Help - eviltoast
  • Hypersapien@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    There is a way to get genuine help from a Linux forum.

    Say “Fuck this, I’m going back to Windows”.

  • Graphine@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    I swear it feels like for a lot of the things I do on Linux there’s a GUI app for it, but then if I wanna do something as basic as adjust my fan speed I gotta use the freaking terminal.

    Like it’s always at the worst possible time.

    Edit: I’ve installed a distro on my gaming PC that I really liked, used it on my laptop. Sensors and fans were fully supported. Did not work at all on my PC so I told it to fuck off. It’s just too much of a pain to set up.

      • zelifcam@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        I’ve noticed over the years a LOT of Linux users do no have their system sensors / CPUs setup properly. Mostly missing fan information, missing / incorrect sensors and most importantly improper AMD CPU PSTATE and governors. For example, the past few years I’ve had to ensure I had correct kernel drivers and boot kernels parameters for my AMD 5950x to properly use the correct governor and idle at 500mhz and for correct sensor information and control for my viii dark hero MB.

        • SteveTech@programming.dev
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          1 year ago

          Thanks for this, I was wondering why Linux was using more power (on my UPS) compared to Windows.

          I just added amd_pstate=passive to grub and it brought it down ~15 watts, there’s other options but I believe they require kernel 6.3 or higher. More info here.

          Also I was using this before but for other people, if your it87 based sensors aren’t showing up, frankcrawford maintains an updated it87 module.

        • tetra@feddit.de
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          1 year ago

          With kernel 6.5+, the default is now amd_pstate=active for Zen systems.

          I recommend amd_pstate=guided for 6.4+ though as at least on my machine, this seems to yield the best performance/energy trade-off.

    • SkyeStarfall@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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      1 year ago

      There’s coreCTRL for AMD and apparently nvidia-setting for Nvidia?

      AMD GPUs got more tools due to them being open source, while Nvidia’s isn’t and you are beholden to Nvidia bothering to implement support, which they often don’t.

      Also, idk if I would call fan curves that basic, haha. For the vast majority the default curve is sufficient.

    • Dnn@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Not sure if you’re being sarcastic or serious. I’ve been using computers for decades and not once adjusted fan speeds, so that function doesn’t seem very basic to me.

      • MentalEdge@sopuli.xyz
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        1 year ago

        When building a system yourself, setting up a custom curve is how you get the best balance between cooling and noise.

        I try to choose motherboards that support doing that in the bios, so I never have to worry about it on the OS level.

    • denast@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      I think it’s a matter of habit, really. After using a somewhat minimal Arch install with a WM instead of DE, I get frustrated when an app doesn’t have a CLI version, using GUI now feels less comfy almost

    • Pastor Haggis@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      This is part of the reason I haven’t gone back to Linux for my gaming PC. I had zero desire to try to set a fan curve in the terminal.

        • LonelyWendigo@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          Another thing that’s satisfying is having a machine that knows when it needs to turn on the fan and never needing my input, which would be pretty ignorant on the subject anyway.

    • MajorHavoc@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      I feel that in my bones.

      If I need to do something obscure, like organize your Magic: The Gathering card collection by artist, there’s a GUI on Linux for that.

      But if I want to adjust my monitor, I better break out the CLI!

    • nexussapphire@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      I like cooler control. I hate appimage but I’m on arch so it’s just a quick dive into the murky deep called the AUR.

  • redcalcium@c.calciumlabs.com
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    1 year ago

    Who need GUI apps when you can do these things on CLI:

    • view image: imcat my-image.png
    • watch video, even YouTube: mpv --vo=tct "https://youtube.com/watch?v=BBJa32lCaaY"
    • browse the web using modern Firefox engine: browsh
    • listen to your Spotify playlists: spt play --name "Your Playlist" --playlist --random

    and perhaps many more I’m not currently aware of…

    • imben@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      While this is not a serious post I’m going to take it seriously, so here are some of the reasons:

      Nobody can easily remember the precise file name and if you don’t get the first letters right you’re screwed(did I mention capital letters matter?)

      Wtf is --vo=tct? No sane person is remembering all of that (same goes for the rest 10000 parameters and options)

      Again, waaayyy too many parameters, who remembers their playlist name? There is no autocomplete here, you’re on your sad own in your sad little room with your sad little feelings, because there’s no one there to tell you the song’s precise name, because computers are assholes and don’t hate you.

