 DistroWatch Weekly |
| DistroWatch Weekly, Issue 1050, 18 December 2023 |
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Welcome to this year's 51st issue of DistroWatch Weekly!
One of the key technical features which is slowly being adopted across the Linux landscape is immutable filesystems. An immutable filesystem is one which cannot be changed while the operating system is running, creating a fixed base on which we can run applications. This week we begin with a look at rlxos, an independent Linux distribution which combines an immutable core with a minimal Xfce desktop experience. Read on to hear early impressions of the rlxos distribution. Then, in our News section, we talk about security fixes and improvements, starting with: the Debian project released a delayed Debian 12.4 to give developers time to work around a kernel bug. Meanwhile the TrueNAS team has published new updates and an advisory for a ZFS bug which could cause data corruption as Canonical winds down support for Ubuntu 23.04. The Haiku team had a less hectic week, publishing a series of small improvements and usability enhancements for their lightweight operating system. In our Questions and Answers column we explore a few easy ways to rename large groups of files and how to jump to a specific directory when opening a terminal window. Plus we are pleased to share the releases of the past week and list the torrents we are seeding. Next week we will be off for the holidays, but we will return on January 1st of 2024. We wish you all a wonderful end to 2023 and happy reading!
This week's DistroWatch Weekly is presented by TUXEDO Computers.
Content:
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| Feature Story (By Jesse Smith) |
rlxos 2023.11 "Silanghana"
rlxos (sometimes written RLXOS) is an independent Linux distribution which runs on an immutable filesystem and features the Xfce desktop. The project offers the Distrobox container manager to facilitate running software from multiple other distributions. It also includes support for Flatpak as a method of acquiring additional applications.
The latest release of rlxos shifts from using GNOME to Xfce for improved performance and resource usage. The distribution includes a tool called swupd for managing updates and we can check for available updates using the command "sudo swupd status". Previous versions of rlxos booted on computers with UEFI enabled exclusively. The latest release reportedly works on computers running either UEFI or Legacy BIOS configurations. The new version also features a custom first-run wizard as an alternative to the previous version's GNOME's initial setup utility.
The rlxos distribution provides a single edition which is available as a 2.5GB ISO file. Booting from this image happens very quickly and almost immediately shows us the Xfce desktop. A welcome window opens automatically and offers to walk us through installing the distribution.
rlxos 2023.11 -- Exploring the application menu
(full image size: 1.6MB, resolution: 1920x1080 pixels)
Something I noticed when first trying out rlxos was the welcome window had two buttons on its first screen, a Home button and a Help button. Hovering the mouse over the Home button displays the project's home page URL in a tool tip, but clicking the button opens Firefox and displays a copy of our live user's home directory. Clicking the Help button also opens Firefox, but it displays an on-line copy of the distribution's documentation. The documentation offers some tips on what sets rlxos apart and how to manage software - updates, containers, and portable package formats.
Moving on to the welcome window's next screen, we are shown a list of partitions on our computer's hard drive. An Edit button on this page opens the GParted partition manager so we can adjust partitions as required. Returning to the welcome window and hitting Refresh updates our view of the disk layout.
The following page gives us a chance to assign root and UEFI partitions. The distribution did not detect or offer to create a swap partition. With this step completed, the installer copies its image to the root partition of our local drive. Once this copy procedure is completed the installer offers to reboot our computer. Alternatively, we can close the installer/welcome window and browse the live desktop.
The installer is fairly straight forward to use and works quickly. It isn't particularly flexible in the way it handles partitioning (we cannot set a separate /home partition, for example, but otherwise the experience is pleasantly simple to navigate.
Early impressions
My fresh copy of rlxos booted almost instantly and displayed the Xfce desktop. A new welcome window appears, this time with some first-run configuration steps. Well, there is really just one step. We are asked to make up a username and password for ourselves. This page also gives us the option of automatically logging into our account at boot time. We are asked to confirm our choices and then the welcome screen disappears and we are signed out of the desktop. We're then shown a graphical login screen.
Xfce 4.18 is set up with a light theme by default and a dark theme is available through the settings panel. There is a thick panel placed across the bottom of the screen. This panel holds an application menu in the bottom-left corner. Then, from left to right, we find a virtual desktop switcher, quick-launch icons, a task switcher, and the system tray.
After five minutes a screensaver is activated, locking the session. This behaviour can be adjusted in the settings panel.
Speaking of the Xfce settings options, there are two settings applications. One is called the Settings Editor, which acts like the Windows registry editor, but for Xfce. The other settings utility is called the Settings Manager which is more typical for a desktop settings portal, in the same style of GNOME Settings or KDE System Settings.
rlxos 2023.11 -- The two settings utilities
(full image size: 1.2MB, resolution: 1920x1080 pixels)
Hardware
While I was using rlxos, desktop performance was top notch. While the GNOME desktop used in previous versions of rlxos performed fairly well, I feel as though the move to Xfce is a step forward in this regard. Apart from an increase in responsiveness, we can also see a reduction in resource consumption. The current snapshot of rlxos used 515MB of RAM when signed into Xfce (compared to 740MB used by the previous GNOME snapshot). The latest release uses 4.7GB of disk space while the previous version used 5.4GB.
