You’ll be fine as long as you maintain the system, don’t wait too long between updates, and pay attention to the output when you do. I’m running arch on everything - work laptop, a spare laptop, and a server (nas, Plex, home assistant, etc) - two of which are critical systems for me. I use ZFS for all storage pools, including root, and zfsbootmenu, so I can rollback to a previous snapshot if I ever need to or the system won’t boot.
My personal laptop is whatever the first gen Framework is called. After many, many years doing the “cool” distros, I’ve settled on Mint and don’t really have any motivation to do anything else… I have real work I need to do and can’t be bothered to deal with figuring out weird shit. I just need it to work.
TBH, the only things I use my laptop for anymore is a browser, vim, git, and kubernetes tooling… I barely have any interest in running Linux on a workstation at this point. The only things that really interest me anymore are being run in distributed clusters. Desktop Linux is kinda boring and tedious for me.
Linux desktop will, most likely, fail for: Developers and sysadmins, because not everyone is using Docker and Github actions to deploy applications to some proprietary cloud solution. Finding a properly working FTP/SFTP/FTPS desktop client (similar WinSCP or Cyberduck) is an impossible task as the ones that exist fail even at basic tasks like dragging and dropping a file.
Linux desktop is great, I love it but I don’t sugar coat it nor I’m delusional like most posting about it.
It all comes down to a question of how much time (days? months?) you want to spend fixing things on Linux that simply work out of the box under Windows for a minimal fee. Buy a Windows license and spend the time you would’ve spent dealing with Linux issues doing your actual job and you’ll, most likely, get a better ROI.
Guess what happens whenever people popularize immutable distros as the next hype in tech that will make everything better? You get yourself into a totally unreasonable and avoidable ecosystem just because those systems won’t cut it for most use cases… same that happened with Docker/Kubernetes.
I’ve been saying it for year and nobody cares: nowadays those companies are all about re-creating and reconfiguring the way people develop software so everyone will be hostage of their platforms. We see this in everything now Docker/DockerHub/Kubernetes and GitHub actions were the first sign of this cancer. We now have a generation of developers that doesn’t understand the basic of their tech stack, about networking, about DNS, about how to deploy a simple thing into a server that doesn’t use some Docker BS or isn’t a 3rd party cloud xyz deploy-from-github service.
The latest endeavor in making everyone’s hostage is the new Linux immutable distribution trend. Immutable distros are all about making thing that were easy into complex, “locked down”, “inflexible”, bullshit to justify jobs and payed tech stacks and a soon to be released property solution.
We had Ansible, containers, ZFS and BTRFS that provided all the required immutability needed already but someone decided that is is time to transform proven development techniques in the hopes of eventually selling some orchestration and/or other proprietary repository / platform / BS like Docker / Kubernetes does.
“Oh but there are truly open-source immutable distros” … true, but this hype is much like Docker and it will invariably and inevitably lead people down a path that will then require some proprietary solution or dependency somewhere that is only required because the “new” technology itself alone doesn’t deliver as others did in the past.
As with CentOS’s fiasco or Docker it doesn’t really matter if there are truly open-source and open ecosystems of immutable distributions because in the end people/companies will pick the proprietary / closed option just because “it’s easier to use” or some other specific thing that will be good on the short term and very bad on the long term. This happened with CentOS vs Debian is currently unfolding with Docker vs LXC/RKT and will happen with Ubuntu vs Debian for all those who moved from CentOS to Ubuntu.
Those popularizing immutable distributions clearly haven’t had any experience with it before the current hype. Let me tell you something, immutable systems aren’t a new thing we already had it with MIPS devices (mostly routers and IOTs) and people have been moving to ARM and mutable solutions because it’s better, easier and more reliable.
There is always some solutionizm in tech, but I’m interested in containerzation as a solution to problems I’ve had with configure drift building up on my systems and make it easier to share and work with the community.
The immutable desktop work to me is specifically working on bridging the gap between the UX of a local admin (you know wanting custom configuration and fast reaction to user input) and the industrial expectations of being able to test and track every change and reduce the number of different pieces you need to operate a system.
Hopefully we can lose some of the industries bad habits though. Like “relying on this proprietary piece is ok because we can move faster” or making other excuses as if you are going to have to explain to your boss why some metric looks bad instead of just trying to make the best system or solution we can.
The amount of times my Windows installation(s) broke is just as high as the amount of times my Linux installations had issues. The article you quoted seems to be from someone with more Windows experience than Linux experience.
One example: FileZilla is a capable GUI SFTP and FTP client, but so is nearly every file manager. I can drag and drop files from Dolphin into a fuse mounted FTP, SMB or SFTP folder just fine. Skill issue?
EDIT: omg, I just realised they use WinSCP for deploying applications. It really seems like a skill issue since you can automate that even without proprietary clouds. I can probably replace this person with a PowerShell script, which is even more efficient than them doing their job on Windows.
All operating systems sadly need lots of maintenance nowadays. The main reason I use Linux is that I feel in control of the system and the vendor doesn’t actively try to fuck with my installation.
would recommend linking the phrase “a fuckload of distros” to DistroWatch – give newcomers a heads-up on just how deep that particular rabbit hole goes …
The big advantage for me is that lact runs as a (systemd) daemon. This is more convenient for me than having to autostart CoreCtrl.
A disadvantage of the daemon is that it can’t be packaged on flathub.
Enable and start the service (otherwise you won’t be able to change any settings): sudo systemctl enable --now lactd
You can now use the GUI to change settings and view information.
Is there a community for people that actually know and use linux or is this just like 'programmer’humor where morons can’t exit vim, use a debugger, or RTFM?
How would you define “knowing” and “using” linux? Many people here don’t use Linux professionally and only on the desktop, so they probably aren’t too familiar with all the features of different cli programs.
Reading a blog post is more accessible than reading a man page. I didn’t know cd -, so reading the post was worth it I’d say.
manpages aren’t guides though - they don’t help much in learning new tools, especially complicated ones. They’re comprehensive references, some can literally span hundreds of pages. Useful when you know what you’re doing and what you’re looking for, not great for learning new tools.
Any program should have a man page, even if it only lists all options. My point is that a blog post helps some people to learn about a program. For example a post often highlights the most important options of a software.
This is a great write up. Thanks for this. I may daily drive Fedora as a result of reading it. I recently installed it on an old laptop when I was looking for the lightest distro that comes with gnome by default. I took a liking to it immediately and I now feel validated knowing Torvalds himself is a fan :)
This is pretty useful information as someone that has used Linux off and on (still essentially a beginner). I'd like a bit more elaboration on why it is that Snaps is bad though, as I'm currently using Kubuntu and I haven't found anything seemingly wrong with it on my end.
From what I hear, it just makes things slower, and it’s proprietary. Basically exactly what OP said. It also makes a ton of loop devices, so if you’re working with them yourself it’s kind of annoying.
There isn’t anything wrong. Many of the things that “common crowd wisdom” in the Linux community says are bad are just drama. They get into their own heads about something and lash out at anything that’s different.
I strongly object to this, having used neither on stock GNOME for the majority of my time on Linux. These extensions make GNOME different from intended and not necessarily better, and while beneficial to some are hardly must-haves.
I think I read his blog back then. Telling about the progress his (then) very young son made. How he didn’t install a graphical user interface at first but the kid loved ‘sl’ (the steam locomotive if you mistype ‘ls’), and cowsay and so on. And they had a command-line chat to communicate (or just smash buttons).
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