      So why GUIs? Because they make computers seem like friendly fellas which actually care about you and give you options, tell you the available functions(without deciphering a 50 pages manual if done well)

      • sanpo@sopuli.xyz
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        1 year ago

        If you take it seriously, then at least your complaints should be reasonable, not meme-worthy.

        Autocomplete is a standard feature in CLI nowadays, so no need to remember everything.
        And parameters usually have names chosen to make the most sense and to be memorable (e.g. vo = video output).

        • propaganja@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          Serious person here.

          Can autocomplete fill in a YouTube URL or Spotify playlist name? Can I browse the list of what’s available and filter, drill down, poke around according to my whimsy?

          Or if I’m accessing a local file, how do I find that one video of my cat named VID-004326.MP4?

          Can I autocomplete the parameters themselves, which are betimes lengthy and unwieldy to type out?

          Even if it’s possible, and I’ve mastered every arcane parameter necessary to do it, is it really faster / more convenient than doing it through a GUI?

          Maybe there are good answers to the above questions—I don’t know and would love to find out—but they and many more like them are surely reasonable and far from meme-worthy, or else I’m missing something huge.

          • sanpo@sopuli.xyz
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            1 year ago

            In which situation would you need an autocomplete for YT URL? Online-only services designed for a web browser are crappy examples.
            But anyway, yes, Spotify clients written for CLI do provide autocomplete and filters. I never tried YT, so I don’t know.

            Or if I’m accessing a local file, how do I find that one video of my cat named VID-004326.MP4?

            And how do you do that using GUI? The exact same way, looking blindly and playing random videos (or name the file properly in the first place).

            Can I autocomplete the parameters themselves, which are betimes lengthy and unwieldy to type out?

            Obviously, yes, that’s pretty much the entire point.

            Even if it’s possible, and I’ve mastered every arcane parameter necessary to do it, is it really faster / more convenient than doing it through a GUI?

            That mostly depends on the user, but often: yes, it is. Otherwise we’d all have moved on from CLI ages ago.

            Please don’t take this as a personal attack, but assuming CLI is some unwieldy, outdated idea requiring mysterious arcane knowledge to use effectively only shows ignorance.
            It also hurts new users, because it discourages them from trying it for bad reasons.

            • AnonStoleMyPants@sopuli.xyz
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              1 year ago

              The main annoyance with CLI is that it is not nearly as easy to discover things with it. With a gui you can just click through each setting and see what is what. With CLI you can’t really, you gotta read the manual which definitely can be cumbersome. And even if the commands do try to make sense it is still very common to forget the abbreviation unless you use it often (or write it down). At least I do. I use git semi occasionally and keep forgetting amend.

              I like CLI. But it does have its shortcomings.

            • flop@lemmy.fmhy.ml
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              1 year ago

              And how do you do that using GUI? The exact same way, looking blindly and playing random videos (or name the file properly in the first place).

              Thumbnails? Or maybe searching through find, which is not as straight forward as something like search in dolphin.

              Also “name the file properly in the first place” is such an off putting mentality. I want my computer to simplify work by doing things for me, not need to properly catalog every random video because of the failures of my UI.

              • AustralianSimon@lemmy.world
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                1 year ago

                Name the file properly, say that to a photographer with 3 cameras and an auto export. This is what thumbs and a gui are built for.

                • BURN@lemmy.world
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                  1 year ago

                  Same. When I’m importing 10-15k photos from a 3 day trip (motorsports photography) there’s no way to name all of them effectively. A GUI is a requirement for photo management imo.

    • linearchaos@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Imcat is awesome, Debian and had a news reader with the same name.

      MPV refuses to play any YouTube for me I suspect it has something to do with their new restrictions on YouTube DL.

      Browsh looks absolutely magnificent until I actually try to use it, It seems like submitting form pages or maybe JavaScript is broken

      • redcalcium@c.calciumlabs.com
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        1 year ago

        You’ can try installing yt-dlp. That one is still actively maintained. YouTube also actively trying to broke it, so the one available in debian repo might be out of date.

