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Bell curve of Linux distributions (lemmy.world)
submitted 1 year ago by mafbar@lemmy.world to c/linuxmemes@lemmy.world
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I use Windows btw

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[-] nottheengineer@feddit.de 96 points 1 year ago

Except you have to wait 5 seconds before it goes brrrr because of snaps.

[-] mafbar@lemmy.world 30 points 1 year ago

Yikes, I forgot about the All-Snap Ubuntu Desktop!

[-] outdated_belated@lemmy.sdf.org 28 points 1 year ago

Oh snap

[-] TheInsane42@lemmy.world 6 points 1 year ago

Snaps?

Got my new laptop with Ubuntu, s they offered to install it on it instead of windows. (The license costs of windows was as high as doubling the mem to 64 GB, no contest what so ever) It was on the laptop for a few min (sync install to backup location on NAS) before Debian was installed. When looking around, I just couldn't get to grips with it. (couldn't be bothered as well to be honest, as OS replacement was already planned, I just wanted to nick the graphical config)

[-] cevn@lemmy.world 11 points 1 year ago

You can turn them off, but good luck keeping firefox up to date.

[-] loutr@sh.itjust.works 14 points 1 year ago

Yeah but at this point you're fighting against the OS, might as well switch to a distro that already works the way you want.

[-] cevn@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago

Yea… switching requires work though. I got enough of that already :D

[-] loutr@sh.itjust.works 3 points 1 year ago

Sure, that's why I endured Canonical's BS for almost a year, but when I started my new job I just installed Arch even though Ubuntu was the "safe" choice.

[-] nottheengineer@feddit.de 7 points 1 year ago

Ah yes, vendor lock-in in desktop linux.

I don't get why anyone thinks this is acceptable in any way.

[-] cevn@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago

I kinda hate it, but I’m also too lazy to switch on my main desktop. Every new install gets Fedora though.

[-] jelloeater85@lemmy.world 1 points 6 months ago

Or just use Waterfox or LibreWolf?

[-] avidamoeba@lemmy.ca 1 points 1 year ago

It's 2 seconds after the latest optimizations.

[-] Sivaru@lemmy.world -3 points 1 year ago

and apt is awful.

[-] mafbar@lemmy.world 32 points 1 year ago

Man, why do people hate apt so much? Maybe because I'm a filthy casual but I never really had any big problems with apt.

[-] Sivaru@lemmy.world 17 points 1 year ago

Compared to Pacman it's very slow. I had several problems when I used it. but if it's good for you, then use it.

[-] gornius@lemmy.world 14 points 1 year ago

If you think apt is slow you've never used dnf.

[-] Sivaru@lemmy.world 6 points 1 year ago

I even forget that it exists sometimes.

[-] redcalcium@c.calciumlabs.com 8 points 1 year ago

Could be because they have more users slowing down the repo servers, especially for debian as it's used by a huge proportion of docker images, which tends to pull a bunch of packages during the build process eating tons of bandwidth.

[-] Sivaru@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago

maybe you are right.

[-] mafbar@lemmy.world 5 points 1 year ago

I mean I prefer Pacman too, but yeah, maybe because I don't use Ubuntu / Debian that much so I can't really say.

[-] Dnn@lemmy.world 12 points 1 year ago

I like pacman too but I will probably never get comfortable with its arguments. It's worse than tar which has already become a meme. apt is more intuitive to use.

[-] nottheengineer@feddit.de 3 points 1 year ago

After a month of using arch, I'm still considering aliases for pacman.

At least I can remember "Xtract Ze Vucking File" for tar, but whenever I want to do anything more than -Syu with pacman, I have to look it up.

[-] mafbar@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago

pacman -Syu, pacman -Syyu, pacman -Ss, pacman -Qs, etc. etc...

[-] russjr08@outpost.zeuslink.net 2 points 1 year ago

Right, but if you don't already know what those arguments mean, then its not exactly super obvious as to what they do.

For example, I've been told that you're generally not supposed to do pacman -Syyu because it can result in partial upgrades (unless I'm remembering the wrong set/combination of flags, which would just be case in point...) - I tend to remember flags by associating them with words.