I tested the distribution in VirtualBox and on a laptop and rlxos performed well in both environments. The new version, as advertised, boots in Legacy BIOS and UEFI modes, which is a step forward. The distribution ran smoothly for me in VirtualBox and detected all of my laptop's hardware. Networking, my touchpad, and audio all worked out of the box. The rlxos distribution mutes audio by default, which I appreciate, and we can enable sound output by using the volume control widget in the system tray. The operating system automatically made use of my keyboard's media keys. My only (minor) complaint was Xfce didn't register taps on my touchpad as clicks, but this can be adjusted in the settings panel.
rlxos 2023.11 -- Performing a search for installed applications
(full image size: 1.5MB, resolution: 1920x1080 pixels)
Earlier I mentioned the rlxos system installer does not detect or create a swap partition. It also does not set up a swap file. Instead the distribution enables compressed memory (zRAM) and swaps out inactive memory to be compressed and stored in a corner of RAM. This can work when an operating system is getting close to filling its memory, but doesn't require a lot of swap space.
Included software
The rlxos system runs Xfce 4.18 and the Firefox web browser. We're also given the Parole media player (along with codecs for most audio and video formats), the Pinta image editor, and an image viewer. The Gufw firewall is included along with the Thunar file manager. The Xfce settings panel is installed for us as is the CUPS printing software.
I found the GNU command line utilities are installed, though there is no man command, so no access to local manual pages. In the background systemd provides the distribution's init software and rlxos runs on version 6.5 of the Linux kernel at the time of writing.
This is a small collection of applications, which seems a standard approach for immutable distributions. They tend to offer a minimal base and layer applications on top as needed.
One of the entries in the application menu is Print Manager. Clicking this launcher opened the Firefox web browser and displayed the contents of my home directory. This was the same behaviour I saw in the live environment when using the system installer. In fact, whenever Firefox was opened it defaulted to showing me the contents of my home directory. I later found a fix for this (which I'll talk about later). After the fix was applied Firefox would open the Print Manager web page and show me CUPS documentation. However, I was unable to set up any printers. Attempting to add a new printer would prompt me for a username and password. Both my credentials and the root user's credentials were rejected, preventing me from adding my printer.
rlxos 2023.11 -- Trying to set up a printer
(full image size: 1,4MB, resolution: 1920x1080 pixels)
There is a desktop application for printer management as well. This CUPS front-end ran into the same problem. I would be asked to provide login credentials and, regardless of whose I supplied, I was rejected.
Software management
The rlxos distribution does not appear to offer a graphical software manager. I decided to visit the project's on-line documentation and clicked the link for swupd which, at the time of writing, displays a "404 - not found" error. Fortunately, I found another section of the documentation which talks about using swupd, the project's update utility.
In most situations, we just need two commands when running swupd. The command "sudo swupd check" will look for any available system updates and list them along with a summary of changes they will introduce. The second command is "sudo swupd upgrade" which fetches and installs the waiting updates. A system restart is then required to apply the waiting updates.
Earlier I mentioned finding a fix for Firefox. One of the waiting updates was labelled as a fix for the default page displayed when Firefox launches. Once this update was applied Firefox's behaviour was corrected and it showed the requested page or a normal search page when it was launched instead of my home directory's contents. This fix was included in upgrade number 86, for those interested.
There is a line in the rlxos documentation which I believe includes a typo: "rlxos is a immutable distribution and you can make any permanent changes into it. But you can apply a safe mutable overlay over the system roots to apply temporary modifications." I believe the highlighted word should be "cannot", indicating that normally users cannot modify the base system. However, using swupd we can temporarily set up an editable (mutable) layer and make changes to it. Most users probably will not need this feature, but it is nice to have in case we want to adjust a low level system setting.
rlxos 2023.11 -- Checking for updates
(full image size: 1.0MB, resolution: 1920x1080 pixels)
When we want to add applications to rlxos we can do so using the Flatpak command line utility. Flatpak is installed for us and automatically connects to the Flathub repository. This gives us a large collection of desktop software. Flatpak allows each user to fetch and run their own copy of Flatpak bundles, with each user getting their own copy. No Flatpak bundles are installed by default, giving rlxos a fairly lean default configuration.
Should we wish to install and run lower level software or applications not available through Flatpak, we have the option of using Distrobox. The Distrobox container administration software is included by default and mentioned briefly in the rlxos documentation. For people who want some hands-on tips for using Distrobox to set up containers and install minimal distributions in them, we have an overview and tutorial of the technology.
Conclusions
I recently talked about openSUSE's MicroOS and I feel as though, with that experience fresh in my head, it makes sense to draw some parallels with rlxos. Both distributions offer immutable bases and both use Flatpak to supply additional software. There are a few key differences. For example, openSUSE's MicroOS offers Plasma and GNOME desktop experiences while rlxos offers Xfce. MicroOS provides graphical front-ends for package management while rlxos requires command line usage.
