[HN Gopher] Linux Guide for Power Users
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Linux Guide for Power Users
Author : yarapavan
Score : 127 points
Date : 2023-08-07 17:19 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (xnacly.me)
(TXT) w3m dump (xnacly.me)
| frantathefranta wrote:
| > As said before, in this tutorial we will be using Manjaro due
| to it:
|
| > * containing a fully configured system (yes bloat, idc its a
| beginners tutorial)
|
| So is it for beginners or power users? Or can that be the same
| person? Choice of Manjaro is also curious, considering its
| history.
| artisanspam wrote:
| > considering its history
|
| Can you elaborate?
| heavyset_go wrote:
| It's amateur hour over at Manjaro. They've pushed breaking
| updates, insecure settings, etc. Their infrastructure is
| poor, as well.
| tenacious_tuna wrote:
| I don't know everything, but I do know they've let their
| HTTPS cert expire a few times [1], and they apparently delay
| package updates from upstream for like 1wk for "stability"
| reasons... which doesn't really add any stability, and just
| slows down releases.
|
| [1]: https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/wr2dps/manjaro_l
| et_t...
| bil7 wrote:
| You can drop in replace Manjaro with EndeavourOS to achieve
| Arch on easy mode these days.
| pxc wrote:
| Arch has easy mode built in1 these days.
|
| --
|
| 1: https://github.com/archlinux/archinstall
| ArisakaDJB wrote:
| I must've used this a dozen times in the last few months
| helping friends. It never fails to amaze me. Has options
| like a btrfs layout with sane defaults, choice of DE and
| Tiling, etc.
|
| I'm writing this from an installation I made today using
| it.
| dingnuts wrote:
| it's for power users of proprietary OSes who are beginners to
| Linux
| freedomben wrote:
| > _So is it for beginners or power users? Or can that be the
| same person?_
|
| Reasonable and good question. I tend to see that as orthogonal
| (but with some overlap) as "power user" is more of a mindset to
| me.
| benbenolson wrote:
| I see it as "power user" meaning "a power user of Windows."
| iueotnmunto wrote:
| My recent gripe is that I've used Linux for more than half my
| life and I'm well into my 30's. I feel like my ability to
| navigate a system has gone _backwards_, Debian no longer accepts
| 'init 0' as a command, ipconfig isn't a command anymore, systemd
| changed the whole subsystem from underneath me, ubuntu/snap
| decided not only to litter+bloat my filesystem with needless
| duplicates but also that not only would I prefer Firefox be a
| snap package (which broke my workflow), but that it would require
| me to go well out of my way to solve that, Gnome decided that I
| wanted a touchscreen layout (I custom compile gtk+ to remove the
| 'search on type' behavior in file>open dialogs, most major
| packages seem to default to nouveau which while a great movement
| seems to totally break critical path regularly.
|
| How the hell have we gotten to a point where Linux closely
| reflects the instability of the Windows ecosystem. I'm not afraid
| of change, but I feel like the large majority of changes that are
| made cause me problems to the point where I now fear upgrading my
| distro to latest.
| cumshitpiss wrote:
| [dead]
| vcg3rd wrote:
| "This guide is meant as a loose inspiration for a poweruser
| looking to switch to Linux."
|
| It's your guide, but as a non-technical Linux power user of over
| 2 decades, I don't think I would recommend Windows or Mac power
| users make the immediate shift to the (Neo)vim and i3 "metaphors"
| (if that's the right way to express it). I'd recommend KDE for
| Windows PUs and Pop? Peppermint? (I forget which disto aspires to
| the MacOS look and feel.
|
| I started using Emacs for Org because I don't program, and I
| gradually added email, file management, irc, gopher, roam, and
| other "functionality" as I became more proficient. I finally
| switched any key binding I could anywhere to Emacs, but I would
| never suggest Emacs to a Windows or Mac PU unless they already
| used it, let alone modal editing if they never used it and didn't
| live in a text editor.
|
| When I started using Org there were not many decent open source
| plaintext information managers that could also do agendas, to-
| dos, etc. I mostly used Zim prior. Not all PUs live in text
| editors, program, or edit configuration files in a modal editor.
| Why would someone who uses a text editor primarily to edit
| configuration files do so in a modal editor unsteady of Gedit or
| Kate or even nano or micro?
|
| Today, I would likely recommend Joplin for a PU who wants open
| source plain text information management plus a multitude of
| plugins on any platform and any GUI text editor with good syntax
| highlighting and customization and a Desktop Manager. It would
| allow for more gradual transition because being a PU on Windows
| or Mac means making significant changes would actually be more
| difficult.
