Windows 11 still sucks.

[Mæstro]

The die hard Windows "fan boys", they are always telling people linux distros are "ALL" command line where you have to use the Terminal in linux to get things done when using a linux distro. And that is nothing more than a big fat bold faced "lie".

Canonical offers technical support for each Ubuntu LTE for a decade, which has been the average time Microsoft supports Windows versions. It has always offered at least three, and that was almost twenty years ago. A Windows-like experience has always been there for those who want or need it. How does such patent nonsense circulate?

[Night Wing]

Canonical offers technical support for each Ubuntu LTE for a decade, which has been the average time Microsoft supports Windows versions. It has always offered at least three, and that was almost twenty years ago. A Windows-like experience has always been there for those who want or need it. How does such patent nonsense circulate?

It is not the support that is in question. It is aimed at the non technical people who do not like the direction Windows 11 is going in and who want to try a different operating system which isn't Windows 11. Linux distros are not an operating system. The distros for all intent and purposes are created from the linux kernel.

About a decade or more ago, many things in linux were done using command line code. But there were those in the linux community who went towards gui windows to get things done. This is what attracted those people, like me, who wanted to quit using the Windows operating system.

As an analogy, take linux Pale Moon as an example. Since you mentioned Ubuntu, I'll use that as the example.

If you search on this forum, you will find many people who switched over to a linux distro and wanted to install linux Pale Moon. But there were posts by these people saying they couldn't install linux Pale Moon.

And what answer was given to these people? The answer was to use "code" in the Terminal to install linux Pale Moon. And the video below is using the Terminal. And this video is just one year old. And videos like these is what scares away non technical people from trying a linux distro because they think installing applications is going to be nothing but aggravation and frustration for them.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GCMvgj9Mpu8

But linux Pale Moon does "not" have to be installed in a linux distro to use it. My linux Pale Moon is "never" installed, so the Terminal is never used by me, whether I was using Mint and now by me using it in MX Linux and Debian. I will say this though. My method works best in any linux distro as long as the desktop environment (DE) is Xfce.

I have two old desktop photos where I show the linux Panel in MX Linux and Debian. The first photo shows the Panel in MX Linux and on the right side of the Panel you can see the Pale Moon launcher icon with the Pale Moon logo.

https://forum.palemoon.org/download/fil ... &mode=view

The second photo shows the linux Panel and again the Pale Moon launcher icon with it's Pale Moon logo in Debian.

https://forum.palemoon.org/download/fil ... &mode=view

And again, my linux Pale Moon is not installed in MX Linux and Debian.

[Lucio Chiappetti]

Off-topic:
I would never understand why people should be scared of using the command line.
Personally, for what concerns describing a procedure (or taking notes about how to do it), I greatly prefer being given a sequence of commands rather than a verbose description of GUI interactions ... which by the way could also be language-customized).
And I'm curious to know whether the presumed command-line-scared should be young people, or aged people. A recent post in an Italian Ubuntu forum seemed to equate people reluctant to leave Windows for Linux with "boomers". Now myself, Tim Berners Lee and Pope Leo XIV are all born in tne same year (atually I thought TBL was younger).

[Night Wing]

Off-topic:
I would never understand why people should be scared of using the command line.

Off-topic:
For you, using the linux Terminal is easy. But for others, like me, it is not that easy. And I will use myself as an example.

Some linux commands are long in length. And if you have a long command where you have to use an underscore (_) in it, but the underscore is not correct because what is needed is a hyphen (-). And this makes the command wrong. And things will not install or work which results in an error prompt.

Ditto if one puts a capital letter where a lowercase letter is needed. Same result. An error prompt. Or if two spaces are needed when one space is needed in a line of code. Same result. Another error prompt.

This leads to frustration and aggravation. I know how to use the Terminal, but is "never" my first choice. For me, the Terminal is the choice of "last resort" since I am backed into a corner, cannot get out and I "have to use the Terminal".

Another example.