On the other hand, rlxos offers a lighter, faster experience when running in my test environments. I also like the super simple system installer and the clear documentation. There were a few issues with rlxos, mostly in terms of the Firefox bug which was fixed at the start of my trial. Apart from this small issue, and the print permissions error, rlxos offered a smooth, fast, light experience and I quite enjoyed it.
I'm not sure I could use it as a daily driver, or at least it wouldn't be practical. I'd need to install at least one container using Distrobox and, at that point, I might as well just run the container distribution directly as the main operating system. However, I could definitely see the benefit of running rlxos for someone who doesn't use the command line a lot or many obscure software packages. rlxos offers a light, fast, clean environment and an immutable base. It's pleasantly streamlined while still offering all of the software available in Flathub. I think, if the project adds a graphical software centre, I'd recommend it to less experienced computer users or people who want an easy, stable experience.
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Hardware used in this review
My physical test equipment for this review was an HP DY2048CA laptop with the following
specifications:
- Processor: 11th Gen Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-1135G7 @ 2.40GHz
- Display: Intel integrated video
- Storage: Western Digital 512GB solid state drive
- Memory: 8GB of RAM
- Wireless network device: Intel Wi-Fi 6 AX201 + BT Wireless network card
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Visitor supplied rating
rlxos has a visitor supplied average rating of: 7.7/10 from 3 review(s).
Have you used rlxos? You can leave your own review of the project on our ratings page.
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| Miscellaneous News (by Jesse Smith) |
Debian publishes new install media with a kernel fix, Haiku improves desktop experience, Ubuntu 23.04 nears its end of life, TrueNAS publishes important update for ZFS
The Debian project has published new install media for Debian 12 "Bookworm". The new media is not for a new version of Debian, but includes bug fixes released since Debian 12 was originally launched. "Please be advised that this document has been updated as best to reflect Debian 12.3 being superseded by Debian 12.4. These changes came about from a last minute bug advisory of #1057843 concerning issues with kernel-image-6.1.0-14 (6.1.64-1). Debian 12.4 is released with kernel-image-6.1.0-15 (6.1.66), along with a few other bug fixes. The Debian project is pleased to announce the forth update of its stable distribution Debian 12 (codename Bookworm). This point release mainly adds corrections for security issues, along with a few adjustments for serious problems. Security advisories have already been published separately and are referenced where available."
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The Haiku project has published their November newsletter which highlights changes and improvements being worked on in the spiritual successor to BeOS. Some of the changes are little adjustments which make using some applications more convenient. "humdinger fixed Tracker to display half-star ratings on files instead of rounding to the nearest whole star. He also added 'Reset rating' menu actions to MediaPlayer and ShowImage, to allow file ratings to be easily reset.
apl made some performance improvements to HaikuDepot's loading procedure, including to defer loading sizes or skip it all together when unnecessary, using buffered reads and reusing text buffers during JSON parsing, and more. He also started a refactor of the data-model generation code, writing a new parser generation script and adjusting the generated code for performance, among other changes.
humdinger fixed Mail's 'Save address' command to automatically open 'People' with the email and name fields already populated if no contact file yet exists for that email address. (This involved adjusting 'People' to accept such initial values.)"
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Brian Murray has sent out a reminder that Ubuntu 23.04 will soon reach the end of its supported life. "Ubuntu announced its 23.04 (Lunar Lobster) release almost 9 months ago, on April 20, 2023 and its support period is now nearing its end. Ubuntu 23.04 will reach end of life on January 25, 2024. At that time, Ubuntu Security Notices will no longer include information or updated packages for Ubuntu 23.04. The supported upgrade path from Ubuntu 23.04 is via Ubuntu 23.10." The Ubuntu support website has upgrade instructions.
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An issue in the OpenZFS advanced filesystem was discovered in November which could cause data corruption in specific circumstances. This bug was fixed and operating systems shipping with ZFS support have updated their packages. TrueNAS has published an advisory about the potential issue with links to detailed discussions about what has been corrected in ZFS. "This is a small update to 13.0-U6 to update OpenZFS to version 2.1.14 and fix a data integrity issue discovered in that project (NAS-125356). While this bug has been present in OpenZFS for many years, this issue has not been found to impact any TrueNAS systems to date. This TrueNAS Community announcement has further details."
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These and other news stories can be found on our Headlines page.
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| Questions and Answers (by Jesse Smith) |
Renaming files and opening virtual terminals in specific locations
Cleaning-up-the-names asks: I have a lot of files where I want to replace spaces with underscores. Any easy way to do this?
DistroWatch answers: There are a few ways we can approach renaming files, substituting some characters for others. One of the easier ways is using the Xfce Bulk Rename utility. Bulk Rename is a friendly, desktop application which makes it easy to perform find-and-replace style actions on filenames. We can select a group of files, pick an adjustment to perform, and the utility will show us the "before" and "after" views of the filenames we have selected.
