Back when I was still on Gnome, I gave this a try and it was great - until Gnome got updated and it stopped working. And then they’d fix it, and Gnome got updated and it stopped working again. So I stopped using it because I couldn’t deal with the constant breakages. I see that they still haven’t updated it for Gnome 45, despite a bug report being opened for it over two months now. It’s exactly because of breakages like this, and extension neglect from the authors, that I’ve stopped using Gnome and switched to KDE.
KDE worked great for me out-of-the-box, so I didn’t install any third-party extensions. The only changes I’ve made is for aesthetics - moved the panel to the top, enabled a global menu and a side dock, for a more Gnome/macOS-style layout.
While that issue isn’t marked as closed, this PR was marked as merged two weeks ago. I honestly feel like a 6 week turnaround on what, from my quick skimming, was a rather major change in how extensions work in Gnome 45, is pretty reasonable. I understand where you’re coming from, but this comment reeks of entitlement.
You’re thinking of just one extension, one instance. Now repeat this for EVERY single Gnome release, for pretty much all extensions (not just this one), and you can understand my frustration. Which is why I’ve left the Gnome ecosystem.
Also, it’s not like v45 came out of the blue, the beta releases were available for quite a while prior to final release, and even before the final, the Gnome developers did warn that about the upcoming extension changes. So it’s not like the Material Shell devs were unaware.
Edit: Also, the PR may have been merged but the updated version hasn’t been released yet. Both the versions on Github and the Gnome extensions site are still the old release.
Tldr and tealdeer in the arch repo are both helpful, but Ill do you one better since someone already beat me to it. I found fish shell’s tab completion with either tool to be immensely helpful if you’re not trying to stay stock standard. But if you’re working on a lot of remote machines you don’t own stick with bash/zsh.
There’s some easy to find fuzzy search and linting for for history plugins that mean if you found it once you can do it again in whichever shell.
Its mostly familiarity, but i don’t think I could function without fzf.
I frequently switch between audio outputs (headset for calls and focused gaming, speakers for other use). I installed an audio switcher applet to make changing that easier and faster. But cosmic is perfect for me other than that.
I’d rather avoid a Linux distro that’s implementing something like ads or telemetry…if that’s even a thing that’s happening?
Fedora has some telemetry, but as far as I know, you can turn it off during the installation. Some desktop environments like KDE Plasma also have options for telemetry but it’s disabled by default. If you want it, you manually have to enable it in the settings.
Should I avoid OpenSUSE
Some software might not be available on openSUSE
or KDE Plasma
Not really, Plasma has a shitload of features and customization options, if many options tend to overwhelm you, you might be better of with a different desktop environment, if you are fine with customization options, Plasma is great for you.
Are there any ‘10 things to do first when installing Linux for the first time’ recommendations?
Why would some software not be available on OpenSUSE? Would it be available on other distros due to a different way they handle packages, or do you mean in comparison to Windows?
openSUSE is rather small, not everything is packaged for it. Arch is the best in terms of software availability, thanks to the AUR.
The only distro that even comes close is NixOS, but I really wouldn’t recommend it for beginners. You can explore it in a VM though or maybe at some point actually try it out. It’s very very different than other distros though.
If something is packaged for a disto, then I can download it using the package manager and it should theoretically be compatible with the distro and the other packages available through the package manager. But if something isn’t available via the package manager, I could still find it online and download and install it, but it might cause issues because it hasn’t been verified by the people who maintain the distro’s package manager accessible repositories. Or I could still install it with flatpaks or snaps and something something container and it should still work? Or might cause compatibility issues?
And you’re saying that AUR has more packages that have been verified for arch than OpenSUSE has with Yast?
But if something isn’t available via the package manager, I could still find it online and download and install it, but it might cause issues because it hasn’t been verified by the people who maintain the distro’s package manager accessible repositories.