In Mint, if one wants to block a website from being visited by any browser, one would install the Domain Blocker application. But the Domain Blocker is not installed by default in the Mint menu. The Domain Blocker in Mint is basically the Hosts File. But the Domain Blocker is not named that. Some developer/developers named it "mintnanny" for the install in Mint.

To install it without using the Terminal, one has to go into the Mint Software Manager and in the Search field, type "mintnanny" (without the quote marks) and follow the prompt and it installs. Once installed, find the Domain Blocker name in the Mint menu and add the website where any browser cannot go to, save it and that website cannot be visited by any browser in a linux distro.

But in both MX Linux and Debian, the Hosts File has to found by using the Terminal. In order to get to the Hosts File, one opens the Terminal and types the command line

Code: Select all

sudo nano /etc/hosts

Tap the Enter key, type in the password and follow the prompts.

And if one know how to use the Hosts File, then type in 127.0.0.1, tap the Space Bar a few times and then type in the address of the website. To save the created file in the Hosts File. This is done by holding down the Control key with one finger and using a second finger to tap the "x" key.

The next step is holding down the Shift key with one finger and tapping the lower case "y" key with a second finger. And the shift key makes the (y) key into a capital letter Y. Then tap the Enter key and you are out of the Hosts File and back into the Terminal where one exits out of that.

Do I use the Hosts File in MX Linux and Debian using the Terminal? Obviously I do because I "learned how" by looking at YouTube videos.

[UCyborg]

Off-topic:

And again, my linux Pale Moon is not installed in MX Linux and Debian.

Pale Moon on Linux just happens to be available only as tarball from its developers, packaged installable versions are only provided by its users that volunteered to package it. Most other browsers developers tend to package it at least for Debian based distros, if not also for some others. I did mention at some point Pale Moon is the oddball in open source world. Otherwise, you could install it out of box by typing "sudo apt install palemoon" or rather simply find it in the software store application. You can install Links that way!

There are apparently some folks on Windows that prefer to never "install" software.

Well I like having programs in use every day installed, regardless of OS so it's registered in programs list / with package manager on Linux, on the lists dealing with file associations etc. It's not that complicated, at least on Debian based.

I went and tested Flash Player on Linux Mint today and needed the terminal to mount my data NTFS partition as it refused to mount from file manager. Maybe because Windows was hibernated (so partition was technically in use) and logic to auto-mount in read only mode failed (or maybe isn't there). I remember that being a problem years ago on Ubuntu and taken care of at some point, though back then, it showed the correct meaningful error, not vague D-Bus error. Though the D-Bus error sounds familiar...

[Night Wing]

Off-topic:
I did mention at some point Pale Moon is the oddball in open source world. Otherwise, you could install it out of box by typing "sudo install palemoon" or rather simply find it in the software store application.

Off-topic:
When I left Windows 7 and went to Linux, I had problems trying to install linux Pale Moon. But there was one person on the; now defunct distro, SolydXK where I used SolydX, showed me how to use linux Pale Moon with it's luancher icon and logo, without it being installed. This is the method I have been using since January of 2013 in Mint.

But I am not sure if your code

Code: Select all

sudo install palemoon

will actuallly install linux Pale Moon. From your code, you (or someone else) might get an error prompt. From using Mint, way back then in 2013, one had to use "apt" (without the quote marks) to install applications.

I have never tried this code, but if someone on this site is bold enough and they see this topic thread, if they want to install linux Pale Moon in Mint using the Terminal, the commands might be:

Code: Select all

sudo apt install palemoon

If it does work; then to uninstall linux Pale Moon, these commands below might work.

Code: Select all

sudo apt uninstall palemoon

Since I am a creature of habit, I have no reason to install linux Pale Moon since I prefer my method of not having Pale Moon installed. When I get a new Pale Moon version, I just delete the oldest PM folder, then extract the newest Pale Moon folder from the newest tarball. Then put the newest folder back to where the oldest Pale Moon folder was deleted from.

Then click on my Pale Moon launcher icon and Pale Moon launches for use.

[UCyborg]

Off-topic:
Sometimes words slip when I type.

