delete by word
w for word obviously.
- ctrl-r to search your command history
- alt-b/alt-f to move cursor back/forwards by word
r reverse, b back, f forward. Not sure why alt vs control though; presumably ctrl+b and ctrl+f do different things although I know emacs likes to use Alt (“Meta”) a lot.
I once installed HP shitbox printer drivers from the command line in 30 seconds, and the shitbox printer just…worked.
My heart soared higher than the eagle. I touched the face of the one true FOSS God, and felt that thing when astronauts have epiphanies about the Earth. 10/10, would recommend.
The moment I loved the FOSS community was when I went on an Linux IRC channel, complained about my wifi not working, and some stranger messaged me detailed instructions with a patch in 20 minutes that completely fixed my issue.
At the same time it encourages people to just trust whatever people are telling them to input in the terminal, which is potentially dangerous.
I once plugged my linux laptop into the scanner and it just worked
I spent days tinkering with proprietary, outdated (seriously, win XP as target) programs that provide sort-of drivers, and nothing worked, on windows.
I think that is just wildly amazing that printer drivers in Linux so often just work. I plugged in a wireless printer the other day and the hardest part was connecting it to the network. Once that was done BOOM Ubuntu found it and I could print. Those driver maintainers are doing a great job!
Capitalism vs Communism on a small scale
One is “We’re not making profit anymore, so not paying anyone to do this. Also not publishing the source because of IP.”, the other one is “I have fun doing this, I think I’ll adapt the driver to my printer. Open ofc, so others can benefit, while all others, including me, benefit from others achievements.”
Mine worked out of the box on mint. Like, it detected the network HP shitbox and I could print, no user intervention. I was floored.
When the GUI fails, Terminal will have your back; can I get an Amen?
When my computer starts to run out of ram and I immediately try and switch into the CLI so I can launch htop and kill the offender
Amen. Hallelujah! AMEN! Ooh yeah brothers and sisters, AaaAAaAmen!
PS: this is not a cult BTW