As others have already pointed out, a lot of Linux software is installed from repositories in a standard way, and once you do that, it updates automatically.
However, as you’ve already discovered, there’s more than one way to install Linux software. Repositories are still the most common way, but installing single .deb’s (Debian based distributions) or .rpms (RedHat packaging format) is still there and there are more like Snap, Flatpak and Appimage. You can also often just download the source and compile it yourself. It’s a very diverse ecosystem, not like the controlled worlds of WIndows and Mac.
In this case you can download the .deb file, and pretty sure you can even install it through the file manager, just like in Windows (I don’t use Ubuntu, but I think it will just start GUI installation if you double-click on a .deb file).
But lot of things in Linux are still done through the terminal, like changing configurations and, yes, installing things.
Getting used to it takes a while, especially if you’re not used to modern Windows administration through PowerShell.
The important part is trying to figure out what each of the commands do and that the output actually means. Software that supports Linux normally has very clear instructions (like in this case), but it does require willingness to change habits, technical curiosity and some trial and error (patience). It’s not quite as polished experience as the commercial OS’s. There’s still a lot of rough edges for the user.
Put a shell script in your PATH named inkscape with the following content:
<span style="color:#323232;">#!/bin/sh
</span><span style="color:#323232;">
</span><span style="color:#323232;">flatpak run org.inkscape.Inkscape
</span>
Note that you can use a local folder in your home directory to house small executables and scripts like this, so you don’t have to touch your system config. I generally recommend using something like ~/.local/bin and add it to your PATH via your Shell’s RC file.
<span style="color:#323232;">flatpak run org.inkscape.Inkscape "$@"
</span>
To forward all of the arguments to the script. Note that this might be a bashism, so you might need to change your hash bang to /bin/bash as well. Double check though.
(An easy way to check if something is working as you assume is just prepend the line with echo.)
hmm, not sure why baca would need so many requirements. I installed baca using pip as per (github.com/wustho/baca), on a hedless ubuntu based server. Maybe on Arch it would need to install / update python packages?
You could also try epy (github.com/wustho/epy) which is also a terminal based epub reader.
I’m a firm believer that the vast majority of things we needed for software were implemented by the 2000s.
Usually, people who don’t understand what they’re doing will overcomplicate things to cover-up their misunderstandings. I think choosing a technology before you have a use-case is one of these examples.
“that thing you used to do is now impossible to do consistently across different implementations, if at all. But it’s all ok, because we have decided it’s not our responsibility!”
That is not what users want to hear. From a user’s point of view, it is broken.
I see what you’re getting at. It’s a matter of perspective, I guess.
If you presented someone with a list of features from two similar but different pieces of software, they wouldn’t say software b is broken because it’s featureset is different from software a, right? But I acknowledge it’s not that straightforward. It’s more like telling them software b is going to replace software a that you’re currently using, get ready to say goodbye to some features.
I still don’t consider wayland broken, but I understand argument that it is.
yes, if i combare kicad with blender, neither is broken because they have different features. But also, nobody is telling users that kicad’s days are over and it should be replaced by blender. If they did, and a user wanted to design a circuit board, the user is out of luck. The user is told that it is a replacement. From the user’s point of view it most definitely is not.
The probeem isn’t just that wayland doesn’t do everything x does. But that users are told that it will replace x, deal with it and quit complaining.
We have to keep in mind that the fact that we know what wayland is in the first place puts us squarely into the “technical user” category, not regular users. Regular users are the ones who don’t even know (nor should they have to care) what wayland even is
I’d rather get three mid range 1440p monitors , stack two horizontal and the third over the two horizontals but offset. It would probably still cost less than one of those ultrawides.
I don’t see why we need convincing that Wayland’s better. Most Linux users either use it currently or are possibly looking to switch in the future. The other people who are not are likely going to use X for eternity
I think real X11 fanboys are almost non-existent. Wayland wouldn't be so rejected if it wasn't that it still has a lot of compatibility issues, I think most people just want everything to work and don't care whose fault it is.
Yeah I don’t get why some people would think sticking to X is fanboyism. Nobody likes X, let alone love it. Most people’s relation to X is pragmatic, it’s “it works and does everything I need”.
If anything, fanboyism is telling people they have to use Wayland when it doesn’t yet work for what they need it to do.
Just keep improving the damn thing and people will switch when it’s ready. There’s no convincing needed.
I remember some 10-15 years ago when I’d look at the y windows website every couple of months hoping for some news of progress, simply because I was sick of x11 being so crappy. I hated it, it was so fiddly, it didn’t work right, I just wanted something that worked.
So you can imagine how happy I was when Wayland started taking off. Here was the promise of something better, something that just worked, it sounded amazing. And yet, today I’m still running xorg and I will be for the foreseeable future.
The reason is simply that in the time passed xorg just became usable, I don’t have to think about it, it works reliability, it has all the features I need and I hardly ever have to touch it. Meanwhile, I log into my Wayland session and instantly 3 or 4 of the applications I use daily either don’t work or act weird. I go and try and fix the issues and I’m told to just accept it, or that I actually don’t exist because Wayland works perfectly for everyone. And I’m not even using an Nvidia card, just plain Radeon.
So I quit and go back to what works. Maybe in a couple of years, until then: no thanks.
Just this morning I was having issues with a wacky dual-boot install with NixOS and Windows sharing an EFI partition, and quite interestingly ChatGPT and I were able to troubleshoot the process and get it resolved in under half and hour. I was really impressed by the specific configurations it was giving me for my /etc/nixos/configuration.nix , so that is also another resource you may consider leaning on when you run into walls in other documentation sources.
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