You can type just "apt" to get list of available commands. No "uninstall", but "remove" works.

[back2themoon]

Off-topic:

I would never understand why people should be scared of using the command line.

Probably scared/bored to type/write stuff. Same as with reading stuff...

[Mæstro]

I would never understand why people should be scared of using the command line… And I'm curious to know whether the presumed command-line-scared should be young people, or aged people.

I am someone else who was once afraid of the terminal, and who still prefers to avoid it if possible. I only ever use the terminal regularly for passwords, whether normal (pwgen) or one-time (oathtool). Night Wing gave his own perspective. Mine will be different, simply because I am not the same man as him, but complementary.
Windows 95 is thirty years old now, or slightly older than me. Windows 2000 was my first operating system. An entire generation of adults, even those who (like me) grew up with actual PC and not oversimplified mobile interfaces, has grown up using and managing computers entirely through graphic interfaces, without being hindered even in administrative tasks. I can only recall two instances in my entire time using Windows where I needed use the terminal on a computer which I alone use. Both were on Windows 7 in 2019. One was following a recipe to edit a visual novel patch so it would work on another edition of the game, and the other was a vain attempt to reconfigure the firewall after a botched antivirus uninstallation left certain settings locked in place, after any other attempt to alter its settings failed. Terminal commands are disorientating for someone not already familiar with them. Visual feedback is much reduced, of course, and giving commands with inline options and flags makes it much easier to give wrong or meaningless commands that appear about the same (Night Wing’s underscore and hyphen are a good example), whereas the GUI equivalent (eg opening a menu to tick or fill out a box with something stupid) would be clearly wrong. We were not introduced to computers in a uni course where we knew from the beginning to hunt for missing brackets; we were introduced as small children, playing Neopets in the living room, before we even knew what brackets were.

which by the way could also be language-customized).

I admit that I have experienced this problem. My system language is German, so if I need to describe a technical problem in English, I must literally translate the German menu entries without knowing what the English version actually calls them. In any case, I prefer this to giving a terminal command like oathtool, which only makes sense in English. I imagine that, for someone with a poor grasp on the English language, a localised GUI in his own language is far easier to use than trying to use commands which may as well be Chinese characters or random number sequences.

[Lucio Chiappetti]

@Moonchild or some other forum admin: would it be possible to fork off the messages about "GUI vs terminal" to a separate thread ?
I'd enjoy continuing such discussion, which is going on on very civil terms, but won't do it in this thread to keep it on topic.

[frostknight]

And obviously, you're not stuck with one desktop on Linux that goes out of the way to make things cumbersome.

This is completely false, there are many desktop options on linux.

XFCE, LXDE, LUMINA, KDE, GNOME, CINNAMON, MATE, BUDGIE, LXQT, CDE and then there is the window managers which my personal favorite is jwm because you can make it look how it needs to be and use almost no cpu power in the process.

Also, those Desktop Environments, some have multiple flavors, like KDE5, KDE6, GNOME 3 and GNOME4.

My point is, you got that wrong.

I wonder what Moonchild will do in the following years.

I think I'll stop using computers when wheels fall off Windows 10.

\I don't know if this is accurate, or not, but I would think he would either A: wait for a better windows, or B: use a very user friendly linux distro like Zorin.

OR C: unknown

[frostknight]

Hm, that USB thing might have to do with sleep specifically, so power reducing in sleep on one OS but not another.

Funny thing with graphics cards, when I bought the last one, everyone was like "ATI sucks, get NVIDIA if you want normally working 3D graphics". That was in Linux context specifically.

Intel graphics cards while not the best looking, require the least amount of blobs to run.

You don't need proprietary drivers to run them. Otherwise you are better off with specific nvidia or specific amd graphics cards.

Not sure which can be used without blobs to access all their important features

[UCyborg]

Off-topic:

And obviously, you're not stuck with one desktop on Linux that goes out of the way to make things cumbersome.

This is completely false, there are many desktop options on linux.

You didn't read that statement well, that's what I implied.