        • linearchaos@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          looks like it is using DLP backend, didn’t read the whole error

          [ytdl_hook] ERROR: [youtube] BBJa32lCaaY: Unable to extract uploader id; please report this issue on  https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp/issues?q= , filling out the appropriate issue template. Confirm you are on the latest version using  yt-dlp -U
          [ytdl_hook] youtube-dl failed: unexpected error occurred
          Failed to recognize file format.
          

          Let’s hope youtube hasn’t finally ground the project permanently

          • flop@lemmy.fmhy.ml
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            1 year ago

            At the risk of being a ‘works for me’ guy, I tried downloading and playing a couple random videos and it worked on version 2023.07.06. So hopefully yt-dlp is alive and kicking!

    • Hydroel@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Exactly! Takes so much of the pain away. And you know what would be really useful? If those scripts were accessible easily through simple buttons or sliders on which you could click, or something like along those lines.

      • croobat@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        For basic functionality I agree, but I don’t think any dev would put the time and effort to implement buttons (much less pipe into another totally different software) for my extremely specific use cases. In the command line I’m presented with a toolset where I can do so myself.

  • kamen@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    IMO it’s not even a Windows vs GNU/Linux debate (although yeah, maybe more of the users of the latter would be familiar with the CLI), it’s about using the right tool for the job. Image or video editing? Good luck even starting to do anything without a mouse. Installing something? Yup, even on Windows I’d prefer doing scoop install foobar2000 instead of opening a store app or a website.

    • slampisko@czech-lemmy.eu
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      1 year ago

      I used to use Chocolatey on Windows and briefly tried scoop but now I prefer winget. I dunno, it feels… More official? :)

      • joyjoy@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        I made the mistake of installing powershell using the Microsoft store. Now Winget refuses to update it. I have to open the store to do it.

  • MossBear@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    I use CLI daily for git and nano, but it’s far from necessary for the average user. I’m not sure why some people want to propagate the idea that Linux is hard when it’s just a little different than what most people are used to.

  • Coeus@coeus.sbs
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    1 year ago

    Terminal is great until you paste a command from an online tutorial and it doesn’t do what it is suppose to.

      • Rodeo@lemmy.ca
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        1 year ago

        My brother used to constantly try to tell me this. I don’t know how many times I had to compare number of keystrokes to number of clicks before he finally admitted GUI programs are easier even if you already know exactly what you’re doing.

        • IDatedSuccubi@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          It very highly depends on the application

          For something used daily that’s more or less true

          For something that needs very complex configuration like specific ffmpeg transcoding rules and cmake build files - you’d have menus that are 5-10 pages long and full of super detailed selections and forms, while in reality you’d only want to switch on or off one thing, so it would be easier just to write the command

          When I made my small game engine I had a second window full of settings that I could change dymamicaly. After like 2 months of work it was so full of settings it was very hard to navigate even with all subdivisions and layouts properly made

          Also, GUI apps often lack specific or new settings for the terminal app they’re built on

  • ciko22i3@sopuli.xyz
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    1 year ago

    If there is a well written manual or a wiki im fine with using terminal programs.

      • There is also that obscure forum post from 2012 that refers to a post from 2004, from someone who gives some cryptic advise with commands not even in the manual that are outdated from 5 major releases ago but somehow still work. Except for one command tgat you then google and find a forum post from 2016 that it has been renamed, but the functionality stayed the same.

        Anyways you put it all together and your problem somehow got solved, but you seemed to have created a black magic incantation because now a three headed demon has appeared and eaten your neighbour alive.

        • igorlogius@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          now a three headed demon has appeared and eaten your neighbour alive.

          Reminds me of … (a bit on the long side, but i’d say worth the read, if you have some time)

          … I’d still watch it.

        • odium@programming.dev
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          1 year ago

          I have no problems with small man pages. My problems with manpages arise when a command has hundreds of arguments and I need to find a very specific combination.

      • MigratingtoLemmy@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        A manpage is usually perfectly good with how descriptive they are. Not a problem unless you’re really short on time

  • igorlogius@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    At the current time this seems kind of untrue. There are many GUI Applications in the repos, which provide alternatives or are wrappers for existing CLI applications. - Perfect for people who dont yet feel comfortable working with programms purely in a terminal.