Bulk Rename -- Changing underscores to hyphens
(full image size: 30kB, resolution: 629x490 pixels)
There is another utility called KRename which, while a part of the KDE Plasma desktop suite, can be installed on any Linux desktop system. It performs similar functions, dividing its actions across multiple tabs.
For people who want a command line solution, renaming files is fairly straight forward with the Perl rename command. With this command line tool we can specify the characters or patterns we want to find and the names of the files we want to change. In the following example we change a space (" ") to an underscore ("_") for all GIF files in a directory:
rename 's/ /_/g' *.gif
The "s" near the start of the rename command indicates we will be performing a substitution. The "g" toward the middle indicates we'll be performing the change globally, which just means we will replace all spaces with underscores instead of just the first instance.
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A-terminal-decision asks: Is there a way I can set up my system to open a terminal and quickly jump to a directory?
DistroWatch answers: There are a number of ways to cause a virtual terminal to jump to a specific directory, either once it's running or when it is being launched. When using most file managers (such as Dolphin or Thunar) we can right-click in a directory and select "Open Terminal Here", or a similarly named menu option in the file manager. This will cause a new terminal to open and set the current working directory to match the one we were browsing in the file manager.
Most virtual terminals will accept a working directory as a parameter and then immediately jump to that directory. For example, running the following command (perhaps from a desktop launcher) will cause the Konsole terminal to open and jump to the Downloads directory:
konsole --workdir ~/Downloads
In situations where we don't want to use a file manager or a desktop icon we can set up shell aliases to quickly jump to directories we use frequently. Let's assume we're running the bash shell, or a compatible shell. We could create an alias by running the following command:
alias sc='cd /home/jesse/work/scripts'
Afterwards, whenever we want to get to the "scripts" directory, we can simply type "sc" and the shell will jump to that location. Adding the above alias command to our account's ~/.bashrc file will make the alias permanent and available whenever a new terminal window is opened.
We can create as many aliases as we want, making each one a shortcut to entering a specific directory.
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Additional answers can be found in our Questions and Answers archive.
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| Released Last Week |
Univention Corporate Server 5.0-6
Univention Corporate Server (UCS) is an enterprise-class distribution based on Debian GNU/Linux. The project's latest release focuses on bug fixes and tightening security. "In the last three months we have released 47 security updates, most of them from the Debian base distribution. However, we have also fixed security-relevant errors in the Univention packages, e.g. password leaks via the process list. We have also further stabilized the Univention Management Console (UMC) when connecting to the individual UMC modules. We have improved the way the Univention Directory Manager (UDM) handles inconsistent user capitalization. Some data is now updated atomically by the portal, which avoids certain error patterns, and the self service now translates the forms correctly in all cases." Additional information can be found in the distribution's release announcement and in the release notes.
Manjaro Linux 23.1.0
The Manjaro Linux team have published a new snapshot of the distribution's rolling release. The new 23.1.0 release offers up to date desktop environments with the main editions offering GNOME 45, KDE Plasma 5.27, and Xfce 4.18. "One of the most noticeable changes in GNOME 45 is the new activities button. Located in the corner of the top bar, this button was previously labelled 'Activities'. In GNOME 45, this static label has been replaced with a dynamic workspace indicator. The new button design is a response to user testing results over recent years, and we are confident that its purpose will be more obvious to new GNOME users. As part of this change, the old app menu (which showed the name of the currently focused app), was also retired. This retirement was another response to user testing results, and was required to make space for the new design. Search performance has been a major area of work for GNOME 45. These performance improvements have been made to a range of apps, including Software, Characters, Clocks, Files, and Calculator. Together, these changes result in faster search and reduced resource usage, which can be seen in both individual apps and in system search." Additional highlights are presented in the project's release announcement.
Manjaro linux 23.1.0 -- Running the KDE Plasma desktop
(full image size: 959kB, resolution: 1920x1200 pixels)
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Development, unannounced and minor bug-fix releases
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| Torrent Corner |
Weekly Torrents
The table below provides a list of torrents DistroWatch is currently seeding. If you do not have a bittorrent client capable of handling the linked files, we suggest installing either the Transmission or KTorrent bittorrent clients.
Archives of our previously seeded torrents may be found in our Torrent Archive. We also maintain a Torrents RSS feed for people who wish to have open source torrents delivered to them. To share your own open source torrents of Linux and BSD projects, please visit our Upload Torrents page.
Torrent Corner statistics:
- Total torrents seeded: 2,941
- Total data uploaded: 43.8TB
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| Upcoming Releases and Announcements |
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Summary of expected upcoming releases
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| Opinion Poll (by Jesse Smith) |
Jumping to specific directories on the command line
In this week's Questions and Answers section we talked about various ways to quickly access a specific directory from the command line. There are a few ways to do this, ranging from shell aliases, to parameters passed to a virtual terminal, to custom scripts. Some tools will even try to do fuzzy matching on directory names to make them easier to access. This week we'd like to hear which, if any, shortcuts you use to quickly jump to a directory.
