• khánh@lemmy.zip
        0·
        1 month ago

        i get that man pages can be useful sometimes but what in the world is that layout, maybe it’s just me not getting used to them but why write them in such a hard to understand way?

        • iocase@lemmy.zip
          0·
          1 month ago

          It’s a vestigial structure from Bell Lab’s Unix documentation which prioritizes brevity and precision. It’s like mathematics on Wikipedia. It’s always written by some math nerd in terms that only fellow math graduate students will understand at a minimum.

          I guess in the case of Linux it also came about because the people using it and developing it were fluent in it, so man pages can follow a rigid structure with extreme amounts of jargon. It also made it easier to compress and transfer in the early internet days as a side effect?

          • captcha_incorrect@lemmy.worldEnglish
            0·
            1 month ago

            Debian is great, I love it. But the ease of which I can repair my system when I break it is the main reason to stay. I made an error in my hardware config and I just had to use the previous generation to get back to a working state. After that, I could take my time to fix the issue without the server being down.

            This whole everything is in config files is also very appealing, even though there is a lot to learn to get to the same level of knowledge (https://nix.dev/ helps there).

      • valter@lemmy.world
        0·
        1 month ago

        This is actually why I installed Bazzite on my desktop and suggested it to all my friends and family who were interested in Linux.

        If anyone has a problem, I’m already familiar with the distro and I can be reasonably certain that the software situation is pretty close.

            • Valmond@lemmy.dbzer0.com
              0·
              1 month ago

              Dude, we got two machines shipped to us because the other team wasn’t able to make the installers function. It was electromagnetic microscope simulators, so the team wasn’t noobs. Got 2 fat pcs.

              Worked!

                • Valmond@lemmy.dbzer0.com
                  0·
                  1 month ago

                  I worked on the visualisation and processing software for the Volume Scope EM ( I could only find a link to the successor here ) and the 2 PCs had the control and acquisition software.

                  A quite nice SEM, multi acquisition (you could designate several regions), multi energy (so scanning several depths by focusing the electron beam per layer) and of course the diamond knife 😁 to cut each layer!

        • cannedtuna@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
          0·
          1 month ago

          The ethos of NixOS is if a program runs on one computer using Nix it will run on any computer running Nix.

            • cannedtuna@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
              0·
              1 month ago

              It’s called Atomic Updates. The idea is every installed program is complete with no missing dependencies by ensuing each package maintains its own. Additionally an image of each program is kept so if an update goes poorly and something breaks rolling back is simple

        • TwilightKiddy@programming.devEnglish
          0·
          1 month ago

          The party trick of NixOS is declaring your whole system in a huge config file. If you want someone to get the same system, you just throw your config at them and it works*.

      • BCsven@lemmy.ca
        0·
        1 month ago

        I know people hate hearing that line, but when I have done technical support it is highly useful to know if it works properly on other machines.

        Preferably identical hardware is a good starting point, but if a solution is working fine on one machine but not another it can steer you toward other client issues.

        Some user complaints of " it doesnt work on my machine" have been resolved to:

        • user modified, or didn’t input, the correct environment variable.
        • user is running a version of app not certified for that hardware config.
        • user actually has no clue how computers work and didn’t realize the app looking for shared network locations only works if you are on the network. Or app needing a license server can’t work if it can’t find the server
        • user isn’t understanding the requirements for the app output, so not providing the necessary input can’t achieve proper output results.
    • viertesauge@feddit.orgEnglish
      0·
      1 month ago

      “this specific issue wouldnt happen if you had just installed distro youve never heard of before”

      • MML@sh.itjust.works
        0·
        1 month ago

        Mostly solved, I cannot install dolphin mpn flatpak due to dependency errors, maybe it’s not flatpaks fault but it kinda is

      • sudoMakeUser@sh.itjust.works
        0·
        1 month ago

        I installed Mint the other day and for fun I went to the software store. I needed Qbittorrent so I hit download and got a prompt to download 4 gigabytes to install it. The .deb is 8 megabytes. In what world is that an acceptable solution?

        • chunes@lemmy.world
          0·
          1 month ago

          Yikes, that seems like an extreme case.

          I understand qbittorent is a complicated piece of software, but does it really need 4 gigs of dynamic libraries or did flatpak really fuck up here?

          • sudoMakeUser@sh.itjust.works
            0·
            1 month ago

            I think a lot of it is a one time installation for a lot of the core flatpak libraries. So if I were to install a second flatpak, the download sizes would be a lot smaller. But the first package has a really big download.

    • mic_check_one_two@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
      0·
      1 month ago

      And Docker. There are a number of ways of packaging complete self-contained images with all of their dependencies included. In the olden days, managing dependencies on a stack of services was basically a full time job, especially when you had multiple services that all needed different versions of the same dependency.

      Of course, the downside is that it potentially leads to bloat when you have multiple containers running. If you have three different images that are packaged with the same dependency version, you’re effectively running that dependency three times. Compared to simply running it once, and having all three services access it.

