Yes, also fair enough. Alpine as well.

So let’s see. This adds us up to:

Arch, Debian, Alpine, Slackware, Opensuse, Gentoo, Void, Fedora/Redhat, Nix.

And yeah I’ve used docker with Alpine before. I think i used ot as a base to setup redis, postgresql, and some other service a while back. I’m not hating on any distro, just very forgetful of even what I read 15 sec ago.

Very fair. Forgot about OpenSuse. Thank you.

Fair. I suppose adding on Slackware, OpenSuse, and NixOS is in order, as they each have their own package management solutions, which to me is the discerning factor for most of the base distributions. That said Gobo Linux is a weird one I’ve simply not heard of until now. Thanks for the heads up.

There are only five distros. Arch, Debian, Gentoo, Fedora/Red Hat, and Void. Pretty much all others are just Arch or Debian with preinstalled desktop environments, theming on top of said environments, and preinstalled packages depending on the intended use case.

Not a knock nor a praise, just a truth.

Until you have a distro that has the “Please wait while we update your system, do not turn off your computer”, and “something went wrong, please contact” screens and actual customer support, Linux won’t be ready for prime time with the majority of users.

The majority of computer and phone users are used to their asses being wiped and their bottle being fed to them.

And as soon as daddy Cook, daddy Nadella, or daddy Pichai started shoving piss poor UI, exorbitant prices, invasive advertisements, and extreme privacy invasions far up their anus, they start to complain.

But lo and fucking behold, all you have to do to get them to stick some lube up there and beg for more is show them a Linux shell. What a fucking surprise.

I’ve used espanso for about 4, maybe 5 years and haven’t encountered this issue. I even have to compile it myself because it’s daemon mode uses systemd on Linux and I dont run a distro that uses systemd and had to modify the source code slightly. I do run it in managed mode, essentially invoking it from a startup script when my window manager starts up.

Long story short, what you encountered might have been related to how it integrates with the init system and you might try and run it directly from a startup script. Simple test is to just try and install the latest version and see if you have the same issue.

Espanso Text Expander. Its not Linux specific but its got so many uses. You can even use it with bash scripts to have essentially alises/text shortcuts for short or massive amounts of text. I use it for so many code snippets and template texts in Neovim and other applications that involve typing.

Artix has the most amount of alternative init systems available.

I would recommend Devuan, but it just wraps SysV in runit as a service manager rather than just using runit as init.

Gentoo has options for systemd or openrc. You can get runit or s6 to work on it if you’re pretty familiar with how /sbin/init works,or so I’ve ascertained from researching, but have not done this yet.

Void is very interesting as it uses runit and also uses musl instead of glibc. I don’t think it has quite as many packages as Artix though due to lack of AUR, and I can only estimate that the use of musl instead of glibc necessitates the need for some interesting workarounds from time to time.

I use Artix with runit. Have been daily driving this for around 6 years now and have been very happy with it.

If I were to use anything else I’d go through the trouble of installing Gentoo and configure it to use s6 init. Just to get more granular control.

I do want mainstream adoption … of the terminal. The terminal is not just a professional tool. In fact, whenever anything goes wrong with your computer silently, I can almost guarantee there’s some helpful output that you’d see had you been invoking that program from the terminal. So what ends up happening? You go to a “professional” who looks at that output, search engines the output, and uses the online documentation to attempt a fix.

The analogy to the car is somewhat apt. I’d argue we’d all be better off if we knew how to at least do some basic mechanic work. This is the same thing. I’m not saying we all need to live in the terminal…I’m saying we all should know the very basics around it. Update our system, read and search error problems should they arise, and know when and where to reach out to others for help when we can’t solve it. I don’t think it’s unreasonable to suggest everybody learn a tool, especially when, again, that tool becomes ubiquitous amongst anyone who does any troubleshooting with computers on a regular basis (i.e. everyone who ever encountered an error ever).

I don’t care about mainstream Linux adoption. I care about mainstream curiosity into how things we use everyday work and attaining a basic knowledge of it.

Many attempts have been made at graphical package updaters, and honestly they always end up just outputting an error message when something goes wrong. The reason it frustrates new users so much is that they aren’t used to having to troubleshoot their own systems. If they don’t wish to do so, that’s fine, but then they should pay for support since that requires other people’s time, efforts, and skills to do so.

Arguing that everything should just work on Linux, a free OS, without having to troubleshoot things on your own (which, again, 99% of the time, involves the terminal regardless of what OS you’re using), is simply a case of wanting to have your cake and eat it too. If you want to run Linux, and you refuse to pay for it, then complain that it should be more “user friendly”, which is just another way of saying “I want tech support but don’t want to pay for it”, then it shows you probably shouldn’t be using that OS, and maybe you don’t understand even the basics of how a computer works?

If you’re just not willing to do even the bare minimum to open up a terminal, attempt to run the program, read the output, and then research said output, then you should be on a platform that will provide the support you need should anything go wrong. In other words, you should be on Windows or MacOS.