You can see the results of our previous poll on whether to replace CentOS Linux on our Major Distributions page in last week's edition. All previous poll results can be found in our poll archives.
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How do you jump to a new directory in a shell?
| I type the full cd command: | 863 (62%) |
| I use an alias: | 60 (4%) |
| I use a launch/desktop shortcut: | 47 (3%) |
| I use a custom shell: | 8 (1%) |
| I use a shell that predicts directory names: | 173 (12%) |
| I use another tool: | 58 (4%) |
| I do not use the command line: | 190 (14%) |
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| Website News |
Donations and Sponsors
Each month we receive support and kindness from our readers in the form of donations. These donations help us keep the web server running, pay contributors, and keep infrastructure like our torrent seed box running. We'd like to thank our generous readers and acknowledge how much their contributions mean to us.
This month we're grateful for the $195 in contributions from the following kind souls:
| Donor |
Amount |
|---|
| K Kappell | $100 |
| J S | $50 |
| Jonathon B | $10 |
| Sam C | $10 |
| Chung T | $5 |
| Darkeugene7896 | $5 |
| DuCakedHare | $5 |
| J.D. L | $2 |
| PB C | $2 |
| Peter M | $2 |
| c6WWldo9 | $1 |
| Stephen M | $1 |
| Shasheen E | $1 |
| William E | $1 |
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New distributions added to waiting list
- CNIX OS. CNIS OS is a Debian-based distribution which uses the Xfce desktop and includes the GNOME Software application for software management.
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DistroWatch database summary
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This concludes this week's issue of DistroWatch Weekly. The next instalment will be published on Monday, 1 January 2024. Past articles and reviews can be found through our Weekly Archive and Article Search pages. To contact the authors please send e-mail to:
- Jesse Smith (feedback, questions and suggestions: distribution reviews/submissions, questions and answers, tips and tricks)
- Ladislav Bodnar (feedback, questions, donations, comments)
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| Tip Jar |
If you've enjoyed this week's issue of DistroWatch Weekly, please consider sending us a tip.
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| Extended Lifecycle Support by TuxCare |
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| Reader Comments • Jump to last comment |
1 • Q&A (by Vinfall on 2023-12-18 01:43:54 GMT from Singapore)
Renaming files: If you are bad at command line, it's also possible to use ls -1 (or ls -a1) to dump the file list, copy that column, replace strings using any tool like sed/Excel, and then curate a renaming script you can paste. Of course, Perl rename command would be much simpler if you are comfortable with cli.
Open a terminal and directory quickly: you can use Ctrl + Alt + T to do that, and then use alias in shell rc, rely on shell history using Ctrl + R, or create a symlink in $HOME. Also, terminal file manager like nnn (with cd on quit shell integration installed) is always your best friend.
2 • RlxOS (by Devlin7 on 2023-12-18 05:17:42 GMT from New Zealand)
I downloaded and tried RlxOS XFCE4 on three different pieces of hardware. The same thing happened three times in a row. XFCE4 panel hung during the install. The install completed but the OS wouldn't boot. I waited a week and downloaded a newer ISO and got exactly the same issue again. I decided to give up at this point.
3 • @1 (by BlackCodec on 2023-12-18 06:05:17 GMT from Italy)
Simply find . -type f -exec rename ... Or without perl you could use sed to store new name in a var and then mv {} ${newname}
4 • The full cd command (by Simon on 2023-12-18 06:15:26 GMT from New Zealand)
Since "the full cd command" is often something like cd - or cd .. and since even when we do need to name specific directories we can use abbreviations like cd f*/b* or use BASH tab completion to finish the names, "the full cd command" usually takes less than one second. I guess like most things shell-related it's different for folk who can't touch-type, but as long as you can type and know the various BASH shortcuts for typing directory names, cd is very fast.
5 • Removing spaces (by daviddpf on 2023-12-18 08:13:12 GMT from United States)
Have a look at "detox". Simple and fast.
6 • fzf fuzzy history search (by Luca on 2023-12-18 08:41:12 GMT from Italy)
I use and recommend fzf fuzzy history (and file) search... I use its integration with fish, but it also works with bash and other shells
7 • GUI renamer (by Mr Renamer on 2023-12-18 09:15:48 GMT from Spain)
Another very good and very easy to use GUI renamer is 'GPRename'.
8 • How do you jump to a new directory in a shell? (by James on 2023-12-18 11:08:18 GMT from United States)
I do not use the command line: 46 (13%)
I was surprised by that number, I so often feel like I am the only one not using the terminal. Good to see I have company and helps dispel the myth you have to be a computer geek to use Linux.
9 • Renaming directories (by Ken Harbit on 2023-12-18 11:36:42 GMT from United States)
I don't know the command line. In the past I have sometimes caused problems instead of fixing them. I use MXLinux file manager. For me, it's quick and easy and I cause less problems.
