Yo linux team, i would love some advice.
I’m pretty mad at windows, 11 keeps getting worse and worse and I pretty done with Bill’s fetishes about bing and ai. Who knows where’s cortana right now…
Anyway, I heard about this new company called Linux and I’m open to try new stuff. I’m a simple guy and just need some basic stuff:
- graphic stuff: affinity, canva, corel, gimp etc… (no adobe anymore, please don’t ask.)
- 3d modelling and render: blender, rhino, cinema, keyshot
- video editing: davinci
- some little coding in Dart/flutter (i use VS code, I don’t know if this is good or bad)
- a working file explorer (can’t believe i have to say this)
- NO FUCKIN ADS
- NO MF STUPID ASS DISGUSTING ADVERTISING
The tricky part is the laptop, a zenbook duo pro (i9-10/rtx2060), with double touch screens.
I tried ubuntu several years ago but since it wasn’t ready for my use i never went into different distros and their differences. Now unfortunately, ready or not, I need to switch.
Edit: the linux-company thing is just for triggering people, sorry I didn’t know it was this effective.
My first experiences were Ubuntu and and pop OS and i t really drove me away from Linux, because especially with Ubuntu lots of the promised customizability and deep control wasn’t there (if you are a first time user who don’t know about the 4-5 places config files can be located, often differing between distros so google doesnt always hekp, you have no idea what sysctl is, how compiling works, how to manage dependencies), instead with gnome you get an Apple/mobile like minimalistic look, where nothing of the ui just says what it does and most things can’t be changed in the gui which I really hated.
When I got manjaro for the first time, I was blown away about how much you could do with Linux even when not a programmer, because smart people on the AUR have paved the way. Also you had things like btrfs which are just plain better then win NTFS or linux ext.
Im not a programmer and don’t work in IT, but man arch was making me interested in Linux.
But you are right, it broke way to often, that’s why I settled for debian after all, as it has the right amount of stability and options imho
Also when coming from win OR having some technical skill OR wanting a highly customizable, good looking feature rich desktop envirment: GO FOR KDE PLASMA!!! THE NEW VERSION IS SO GREAT I FUCKING LOVE IT
In my experience, Manjaro breaks all the time.
Arch doesn’t.
That said, Debian is great. Probably gonna ditch Ubuntu for just pure Debian on my server.
That’s some nice info. From what I’ve heard manjaro is just arch with things done for you most users would do anyway (Desktop environment setup, package management set up, etc.) But if arch is more stable even if some casual hobby ITler like me installs it I should maybe give it another try at times.
Didn’t know there was much difference between arch distros, but now that you mention it: steamOS is working flawlessly while being arch could be an argument for your point. It thought this was more because its perfectly configured for the hardware and deck and I seldom need the OS itself outside of steam because I only use it for gaming.
Well the deck only gets updates once Valve decides they’re good to go, and it’s immutable so there can’t be edge cases where system packages don’t play nice with something user-installed.
Something similar is true for arch in general, package updates go out once they are good to go, and more importantly, when something really breaks, the fix comes in fast.
But manjaro tries to fix something which isn’t broken by delaying arch updates by two weeks, meaning you sometimes gets stuck with broken things, waiting for the fix, or get updates that install versions of things that don’t work together.
Ah that makes sense. The argument for manjaro is that they are not as vulnerable to easy to find 0days or what?
I have no idea. I think the claim is that as “arch is unstable”, the delay allows them to make sure none of that “wild instability” makes it into Manjaro. But as far as I can tell, no such checking occurs and the delay is just a delay. I got into the habit of putting off updating because more often than not it meant an evening of timeshifting and troubleshooting.
But arch isn’t really that unstable. On Endeavour (endeavours main repos are just the arch repos, they don’t maintain their own) I update whenever my system notifies me there’s new stuff, and the possibility that my system won’t boot afterwards doesn’t really cross my mind anymore. I still run timeshift, but I haven’t needed it yet.
In fact, if you really want stability… Unless you need some upcoming security update, bug fix or feature, you can just keep using your system, only installing things when you need them. There’s no real reason to impulsively install updates the second they are available. My system doesn’t even check for updates more than once a week.
Then, if my system worked yesterday, it will do say today. And unless I decide to change something today, it will do so tomorrow too.
In that sense even arch’s stability is “customizable” because you can voluntarily reduce how often you risk breaking something, while at the same time running a system with still more recent packages than most other distros.
Nono, arch breaks too, with no pebcak involved. Been there. Dude’s just been lucky.
How’s arch any different?
It’s either following FHS or not. I’ve never seen them dropped in random places and also differing between distros.
Not knowing about FHS is not distro specific.
