Ever had a question about Linux but felt too afraid to ask? Well now’s your chance, ask any question about Linux, no matter how noob or repeated it is, and I and others will help answer them.
Previous noob question thread: https://lemmy.ml/post/14261893
Is there a way to assess which packages on my linux distribution aren’t open source? I’m planning on having a secondary machine which is exclusively open source, but not sure how I would go about ensuring that is the case.
This would depend on the distro you use. Most distros will require you to enable a non-free repository before you can install anything that isn’t Foss or open source from the official repos. You could also use an FSF approved distro. Keep in mind, the FSF will only approve distros that don’t include any non-free anything in the official repos. Besides that, you just have to know the licensing before you install it.
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For Linux enthusiasts, how do you decide which distro you would like to try out next among the plethora of options that are available? The difference I perceive between majority of distros gets smaller the more I try to understand about them.
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What are the minimum issues I am likely to face using the most beginner friendly distro like Mint for programming and light gaming?
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How customizable is the GUI in Linux Mint specifically? What if I want a start menu like Windows 10 with the app list and the blocky app tiles? What about those custom widgets I see in hardcore Linux users’ desktops?
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I heard there is no concept of file extensions in Linux. How am I supposed to work on my projects that I imported from my Windows machine that do contain extensions?
Bonus: Who creates those distro icons in color coded ASCII in the system info command in the terminal?
For the #4, the file extension can be seen just as a note, a little tag that’ll help you (or anyone else that will receive your file) remember which program you should use to successfully open the file.
From the viewpoint of your computer, in fact, a file is just a sequence of bits and every program can open every file, only it will not be able to find what it expects and actually do something useful with it, just as you can open a book written in any possible language: in most cases you will unable to undestand it, in some others you will be able to read it without any problem.
The “concept” of extensions was than introduced to allow your file manager (Explorer for Windows, Finder for macOS, Dolphin for KDE or Nautilus for GNOME) to know which program to launch when you double click on a certain file through a simple association table (that you can edit in your system preferences).
In regards to Linux you can sometimes read that file extensions are not a thing, but this is just because in the commandline you launch a specific program that you personally point to a certain file, so there is no file manager that needs to guess which app should be launched to open the document you just double clicked on.
That said, I think that should be pretty clear that in a Desktop context (like in a Personal Computer) that double click on a file situation pretty much applies to Linux too, so extensions will be useful and respected by the file manager you’ll find installed in your distro of choice, even if it can use other means when that is missing.
For #1, I’ve made the realization that most distros are lightweight skins or addons on top of another distro. Most of the time, if you start with the base distro, all you have to do is install some apps, change some configurations, and suddenly you have that other distro. It is much easier than doing a reinstallation.
If you filter out all of these distros that only do a little on top of an existing, you’re left with a quite small number actually. I’d bet it’s less than 10 that are not super niche. Fedora, Arch, debian, gentoo, nixos are the big ones. There’s some niche ones, like void Linux and Alpine.
So I’d say if you try all of those, you don’t need to try any more 😁
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I don’t distrohop. Instead I just use what works for me and what I find comfortable.
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You will eventually need to use the terminal. And it will be overwhelming at first. But eventually the learning curve flattens a little when you get more comfortable not breaking your system ;þ
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Can’t comment
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File extensions are, in essence, nothing but a convention. You don’t even need them in Windows, really (You can open a file with any program, for example, you will just not get anything useful from it). So it’s far from a big deal.
For #2,
For gaming, if you use steam, you may not face more than the following:
- game does not work with no well known way to resolve. You can find this out by checking protonDB
- game does not work because it needs to enable some options. Very easy to fix, and you can find the options on proton db for each game.
- does not work because you didn’t setup steam right. You often need to enable proton, which in short is steam’s emulator or windows
- does not work because your gpu drivers did not install. This depends on distro and they should all have a guide on how to do it, but usually it is just a matter of installing something.
For programming, you will love your life because everything programming is way easier on Linux.
I got one!
What constrains access to an rpc socket in the file system? Is it just the permissions of the socket or is there more to the whole process?
E: I originally wrote port instead of socket because it was early lol.
I meant to write socket instead of port because I was tired.
If for example a program can take rpc over a socket which is a file somewhere is it just the filesystem permissions that determine what can be done or is there more at play?
Is plasma big screen really an option? Id like to install it on a desktop to act as a android tv. Launch Stremio, YT and maybe one or two other apps/websites. Easy big tile navigation with remote (flirc).
It’s in dev since 2020. The images hosted on the site are bit for any of my hardware. It says theres a Debian package. Installed that though LMDE but it was horrible. Somone mentioned Kububtu can install it with apt, but its not listed. Think I’ll give up.
Could you point me to a good place to start learning how to troubleshoot? I added Unbuntu as a dual-boot to my gaming rig a while back, and when it works, it’s great. But as soon as I hit an error, I drop back to Windows because I know how to fix shit there.
Just come ask here when you have trouble, and we’ll try to help.
When troubleshooting, the biggest thing is searching the web honestly. But some more things to help you out: look for logs. Linux has loads of logs and sometimes can tell you how to fix the problem.
Logs may not be immediately apparent. Some programs have their own log files that you can look into. Sometimes, if you run the program from the terminal, it’ll print out logs there. Otherwise, you read look through journalctl, although this has logs for everything so might be harder to search.
Another useful tip, particularly for system tools and terminal tools, is manual pages. Just run man ls and replace ls with any command, you’ll get the documentation on how to use that tool.