But, for me at least, I'm not sure if there's even anything other than KDE that's worth using.

The choice is often an illusion realistically IMO and when you filter things out, there's not much left. That also goes for other software and things in life in general.

[UCyborg]

Off-topic:

Intel graphics cards while not the best looking, require the least amount of blobs to run.

You don't need proprietary drivers to run them. Otherwise you are better off with specific nvidia or specific amd graphics cards.

Not sure which can be used without blobs to access all their important features

I remember it was said for Intel being most fuss free on Linux. I'm not to concerned about looks since it's not looked at most of the time.

Linux or no Linux, my desktop will be 17 years old next April. Graphics cards aren't worth the bother at this point. I should've got more RAM sooner, then I could have a bit more optimal configuration. Now you can maybe find stuff on used market at best and I'm not friends with used market (got lucky to find some boring 2 GB Kingston RAM stick at shop that takes used parts and sells them about 2 years ago).

Linux is supposedly better supported these days, it was another time when this PC is from. I tried Linux Mint 22.2 recently and among other things, tried visiting stock YouTube with Pale Moon. Almost clean profile, just uBlock with default settings. It just hung when clicking on any video. Later, I found out nouveau was the factor. Yes, nouveau is that bad (and that was with or without HW acceleration in browser). I could load an older binary driver from NVIDIA from 470.xx branch and that stopped the hanging. I couldn't install it from the repos, they actually have the driver that's incompatible with the newer kernel, it just fails in the middle, someone on GitHub made patches with install script, so went with that. My card (GTX 750 Ti) could probably still use the newest driver, but I was running a live session from USB without persistent storage and the newest drivers are too big.

[Moonchild]

I thought we had already decided to keep this kind of linux chat in the thread that got forked off. Why is this again going into the depths of linux instead of using the other thread?

[Lucio Chiappetti]

I would endorse moving the discussion to a separate thread but ...
... I cannot find any track of the other thread (not even in "Active topics") ... where was the fork (and its link) announced ?
... it would help if all the "offending" (OT) posts would be moved to the other thread (with a notice) ... maybe (if you have time, I hope everything is well with your health and after-removal) close the current thread and open a "Windows 11 s.s. (2)" and a "command line vs GUI" (ideally with the moved OT posts) ... then it's up to the forumer discipline

[Moonchild]

I'd do it but having just my mobile phone for now to poke at the forum. It's very unwieldy on mobile to do this kind of moderation.

[Mæstro]

Why is this again going into the depths of linux instead of using the other thread?

Even if you are saying this out of exasperation, and I cannot blame you for that, the question deserves a direct answer. I think it happens because the intended topic is related. We all know Windows 11 is bad and has motivated many people to consider Linux, whether they succeed in migrating or not. Exploring the factors behind whether they succeed, and behind Windows 11’s own success, is more fertile ground to yield food for thought than repeating how bad it is, especially when half of us already abandoned Windows long before 11 and must rely on hearsay about it. For many of us now, Linux is our anchor and we compare Windows 11 either to that or our memories of past Windows versions to make sense of it.

[Night Wing]

Why is this again going into the depths of linux instead of using the other thread?

I think it happens because the intended topic is related. We all know Windows 11 is bad and has motivated many people to consider Linux, whether they succeed in migrating or not. Exploring the factors behind whether they succeed, and behind Windows 11’s own success, is more fertile ground to yield food for thought than repeating how bad it is, especially when half of us already abandoned Windows long before 11 and must rely on hearsay about it. For many of us now, Linux is our anchor and we compare Windows 11 either to that or our memories of past Windows versions to make sense of it.

Your above post to Moonchild expresses my exact same sentiments on this topic thread. And I could not convey it any better than what you posted.

[Moonchild]

It's definitely part exasperation, also part being less clear in the head, but it just seems that whenever we do land on linux which is predictable, of course, it immediately veers off from the spirit of what this thread was made for and into the dungeons of very specific things to do for very specific situations in linux.
I mean if that is what everyone wants then sure, have at it. I'll just step back in that case.