|
| But you can have my Emacs when you pry it from my cold, dead
| hands.
| ulkesh wrote:
| So it's a tutorial where the goal is to be able to take a
| screenshot, post to Reddit, and feel cool. There are a few pieces
| of good information, but it's for people learning Linux (how to
| install, run a package manager, etc), not power users, which I
| would define as someone who understands a lot of the OS and takes
| as much advantage of the system at hand.
|
| I feel as if I'd qualify as a power user, who has used Windows
| since the 3.1 days, who has used MacOS since the Tiger days, and
| who has been using various Linux distributions since 1999 -- I
| definitely wasn't the intended target audience of this article.
|
| With a title of "Linux Guide for Power Users," I was hoping for
| some interesting scripts or relatively unknown applications that
| might be fun to tinker with. I always love to learn something new
| that I didn't know before (an example: recently I discovered
| TimeShift which is really a fancy wrapper around rsync and BTRFS,
| but it's a pretty nice GUI to help create and restore snapshots
| that I wasn't aware of before).
| koito17 wrote:
| Your first paragraph is spot on. A quick look at the ToC made
| me think it's a "how to reproduce every r/unixporn screenshot
| ever" rather than teaching something interesting about Linux
| for people well-versed in administering or using other Unix-
| like systems (e.g. Mac OS, FreeBSD, ...).
|
| This may be oddly specific to myself, but I hate having to
| memorize internal IPs and like to address my computers with
| their hostnames. This article makes no attempt to tell me
| _anything_ about hostnames, mDNS, DNS-SD, etc. on Linux. Is
| mDNS configured OOTB on most Linux distros like it is on Mac
| OS? If not, which implementations should I consider using? So
| on, so forth.
|
| I also find it a bit amusing NeoVim is automatically chosen for
| the reader. I'll stick with Emacs, and I know many others will
| stick with VS Code or just plain old Vim. :)
| [deleted]
| Given_47 wrote:
| > This guide is meant as a loose inspiration for _a poweruser
| looking to switch to Linux_.
|
| Yea the title and the intro sentence have a subtle, but very
| important difference.
|
| And I appreciate the effort but I'm ultimately still confused
| who the target audience is. I've only ever used macOS (like ~9
| years computer experience) but currently setting up Gentoo, and
| being a "power user looking to switch to Linux" myself, I
| would've found it more helpful to summarize the Linux
| equivalents and added optionality to macOS "power user" things.
|
| Eg u use yabai on mac, well here's i3 and [other options].
| Desktop environment? You actually can choose and here's an
| overview. Like it went from "eli5 what's a distro" to vim
| keybindings so there was that inconsistent definition of "power
| user."
|
| I'm obviously biased in terms of what I wanted _to see_ but my
| larger point is the inconsistency
| user6723 wrote:
| A "power user" is definitively someone not hacker minded.
| orliesaurus wrote:
| Why would you install Arch-based Manjaro? Why not just go with a
| flavor of Ubuntu to start becoming productive from like minute 5?
| And if you're really trying to become a super-user why not NixOS?
| nateb2022 wrote:
| Manjaro can be just as productive out of the box as Ubuntu can.
| frfl wrote:
| Personally, the biggest appeal of Arch is the great wiki, a
| large number of up to date packages without snap/ppa whatever
| else Ubuntu makes you do, and the AUR for anything else that
| isn't available in the regular package repos.
|
| I've only used Ubuntu for work, and typically the versions of
| things are quite out of date. Where as Arch, for all it's warts
| and costs (setup, maintenance etc) gives you those things for
| free.
|
| I haven't found Arch that much more difficult to work with. For
| 2 years I used it on a work laptop without issue. Only recently
| messed up something while updating firmware drivers which
| requires more than 5 mins/week/month to diagnose.
| vdfs wrote:
| Arch wiki is a great resource even if you are on an other
| distro, only difference is config file location in most
| cases.
|
| Having up to date packages also mean having new bugs you have
| to deal with, for some users having a stable things outweigh
| having cutting edge.
|
| Never understood people obsession with distro, whatever work
| for you is fine, they are all linux+open source tools
| captn3m0 wrote:
| The Arch Wiki has the advantage of only having to manage
| documentation for (mostly) a single set of packages. Every
| non-rolling distro ends up maintaining separate websites
| for each releases.