For example, the common flags for tar was brought up in one of the sibling comments here, but at least I can remember them by:

  • x: eXtract
  • z: Use gzip for the operation (which originally I remembered as "the file has .gz" in its extension before I knew what gzip was)
  • v: verbose, giving the details about what its doing
  • f: file, the file name you're wanting to work with
  • c: create archive
  • t: test archive (I use this with the v flag to see what is in an archive before extracting it)

But with Pacman, even after using it on and off for a couple of years, I can try to estimate what the flag names are, but have no idea if its right without double checking:

  • S: Sync with repositories
  • s: No idea on this one
  • y: Also no idea on this one
  • Q: Query (search)
  • u: Allow upgrades (?)

Really I think its the fact that some of the flags can be used in different combinations which have different effects - like passing z to tar doesn't change the effect of the flag whether you use x or c. Yet apparently -Syyu and -Syu are valid but one does a proper supported upgrade, and one does a partial upgrade which is not supported and is generally not recommended unless you know what you're doing. I also know of no occasion where passing the same flag to tar multiple times mutates its behavior as well.

That makes it feel like an anti-pattern to me, similar to using magic numbers in programming. Maybe there is a valid reason for this decision (such as why the Linux kernel uses magic numbers in syscalls) but the result is still that it feels incredibly foreign to me, despite having 10 odd years of Linux experience under my belt.

[-] mafbar@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago

I agree with that. My reply was to illustrate how cryptic sometimes the most common pacman commands are, and you have to refer to both --help and man pacman, though I find it easier to go to Arch Wiki or Google it generally. The tar flags are great! Pacman can be a bit confusing.

  • s is for search, I believe. When you add the S flag, so it becomes pacman -Ss, it synchronises the package database and search within that database.
  • y is refreshing local database or something like that? If you put pacman -Syyu, it will force refresh the master package database so that it can deal with corrupted databases or something like that. Pacman seems advanced to me but I just don't really remember / know my way around it that well.
  • Q is for searching local package database.
  • u is for system update, since it is preferable to rebuild the whole package database in your system to synchronise against the database containing the latest packages.

I hope I'm somewhat correct. There are other flags but I don't remember them. It is elegant if you already are familiar with the commands, but otherwise, other package managers and program commands like tar are much easier since they contain English language imperatives.

As for the magic numbers, that's the first time I knew of that concept. Quickly looking at Wikipedia seems to suggest that there probably are accepted use cases, though that might be historical and not entirely logical.

Really, sometimes computers can be a mess, we're just used to that mess.

[-] russjr08@outpost.zeuslink.net 2 points 1 year ago

Those definitions of pacman's flags sounds correct to me, at least when I correlate them to my (admittedly rough) memory of using them in the past. I generally ended up using yay for handling both Arch and AUR package management, but I did most of my package searching via DDG's !arch and !aur "bangs" to look at it on the web (or just yay likely-the-package-name) which explains my lapse in the Q/s flags.

As for the magic numbers, that’s the first time I knew of that concept. Quickly looking at Wikipedia seems to suggest that there probably are accepted use cases, though that might be historical and not entirely logical.

I won't pretend like I've seen every possible API out there, but the only time that I personally know the use of magic numbers made sense from a developer standpoint was in Linux's reboot system call which this question/answer does a good job of explaining the reasoning behind it but the quick rundown is that its a safety feature; A bit-flip could inadvertently trigger the reboot system call to be ran instead of something like say exec() which you definitely wouldn't want to have done on your PC while you're working (or even worse, something like a web server) . The magic numbers are required for the reboot system call to eliminate this possibility because its practically impossible to inadvertently pass in the exact correct numbers for the reboot syscall to another one in the same way that its unlikely you'd accidentally unlock the guard to a fire alarm and pull the trigger by just brushing up against it.

(Okay, maybe that rundown wasn't quicker than the answer on stack-exchange... oops)

I suspect any other use cases for magic numbers are very similar to this (a safety precaution against accidentally calling a destructive API) or some silly (and weak) "security through obscurity" type of principal. Somehow I doubt the "magic arguments" for pacman are for either though 😅

Really, sometimes computers can be a mess, we’re just used to that mess.

