Terminal > Windows Registry.
Web search on the start menu.
🤮
Web in the search, AI in the search, personal assistant in your files, things in your things that you don’t want, didn’t ask for and are struggling to extract.
things in your things that you don’t want, didn’t ask for and are struggling to extract.
We have a word for these. It’s called “parasites.”
I wouldn’t mind that as an optional function, having a single global search field that brings up whatever you are looking for seems really convenient on paper.
Of course not the way msoft does it, where you never get the thing you want unless you are being really precise (like searching for appdata only yielding web results until you specifically type %APPDATA%).
Its even worse than that. It is completely unpredictable and just does what it want. When I type in “Vi”, the first choice is Visual Studio. It will stay on Visual Studio until I have typed in “Visual Studi”. But if I’m a fast typer, and I type in the entirety of “Visual Studio”, it opens Visual Studio Code.
So the fastest way to open up Code is to type “VSC”. This doesn’t work with “VS” for Visual Studio.
I have to type out “Spot” specifically to open Spotify. Typing out Spotify opens edge.
There are also files and programs it cannot find despite having been installed for years, even though I’ve MANUALLY added the paths to the searched directories.
If anyone of you is on Windows for whatever reason and want your mind blown, try downloading a little program called Everything. It can literally find every single program on your computer as fast as you can type. And it looks up exactly what you type in. It also supports wildcard characters etc. This is the kind of behavior I expect from my computer. Sure, make a shiny frontend for casual users who don’t need to see every single file on their system, but please, why do I have to go through third parties to get this experience on an OS that my company paid for, when I can get the same experience out of the box on any free Linux distro?
I honestly thought I was the only one that has those problems. I think the thing that gets me is when you install a program, the installer closes, you don’t know where in gods name it just installed to, so you type the name of the program and windows is like “sorry never heard of it”, so you go to the programs list and it’s right there.
What you mentioned is particularly frustrating because I too will type full program names and it often switches on the very last letter. It’s even more frustrating that the user can’t manipulate the search by typing a few letters, realizing those letters are shared by two programs, and then typing a few more letters to lead it to your program without moving to the mouse. Instead it acts like you’ve added no info and recommends the same thing.
Also if you go to uninstall a program by right clicking it in start or search and instead of uninstalling it presents you with a list of programs which you then have to go find the program again in and then hit uninstall again. Been that way for 8 years now.
Powertoys Run is really good as well, and developed by MS which is just en extra layer of absurdism considering how bad the start menu search is. I mapped powertoys Run to the windows key and have not looked at the start menu since, literally.
Protip
Also if I could pick my search engine rather than getting one of the shittiest ones rammed down my throat
Luckily on KDE plasma this is just a GUI setting.
For about a year or two, windows had an amazing search from the menu that used a blazing fast index search to search files, directories, and file contents locally and almost instantaneously. It was a glorious thing.
I cannot think of a case in which a user would not need to distinguish between web search and file search (other than the convenience of a single click). I do use a unified search on my phone that includes files, apps, and contacts, and if it’s not in any of those, it will launch a web search using the query. That is more than adequate. If it were performing the web search in real time, I wouldn’t be able to easily access apps and contacts, and the results would slow and change while typing.
I remember that, pretty sure it was in win7 or early win10, before they crammed cortana in there and you had to start jumping through hoops to disable all the garbage they added.
As for the search results, I’m not saying the user shouldn’t be able to distinguish them; in fact the way I imagine it is that the results are grouped by category and in a user determined order of priority.
For the loading times I have nothing, that isnt really avoidable with my idea.
Perhaps with some visual trickery that fades or slides the results in over a second or two, ending on the web results. It would give the web search part time to run behind the scenes, seemingly appearing as quickly as the others.
Part of the issue with web results is that it would generally update as you type which is just a bad fit for a general menu search. I personally don’t see a place for it. If you are searching the web, you’re going to open the browser anyway. Maybe some users would use it to navigate directly to common websites, sort of like bookmarks? I don’t know.
That’s why KDE Plasma just makes the searches shortcuts in a similar manner to the !bang feature of duckduckgo. Though it’d be nice if the used
!in the shortcuts alies by default. !ddg is just more reliable than ddg.
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Start menu 🤮
You mean easily accessible shortcut folder?
What is wrong with that?
Candy Crush and Ad-ridden Solitaire
Everything. I don’t have time for accessing it and searching for what I am looking for.
math in start menu is also powered by bing.