| Adverblessly wrote:
| Personally, if I'm recommending something for daily use (as in,
| you plan to do more than just work on this device) I could only
| recommend a rolling release where your software is always up to
| date. You'd usually want and expect software to be up to date
| (at least for software that isn't trying to screw you ;)) and
| if something you are using has a bug, waiting for the next
| Ubuntu release is unreasonable. Also, if your packages update
| regularly (and you update them regularly :)), it is much easier
| to debug when things go wrong since you can more easily keep
| track of recent changes.
|
| Similarly, I wouldn't recommend Ubuntu to beginners because the
| dist-upgrade process is very scary and unreliable (in fact, I
| don't think I've ever seen dist-upgrade succeed fully without
| errors or manual intervention), so I wouldn't want to have that
| unpleasent surprise waiting for them when they aren't ready for
| it. The situation around snap is also likely to leave a sour
| taste in their mouth ("Why am I being nagged to close Chrome 2
| weeks from now? And why am I _still_ nagged after I just closed
| and reopened it?! " not to mention "Why can't I open this file
| in Chrome?").
| orliesaurus wrote:
| What would you recommend instead of Ubuntu for beginners?
| akho wrote:
| (not the person you're asking, but I have an opinion)
|
| For beginners who want to learn how things work --
| Slackware. That distribution _guarantees_ the beginner will
| soon graduate to a non-beginner status, or understand that
| it's not for them. It's a really quick result. Ubuntu et
| al. just make it so people stay beginners forever.
|
| I really like the Arch trend among beginners; it doesn't
| quite have the educational value of Slackware, but at least
| they try.
|
| For people who just want to use a computer for normal
| things I'd recommend an immutable distribution that doesn't
| break (Fedora Silverblue / openSUSE Aeon) and a friend who
| can help (ideally -- with remote access). The second
| component is essential with any OS.
| frfl wrote:
| Can you explain more about Slackware, in what sense does
| it help you graduate quickly and provide educational
| value?
| MountainMan1312 wrote:
| I think there are just as many reasons to avoid Manjaro and
| Arch as there are to avoid Ubuntu, maybe even more for Ubuntu.
| Ubuntu is a mess.
| PrimeMcFly wrote:
| What are your reasons to avoid Arch, out of curiosity? For me
| it would only be System D, really, that and that I like Void
| and Alpine more.
| PrimeMcFly wrote:
| If you want to become a power user, then using something as
| relatively bloated and dumbed down/obscuring as Ubuntu is not a
| good pick.
| _jal wrote:
| I still don't know what a "power user" is supposed to be, after
| seeing the term for like 30 years. Seems to describe a range
| from "able to leap tall spreadsheets in a single bound" to "the
| person in the office who knows how to fix things".
|
| In my experience, most long-term unix nerds today seem to end
| up using (a) whatever is in front of them or (b) vanilla
| Debian.
| Given_47 wrote:
| The articles definition of it was certainly opaque but
| personally, I consider it a relative term.
|
| "[Insert random AI tool] will make all users become power
| users!"
|
| By my framing, that's literally impossible. There's always
| people that can do/get more value out of _the thing_ than the
| majority, ie power users
| bluefishinit wrote:
| Yay/AUR pretty much always has what I'm looking for. Apt-get,
| not so much. I also never want snaps or whatever they're
| called. Ubuntu is a mess.
| safety1st wrote:
| NixOS is not an obvious choice if you want to become a "Linux
| super-user." It takes a very unconventional approach to package
| management, building and configuring your system. All great for
| what it is but not going to teach you the conventional Linux
| way of doing things.
|
| I don't know if this is still the case but when installing
| Arch, it used to be that you would start with a very basic set
| of essential packages and then build everything up from
| scratch. That is a great way to become a power user. However I
| thought the whole point of Manjaro was that it's an Arch
| variant which does a bunch of that for you, so Manjaro's a
| weird choice for this guide.
|
| Edit: Looks like doing a vanilla Arch install is still pretty
| gangsta:
| https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/installation_guide#Install_...
| accoil wrote:
| Yeah, NixOS really benefits from you understanding what it's
| changing.
|
| Last year I wanted to make flatpak use a different partition.
| Some searches (and reading the docs) later, I decided to use
| /etc/flatpak/installations.d/ to add an extra location. I set
| up environment.etc to create the file, but flatpak ignored
| me. After some futzing around I eventually ran strace and
| realised that it was searching the nix store, and not /etc.
| So I wrote an overlay to have it create the file during build
| so it existed in the store.
|
| Being able to recognize that NixOS may be looking at an
| unconventional location was what allowed me to make that
| work.
