Microsoft and apple are the reasons boomers have learned helplessness with tech. It helped them sell units in the 90’s to imply you didn’t have to ever consider anything under the hood because it all is supposed to just work like magic. you just hit the switch and let electricity do it’s thing.
it is bad if they don’t realize how simple it is to pump their own gas. That’s about the equivalent of a possibly regular task like being able to unencrypt your own files. I’d say it’s important enough that you should not be relying on anyone with the potential security of your own personal data.
The relevant aphorism is “make it as simple as possible, but not simpler”. You can add functionality to make things easier, same as syntactic sugar in programming languages. You shouldn’t turn the person using your system into an object, just accepting what it gives them in response to their magic movements or clicking pictures.
If you don’t mind me asking, what’s your distro and why did you settle on that particular one? I’m in the process of trying out different distros in anticipation of eventually moving all my stuff over and getting out of Windows completely, and that was really high praise, lol.
So if you have a moment I’d really appreciate hearing about why you picked the distro you did, because being front loaded is one of the things I’m low key looking for: I don’t know Linux well enough to know what I might need out of the box, so the more that’s already on it the better (no shortage of drive space, fortunately). If it appeals I’ll load it up on a LiveUSB and test drive it myself. Thanks!
If you’re new, Ubuntu (or one of its variants, like Xubuntu or Kubuntu) or Linux Mint are great “safe” options. The only thing to consider with Mint is that there is only an LTS release so you will end up with older versions of some programs. I’ve been using Linux as my primary OS for 17 years but I will still throw Xubuntu on a laptop if I just want to get something up and running quickly - other than having some extra packages installed out of the box there’s nothing “wrong” with it.
That said I use openSUSE Tumbleweed as my daily driver. I like the rolling release and cutting edge packages, plus I like that YaST allows me to install the system exactly the way I want - picking and choosing individual packages.
Thank you so much for your response. I have tried Mint; it ran perfectly out of the box with zero issues on a 13 year old laptop; I just didn’t care for the Cinnamon DE so I have it on my list to try again with a different DE. Snaps aren’t too much of an issue because it supports other repositories.
I’ve also tried OpenSUSE Leap but not Tumbleweed; I think I had to do the full install (no LiveUSB) but as an OS it was great. I ran it for a week but had some video issues with it, weird horizontal lines that go across the screen for a few seconds at boot, shut down, and login. Not a deal killer but I’ve set it aside for right now while I try other distros. (One thing I love so far about the Arch distros is that the online knowledge base is truly easy for someone with basic tech knowledge but no Linux knowledge to find what they need.) Really appreciate you taking the time to respond, thank you!
Thank you for your response, this is exactly the info I was looking for. It may not work for me, but knowing WHY someone else loves it tells me a lot about it. I listen to every suggestion, but I first tried Linux back in the 90s: I’m not really swayed by emotive pleas because I’ve already heard them all. (The first time I ever heard that joke about if OSs were airlines and Unix/Linux would be the one where people brought the parts and assembled it on the runway while fighting the entire time was around that same period; it has only ever gotten to be even more true over the ages, lol.)
At this point I have over a dozen LiveUSB or install sticks and I’m just rotating through them, spending a week or two on the distros I like. I’m on Zorin OS right now, which is on the list because it claims to have great Windows app support out of the box, and it’s great but I still need to test that part (and I’m procrastinating because it’s a major pain in the ass but I will eventually).
EndeavourOS is one of the ones I keep hearing about, and it’s very high on the list at distrowatch.com, but I don’t really hear about it from the folks that use it so this is exactly what I was looking for. I really appreciate you taking the time to spell out what you’re using on what hardware and why, it cuts out a lot of the chaff that inevitably flies around distro choices. “Yeah, I know you like [____], but WHY does it work for you?” is a lot more helpful, and you gave me that. EndeavourOS is absolutely on my list now, and knowing that it comes preloaded with everything I might ever need helps a lot. Thank you again.
You do on Linux as well, it’s just installed by default.
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Your chosen GNU/Linux distribution installs the applications.
unrar is in busybox
Microsoft and apple are the reasons boomers have learned helplessness with tech. It helped them sell units in the 90’s to imply you didn’t have to ever consider anything under the hood because it all is supposed to just work like magic. you just hit the switch and let electricity do it’s thing.