“Holy Hannah!” That’s great
“Montana Banana!” also an acceptable exclamation
Normal people (idiots) would rather spend 4 years of their overall life “hacking” with Windows to avoid 30 minutes learning to use a forward slash.
Meanwhile the entire Internet :
https://example.com/Laura/EpsomLaura Epsom? Is that Lorem Ipsum for the barbaric tribes of Britannia?
Specifically these Britons. https://youtu.be/F33HokcX8M0?si=EfpM3X0PxsnmkQnS
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
https://piped.video/F33HokcX8M0?si=EfpM3X0PxsnmkQnS
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
Tfw windows uses forward slashes too. Now let’s talk about how *nix is case sensitive because laziness.
But all fall short of God’s glory that is Temple OS.
I won’t have the perfect OS until I’ve rewritten Temple OS from scratch as Hannah Montana’s Temple, The OS
(Idiots)… Way to roast normal people. Don’t know if they will ever recover. The best bit was putting it in brackets.
You are normal people.
Ready, normal people?
I’m ready, Trekkie Monster!
You are normal people.
For a fact, i’m not normal.
I’ve spent ways less time editing the windows registry than I’ve spent trying to fix all the dual monitor bugs with linux.
Windows issues/changes are a 30 second google search away, linux issues often enough require a 1 hour deep dive into multiple forums.
Have you googled Windows issues? Every problem apparently is fixed by running chkdsk or download a “driver updater”. And it wasn’t exactly good in the past either.
If you don’t know what to search, how to word it, or where to look instead of clicking the first link with “[SOLUTION]” then maybe you shouldn’t be troubleshooting…
Oh come off it. Obviosuly you don’t click those the problem is the Microsoft support articles are outdated/missing and their own forums aren’t much better.
The chaff you have to cut through for Microsoft products is on another level.
It… Depends… Also, you picked the wrong platform to argue against Linux on 😅
The fact that you have to say it depends and wait for clarification of which exact flavor of Linux version and problem it is is just chef’s kiss
Ah yes, no counter arguments here, only patting on the back while everyone takes turns looking down on a different group of people.
Wayland pretty much solves every single dual monitor issue. Only problem now is getting complete Nvidia support and patching out edge cases. I dual monitor all the time, and not just normal dual monitor either, the monitor count increases or decreases on a whim and not a single screen in use are the same. They all have different refresh rates, resolutions, orientations, vrr & hdr support, color ranges, etc. everything works as expected.
Last time I checked (during the installation of Fedora 39), HDR support was nearly non-existent in Linux, with the only options being some hacky experimental support for gaming via Gamescope. Has that changed in the last 6 months? It’s the only thing holding me back from jumping to Linux these days.
KDE Plasma 6 has experimental HDR support. The HDR Wayland protocol isn’t finished just yet. Here’s a good source.
I do technical support (mainly Windows but some Linux) and fully agree; most people just want to project for one reason or another. My main concern is privacy and bloat, but those are easy enough to address on either platform.
You sound like an (idiot); you as an individual are not defined by your OS of preference of all things, and by all means, you are one of the normals.
yeah, and most people dont even know linux exists
thats like calling a kid dumb for not understanding how multiplication works when they havent yet learned it in school
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I once spent several hours at work trying to mount a USB drive to red hat. I’ll keep fighting windows for now.
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On work machines, it may also be on purpose (IT department having restricted the use of USB storage).
Yeah. If that’s not one of the first things IT did when they got hired, then you need a new IT. You seriously can’t trust anyone to not plug a random USB into volatile infostructure.
Also, they could do it to prevent theft of their proprietary code and other things that you’d probably need to sign a NDA to even see in the first place.
I don’t think so; there was a procedure for it and we had root access. It just didn’t work according to the procedure, nor any of the ones I found online. If I remember correctly, it said to mount sda1 and that didn’t work. Another different machine worked with sdb0 or 1. Ended up having to plug a laptop in with a network cable and ftp the files.
/dev/sda1 might have been your computers hard disk, with “sda1” in the instructions being an example.
One thing Linux needs to do is change the perception of how hard everything is compared to Windows. Some things are extremely less difficult on Linux.
Both OS are hard if you don’t know how to use them.
Both OS are easy if you know how to use them.