| wetpaws wrote:
| [dead]
| renewiltord wrote:
| This appears to not be for an audience of software engineers.
|
| When I was young, I had a Compiz-enabled cube desktop (maybe with
| conky running) and it was super cool and stuff and I enjoyed it,
| so this is in that realm.
|
| Nice of author to share his setup, though. It's often the case
| that explicit instructions like these help me when I'm searching
| for something so I always support the writing of them. I don't
| think this should have been posted here, though.
| jasoneckert wrote:
| I really couldn't understand the information, purpose, or
| audience for this article until I read it in the voice that
| announces John Cena.
| thatcherthorn wrote:
| As someone who switched from Windows to Linux in college, I have
| no regrets.
|
| All of the rough edges I've encountered (usually) have resulted
| in a better understanding of how software actually works.
| Corsome wrote:
| I have the same experience. In my case everything worked fine
| out of the box (after several test installs of Arch).
|
| The best distro for a new Linux user is actually the same
| distro your best friend uses. When things get dire it's good to
| have a direct help (Arch Wiki is great but one needs to know
| how to extract most or its knowledge).
| soraminazuki wrote:
| Can't agree more, looking at what Windows has become from
| Windows 8 and onwards. It used to be that Windows users chose
| Windows over Linux because they saw it as the OS that "just
| lets them get their work done." No one can possibly say that
| about the Windows of today, the OS that gets in the way at
| every turn and corner to squeeze profits out of users who
| already paid.
| frfl wrote:
| I feel exactly the same. Not going down this route around the
| same time I probably would've gone Windows 7 -> Windows 10 ->
| Windows 11 and had to deal with all that brings with it.
|
| Instead going fully Linux had its pain points, but the
| learning, exposure to everything and the experience was well
| worth it. Looking back, so many of the issue I ran into ~10
| years ago barely exist today - at least I rarely run into those
| kind of hurdles either due to more experience or the ecosystem
| just being quite stable and mature now.
| freedomben wrote:
| Likewise. I think moving my whole life to Linux has also
| benefitted my career greatly. Because of the time I've spent
| hacking on my personal system, squeezing out performance,
| fixing common issues, etc, I'm pretty damn good at doing so
| for Linux servers. Those skills have come in really handy for
| me many times.
| nektro wrote:
| > Manjaro is not superior or inferior to any other Linux
| distribution
|
| quite the contrary, https://github.com/arindas/manjarno
| 31b3r3t7 wrote:
| Power users use Gentoo.
| nateb2022 wrote:
| Not if they don't want to spend a third of their time
| maintaining their system.
| MountainMan1312 wrote:
| That's a bunch of propaganda. Sure it takes longer for the
| initial setup, there's no "click this button to install
| Gentoo" menu, but once you've got it setup it's _easier_ to
| maintain.
| nateb2022 wrote:
| It's easier to maintain a very fine-level of control, but
| only _if_ users are prepared to invest the time and effort
| to keep themselves up to date on the software that makes up
| their system. Sure, that is probably assumed to some degree
| as part of being a power user, however alternatives like
| Arch and nixOS are capable of providing similar levels of
| configuration with a little more ease, at least in certain
| places.
|
| > but once you've got it setup it's easier to maintain.
|
| In general, this is not the case compared to more out-of-
| the-box distros like Debian, where upgrading is simply a
| matter of "apt update && apt upgrade".
| fhduksbegd wrote:
| Minor correction would be to use
|
| sudo apt update && sudo apt dist-upgrade -y
| MountainMan1312 wrote:
| Can't remember the exact quote but:
|
| _" People who use Ubuntu know Ubuntu, people who know RHEL
| know RHEL, but people who use Gentoo know Linux"_
| vdfs wrote:
| Are you even a Linux user if you haven't built your Linux
| From Scratch?
| [deleted]
| seanw444 wrote:
| Meh, I'll stick to binaries for 95% of my stuff.
| PrimeMcFly wrote:
| No, masochists use Gentoo.
| HybridCurve wrote:
| We use gentoo because a linux system without problems is
| boring.
| whalesalad wrote:
| If I wanted a rolling release I would use vanilla Arch or
| Tumbleweed. I would go with EndeavorOS over Manjaro.
|
| I am quite happy with Debian 12, though.
| waithuh wrote:
| > for Power Users
|
| > Manjaro
|
| well, acceptable i guess...
|
| > (yes bloat, idc its a beginners guide)
|
| huh
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(page generated 2023-08-07 23:00 UTC)