General Linux Chat and Small Questions v. I broke my Arch Install - Hardware & Software

[QUOTE=FlubberNugget;40951531]Why, might I ask?[/QUOTE] Wasn't Windows'y enough for him, most likely. Linux should work on being more like Windows, because Windows gets everything right. [editline]8th June 2013[/editline] I mean look at that transparency in Windows, its beau- oh wait :v: Can you still enable Aero or whatever it is in Windows 8? The new borders look like Windows 1.0

[QUOTE=Rayjingstorm;40951555]Wasn't Windows'y enough for him, most likely. Linux should work on being more like Windows, because Windows gets everything right. [editline]8th June 2013[/editline] I mean look at that transparency in Windows, its beau- oh wait :v: Can you still enable Aero or whatever it is in Windows 8? The new borders look like Windows 3.0[/QUOTE] Taskbars are always transparent in Windows 8. They changed how transparent they are. [editline]8th June 2013[/editline] Microsoft are ditching gummy transparency and aero in general because it looks dated, not because they can't get it right. Aero at the time looked better than any other system including XFCE, Fedora and especially LXDE. Possibly not OSX, though. OSX is a great example of form > function

[QUOTE=nikomo;40951088]Groups break apart because they consist of humans, causing duplicate work, [b]aimed at the same goal[/b], thus wasting effort, whilst inside Microsoft or Apple they can just go "You will do this or you're fired". More choice is not inherently good: better choices is.[/QUOTE] The difference is, they aren't all aimed at the same goal. LXDE and XFCE are intended to be as lightweight as possible. GNOME and KDE are 'full fat' desktop environments. I'll talk about KDE, since it represent a large portion of effort expended. KDE's user facing applications are all built on top of Qt, which handles whole bunch of shit across all environments (KDE, Windows, OS X etc.) so there's not a lot of effort that goes into the underlying foundations there (that isn't shared with a lot of other systems). There are still a lot of KDE services and such that needed to be built, but a big focus of the KDE project is to shift a lot of responsibility into Qt (where appropriate) to save others from duplicating that effort.

Why doesn't the user have a say in whether the Aero transparency is "gummy"? I personally prefer it to the gross matte colors of Windows 8 metro.

[QUOTE=esalaka;40949287]That's actually kind of curious, since common CLI shells are not difficult to operate at all. And one of the things I honestly miss on Windows is a proper command line. I mean, it's 2013, they could at least make the new terminal windows which speficially made for PowerShell work like proper terminal emulators! I can't even select text reasonably because it's not handled like text![/QUOTE] See, this is the stuff I don't understand. Who are you making the desktop for? OSX is getting it the most right at the moment. They are moving the operating system out of the way. They're making it easy to use. Anyone can use it. If my mom buys a computer I she shouldn't ever have to tell her to open a terminal and type a bunch of stuff in. I know it's really rare that you'd have to do something like that - but it's inexcusable when an end user has to. It shows that the operating system isn't made for end users. It's made for developer users.

[QUOTE=Rayjingstorm;40951653]Why doesn't the user have a say in whether the Aero transparency is "gummy"? I personally prefer it to the gross matte colors of Windows 8 metro.[/QUOTE] That's where where Microsoft made a mistake (or possibly a good idea). They removed actual 'themes', and replaced them with different colours and wallpapers. I personally don't like that. [editline]8th June 2013[/editline] [QUOTE=garry;40951656]See, this is the stuff I don't understand. Who are you making the desktop for? OSX is getting it the most right at the moment. They are moving the operating system out of the way. They're making it easy to use. Anyone can use it. If my mom buys a computer I she shouldn't ever have to tell her to open a terminal and type a bunch of stuff in. I know it's really rare that you'd have to do something like that - but it's inexcusable when an end user has to. It shows that the operating system isn't made for end users. [B]It's made for developer users.[/B][/QUOTE] Probably why I always see people right here on FP talking about Linux already being perfect for the general population; they only have that one viewpoint, that of a literate computer user.

[QUOTE=garry;40951656]See, this is the stuff I don't understand. Who are you making the desktop for? OSX is getting it the most right at the moment. They are moving the operating system out of the way. They're making it easy to use. Anyone can use it. If my mom buys a computer I she shouldn't ever have to tell her to open a terminal and type a bunch of stuff in. I know it's really rare that you'd have to do something like that - but it's inexcusable when an end user has to. It shows that the operating system isn't made for end users. It's made for developer users.[/QUOTE] I think part of the issue here is that this thread has a lot of people who are interested in using Linux to it's full potential as a powerful tool for productivity, so you're going to get a lot of "they should be using the terminal if they know what's good for them!". Like I said earlier, there are a lot of tools for managing Linux systems in a similar fashion to Windows (KDE's system settings for example is rather good for exposing the functionality and configuring it, though the window decoration options are bit difficult to navigate due to the sheer number of switches), but a lot of us don't really use them since we don't need to.