    • sorrybookbroke@sh.itjust.works
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      1 year ago

      I agree it’s getting better, but some odd stuff does not exist yet. Like changing swap file size. Still need to use good old DD for that

        • sorrybookbroke@sh.itjust.works
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          1 year ago

          That’ll be useful for a swap partition, but if you’re using a swap file instead of a partition it won’t work.

          To clarify, a swap file is just a file on your hard drive the size you’d like your swap to be. Filled, at the start, with zeros. You still put it in your fstab to mount it but instead of a full partition, it’s just a file.

          This makes it more flexible, and easy to change the size of or turn it off or on during operation, safer to change the size (less steps, less ramifications, lower chance of data loss), or have it expand as needed, but is more restrictive in other features while being a bit slower and less secure.

          Windows has a similar system for swap called a pagefile.

          On linux, while there is a gui to change a swap partitions size, changing the swap files size has no gui. Even though it is, theoretically, a simpler operation. Simply run swapoff, delete the old file, create the new file, run swapon. No partition managment needed, essentially no chance of data loss

  • Spooner@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    As a Windows Infrastructure admin, I love this one… and some of the responses. Perfect.

    /crys in PowerShell

    • WagnasT@iusearchlinux.fyi
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      1 year ago

      powershell is pretty great for windows tbh. I use arch and i love python and shell scripts but on windows powershell gets shit done. PS is great for vmware too. There’s a lot of ‘microsoft bad’ that i agree with but powershell is not one of them.

      • Spooner@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Oh for sure, if we didn’t have Powershell, I really would be crying,!

        Deploy reg fixes to 100s of machines? Check. Check hotfix install status? Check. Audit local admin group members? Check.

        Even our PE build environment is all run off a Posh script.

  • Clipper152@lemm.ee
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    1 year ago

    I think the only reason Windows users are afraid of terminals is that they’re not used to them. They’re not that bad. Most terminal programs have a -(-)help command that shows you what you can do as well, in case you get stuck.

    • Knusper@feddit.de
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      1 year ago

      I do think there is another reason, which is that the Windows CMD is awful. If that’s your only reference, I understand not wanting to learn it.

      • Morphit @feddit.uk
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        1 year ago

        Powershell is pretty interesting but I haven’t learnt much of it and it’s hard to discover commands, arguments and fields within results. All the commands have really similar generic names and cryptic mnemonics. And an annoying amount of them are text based and don’t actually interoperate with the ecosystem.

        I’m more used to slinging around text with bash and the basic Linux utilities so I’m not inclined to learn more than I have to on the Windows side.

        • Knusper@feddit.de
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          1 year ago

          I wrote a couple hundred lines of it as part of my apprenticeship a few years ago and have occasionally needed to deal with small scripts since then.

          In principle, I like the idea of static typing, as I’m a backend dev, but yeah, I don’t particularly want a script to ever become large enough where static typing truly becomes useful.
          I would strongly recommend using a full-fledged programming language instead. In particular, because Microsoft somehow managed to make Powershell feel even more verbose than even C#, which is one of the most unnecessarily verbose languages out there.

          Back then, it also felt quite like a web technology, where many features were only available, if you had the right version combination of Windows, Powershell and .NET installed.

          And of course, the biggest strength of Bash is unattainable, which is that there’s multiple decades of people posting snippets and example commands online.

          Having said all that, maybe for Ops folks, who *have* to script a Windows configuration and aren’t proficient in any proper programming languages, it is genuinely quite useful.

    • HughJanus@lemmy.ml
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      1 year ago

      No one is “afraid” of terminals. We just don’t have spare time to learn a whole new fucking language.

      • Clipper152@lemm.ee
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        1 year ago

        How is that different from being afraid of terminals?

        It’s not like you have to learn everything there is to it at once, you know.

    • RoyaltyInTraining@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      I am a huge noob in the terminal, but --help, man, and basic knowledge about things like grep and pipes make me look like a wizard sometimes.

    • tryptaminev 🇵🇸 🇺🇦 🇪🇺@feddit.de
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      1 year ago

      Let me tell you a story of checking a signature and unzipping an exercise file for uni every week on my linux distro that was named 01_ML-exercise_Bayesian-sep.zip.gpg followed by 02-Ml-exercise-FisherLinearDiscriminant.zip.gpg