And why would a brand new beginner touch any of those? If you need to enable something specific, the guide will most likely include systemd instructions. If you need something that’s not in the repo, use flatpak for example. If you’re not pointlessly compiling, you don’t need to manage dependencies, your PMs are doing it for you.
You can do the same things, and AUR doesn’t change that, it only gives you an additional source of packages that can’t be blindly trusted.
They can be set up on other distros, if you don’t like timeshift or other solutions. Btrfs is also not really necessary on a stable distro. A security patch is far less likely to break your system when compared to random bleeding edge releases.
Check out MX, it’s Debian with some desktop improvements, and a far more sensible default DE for the distro. I’m using it and it’s pretty great, nix makes it a lot better, but flatpak does the job as well.
Also, it’s really funny that a Debian user goes all fangirl over plasma 6
Plasma 6 - soon on a desktop near you (in 1-3+ years when it stops being a broken mess early enough to be tested and included in the new release)
PS, why is it funny Debian users like plasma? Such a rarity?
But to be fair, plasma has only become good recently imho, I really liked concept years ago but it was way to fragile and incomplete then.
I think what makes arch different for first time users is mainly the user repository. If I want to have glassy themed desktop for example on Ubuntu I need to understand kvantum, which folder need which permissions, download themes from a website, kvantum from the terminal and install them, while on arch I type yay glassy-themeXY
Sure arch comes with more possibilities in terms if what combinations of software are possible and rolling release etc. Pp. But that’s not that tangeble or import for the beginners usage.
When installing teamspeak for Ubuntu I need to understand how to make my own desktop entries, mark files as executable, how to install .deb packages etc, while on arch I type yay teamspeak, done.
Sure aur is not the most secure source, but better (and easier) then blindly copy pasting commands from some forum or manually downloading dubious python scripts from github.
In a nutshell: I can rely on other (smarter) users better on arch than Ubuntu.
For the customization at the time Ubuntu only had gnome, which is easy but not very powerful in its GUI options from my experience. Manjaro came with KDE plasma which is way more in depth with its GUI.
I don’t know what you are talking about with everything in the same place regardless of distro, I seldom find any config file i dont already know without googleing it for my system. Package names are different, the according folders are different, depending on you DE all paths regarding this will be different.
In win you have all your settings in the settings app (and the values stored in registry) EVERY file of the program you would need to accsess is in the program folder (or roaming).
On Linux, the steam installation via snap has another file structure than via apt, and another for flatpack and another for appimage and another for the aur version which is different from the selfcompiled version. Depending on your Linux version the gamebug could be produced by a file in any of those folders (mostly not one place but some in /etc some in /home/steam some in home/.local some in /home/.share etc. Pp.) Also steam depends on like 100 libraries which are stored in different places. Not to even start with symlinks, config files you should not edit because they get generated from a template in another dir which you instead should be editing and stuff like this.
For people who are working in the field or using the system since decades this becomes natural at some point. But for people who can’t (yet) deal with this kind of stuff it makes a HUGE difference if they can type “yay teamspeak” or not.
Sure, by now it seems trivial for me to know about sudo, chmod, .deb files, apt, .desktop files how to add a repository, manage gpg keyrings and so on but in the beginning, coming from windows this was confusing and overcomplicated as heck (remember under win installing a programming is literally double klicking an installer and that’s it) When you don’t know about this stuff and don’t have the time to watch tutorials or read man pages when wanting to do anything, the difference between this and “yay teamspeak” was like day and night, a matter of usable vs. Unusable.
People good with this stuff underestimate how valuable it is for noobs to be able to rely on smarter people. If I had installed ts when starting with Linux it would have been way more prone to failure and insecurity than a package by an experienced arch user.
The “why would a beginner need those” question always strikes me as odd, because it always sounds love me people wanna deny use cases. I tried changing my local one time, because I accidentally installed the us English default and in the end it was easier to reinstall, because changing the local here doesn’t automatically changes the local there, and for this the locale gets baked in when installing and then your off chasing details and suddenly needing systemctl commands or editing system.d config files or stuff like that. (Again, for something that is literally one klick in a drop down menu for win). I have never seen someone who uses Linux without ever needing the terminal, while doing more than webbrowsing and emails (while for win it is the default to never need the cmd) So if you didn’t study IT for 6 semesters you come to the point where GUI is not working anymore and you don’t know what to do REALLY fast. In this case you are of to either fail if you don’t want to spend hours tinkering and learning about internals of Linux or you have the aur, where its not that unlikely that someone has already written a package to accomplish the task.
“You can do the same things with the aur as without” is the dumbest shit I’ve ever heard (sry) Its like saying you can do the same thing with a guitar as with a CD. Sure, if you are skilled enough you can produce similar results, but for 90% of humanity its either you have the CD and can hear Elvis Presley or you can tinker with the guitar for hours and in the end get something that doesn’t even vaguely resembles Elvis Presley. --> you can’t hear Elvis Presley.