What should I do if I, say, want to go from Ubuntu to Debian? Do I have to back up my stuff, remove everything, install Debian, and then restore, similar to Windows, or is there a better way?

[QUOTE=Darkwater124;40951736]What should I do if I, say, want to go from Ubuntu to Debian? Do I have to back up my stuff, remove everything, install Debian, and then restore, similar to Windows, or is there a better way?[/QUOTE] You "can" save your /home partition if you have it on its own partition, but it would be easier to start fresh. A backup of your /home and maybe /etc if you've done any custom configuration of services would be all you need. Wait for more responses because there may be more things to backup.

[QUOTE=FlubberNugget;40951678]Probably why I always see people right here on FP talking about Linux already being perfect for the general population; they only have that one viewpoint, that of a literate computer user.[/QUOTE] The issue isn't that Facepunch users are literate in using a CLI, it's that people at wide aren't. It's perfectly easy to learn the command-line if it's your primary interface. However, nowadays on x86 computers (that still fundamentally use keyboards as their primary input device) graphical user interfaces are the status quo, which means that most people are introduced to a graphical user interface at first, and it might be more simple to use for very trivial usage cases. However, mouse- or touch-based interfaces often require more precision and effort than simple command-line interfaces. The graphical user interface is by no means objectively superior to a CLI. One could argue the difference is similar to that between CRT text terminals and teletype, but the difference there is that they fundamentally served the same purpose of being a text terminal. I find that a system that can be used via both a command line and a graphical user interface that introduces users to both is the best possible one, as it allows effective methods of control for powerusers and a familiar graphical environment for those who don't know how to use the command-line one. And that's why I like Linux, I guess.

[QUOTE=esalaka;40952058]The issue isn't that Facepunch users are literate in using a CLI, it's that people at wide aren't. It's perfectly easy to learn the command-line if it's your primary interface. However, nowadays on x86 computers (that still fundamentally use keyboards as their primary input device) graphical user interfaces are the status quo, which means that most people are introduced to a graphical user interface at first, and it might be more simple to use for very trivial usage cases. However, mouse- or touch-based interfaces often require more precision and effort than simple command-line interfaces. The graphical user interface is by no means objectively superior to a CLI. One could argue the difference is similar to that between CRT text terminals and teletype, but the difference there is that they fundamentally served the same purpose of being a text terminal. I find that a system that can be used via both a command line and a graphical user interface that introduces users to both is the best possible one, as it allows effective methods of control for powerusers and a familiar graphical environment for those who don't know how to use the command-line one. And that's why I like Linux, I guess.[/QUOTE] Very eloquently put. Windows offers many menus, with submenus in submenus and arbitrary divisions in their GUI that make it difficult to make simple changes. Would you rather have to list twenty steps in order to locate a setting or just instruct a user to enter one simple command? In either case they can do it without understanding why, and it can magically do what they want.

What is that fullscreen terminal session which you can enter using a certain key combo? tsc? tcc? Something along these lines?

Changing the TTY you're on? CTRL+ALT+F1(-7)

Thanks, that was it.

So I've finally made up my mind, and decided to go with just a vanilla debian install. I've only ever really USED arch before (for about 4 months) so this should be a fresh experience and will let me get to know apt. Honestly my favorite thing about arch is it's bleeding edge rolling release mentality (while keeping it slightly less complicated the gentoo). If I can get the same thing with debian unstable/experimental, I think I'll be happy.

Decided its probably time to start backing some things up... I've decided to go with incremental backups using rsync over ssh to my "server" PC. I'm just deciding which directories to backup; the wiki says everything in /etc/ plus the pacman database, but I might do everything and pick and choose what to exclude instead. To those of you who backup regularly, is it easier to: [img]http://www.facepunch.com/fp/ratings/winner.png[/img] Choose [b]what[/b] to backup. [img]http://www.facepunch.com/fp/ratings/zing.png[/img] Choose [b]what not[/b] to backup. [editline]9th June 2013[/editline] Also I need to get a new drive to backup onto. If anyone has suggestions for a cheap drive between 750GB-1TB I would be interested. I still need to check if this mobo accepts sata or ide, though.

