But how do Linux users handle the crippling loneliness of their operating system not pestering them with ads on every update? How else can you know if your computer loves you? Where is the warmth of the corporate embrace?

Guess what I did last night? I spent 4 hours working on getting PSD, XCF and KRA thumbnailers working in Mint. It took custom scripts to be written and each one required different commands because KRA files are just a zip file so you have to extract that and grab one of 3 possible preview files that might exist inside that zip and make that the thumbnail, while in gimp files you cant just use convert command, even convert[0] will only turn the first layer into a thumbnail and thats completely useless. And to top off all that, I finally got thumbnails working in gnome/nautilus but Only the XCF thumbs will generate in cinnamon/nemo (I still have no clue why that is) but I cannot just switch to gnome because there is technically no gnome variant of Mint so gnome doesnt work 100%… etc etc etc

Linux is still not there, this stuff should be simple and automatic. If a 20 year professional took 4 hours to get this far, the average user will give up immediately. Yes Mint is still my daily driver, but seriously thumbnails should not be this much work.

Removed by mod

It’s not a big deal via terminal but for me and probably the average user, a decent update UI is superior. I want my computer to remind me like once a week and then update with one or two clicks. Updating via terminal does not appeal to me.

Two clicks with the update thingy on Mint, if I could never have to use the terminal I might be tempted to uninstall Windows completely.

“Hey computer, I don’t like when you ask for that confirmation, just do it”

“Oh, -y, I got you”

plus it makes you feel like a hacker for a few seconds

New copypasta of 2025: I use Arch btw I use Mint btw

Getting me silenced by the mob of mods is just what a dirty Linux user would do.

Removed Comment: Windows has winget upgrade --all. Fucking cultists.

They were there long before the browser. The problem is that they should work in the browser but they don’t.

You need a purpose. For instance I needed to copy and edit config files for a bunch terminals my company has deployed last week. Instead of manually copying the template directory 80 times and editing the 2 lines that needed to be changed in the parameter file for each one I used powershell to extract the name and id for each terminal from the log files and create copy of the template directory for each one, then replace the terminal name and id in the parameter file of the new directory with the ones extracted from the logs. This would have taken me all day to do manually and it only took about 45 minutes to write up the script and run it. I did have some prior experience with doing this kind of thing but hadn’t tied them all together lile that before so i learned some stuff.

I literally only use it when a how-to guide explains exactly what to do and why. Then I forget what I did and look up how to do it again six months later. I’m fine with this arrangement, though I will prefer to have to use it less.

Maybe you need to have some sort of objective before you get started, otherwise yeah, you don’t have much to do in the console :) In my case I only use linux for work, so I’m ssh-ing away and running commands to compile this, apply that, show me the logs for this, grep that, etc.

What Ctrl+Shift+(do a little spin)+Ins isn’t intuitive enough for you??

Jokes aside, that’s understandable. I guess I’ve just become used to it, but there must be some way to override the default binding if you don’t like it… Personally I like the kitty terminal’s approach which uses mod+c/v for copy and paste in the terminal like you’d expect, while still leaving ctrl+c/v for sigint and verbatim respectively.

middle mouse click is like magic, but CTRL-SHIFT-C/V usually works

Many terminals let you do that, just change keybinds. The issue is Ctrl+C is used to stop/kill a running command.

At the same time if there’s a software I don’t use often I’m not wasting my time updating it every time I update everything else. So for example I haven’t played a game on the Ubisoft launcher in about a year, next time I do it will update to the current version from last year’s version and that will be it.

i mean its just a matter that app makers avoid the windows store. the only companies i recall I remotely use on the windows store are nvidias control panel (which is ironically being depricated for nvidia app and updates itself).

companies just don’t want to use the windows store aome because of the fear at some point if microsoft wants to take a cut of profits, they could strong arm it like android/ios/game console OS. Linux has the advantage that people will trust that repositories wont be paid.

They do, several third party options and of course the Microsoft store too. It’s the users who are stuck in their old ways, which ironically is the harder way. Weird.

With .tar.gz software usually the steps are:

1. Extract the archive
2. Find a file with the .sh extention - that’s the shell script. It will most likely be named something like install.sh
3. Make it executable - by right clicking and enabling it in the properties or by opening a terminal in this folder and using a command:

chmod +x install.sh

4. Run the installer in the terminal:

./install.sh

It might ask you to run it as root and quit. In that case put a sudo before the command above and it will ask you for your password

sudo ./install.sh

And tbat’s it, installation should begin. Follow the instructions in your terminal.

Imma just update: I have given up and wiped the drive to use it as a game drive for windows again. Each turn just gave hours of headache and I’m just done trying.