Oh yes for sure, computers are quite the double edged sword - vastly handy and important tools but also a royal pain in the ass way too often...

[-] mafbar@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago

That makes sense about the magic numbers! Though I suspect that that isn't the case for pacman's commands. This might be totally false but Arch is designed with simplicity and elegance in mind, and so short single letter commands to manage your entire system is preferred.

Just out of curiosity, are you a developer or sysadmin?

[-] russjr08@outpost.zeuslink.net 2 points 1 year ago

Just out of curiosity, are you a developer or sysadmin?

Somewhat both! Most of my background is software development, but I always felt it was important to have decent sysadmin skills so that I'd be able to fully understand the requirements of something that I could be in charge of developing (or at least, helping develop).

This idea was further cemented when I started hearing more and more cases of professional sysadmins having a disdain for developers not understanding things like DNS. And to be fair, I think the reverse is important too - that sysadmins should have at least some knowledge of the development world. At the end of the day, usually both roles have to coexist with each other in a symbiotic relationship of sorts or else it doesn't work. If you don't have people to make an application, then you have nothing to deploy - but if you have no one to deploy and maintain the environment an application runs in, there's no point in creating it. It makes me sad to see that even to this day there still tends to be an "us vs them" mentality from both sides, but I guess that's just humanity in general...

Funnily enough, at my current job my roles are the opposite - I primarily do a lot of system administration, but every now and then I do some of the development at my job as well.

It worked out though, because it got me more into the sysadmin side of things and I try to strengthen my knowledge of systems administration even in my personal time - that's one of the reasons why I'm hosting the instance I'm commenting from 😁

Probably a longer answer than you were looking for, but there you have it!

[-] mafbar@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago

Ah I see! So you were/are both, that's why you can understand both perspectives. I see, you're your instance's host! Nah, thank you for sharing! I'm quite new to the free/open-source software and Linux world, and this meme sort of sums up my feelings about the different Linux distributions. I guess I'm still in that infatuation phase where I think of distros as cool and looking at new cool stuff and projects. I'm not a technical person, so this is a total noob's perspective.

[-] russjr08@outpost.zeuslink.net 2 points 1 year ago

I guess I’m still in that infatuation phase where I think of distros as cool and looking at new cool stuff and projects.

To be honest, I don't think I ever left this phase ahaha. I've been using Linux for quite a while now, about 10ish years on and off (definitely more the "on" over the last 4 years) and I still find it really cool to switch distros whenever I find something that looks neat/different. Right now I'm trying out Fedora Kinoite (An "immutable" version of Fedora's KDE spin), but when the new "Orchid" release of Vanilla OS comes out I have a good feeling I'll be switching again to try that one out!

I’m not a technical person, so this is a total noob’s perspective.

Well I think you're selling yourself short here (checkout imposter syndrome which is very common in the tech field), you could've certainly fooled me! You had a really solid explanation of pacman's arguments, and being able to explain them (rather than just memorizing "I use this combination in order to do X", if that makes sense) is part of what makes someone stand out as more of an intermediate level rather than a beginner level in my opinion!

[-] mafbar@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago

I have a good feeling I’ll be switching again to try that one out!

Ah, the eternal distro hopping. I can relate. Frankly, I do think that Vanilla OS and even something like NixOS are genuinely exciting development in the world of Linux distributions. I'm unfamiliar with Fedora Kinoite, but skimming thorough its page, it looks really good! In general, I do like this side of things where Linux distributions tend to focus on being "universal" and "reliable", even if it means fundamentally pushing forward and away from the traditional this-distro-does-this-uniquely-and-manage-packages-like-this thing. I'm not super well versed in Vanilla OS but I did watch The Linux Experiment's video on it. I believe that it is immutable and installing packages through GNOME software defaults to the Flatpak format. Another thing is that you can create/launch containerised systems inside your OS, perhaps for developers or tinkerers who want to mess with different OSes.