You should back up everything in /etc and everything in your /home folder. Since this would cover both system settings and user settings/files. Backing up the pacman database is just for convenience so you could easily reinstall every package you've installed then override all their default settings with the ones you backed up in /etc and /home. Oh also about "never having to open a CLI for the computer illiterate" problem. For me the CLI interface is insanely powerful. Whenever someone has a problem (which on any system there's bound to be) you can simply list commands to put in their CLI which will solve their problem specifically and easily. Rather than saying something like "Press start, then type in run, then type 'regedit' then find HK_SYSTEM_HOLYSHIT_I'M_HARD_TO/FIND click on it, then click on the WHY nodes--" you could just let them copy and paste the command to do it for them in a terminal. I don't disagree with having a system completely independent of a CLI, but given it's the most powerful tool of the system why not have the terminal teach you how to use it? It could give you a introductory of how it works and some simple commands to use it. It COULD be just as easy to use as any other button-clicking application, with auto-completes, hints, tutorials, and perhaps an annoying-ass paperclip with eyeballs. [B]tl;dr[/B] Having to use CLI isn't a bad thing. In most Linux distributions you already don't have too, but since it's so powerful and useful you're bound to come across it. So why not teach it to new users in the system rather than working around it?

[QUOTE=Terin7;40931949]Has anyone gotten Counter-Strike to mount at all on Linux, either client or server? I've seen vague reports of "yeah I got it to work" but I'm not sure if that's on Windows or Linux.[/QUOTE] I remember getting TF2's dylibs to work with the Portal executables during the Steam for Mac beta - surely you couldn't do the same with TF2 or some other Source '07 game?

I love using the terminal, along with the reasons listed above it's also so much quicker. For example, if I want to install a program on windows I need to go to the website, download the EXE, open it, click next a thousand times before I can finally use it. Linux? open terminal sudo apt-get install <program name here> password

[QUOTE=Rayjingstorm;40960043]Also I need to get a new drive to backup onto. If anyone has suggestions for a cheap drive between 750GB-1TB I would be interested. I still need to check if this mobo accepts sata or ide, though.[/QUOTE] Assuming SATA, this would be my backup HDD of choice. [url]http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822236070[/url]

[QUOTE=garry;40948862]I think the Linux guys get too upset about what I have to say. There are a few problems with Linux. It's not going to be a successful desktop if you're expected to ever go into the command line to do stuff for example. It's only really ever used as a desktop for bragging rights by nerds. I'm not saying these things because I hate Linux. I'm saying it how I see it as an outsider. I like the idea of Linux. I want it to beat the shit out of Windows and OSX. But in the current condition it's not going to happen. Especially when Ubuntu is being touted as the Linux desktop - when it's arguably the most awful desktop you can get on Linux. It's confusing to me that Windows is closed source and it has a few hundred, maybe thousand people working on it. The same with OSX. But they can be so much more user friendly than Linux.. when Linux has the potentially everyone in the world contributing to it. Why isn't it the best platform yet? It can't just be because of a lack of users - right?[/QUOTE] Linux developers are biased toward making software for people from a Linux user's perspective. I assume Apple and Windows developers use their own software much more, so they're more in touch with what their audiences want. This is one of many distinctions: others include the Linux market not being as profitable or capitalistic as the market in which Apple and Windows are competing -- i.e., Apple and Windows developers get paid; not all Linux developers do. And there's a long history and tradition of capitalism behind Apple and Windows, whereas there's a long history and tradition of scruffy, bearded garage-hacking behind Linux. I may be wrong, but those are my thoughts...

Why isn't Linux widely used? Because it's not preinstalled on systems. Your average user isn't going to fuck with their computer like that, therefore no Linux. Because it's incompatible with Microsoft products. Whenever someone sees a major game port from Windows to Linux you see people write 'there goes my Windows install'. There's also the fact that Microsoft Office is incompatible with anything that isn't its own proprietary formats that nobody on Earth and interoperate with. Why is it user hostile? Lack of training is the main problem here. You use Windows everywhere: at home, at school, at work, everywhere. It's culturally engrained. We don't have professional UX developers.Everything in Linux is written by either hobbyists or enterprises, neither give a damn about UXes as Linux doesn't need to sell itself to customers to stay alive as everybody on Linux is already using Linux, and is at that skill level where they're comfortable with it. If you've ever looked at pretty much any Linux conference, you'll see that it's pretty much the definition of geeky stuff: Filesystems, X11 replacements, or stuff like Linus talking about the kernel and power saving. People get excited about kernel upgrades. That's the current culture we have. The command line is incredibly useful once you're literate with it. Imagine you're giving someone directions or support over the phone or Internet. In Windows you have to deal with all kinds of stuff like finding GUI items, or going in to the registry or worse - group policy. Every tutorial starts with 'open the start menu and navigate to X'. It's MUCH easier to just type in commands and have the contents read back. Ideally people would be literate with the command line (if you can drive a car you can use the command line, it's really not that hard.) My mother use to hexedit fonts back in the DOS days, but now she calls me to get help with formatting Word documents. It puzzles me. However, some people just aren't COMPUTER literate, and by 'some' I mean 'most'. This is where the main problem is, and it's just something Linux, nor its culture appeals to.