That’s not an inherently bad thing though, same as it’s not inherently bad that not everyone can repair their car, or sew up tears in their trousers.
it is bad if they don’t realize how simple it is to pump their own gas. That’s about the equivalent of a possibly regular task like being able to unencrypt your own files. I’d say it’s important enough that you should not be relying on anyone with the potential security of your own personal data.
The relevant aphorism is “make it as simple as possible, but not simpler”. You can add functionality to make things easier, same as syntactic sugar in programming languages. You shouldn’t turn the person using your system into an object, just accepting what it gives them in response to their magic movements or clicking pictures.
You’re not from New Jersey I see
Sorry, didn’t get the reference?..
TBF, I personally learned helplessness with house repairs. There’s no MS and Apple there. My colleagues are not like that, for example.
If you don’t mind me asking, what’s your distro and why did you settle on that particular one? I’m in the process of trying out different distros in anticipation of eventually moving all my stuff over and getting out of Windows completely, and that was really high praise, lol.
So if you have a moment I’d really appreciate hearing about why you picked the distro you did, because being front loaded is one of the things I’m low key looking for: I don’t know Linux well enough to know what I might need out of the box, so the more that’s already on it the better (no shortage of drive space, fortunately). If it appeals I’ll load it up on a LiveUSB and test drive it myself. Thanks!
If you’re new, Ubuntu (or one of its variants, like Xubuntu or Kubuntu) or Linux Mint are great “safe” options. The only thing to consider with Mint is that there is only an LTS release so you will end up with older versions of some programs. I’ve been using Linux as my primary OS for 17 years but I will still throw Xubuntu on a laptop if I just want to get something up and running quickly - other than having some extra packages installed out of the box there’s nothing “wrong” with it.
That said I use openSUSE Tumbleweed as my daily driver. I like the rolling release and cutting edge packages, plus I like that YaST allows me to install the system exactly the way I want - picking and choosing individual packages.
Thank you so much for your response. I have tried Mint; it ran perfectly out of the box with zero issues on a 13 year old laptop; I just didn’t care for the Cinnamon DE so I have it on my list to try again with a different DE. Snaps aren’t too much of an issue because it supports other repositories.
I’ve also tried OpenSUSE Leap but not Tumbleweed; I think I had to do the full install (no LiveUSB) but as an OS it was great. I ran it for a week but had some video issues with it, weird horizontal lines that go across the screen for a few seconds at boot, shut down, and login. Not a deal killer but I’ve set it aside for right now while I try other distros. (One thing I love so far about the Arch distros is that the online knowledge base is truly easy for someone with basic tech knowledge but no Linux knowledge to find what they need.) Really appreciate you taking the time to respond, thank you!
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Thank you for your response, this is exactly the info I was looking for. It may not work for me, but knowing WHY someone else loves it tells me a lot about it. I listen to every suggestion, but I first tried Linux back in the 90s: I’m not really swayed by emotive pleas because I’ve already heard them all. (The first time I ever heard that joke about if OSs were airlines and Unix/Linux would be the one where people brought the parts and assembled it on the runway while fighting the entire time was around that same period; it has only ever gotten to be even more true over the ages, lol.)
At this point I have over a dozen LiveUSB or install sticks and I’m just rotating through them, spending a week or two on the distros I like. I’m on Zorin OS right now, which is on the list because it claims to have great Windows app support out of the box, and it’s great but I still need to test that part (and I’m procrastinating because it’s a major pain in the ass but I will eventually).
EndeavourOS is one of the ones I keep hearing about, and it’s very high on the list at distrowatch.com, but I don’t really hear about it from the folks that use it so this is exactly what I was looking for. I really appreciate you taking the time to spell out what you’re using on what hardware and why, it cuts out a lot of the chaff that inevitably flies around distro choices. “Yeah, I know you like [____], but WHY does it work for you?” is a lot more helpful, and you gave me that. EndeavourOS is absolutely on my list now, and knowing that it comes preloaded with everything I might ever need helps a lot. Thank you again.
And often, you need two! I use both gzip and tar all the time
Same with Mac OS, it’s such a fucking no brainer and it’s not hard to impl