For btrfs: OK, give me the Debian bookworm installer where you can select ANY enrcrypted format that is not luks–>lvm–>ext. I looked lastime I installed there wasnt an option for encrypted btrfs on Debian, but there was on arch Maybe I could customize filesystems and install drivers/libs etc afterwards, but from what I’ve read its not that easy to get it working and it for sure didn’t work out of the box. But please correct me if I am wrong.
For flatpack: I avoid it, as people who are far more deep into the topic than me said its basically snap with extra steps, bloated, insecure, against the Linux philosophy of interlocking FOSS software blah blah. Didn’t understand most of it but followed the advice.
part 1/2
huh?
But yeah, the large repo + AUR do make some things easier. Although the additional package managers are quite close, while allowing for a more dependable base system.
flatpak search teamspeak->flatpak install com.teamspeak.TeamSpeak-> done (I’ll get to flatpak later)Sure, and that’s why you can use something like flatpak in any scenario. I prefer nix, but that’s still not user friendly.
They have flavours for each DE, same as Fedora has spins. It’s an easy way to ensure default apps go with the correct DE.
Most packages follow FHS and XDG, but there are still plenty of them that just drop it in ~ and call it a day.
The FHS ones (
/etc,/usr/share,/usr/local/etc) are where you’re supposed to find default configs. But,/usrshould be read-only and only ever copied from, while/etcis for system wide configs.The XDG configs are tied to your user, and only located at your ~. Usually in ~/.config but there are some cases where you might want to use ~/.local/
Yes, but that’s got nothing to do with the distro.
Apt and pacman follow the FHS, AUR just provides instructions to pacman.
Appimages contain everything they need to run in a single file that you execute.
Flatpak, snap, nix, guix, distrobox, etc. don’t save in the exact same directories because it’s much safer that way, but they still roughly follow FHS. For example nix symlinks everything into ~/.nix-profile and provides you with the same structure as apt (/etc, etc.)
GUI stores like discovery allow you to install and update packages from different stores at the same time. You can search for teamspeak and chose to install the deb or flatpak. Can’t get more user friendly than that.
No, you have the available windows settings in the settings apps. KDE approaches it the same way, and is far superior IMO. The difference is that if you want to change something that’s not covered by the settings apps, windows forces you to blindly copy-paste regedit commands, while linux has a text file.
For packages there is no FHS, they might or might not include default configs if they support text configs in the first place (a BIG part of the UNIX philosophy), or they might generate them when needed. It might be in one of the program files, in multiple locations in my documents and app data, or you might need to once again blindly copy-paste regedit commands. Hell, a windows program might use different 5 location for different configs.
It’s more because Linux has come a long way. For example I can just use MX Date & Time and use a gui to adjust my local and hardware time without ever touching the terminal.
part 2/2
Nah, that’s coming right up:
Argument from authority is a logical fallacy, and I don’t think basing your entire argument on willful ignorance requires further comment
People have issues with snap due to following reasons, and none of them apply to flatpak:
For example: you want to install the newest obs, but it requires a higher version glibc than your KDE. Installing the newer glibc in the exact same location as your system could possibly break your system. Pacman simply errors out, on the other hand flatpak provides the correct version to each of the packages it installs. And that’s possible because:
each package gets its own private sandbox with a filesystem, libraries, dependencies, runtimes, etc.
there are built in systems to further isolate packages from each other and your system
you can use tools like flatseal to control permissions on top of whatever the base system uses (AppArmor/SELinux).
no sudo privileges required
Pacman can only use AppArmor/SELinux, and AUR is the riskier version of community flatpaks.
The default one, and therefore essentially everything downstream: guided partition -> change from ext4 to btrfs and set to mount to / -> run the encryption wizard. Do read the maintenance section though, there are reasons why stable distros don’t default to it. Besides that, rsync does the job more than well enough. You can use the timeshift gui to have it periodically take snapshots, or easily automate it in different ways.
Honestly, monthly snapshots are going to be just fine. That’s the whole benefit of this kind of a setup. Your base system almost never changes, while everything you need to be up to date is completely separate. Half of my packages are nix unstable and just as bleeding edge as on arch, but my system is not at real risk of failing to boot due to an update because it’s still Debian, and quite close to vanilla at that. You don’t need btrfs and snapshots on every update because both flatpak and nix support rollbacks, and that’s the only scenario where updates could be risky.
There are downsides, and possible complications during setup though, but I’d say the trade is more than worth it, especially if you depend on your device and can’t have it break down because you ran a system update or installed a package without updating the whole system. Working abroad with bad internet really drew it home for me, and caused me to finally drop arch.