[QUOTE=jetboy;40961079]Assuming SATA, this would be my backup HDD of choice. [url]http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822236070[/url][/QUOTE] Thanks for the suggestion, this looks perfect, but I was just at Office Max and noticed something like [url=http://www.amazon.com/Seagate-Expansion-Desktop-External-STBV2000100/dp/B00834SJS0/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1370799779&sr=8-1&keywords=2tb+external]this[/url]. Any opinions? $100 seems pretty cheap for 2TB, and I might like to be able to move the drive around or even backup without going across the network. Anyone have experience with backup drives over USB?

[QUOTE=Jookia;40961385]Why isn't Linux widely used? Because it's not preinstalled on systems. Your average user isn't going to fuck with their computer like that, therefore no Linux. Because it's incompatible with Microsoft products. Whenever someone sees a major game port from Windows to Linux you see people write 'there goes my Windows install'. There's also the fact that Microsoft Office is incompatible with anything that isn't its own proprietary formats that nobody on Earth and interoperate with. Why is it user hostile? Lack of training is the main problem here. You use Windows everywhere: at home, at school, at work, everywhere. It's culturally engrained. We don't have professional UX developers.Everything in Linux is written by either hobbyists or enterprises, neither give a damn about UXes as Linux doesn't need to sell itself to customers to stay alive as everybody on Linux is already using Linux, and is at that skill level where they're comfortable with it. If you've ever looked at pretty much any Linux conference, you'll see that it's pretty much the definition of geeky stuff: Filesystems, X11 replacements, or stuff like Linus talking about the kernel and power saving. People get excited about kernel upgrades. That's the current culture we have. The command line is incredibly useful once you're literate with it. Imagine you're giving someone directions or support over the phone or Internet. In Windows you have to deal with all kinds of stuff like finding GUI items, or going in to the registry or worse - group policy. Every tutorial starts with 'open the start menu and navigate to X'. It's MUCH easier to just type in commands and have the contents read back. Ideally people would be literate with the command line (if you can drive a car you can use the command line, it's really not that hard.) My mother use to hexedit fonts back in the DOS days, but now she calls me to get help with formatting Word documents. It puzzles me. However, some people just aren't COMPUTER literate, and by 'some' I mean 'most'. This is where the main problem is, and it's just something Linux, nor its culture appeals to.[/QUOTE] If this is true, then why should we expect Linux to ever become popular? If that were to happen, either Linux would have to become much easier for that large group of users to use, or people would have to lose their aversion to opening up a terminal. I'm not sure the latter is likely to happen.