10 • Command Line (by Friar Tux on 2023-12-18 15:17:49 GMT from Canada)
@8 (James) & @9 (Ken) I'm with you, I stopped using command line way back when - with MSWindows 3.11. We now live in the 21 century. Command line, to me is for hobbyists, and developers. I much prefer point and click. I'm looking forward to A.I. input in another 5 to 10 years. Something to the effect of Star Trek's computer - "Computer, write a Christmas letter to my Gramma. Make sure to mention the year's events." We're close, but still not quite there.
Anyway, back to command line. Some have said that it's faster to use the terminal to do stuff. I disagree. I find pointing and clicking is faster and doesn't mess up your computer when you make a spelling error, give you a "Command Not Found" because you hit the wrong keyboard key. Now you have to start all over again. How is that faster. This is why Point-And-Click was invented in the first place. Computers would not have gained the prominence they have today if we were still using the terminal and command line. I thought of this the other day, while in the doctor's office, watching him renew my prescriptions and sending them to the pharmacy. Point and click, and done, in less than 30 seconds.
11 • Jumping to a “new” directory? (by SuperOscar on 2023-12-18 16:22:45 GMT from Finland)
I’m not sure if the Opinion Poll question of “jumping to a new directory” means a directory that is not current or a directory that is actually new or even yet non-existing, but for the latter I use a Zsh function:
# create-curr-word-as-dir()
#
emulate -L zsh
local -a words
local dir
words=(${(z)LBUFFER})
dir=${(Q)~words[-1]}
if [[ -e $dir ]]; then
zle -M "already exists: $dir"
else
mkdir -p $dir && zle -M "created: $dir" || zle -M "cannot create: $dir"
fi
Bind this to, say, Alt+M, and you can type `cd not-yet-existing-directory Alt+M Enter`, and the directory is created before you run the actual command line.
12 • @10 Friar Tux: (by dragonmouth on 2023-12-18 16:53:41 GMT from United States)
" I'm looking forward to A.I"
Be careful what you wish for. Something to the effect of Hall9000 :-)
A.I. is already causing problems.
13 • Command line (by Daniel Martinez on 2023-12-18 16:54:44 GMT from United States)
@8, @9, @10,
I'm not a big user of the command line for day to day stuff but, I wouldn't exactly shun it either. I has saved my butt a few times when something goes wrong. It is worth while to learn, at least, a few things when all you have is a terminal because your desktop/window manager won't load. Stuff happens.
Peace.
14 • Of command lines, CD and other stuff... (by tom joad on 2023-12-18 17:17:26 GMT from Sweden)
Honestly!
Linux is full of geekie little toys to amuse and distract for folks with plenty of free time on their hands.
Me? I like the KISS method...'Keep it simple, @#$%^&*!!!
I do the 'cd' and get stuff done. Then I move on...
And that is how I voted.
15 • command line (by Titus Groan on 2023-12-18 18:06:01 GMT from New Zealand)
Using a GUI and mouse is great - until its not.
If something goes wrong when using GUI driven actions, there is often no error feedback. They silently exit.
Possible causes: incomplete update, mis-match of libraries, Bug unique to your hardware / software setup.
For that information, you would need to use the command line.
16 • @#5: detox (by grindstone on 2023-12-18 18:29:44 GMT from United States)
+1 Like any fine tool, a pleasure every time its used.
17 • Running out of Improvements (by Scott M. Boston on 2023-12-18 22:39:14 GMT from United States)
I kind of feel like there really should only be Seven Linux Distros. Linux is essentially being one homogeneous base. In general - they're almost no better than its next closest competitor. Fedora Ubuntu, Mint, Arch, Endeavor, Manjaro , OpenSuse Every other "Nux is just junk
18 • Pushd fan (by AdamB on 2023-12-19 00:02:35 GMT from Australia)
I voted for "I use an alias", and I have quite a few set up, but many of them, instead of being 'cd ' are 'pushd '.
Pushd has transformed my use of the command line in the last few years. Paths can be long and complicated, but if a path is in my 'dirs -v' list as #3 (for instance), I can change to it by issuing 'pushd +3' and can copy a file to it by issuing 'cp ~3'.
Since discovering pushd, I have not needed to use a file manager (such as MATE's Caja) so often - and I have some virtual machines which are not running a graphical environment, so efficient command-line use is extra handy.
19 • Correction to #18 (pushd) (by AdamB on 2023-12-19 00:06:31 GMT from Australia)
Should be:
and can copy a file to it by issuing 'cp ~3'
20 • Directory jumping (by archer on 2023-12-19 00:32:38 GMT from Moldova)
Are those directory questions made by a windows user ?
Literally the most basic usage pattern wasn't asked:
1) type cd & first 2 letters of a folder and press TAB
2) when you already used this command recently press
3) search for command in history + type folder name
4) use "cd -" to jump to previous dir
these 4 things are universal and people use them for 40 years.