Correct. The usual issues that you’d find is missing libraries or other package dependencies, because the versions/packages on your OS may not match what the developer complied their generic release package with. Which is why you normally don’t download random apps from the web like you’d do on Windows, becuse there’s no guarantee that it’d work on your distro (not to mention the security concerns).
Or I could still install it with flatpaks or snaps and something something container and it should still work? Or might cause compatibility issues?
Correct, Flatpak/Snap was invented for this very reason, to solve the library mismatch and dependency issues you might get. Flatpak/Snap works by bundling all the necessary dependencies a program might need, so it doesn’t matter what your OS has. There are some issues with Flatpaks/Snaps, but these are rare and usually they come about due to the sandboxing (Flatpak/Snaps typically don’t have full system access, but “just enough” to get things working. You can manually configure the permissions though if you need to give an app more/specific permissions).
AUR has more packages that have been verified for arch than OpenSUSE has with Yast?
“packaged”, not “verified”, but yes being packaged for a particular distro usually implies that it works, but that’s not always the case. Btw, YaST is just a system config tool, not a repo. OpenSUSE’s default repos do indeed have fewer packages compared to AUR, but that’s an unfair comparison since the AUR isn’t even enabled by default on Arch, it’s something you’ll manually need to enable and even get a third-party package manager like yay/paru etc to access it. OpenSUSE also has third-party repos like Packman, and even an online Software Portal that can be used to search for and install package from several official and unofficial repos. So technically speaking you could probably find everything you need on OpenSUSE (it’s hard to get an exact package count to compare), but I guess it’s not as easy/convenient as simply using the AUR on Arch.
Nix (Nixpkgs) actually exceeds the AUR in the number of packages, according to this page.
And the nice thing about it is that you don’t even have to be on NixOS to use it - in fact, NixOS came much later. Nix started out as a distro-independent package manager, and can still be used that way, because Nix packages do not interfere with your system’s packages.
I’ve been using openSUSE for a while now and haven’t come across any software that was not available for it. Doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist, but I wouldn’t worry about it. It’s a pretty good OS in my opinion.
I thought a more advanced distro, that is still stable, would be good overall. However, not getting new software for a long time sounds quite annoying.
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.
I’m wanting to challenge myself to get much better with Linux, partitioning, CLI, CLI tools
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.
I’ve been considering installing Arch the traditional way, on my X220, as a way to force myself to improve. Is this a good way to learn more about Linux and a Linux system in general?
Yes.
I always hear good things about the Arch Wiki.
It is truly fantastic.
Is there any other tips someone can give me, to sharpen my Linux skills?
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 was even considering trying out Gentoo on my X220, but the compiling times sound painful.
I would not recommend that, updating packages will take ages, it’s not a great experience.
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: youtube.com/watch?v=KKxhf50FIPI. This is actually pretty close to my shell setup. If you want to start customizing bash, check this out: 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Installing arch is a great way to learn. Also don’t be scared of daily driving it, it’s not like it breaks twice a week. More like once a year, which is better than ubuntu in my experience.
Arch is pretty painless on the long run, almost everything is available when you combine AUR and official. I’ve had some package manager issues after not using my laptop for like 6 months but I believe it more a lack for arch knowledge rather than a problem for intermediate / advanced user.
What was frustrating, like in every single imperative distro it that I feel like the system isn’t clean anymore after a while and I end up reinstalling or hoping for another distro.
What I found to daily drive everything rock solid but in a funny way is NixOS, which is declarative. If you have some time and curiosity I would recommend checking how it works. No more distro hoping / installs for me
Manual arch install was one of the best experiences I had on Linux so far. You learn so much (even more when you try to compare file systems for example to find the best one for you) from the wiki. I don’t know if I’ll be switching from it haha. I’m in the same boat as you, wanting to learn it more and more, hell I’m reading How Linux Works book haha. CLI file management is nice, but I still go back to GUI a lot cos it’s easier to drag and drop to another window instead of figuring out the path to copy to. Not gonna use it just for the sake of it lol Unless someone has tips. I’m all ears :)
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