[QUOTE=smlance;40965445]If this is true, then why should we expect Linux to ever become popular? If that were to happen, either Linux would have to become much easier for that large group of users to use, or people would have to lose their aversion to opening up a terminal. I'm not sure the latter is likely to happen.[/QUOTE] Well, there are several things that make it relatively cool: 1) Linux runs on practically every platform imaginable. Even if binaries aren't compatible, probably most programs written for Linux are written in languages and ways that make porting as simple as recompiling with a cross-compiler. 2) Linux has superior filesystems compared to Windows. (I hear OSX has a nice filesystem. Apple can keep on doing that if it's true.) Seriously. Even the ext2 driver was written to not fragment much and to cope with whatever fragmentation there is with intelligent readahead, and only a year after NTFS 1.0. Both ext2 and NTFS were then developed further during the following decade, with ext3 appearing in '99 and various versions of NTFS being released with different Windows versions, the most important probably being NTFS v3.1 (Driver version 5.1, I believe) on Windows XP. The issue there is that even in Windows XP - hell, even in Windows 7 - NTFS has a tendency to [I]both[/I] fragment incredibly much [I]and[/I] to have issues with said fragmentation. Granted, nowhere near as bad as before, but still quite bad. Maybe it can't be fixed for the sake of backwards compatibility? I don't know. A new filesystem was included in Windows Server 2012, but I dunno much about that. It's probably awesome. It better be, after over twenty years of NTFS! If it's generally better than ext4, Microsoft will take the lead here as Btrfs is not complete yet. 3) Anyone can contribute to, or start a project to benefit other Linux users. Take Canonical, for example: They're trying to make Linux as accessible as possible because that's what their business is about. I'm not a huge fan of them inventing and somewhat forcing on users everything from their own shell (even if better than gnome-shell) to custom chat/social/video call software (gwibber, empathy) to their own DVCS (Weren't hg and git enough?) but at least they're trying hard and their software isn't actually half bad. Better yet, users can help make it better. I suppose something people assume because of having been grown on propretiary platforms is that if something's broken, they can't but complain and persevere. With many F/OSS programs, they [I]can[/I] make a difference - or at least make their issue known to the developers - by filing a bug report. If they're competent programmers, they could also patch the software themselves. In many major distros bug reports are centralised, too, which is especially useful if the programs can be quickly fixed in the downstream before getting a new official release from the original developers. 4) Linux supports every damn peripheral you can imagine. Hell, I can use my joystick to control the mouse cursor! There are drivers for practically [I]everything[/I] you could imagine that isn't propretiary - and even if it is, there probably is a driver for it. I believe the first publicly available PC driver for the Kinect was written for Linux. Not because of profit but because someone wanted to do cool things with it. (And possibly because someone offered a cash price for it... But the development is ongoing.) 5) Skype and all the major browsers work on Linux. If a person doesn't need more than Facebook or Tumblr or whatever, that's all they're going to need. As an added advantage (though with mere anecdotal evidence), I've always had faster shutdown and startup times on Linux than on Windows. That is, many people could literally move to Linux and not notice a difference apart from the very top of the screen. Which they wouldn't notice either with Chrome, which most people seem to use, maximised. 5) It actually [I]is[/I] user-friendly in many ways. Or well, distributions are. Practically every distribution provides you with a simple-to-use package manager. Ubuntu and Mint, I believe, have fully graphical package managers. And auto-update. Just think how awesome it must be for someone who's been on Windows for their whole life to be able to do a software update that simultaneously updates system software [I]and[/I] your browser - and doesn't even require a reboot! (On some distros you can even use Ksplice to eliminate the need to reboot for kernel updates, though that's beyond the scope of this argument. It might still be necessary to restart X in some cases.) 6) Who the hell even knows why things get popular. Analysts keep failing to predict anything. Calling any year the year of Linux on the desktop is silly, but if there really was a big push for Ubuntu and Mint on pre-builts and getting most Steam games to work on Linux... Why wouldn't you at least try it? This would only really rule out corporate users who absolutely need Microsoft software because they've used it before and they couldn't access their files without it. And even that should work with Wine. Additionally, LibreOffice is compatible with surprisingly many things, even if it has a messier UI. --- Basically, Linux distributions aren't being widely used because people don't know about them and don't really feel comfortable enough to change. Changes between Windows versions are traditionally pushed by installing new versions on new PCs, as well as stopping the sales of new versions. If we got Ubuntu on a significant amount of pre-builts and computer sales clerks who knew their shit, there would suddenly be a whole bunch of new Linux users. And while many might still install Windows, at least they might try it and notice it's not actually all that terrible.

i did pacman -Syu it [I]all[/I] broke

[QUOTE=Activeellis;40966443]i did pacman -Syu it [I]all[/I] broke[/QUOTE] If you're using Arch Linux you need to check [url]https://archlinux.org[/url] for any important messages. Since you're using a rolling release distro they sometimes make big changes that can fuck up your update if you don't do it correctly. Arch Linux requires informed updates. You must be careful.

[QUOTE=esalaka;40966061] 5) Skype and all the major browsers work on Linux. If a person doesn't need more than Facebook or Tumblr or whatever, that's all they're going to need. As an added advantage (though with mere anecdotal evidence), I've always had faster shutdown and startup times on Linux than on Windows. [/QUOTE] I also have had fast startup times and fast shutdown times in linux.

On linux I have 20s from bootloader to desktop without any effort to optimize it. Windows is atleast 1-2 minutes.

[QUOTE=esalaka;40966061]5) Skype ... work[s] on Linux.[/QUOTE] Personally, I find that the Skype client has issues that the Windows client doesn't (mainly the fact group chats and group calls are considered to be separate in the Linux client, so if a Linux user is hosting the call it shows as two separate entries in the Windows client). Of course, the Windows client isn't exactly the paragon of A+ software either. Honestly they're both equally bad, it's just Linux is a different kind of bad than what Windows Skype users are likely to be used to.