Sure there are fancy bash plugins like 'ohmybash' which add ability to predict names, but good old covers this for 'cd' out of box.
so couldn't really choose the poll option and went with 'I use a shell that predicts directory names' instead of 'I use tab for completion' which I am sure 90% of people would choose when dealing with 'cd' command
I suspect that 'I use a shell that predicts directory names' was about using oh-my-bash plugins, oh-my-zsh or fish shells, but those fancy configurations deal mostly with predicting 'git' and complicated commands, not about 'cd', which covers just fine.
21 • Directory jumping (formatted) cause used tags (by archer on 2023-12-19 00:36:31 GMT from Moldova)
Are those directory questions made by a windows user ?
Literally the most basic usage pattern wasn't asked:
1) type cd & first 2 letters of a folder and press TAB
2) when you already used this command recently press 'up'
3) search for command in history + type folder name 'ctrl+r'
4) use "cd -" to jump to previous dir
these 4 things are universal and people use them for 40 years.
Sure there are fancy bash plugins like 'ohmybash' which add ability to predict names, but good old 'tab' covers this for 'cd' out of box.
so couldn't really choose the poll option and went with 'I use a shell that predicts directory names' instead of 'I use tab for completion' which I am sure 90% of people would choose when dealing with 'cd' command
I suspect that 'I use a shell that predicts directory names' was about using 'oh-my-bash' plugins, 'oh-my-zsh' or 'fish' shells, but those fancy configurations deal mostly with predicting 'git' and complicated commands, not about 'cd', which covers just fine.
22 • A.I. (by Friar Tux on 2023-12-19 01:47:45 GMT from Canada)
@12 (dragonmouth) "A.I. is already causing problems."
Unfortunately, yes, but, every new bit of software has caused problems in it's infancy. Time and development will improve it, hopefully. And yes, there is the possibility of abuse and misuse. Mankind certainly has a penchant for that. For everything we have invented, someone has found an illegal and/or unethical use for it. That should not stop us from trying, though.
23 • CLI (by So on 2023-12-19 09:17:45 GMT from Spain)
@10 So the radio is useless because the have invented the TV?
24 • Command line (by James on 2023-12-19 11:51:52 GMT from United States)
Why I don't use the command line.
I never learned to type beyond hunt and peck.
I am old and struggle to remember new thing, like complicated commands.
Now that is not to say I never use the command line. If I want to move something I call up my file browser with the terminal to drag and drop, I find that much easier than trying to type the path.
I use Synaptic for software management, which uses the terminal for me, but one thing Synaptic is not always good at is fixing broken packages, sometimes in works, sometimes it doesn't for broken packages. For that I have a cheat sheet, copy and paste. The one essential command to me is
sudo dpkg --configure -a
in case there is an interruption in an upgrade. After that, pure GUI.
25 • Leon A.I. (by Wilma on 2023-12-19 13:52:11 GMT from Switzerland)
@10, @12, @22
"I'm looking forward to A.I"
There is actually a personal assistant available for Linux (2019).
It only requires a computer with at least 8GB of RAM.
All you have to do is download it from GitHub.
You can also run it locally if you like.
26 • cd via command line (by Simon Plaistowe on 2023-12-19 19:33:18 GMT from New Zealand)
@4 and @14 yes I agree totally, keep it simple and use those shortcuts. My vote goes to the standard bash cd command.
27 • mouse vs command line (by Buster on 2023-12-19 23:28:45 GMT from Canada)
Most of us can certainly use the command line to some extent. But I, now, would use it only as a last resort, in Windows or Linux.
Linux will never be a popular desktop until it can be handled with a mouse or equivalent, much like automatic transmission has replaced the stick shift, and sensor dryers replaced the 'guess and check' dryer.
Many distros work very well with a mouse only. These distros should be praised and encouraged. Otherwise Linux will remain a toy for the technically inclined computer users, when Linux could take over the world (so to speak).
28 • @27: (by dragonmouth on 2023-12-20 11:55:48 GMT from United States)
"Linux will never be a popular desktop until it can be handled with a mouse or equivalent ..."
Linux CAN be handled with a mouse or equivalent already. It is the pundits and "experts" who keep pushing CLI "just in case" that are holding Linux acceptance back. They make it sound like if you don't know the magic spells, you can't be a Linux user.
Windows was at a similar point, except at that time everybody wanted to play with the new toy - GUI. Because of how long we've had GUI, CLI has become the new gee-whiz toy.
29 • Command line (by Cmdline user on 2023-12-20 12:34:04 GMT from Singapore)
It's weird that when Windows is adding the command line terminal through Powershell and WSL whereas Linux is moving towards the GUI ditching the command line.
30 • Command Line (by picamanic on 2023-12-20 12:46:28 GMT from United Kingdom)
I suppose people adverse to typing, will login by selecting characters from a menu with the mouse to build their password. There must be a distro that does this.
31 • Command Line (by Zane on 2023-12-20 13:50:47 GMT from United Kingdom)
I like the analogy to stick shfit vs automatic cars - the fact is many use manual cars in the UK because it's more fuel efficient and the public learn from driving lessons how to operate them. We have automatics, but they're rare. A bit like the cli - it's more efficient to use, but only if you put the time in to learn.
