So i really wanted to ditch windows once and for all so i’ve tried Linux for a week trying different distros (debian, manjaro, ubuntu, opensuse, mint) and first of all why? Why are there so many distros out there? What’s the difference between debian + kde and manjaro + kde? They look the same, they work the same. I don’t get it. Also why do things have to be complicated? I’ve installed debian, installed calibre to manage my ebooks, created a library from an existing library on my hard drive (not the one with debian installed), ERROR! All the files are read-only. What??? I’ve followed multiple guides on how to change permissions and finally solved the problem. Now let’s restart my pc. files on the hard drive are read only WHAT??? Fuck debian, let’s go on manjaro. No problems at all on calibre. Managed to create the library as easy as i did on windows. My question is: where’s the fun in this? It’s just problems, after problems, after problems and i didn’t even start gaming. I mean i tried installing retroarch and importing my saves but of course nothing works. Read this guide, read that guide. Nope. Nothing works. Ok, fuck retroarch let’s customize the appearance of my desktop: move some icons on the panel, center this, adjust height, move this on the left, spent 30 minutes tweaking, very nice… kde crashes, all back to default. Let’s download some apps. I want as many apps that i already know as possible. Let’s see if jdownloader is available for linux. Yep there’s one. Nope, not for manjaro (officially). There’s a AUR package available. Nice. What do i need to do to install a AUR package? A wall of text on the wiki, 20 minutes videos, yay. Ok let’s call it a day. Do i need to live another life to make linux work?

  • Max-P@lemmy.max-p.me
    3·
    2 months ago

    Why are there so many distros out there? What’s the difference between debian + kde and manjaro + kde? They look the same, they work the same. I don’t get it.

    They visually look similar because both are running KDE with pretty much all the defaults, as it happens both Debian and KDE don’t diverge too much from the recommended defaults as long as they work well. But under the hood, Debian and Manjaro work completely differently: one uses apt, the other uses pacman. The way those packages are maintained, compiled and distributed is vastly different, with different kinds of QA testing.

    Ubuntu is a derivative of Debian, so it doesn’t look that much different but Canonical does tend to provide newer packages than Debian does. But Ubuntu also has a lot of flaws so spinoffs like Mint and Pop_OS! take on Ubuntu as a base and “fix” it to their liking and hopefully the user’s too, which, given how popular Mint is I’d say they’re pretty successful in that goal.

    Also why do things have to be complicated?

    It doesn’t, but the amount of options and choices in how to do basically anything on Linux can certainly look very overwhelming. You can click on it in your file manager, you can add it to /etc/fstab, you can use a systemd mount unit. They’re different ways of automating and configuring what ends up being mostly the same: mounting a filesystem and setting permissions on it, and they come with different defaults.

    You’re running into the particular area of trying to mount an NTFS Windows partition on Linux, which is nothing like what Linux expects to it fakes a few things to make it work, and that makes everything owned by the same user by default. If you do it from your file manager, it’ll get a temporary mountpoint in like /run/user/1000/media/YOUR DRIVE but is mostly intended for when you plug in a USB or something. You probably found /etc/fstab but then that made all the files owned by root, and you can temporarily change that with chmod and chown but once you reboot and it gets mounted again, it’ll revert back because it doesn’t actually store those fake permissions as to not break Windows.

    It’s just problems, after problems, after problems and i didn’t even start gaming.

    Yeah, some people end up particularly unlucky in that department. Eventually, over time, it feels as easy or easier than on Windows. It’s just, you have years of experience on how to make Windows do the thing, and Linux is completely new to you. I had a very similar experience a couple years ago when I was forced to learned macOS because the job would only issue MacBooks. Everything felt way overcomplicated and eventually you start thinking the Apple way and it goes more smoothly, you understand better how it works. I mean, how alien is it to just open disk images and copy .app files to /Applications and that’s how you “install” things?? And you get used to it and now I wield the macOS terminal like I do on Linux.

    What do i need to do to install a AUR package? A wall of text on the wiki, 20 minutes videos, yay. Ok let’s call it a day.

    So, this is why people don’t like recommending Manjaro. It’s ArchLinux with a coat of paint, but still relies on Arch’s infrastructure for the AUR. ArchLinux is well into advanced Linux: it’s a box of legos you have to assemble in the shape of a Linux distro yourself. So yes they do expect you to do a fair bit of reading, but Manjaro doesn’t, and it’s a real problem that has caused a fair bit of drama at its time. The AUR is great, but to make another analogy, the AUR is more like a recipe book: you don’t download premade meals, you have to bake them yourself (compiling source code into binary) to have your meal (the generated package file). Sending beginners that route is a recipe for a bad experience.

    Ironically, yay is the name of one of the tools that helps install AUR packages.

    Do i need to live another life to make linux work?

    No, but it does take some initial commitment to get to the nicer part of the learning curve. The first install is always pretty rough, you will destroy it, that’s fine, you have to learn first.

    Ok let’s call it a day.

    Honestly by the post you should have done that earlier. As with anything, when you’re frustrated with it you stop learning, you start making it much harder than it needs to be.

    It’s fine to take a step back and reboot into Windows and try again the next day. It doesn’t have to be all or nothing, plenty of people have started by using Linux for just one task that’s easier to do on Linux, and eventually you start thinking of migrating more workloads to Linux over time. You’re restarting your computer learning journey from pretty close to the start, give yourself a break, computers aren’t worth getting pissed off at.