Don’t get me wrong. I love Linux and FOSS. I have been using and installing distros on my own since I was 12. Now that I’m working in tech-related positions, after the Reddit migration happened, etc. I recovered my interest in all the Linux environment. I use Ubuntu as my main operating system in my Desktop, but I always end up feeling very limited. There’s always software I can’t use properly (and not just Windows stuff), some stuff badly configured with weird error messages… last time I was not able to even use the apt command. Sometimes I lack time and energy for troubleshooting and sometimes I just fail at it.

I usually end up in need of redoing a fresh install until it breaks up again. Maybe Linux is not good for beginners working full time? Maybe we should do something like that Cisco course that teaches you the basic commands?

  • @patatahooligan
    2•1 year ago

    This man page is thirty pages long and has in depth descriptions of all fifty switches in alphabetical order, but all i want is an example on how to do a very simple, common thing with it. And of course, all commands have their own syntax (of course windows isn’t any better, outside of Powershell).

    Yes man is intended to be a manual so it’s understandably bad at being a cheatsheet. Check out tldr or tealdeer. They are similar but I found tealdeer to be much faster for me. Also try a shell with better completion than bash, like zsh or fish. Having better completion will sometimes sidestep the need for a cheatsheet altogether.

    Don’t curl to bash, it’s dangerous.

    You can curl the file normally, inspect, and then run it with bash. All the safety issues of running stuff you found online still apply (is the source trusted?), but you don’t get the issues that arise specifically from piping curl to bash. But most applications don’t need you to curl | bash in the first time because of package managers.