And Linux is about choice. Saying the cli is useless because of the GUI or vice versa is a stupid argument. You don't like it, don't use it - nobody's holding a loaded gun to your head. Using that as an excuse because you're not willing, want to or able to learn is a bit dumb. Just be happy with your choice and don't expect anyone else to like it (nor should you).
32 • Command Line (by Buster on 2023-12-20 18:47:53 GMT from Canada)
Well, I can see I made a blunder mentioning stick shift. That wont change anyone's mind. My sports car had a stick shift and every time I was in GB I used a stick.
I don't care what people use for their distros, but I think most people outside the community think mistakenly you have to use the command line, and many people on the forums eagerly promote using it.
But we know at the same time that the vast majority of desktop users (Windows, Apple) use a mouse or equivalent. Those are the people we have to win over, or always remain marginal
33 • CLI vs GUI (by Otis on 2023-12-21 00:04:38 GMT from United States)
@32 "But we know at the same time that the vast majority of desktop users (Windows, Apple) use a mouse or equivalent. Those are the people we have to win over, or always remain marginal."
Those going from MacOS or Windows to Linux are quite varied in reasons. We see them in distro forums talking about it, and most seem to be attracted to Linux via some version of getting away from "the Man," so to speak. They sound a lot like I did back in 96 when I first started in Linux. Already there was a veritable take over by Microsoft, and Windows 95/98 was out there as computing, it was marketed as THE ONLY computing we'll ever need, a huge assumption and a clever marketing strategy. It reminded me of Kleenex and Coke, their names became synonymous with the whole world of that commodity.
As to the CLI thing, yes I do remember all the braggy way the savvy Linux users were (and basically still are) about "cracking a shell so you can get into the system and make changes from the inside." I felt guilty not knowing basic commands so I learned them, and beyond.
I think that "winning over" Apple or Microsoft users to Linux is a silly endeavor, as the ones who come around to Linux are made up of experimenters, explorers, revolutionaries, and those just bored for a while. Also those who honestly do want to become experts; a tiny minority of new Linux users I'm guessing. So.. the GUI to replace CLI is attractive and always will be, probably more and more so.
34 • This CLI versus GUI "debate" (by picamanic on 2023-12-21 14:40:34 GMT from United Kingdom)
The people commenting on the CLI versus GUI "debate" here are hard for me to fathom. I started using "Unix" computers in 1988 [SUN and Silicon Graphics workstations], migrating to Linux when it first became usable with Redhat 6.0. Thoughout these 35 years, I have used a mixture of CLI and GUI programs, as appropriate for the work. The "Year of the Linux Desktop"? Always used it. I have never used Microsoft or Apple. Maybe that's where I have been going wrong.
35 • @10, @11, @34 (by Jay on 2023-12-25 02:55:02 GMT from Bosnia and Herzegovina)
I wouldn't give up zsh for anything either, so maybe (like picamanic) I'm doubly 'wrong'. ;)
There is no innate virtue in using one UI over the other beyond whether it best fits the task at hand. GUIs were designed for ease of use, CLIs for power and flexibility. All things being equal, pick whichever UI best fits your workflow.
For those that think one UI is somehow superior to the other, try using the full capabilities of the computer in front of you. Limiting oneself by deciding one UI should be used exclusively is actively choosing to be a half-wit.
If computers can do both UIs, you should be able to as well.
36 • Christmas (by Friar Tux on 2023-12-25 13:20:05 GMT from Canada)
Not here to comment, but seeing as this is still up and running, I want to wish the DW Team and all of you out there a very Merry Christmas, and tons of prosperity in the New Years.
37 • PostMarketOS (by Tux_Raider on 2023-12-27 01:16:07 GMT from United States)
thats the first distro i seen on distrowatch that has builds for smartphones
kudos to PostmarketOS for this, its what i been hoping for for years, a FOSS contender in the smartphone market, i am aware of others LineageOS, Graphene and some others
what i want to see is Fairphone and Pinephone be usable in the USA but i think Apple & Google and the NSA dont want that to happen
38 • cd with CDPATH (by John on 2023-12-29 17:08:26 GMT from Canada)
I use cd with CDPATH set, a bit different than the options and I find it a big time saver :)
39 • @37--Pinephone (by R. Cain on 2023-12-29 22:02:47 GMT from United States)
"...what i want to see is Fairphone and Pinephone be usable..."
Ever since Pine Microsystems Inc (Fremont, CA) was dissolved and was replaced by Pine Store Ltd (Hong Kong), a lot of people have wanted to see a Pinephone be usable.
Its (Pine's) last Pine Monthly Blog--after some prior, unexplained, very random fits and starts (1 April; 10 April; 12 August; 15 August; supposed to occur on the 15th of every month)--was August 2023.
Is Pine still in business? No help from the search engines.
Number of Comments: 39
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