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Learning fixes without looking everything up or having the answer given outright (sh.itjust.works)

submitted 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) by bridgeenjoyer@sh.itjust.works to c/linux@lemmy.world

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How do you guys actually learn how to fix certain things? Its mind boggling how one can visit a forum and there's people saying "oh yeah just run -c xhhkrk ()<>[] bbbhjl and that will fix your sound issue"

Like WHERE do you even start? I hate having to look things up all the time when everyone else on windows "just works". Copying commands off forums endlessly doesn't really help you learn.

Example, installed cachyos on an older laptop, but sound and screen dimming will not work. I have no ides where to even begin with that. I feel like a windows user could at least poke around control panel and probably fix the issue but its way harder with linux.

I have had luck with almost everything working with mint on my desktop (except vr, oculus is a nighmare to get working) and have been running that about a year. If I had to set it all up again id have to re look up everything I forgot since then..

If there was something like man but easier to parse through, that would be immensely helpful. Like for my sound issue, if there was a better organized manual that I could look under "sound" and see the inner workings laid out and common issues, thats what we need. Otherwise people are going to be terrified of linux because its so hard.

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[–] Limerance@piefed.social 13 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (1 children)

For new Linux users it’s best to stick with well established and supported distributions. Then it’s easier to find solutions for common problems.

It’s good practice to look up what the commands do, you enter when you find a solution. Read the man page or other documentation of the command you’re entering. It doesn’t need to be everything, just enough to get an idea what it does.

Also: take notes when you find a problem and how you fixed it. You can go back to them later.

sound and screen dimming

You can’t give a general answer to this. There are several different software stacks for sound on Linux. A typical one goes like this, but can look different.

Kernel - driver - ALSA - PipeWire - desktop environment - application - user

There might be an error at each of these levels.

In the simplest case, it’s a bad configuration, where the volume is set to 0 or mute somewhere in this stack. So try different applications first to play sound, also try playing sound from the terminal. Change volume sliders in different places.

Then go down the stack. Try playing sound with ALSA directly using aplay and speaker-test.

Finally go down to the driver and see if the hardware is detected. Depending if the soundcard is connected via USB or PCI use lsusb or lspci.

Find out the type snd chipset of your soundcard and then search if there’s a driver for Linux already. If you have new or unpopular hardware, it can take a while (a year or two) for a driver to be written, tested, and accepted into the kernel. Then it has to go downstream to the distributions until you get it. So for new hardware you might have to do some additional steps like finding a driver and compiling a kernel yourself.

It’s also worth checking the log files of the audio stack (ALSA, pipewire, or whatever your distro uses).

screen dimming

The stack looks like this:

Kernel - driver - X11/XOrg or Wayland - compositor - Desktop Environment (KDE, Gnome, etc.)

The error might be the keystroke not registering, the desktop not sending the right command, the display driver not supporting dimming, a bad or missing configuration. Again work through the stack. Find out what your distro uses.

Try setting the brightness through the terminal for example.

[–] bridgeenjoyer@sh.itjust.works 2 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (2 children)

While this is very helpful and I do understand the general operation of things, i still dont have a way to find that specific command.

For example, brightness through terminal, I have no idea what that command is. Or how I'd figure it out without a web search.

[–] bjoern_tantau@swg-empire.de 4 points 1 week ago

I wouldn't know how to figure it out either and I've been on Linux for decades. I'd just google "linux brightness cli" and click on the Arch wiki link. That's mostly because my brightness keys have always worked out of the box.

Try to see it the other way around. If you didn't even know that a device manager existed on Windows (which is feasible nowadays since it's been buried deeper and deeper with every new Windows version) you would search and read and search some more and probably eventually end up at the device manager. Do it enough times with other issues and you start to see patterns.

[–] Limerance@piefed.social 1 points 1 week ago

Do you know how to do that in windows? How did learn?