NixOS on the other hand, well I think it's a package manager as well as a distro (?), and it basically builds packages in containers or in isolation of some sort. I do like this philosophy of containerising things to manage them by themselves individually (I think? sorta like Flatpak?), and NixOS also makes it immediately reproducible by its declarative system management. I think this sort of development is really good since it is a battle against the naturally occurring fragmentation in the Linux environment. Perhaps, there will be less "apt snap pacman yay zypper dnf yum emerge etc", since the method of having unique repos for each distro can be a bit annoying and time-consuming for the overall Linux and open-source ecosystem, though I think it's okay for the most part. Making the fundamental design and maintenance of the systems and packages modular is really great, since we'll have better hardware and software in the future. It is pretty exciting, for me at least.

Well I think you’re selling yourself short here

Haha I'm flattered, thank you! I promise you I absolutely suck at all in these things, I just have some really minor interest in *-nix stuff. I'm not in the tech field (at least not right now), I'm just a postgraduate student studying solar cells. I used MX Linux for about a year during my final year of bachelor's degree, and right now I'm toying around with Arch. I'm that new kid interested in Linux, you know? I think in general I'm more interested in the free / open-source software (FOSS) world. Throughout several years, I played around with Ubuntu/Lubuntu, Mint, Fedora, openSUSE, Debian, even tried FreeBSD, and experimented just a tad bit with Alpine. Read about UNIX, GNU, Linux, FOSS stuff, and then OS, software, programming, web, technology stuff. Then I just have my own setup using almost entirely FOSS for personal use (mostly browsing, writing, learning programming, and some light retro gaming for leisure), and also for academic work (LaTeX, Zotero, Taguette, just a little bit of Python). I'm also using Vim. Again, I'm that excited kid, ya know? Anyway, I'm just a science student, but only now getting quite interested in Linux, computers and software in general. No experience in the tech field at all. Thank you though!

[-] russjr08@outpost.zeuslink.net 2 points 1 year ago

NixOS is really cool! I've actually tried it out a couple of times, and I find the premise of a completely reproducible system to be incredibly intriguing. In the time that I've tried it, I've found that it strays a bit too close to the "The way this system is designed is getting in the way of the things I want or need to do with my PC" - but it will up there on the distros to circle back to every now and then to see if things change.

You're correct that Nix is a few different things, it's a language (the Nix language), a package manager (Nix as a package manager), and then finally a distro as well (NixOS) - when running NixOS you get the benefits of all of them wrapped up in a convenient package so that your whole system can be managed in a declarative way (even down to your home folder / "dot files" if you use Home Manager - which technically also works outside of NixOS too).

Your knowledge of the FOSS world is stellar, even if you're not in the tech field - keep up the great work because I can tell you've got some wonderful adventures ahead of you!

[-] mafbar@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago

I see, that's what Nix is! Interesting. Perhaps someday it can change and improve until it becomes a seriously viable distro for most people. It'll be a sight to see.

Hey thanks man, I appreciate it! Thanks for this conversation too! Hopefully we can have more conversations like this in the future. 😄

[-] beeng@lemmy.fmhy.ml 4 points 1 year ago

Apt install nala

[-] TheInsane42@lemmy.world 10 points 1 year ago

Correct, apt is awful, apt-get, that's what you need. ;) You really need to tell apt not to install junk:

$ cat /etc/apt/apt.conf.d/00NoJunk 
APT::Install-Recommends "0";
APT::Install-Suggests "0";

I hate yum with a passion, but still wouldn't touch dnf when I have an alternative. As it earns my keep (alas, no deb based distro at work... yet), I've managed to hide all that perfectly in scripting/config management setups.

[-] mafbar@lemmy.world 8 points 1 year ago

What does that config do? Sorry I'm a new Linux user.

[-] AlpacaChariot@lemmy.world 8 points 1 year ago

When you install software, other packages are pulled in and installed. Some of those are necessary dependencies but some are just recommended (but not actually required). This setting makes apt only install the actual dependencies (no extras).

[-] mafbar@lemmy.world 4 points 1 year ago

I see, that's why sometimes there are lots of installed dependencies that you don't really remember needing when you use apt.

this post was submitted on 18 Jul 2023
338 points (84.5% liked)

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