      It’s really just a trade-off between convenience and efficiency, and most modern hardware is probably capable of handling a little bit of container bloat. Containers effectively take the modern AAA game dev approach of “we don’t need to make it ultra efficient or worry too much about compressing file sizes, because modern hardware will be able to handle it even if it’s inefficient. If users can’t boot it, we can just tell them to use better hardware.”

    • notabot@piefed.socialEnglish
      0·
      1 month ago

      Back in the dim and distant past, when I first studied CS, we were literally told to run that as one of the first commands we tried. It’s an excellent place to start if you have the time to learn unix/linux thoroughly.

      • rumschlumpel@feddit.org
        0·
        1 month ago

        I should probably read that. TBH I’ve been piping longer manpages into a text editor, and I definitely don’t want to do that when I haven’t installed my text editor of choice for whatever reason (I hear sometimes you just don’t have sudo rights when you’re working on someone else’s system).

  • state_electrician@discuss.tchncs.de
    0·
    1 month ago

    I first installed Linux in 1995, before I had a second computer where I could look for help. Compared to that experience today’s situation is paradise. So you won’t hear me complain.

    • kevincox@lemmy.ml
      0·
      1 month ago

      I’ve definitely ran into the situation where I fucked something up half-way though installing a new distro, then had to wipe it to go back to an old distro so that I could access the internet and find out what I did wrong so that I could start from scratch.

      I hate doing debugging on my phone, but man sometimes is it better than the alternative.

    • comador @lemmy.worldEnglish
      0·
      1 month ago

      Similarly, I ordered floppies for Slackware from Walmut Creek. Spent weeks screaming at my system for not being able to get a 256k Tulip VLB ISA video card to init into X before I found my first Linux BBS on I think DalNET… times were… different.

      • Bluewing@lemmy.world
        0·
        1 month ago

        But the sheer joy you felt when finally you got it to work made you really feel like you were a real haxzor.

        I do not miss that.

    • homes@piefed.worldEnglish
      0·
      1 month ago

      Oh, I remember that. Red hat 2.0. Where you had to download the source code for all of the floppy discs, compile them, and then write all of the floppies. I remember it was 7 or 9 floppy discs, 13 if you wanted printer drivers.

      It wasn’t until Red Hat 2.5 that they had pre-compiled floppy images you could download.

    • Ricky Rigatoni@piefed.zipEnglish
      0·
      1 month ago

      Today’s linux situation is paradise compared to gaming on windows any time before 2015. I still remember having to keep multiple different nvidia driver installers ready for launching just to match what game I wanted to play.

  • ZombieCyborgFromOuterSpace@piefed.caEnglish
    0·
    1 month ago

    I use Arch, btw. You should have installed Arch too. It crashes sometimes and I got malware a couple of times, but most of the time, if I troubleshoot it just right, it’ll show me my desktop. But, hey at least it’s at the latest version and has the latest features so I can brag about it. But you should just use Arch, bro. It’s the best, bro.

  • quakki@discuss.tchncs.de
    0·
    1 month ago

    If you’re a ‘new linux user’ then your only usecase is opening a browser and thats pretty much it. No PR needed for that lol.

    • AnimalsDream@slrpnk.netEnglish
      0·
      1 month ago

      Not even close, Linux users have been creating documentation long before Discord existed, and will continue to do so long after Discord dies. In my experience one of the most consistently great places to learn how to perform various tasks is the Arch Linux Wiki. It’s extremely helpful and relevant even if you’re not using Arch.

      If I were trying to get info about Linux on Discord, I’d probably find myself getting upset too. It’s almost like Discord just sucks or something.

  • [object Object]@lemmy.ca
    0·
    1 month ago

    Is there a golden retriever labelled “random person on IRC with answers to all questions, writes a driver for you so you do t have to enter that house”

  • bizarroland@lemmy.worldEnglish
    0·
    1 month ago

    Those same people when you use an LLM to solve your problem:

    What the fuck did you just fucking say about LLMs you little bitch? I’ll have you know I graduated top of my class in the Navy Seals, and I’ve been involved in numerous secret raids on Al-Quaeda, and I have over 300 confirmed kills. I am trained in gorilla warfare and I’m the top sniper in the entire US armed forces. You are nothing to me but just another target. I will wipe you the fuck out with precision the likes of which has never been seen before on this Earth, mark my fucking words. You think you can get away with saying that shit to me over the Internet? Think again, fucker. As we speak I am contacting my secret network of spies across the USA and your IP is being traced right now so you better prepare for the storm, maggot. The storm that wipes out the pathetic little thing you call your life. You’re fucking dead, kid. I can be anywhere, anytime, and I can kill you in over seven hundred ways, and that’s just with my bare hands. Not only am I extensively trained in unarmed combat, but I have access to the entire arsenal of the United States Marine Corps and I will use it to its full extent to wipe your miserable ass off the face of the continent, you little shit. If only you could have known what unholy retribution your little “clever” comment was about to bring down upon you, maybe you would have held your fucking tongue. But you couldn’t, you didn’t, and now you’re paying the price, you goddamn idiot. I will shit fury all over you and you will drown in it. You’re fucking dead, kiddo.