Installing Mint took over 3 hours of searching obscure errors with solutions that were way too technical. In the end having gone from 5pm to 11pm just to get Mint dual booting. Got it installed and got teamspeak and stuff installed, after a bit too long having to find out but that’s fine. Spent 4 hours trying to get steam games to run, not a single working boot and couldn’t find anything online.

I might try again once I get my new AMD based game pc whenever I have budget for it. But for now, nah this took too long and took way too much effort. I just started a new work project which has already been exhausting and I just plain don’t have the energy to bother with this. Its not plug and play like people like to say online.

Can’t say for TeamSpeak, but will say for Linux: setting everything up and figuring out your steps in edge cases is the hardest part. Once you figure it out, it gets so much easier.

https://flathub.org/ is a great way to manage linux apps/programmes. Very easy and several other benefits

next step to full on conversion is making your own dotfiles repo :)

I have to check out some of these!

As for the browser, how does it display sites? Does it display images/video/play audio or is it mostly for just the text based stuff? How about ads/adblockers?

If you’re looking for a full list of these kind of navigation shortcuts, they all come from readline so read the man page for that. Or just look up the basic navigation of emacs which is what readline is mimicking.

• alt-. also pastes the last argument of the previous command (useful if you need to modify it a bit)
• instead of any shortcuts starting with “alt” you can also press “esc” followed by the second key, e.g. pressing “esc”, releasing it and then “a” is the same as pressing “alt-a” (useful if you have only one hand available, or if alt is not availalble)
• if you put a space before a command, it will not be saved in history (useful sometimes, e.g. if you pass a password directly as an argument)

Makes me realize just how illogical and bad these shortcuts are

What’s the shortcut for scrolling the terminal?

Saving this! Absolutely gold, thanks for writing it up. You’re what makes the Linux community cool. ❤️

tab completion works in more places than you might expect

I’ve found tab to be such a nice “please give me a hint” button.

• Bonus tip : Sometimes you won’t get auto complete because there’s too many possibilities and the computer can’t be certain which one you want. Hitting tab multiple times will show the possibilities, so you can type in enough characters to remove ambiguity, hit tab again, and boom auto complete!

…That was a terribly convoluted explanation I’m sorry. Just try hitting tab multiple times for fun if you’re stuck it’s kinda handy. Lol

Nice list, TIL about Ctrl+U and Ctrl+Y.

If I may add, Ctrl+X into Ctrl+E opens $EDITOR to edit the current line.

I’ve been using the commandline for so long but was always too lazy to look up the rest of these commands after ctrl+a/e and ctrl+r THANK YOU!!!

post this commend again and again! There’s always lazy idiots like me who will be helped that way!

Saved! Thank you so much.

I’ve used Linux full-time since late 2020 and I never knew about ctrl+y and ctrl+u.

I’d also like to contribute some knowledge.

aliases

You can put these into your ~/.bashrc or ~/.zshrc or whatever shell you use.

###
### ls aliases
###
# ls = colors
alias ls='ls --color=auto'

# ll = ls + human readable file sizes
alias ll='ls -lh --color=auto'

# lla = ll + show hidden files and folders
alias lla='ls -lah --color=auto'

###
### other aliases
###
# set color for different commands
alias diff='diff --color=auto'
alias grep='grep --color=auto'
alias ip='ip --color=auto'

# my favourite way of navigating to a far-off folder
# this scans my home folder and presents me with a list of
#    fuzzy-searchable folders
#    you need fzf and fd installed for this alias to work
alias cdd='cd "$(sudo fd -t d . ${HOME} | fzf)"'

recommendations

ncdu - a shell-based tool to analyze disk usage, think GNOME’s baobab or KDE’s filelight but in the terminal

zellij - tmux but easy and with nice colors

atuin - shell history but good, fuzzy-searchable. If you still have the basic shell history (when pressing ctrl+r), I cannot recommend this enough.

ranger - a terminal file-browser (does everything I need and way more)

For me the Home/End keys also go to the start/end of a line like ctrl-a/ctrl-e, and ctrl-tab/ctrl-Tab move the cursor fwd/back a word at a time.

I setup open SSH on windows so you can swing it both ways!

My main gripe is it runs cmd.exe and I gotta powershell to jump into that. If you auto powershell it doesn’t work right.

Times like this make me miss reddit gold

When my computer starts to run out of ram and I immediately try and switch into the CLI so I can launch htop and kill the offender

amen

Amen. Hallelujah! AMEN! Ooh yeah brothers and sisters, AaaAAaAmen!

PS: this is not a cult BTW

I was a Nobara user and I’ve gone back. Too many updates that Bork the DE/bootloader (TBF it’s not as maintained as AUR) As for fedora… Random NVidia update borked the system too… But I’m resigned as my GPU being cursed rather than the distro being the isue

It is going to make to want to go back

Someday

When you least expect it, and have a deadline

you’ve seen top, get ready for btop