If you all want the year of the Linux Desktop, and you all seem to be proclaiming it can’t happen until it can operate without the use of the terminal, then you should pay a group of developers to develop it and provide support for it. Until then, you are the maintainer of your own computer, and you should probably just do the work and open the terminal up and do the bare minimum, or shutup and go back to Windows/MacOS.

Edit: wording/grammar.

Because the use of the terminal is as intuitive as using a Word Processor. Learning to use the terminal is as important as learning how to type. Without this knowledge, I’d argue you’re not using your computer, you’re spectating. Which is fine if you’re paying for support, but with Linux you are doing no such thing unless you use Redhat.

As soon as computers hit the general public, there should have been a mass effort to teach people that the terminal is the main interface through which everything happens on a computer, just like there were a ton of men suddenly learning to type in the early 70s when computing suddenly became important to everyday work. Prior to that typing was considered the sole domain of female secretaries. But this never happened for use of the terminal for better or worse.

Ultimately I get that people don’t have time to learn everything, but, again, the terminal is as ubiquitous as the Word Processor and ten thousand times more powerful. The fact it is not a staple in the arsenal of anyone who has ever sat in front of a Computer screen is a sad state of affairs.

The argument I’m making is that we have multiple generations of people where the majority of them simply don’t speak the language of computers while the majority of them have to use them everyday. It’s no wonder they all get so frustrated. If only someone had taught them how to use it in the first place rather than gave them a bandaid solution that hides the majority of what’s happening behind the scenes.

While frustrating to learn at first, that is all learning, it is always hard to learn something new. Picking up a Word Processor is hard, learning to use Graphics Manipulation Program is hard, etc. But people rarely argue you shouldn’t learn to use those tools, even though the terminal is just as essential to modern computer use as those tools. Again, we have multiple generations who generally lack the knowledge on how to use something as essential as the Word Processor, and that is a damn shame.

I’ve gone back and forth on this topic over the years, but I’ve finally just come to the conclusion that the year of the Linux Desktop just…shouldn’t come, and I hate when I see this argument that people shouldn’t have to learn to use the terminal.

The terminal is about as difficult to learn as a Word Processor or a Spreadsheet Application.

Sure, it can get complicated sometimes, but most of the time you just become familiar with your daily habits in it and when something weird comes up that’s what a search engine is for.

A lot of the time when I hear “Computer users shouldn’t have to learn how to use the terminal,” what I hear is “Computer users shouldn’t have to learn how to use the Computer.”

f you want to play basketball but don’t want to pick up a ball or learn how to dribble, then you don’t want to play basketball. Maybe you just like to watch basketball?

But using a computer is not a spectator sport, you’re typing and clicking and touching, etc. You’re interacting with the computer, and thusly you have to speak it’s language, at least a little, to get stuff done.

Additionally, most Linux Distros these days have made things incredibly user friendly, just not as braindead easy as Windows or MacOS.

Beginner friendly distros (Ubuntu, Mint) generally require you to open up a terminal to update your system and install/uninstall new software, and that’s usually all you have to do. That is a couple commands to remember and one password.

If most people can’t manage that then, yeah, I’m sorry, Linux will never be for you, and distros shouldn’t inherently have to create an autoupdate fix all errors back end for you just for the sake of getting every idiot under the sun using Linux.

You don’t want to learn how to use the terminal? Then you don’t want to use Linux. You just hate Windows, and hating Windows does not mean you love Linux.

Saucy rant over.

I use zsh, but my old Bash prompt looks almost the same as my Zsh prompt. Sorry, no screenshot, but here’s the code:

export PS1='\[\033[01;34m\][\[\033[01;37m\] \W\[\033[01;34m\]]\$\033[01;34m\] $(git branch 2>/dev/null | grep '^*' | colrm 1 2)\n\033[01;34m└─>\033[37m '

Searxng uses bangs but you have to double them up (i.e. !!aur btop or !!ddg search).

Yep. Use it every day. It’s awesome.

I knew dudemanguy would eventually make a post like this. I use the distro(Artix Linux) he’s a maintainer on Artix, and he’s a solid dude that is always willing to help and gives solid help.

I have both riverwm and bspwm along with Wayland and X on my system and honestly have stuck on X because getting my workflow exactly the same on Wayland has been a technical hurdle of learning Zig (riverwm is written in Zig), and so far, with the exception of the occasional race condition, X just works.

I want to convert to Wayland, and will probably get around to making my own custom scripts in zig for working with riverwm. But until then, X/bspwm is where I live.

This, and take physical notes, or at least make notes in something you can refer to on a screen that is not your phone, ideally another desktop or a laptop computer with internet access in case something unexpected comes up during the physical install and you need to search the archwiki or the wider internet.

Sorry to hear that. I’ll admit I don’t buy ebooks. Yoho yoho and all that. And yeah, I also never turn on wifi. Have you tried a hard reset?

Kobo is the answer. It used to require some finicking to get it so you didn’t have to sign up with Walmart, but now that’s supposedly no longer an issue (I’ve had my Kobo for a long time). Install Calibre and the Kobo extension for Calibre. You now can borrow epubs from your local library, purchase them from your favorite online ebook store, or sail the high seas if you don’t give a fuck.