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this post was submitted on 25 Nov 2023
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Linux
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Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).
Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.
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Arch is actually not as bad as many say. It's pretty stable nowadays, I even run Arch on some servers and I never had any issues. It gives you the benefits that you can basically find any package in the AUR and everything is up-to-date. Try it out, if you don't like it, you can still switch to something else.
The best way to learn the CLI is to use it. Try not to use your graphical file manager for a while and only interact with the file system through the terminal, that teaches you a lot.
Yes.
It is truly fantastic.
Use the system, don't be shy, try different things out. If you are scared that you might break something, try it out in a VM. Break your VM and try to fix it. That teaches you a lot.
I would not recommend that, updating packages will take ages, it's not a great experience.
Not even just nowadays. My desktop is running a nearly 10 year old install. It's so old, it not only predates the installer, it predates the "traditional" way and used the old TUI installer. It even predates the sysvinit to systemd switch! The physical computer has been ship of thesis'd twice.
Arch is surprisingly reliable. It's not "stable" as in things change and you have to update some configs or even your own software. But it's been so reliable I never even felt the need to go look elsewhere. It just works.
Even my Arch servers have been considerably more reliable and maintenance-free than the thousands I manage at work with lolbuntu on them. Arch does so little on its own, there's less to go wrong. Meanwhile the work boxes can't even update GRUB noninteractively, every now and then we have a grub update that pops a debconf screen and hangs unattended-upgrades until manually fixed and hoses up apt as a whole.
Same here. Been going on 8 years with the same install and it has never let me down. The only time something "breaks" is when I'm the one who caused it, and it's always been easily fixable with arch-chroot from the iso. Although I haven't even had to resort to that in 3 or 4 years now.
Similar experience. My current install is not as old due to hardware failure but I've been using arch since 2007ish and it's been stable enough through all that concurrent with sort of losing interest in being an admin for a hobby in the last few years that I've honestly got kind of bad at administrating the thing, haha. But it hardly matters because issues are rare.
Third same. Before my current PC, my old PC was a 6yo install. Never had problems that weren't caused by me (although I could count on one hand the number of times I had issues in that 6 years).
My current install is more than 2yo trouble free.
I've DE hopped and fiddled with heaps of stuff in that time too.
Oh wow! That's truly impressive.
Thanks for this, I think I will give Arch Linux a go, and avoid GUI file management. My plan is to daily drive my X220 for more lightweight tasks as it's a nice laptop to use. So using Arch on it may just force me to have to use Arch as a daily driver if I want to use a nice laptop keyboard.
Another thing that helped me: Get comfortable in the Terminal. Obviously you have to learn some commands and how they work, but just configure your shell and commonly used CLI tools. It makes the experience so much more pleasant. Install a nice shell prompt, set up some aliases for frequently used commands, learn the basics of shell scripting and write your own useful little scripts for things you often have to do, maybe start using Vim and configure it the way you like it. Also explore other shells. Bash is the default shell, but there are better options like zsh or fish. You can watch this video to get some inspiration: https://youtube.com/watch?v=KKxhf50FIPI. This is actually pretty close to my shell setup. If you want to start customizing bash, check this out: https://youtube.com/watch?v=b3W7Ky_aaaY.
To continue learning, maybe subscribe to some Linux-oriented YouTube channels. DistroTube makes great videos about Linux, tiling window managers, how to use various commands, how to configure your shell environment, etc. He also reviews many Linux distros or explains why free software is important. If you search any Linux-related topic on YouTube, chances are that DT already made a great video about it.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
https://piped.video/watch?v=KKxhf50FIPI
https://piped.video/watch?v=b3W7Ky_aaaY
DistroTube
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
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When using BASH, one of the best commands is ctrl-r. I’ve been running Linux on a couple of servers for 20+ years and only found about ctrl-r a few weeks ago…