Linux’s problem is fragmentation. There’s not a single OS that many people are familiar with like Windows. Instead there’s hundreds of different distros that all function in a variety of different ways. Even if a person learns to do something on Mint or Ubuntu, they will be completely lost trying to do the same thing on Fedora or Arch.
hundreds of different distros
And out of those “hundreds” only a handful of them are actually popular and progressing innovation…
As someone who’s distro hopped across a wide verity of distros, the fundamentals are more less the same across all of them. Just go with a popular distro with good documentation and you’ll be fine. If you’ve learned enough from mint to feel comfortable tackling Arch Linux, then the documention (e.g. ArchWiki) will be your strongest asset.
Good documentation is great to have. Here’s the thing though. If you need documentation to use an OS… That just proves that it really is harder for people to use.
Mint and Windows both share the ability to pick it up and use it for the majority of what most people do. Arch is like the textbook example of having to learn a bunch in order to use Linux.
I have used Windows since I was a child and I still need “documentation” to do routine things, because they hide stuff 8 levels deep inside an obscure settings window that requires an arcane ritual to access.
I think Arch is meant for people who want to learn the software - so that you can also choose, control, customize, diagnose, and fix the software!
That said, archwiki is still a great resource on other distros for when something does go wrong, or when it’s not obvious how to do something, particularly when messing with experimental or server stuff.
The Arch wiki is one of the main reasons I use Arch/Arch based Distros. Its so insanely good and after you learned some of the basic stuff and what certain terms mean its a very good resource for doing stuff.
You forgot the entire point of Arch Linux, it was never meant for newbies, bud.
Arch is the easy way, when you compare it to Debian Sid.
I’d argue that there’s like 4 ways that 90% of distros work like and even they are extremely similar to each other. You got Fedora, Debian, Arch, and whatever Gentoo users do when they are in the dark in the basement. The rest are niche and weird stuff that not even Linux hardcore fans know all about. Similarly there’s only two desktop things that matter, GTK or QT. Everything else is us nerds nick-picking.
Ok, there’s also nixOS and the new wave of atomic monolithic containerized whatever distros, but they are like, super new and the resulting system is indistinguishable for the end used from the other 4 main.
Definitely this. I have been eyeballing Linux for years, always intimidated by the CLI and the notion that everything you try to do on Linux requires user research and work first.
Now I finally made the switch a couple days ago, and while it took a bit of tinkering and googling here and there I am amazed how simple, even way simpler than on windows, the experience for a an average user is, particularly with the very beginner friendly distro I went with (bazzite/gnome).
It just works right out the box for 90% of whatever I want to do, configuring it is simply flipping some switches in the software and extension apps. Feels more like setting up a new smartphone than a PC. I didn’t even have to mess with the CLI all that much, perhaps half a dozen times so far, and each time i followed specific steps in a guide or tutorial, or tried out some basic things like file search.
It is good to send new users to something like Gnome they can branch out. I think Cosmic will be a great fit as well. Outside of updates, you don’t have to do too much in the CLI really. But long as you learn some of the basics how to get around and maybe make an alias. I think that will get you by just fine on Linux. I do think people should get users to try less Windows like experiences on Linux. Because a Windows like UI will just make them miss Windows.
I do think people should get users to try less Windows like experiences on Linux. Because a Windows like UI will just make them miss Windows.
That is actually the exact reason I went with gnome instead of KDE myself; I find it much easier to learn a new system than to adjust habits that have formed for years. I will probably eventually switch to KDE when i feel fully comfortable, because it is supposedly slightly better in performance and far more customizable.
I’ve been using KDE Plasma for 5 years now and I’ve never missed Windows UI.
Problem is is that is that too many people insist on doing things the Windows way and they get frustrated because of it. For example, instead of going to the software center, they choose to download their programs from a website, even though that’s not how you’re supposed to do it most of the time. They’ll also spend hours trying to get Windows only programs to run, when there are alternatives available that work just as well.
That’s absolutely true. I made the same mistakes and I got absolutely mad.
I still don’t fully know how to install rpm files lmao, that’s how I learned about Apt back on linux mint, don’t remember what I was trying to install as it was like 15 years ago. Deb files were nice because they did work like a windows user would expect.
I don’t even know what rpm files are xD. I personally havent figured out how to make use of a tar.gz file.
A tar file is similar to a ZIP file. The easiest way to uncompress them is by using your file manager and right clicking.
I know, but since Programms often ship as tar.gz I still have no fucking clue on how to finally install a Programm from it.
Right, the few times I used tar.gz it was basically just a portable app, which isn’t how I think about “installing” programs usually.
Let’s use Tor Browser as an example since that’s one of the programs that typically gets installed with a tarball. Once you’ve downloaded and extracted the tarball, you’ll want to navigate to the extracted files. You can do this in the terminal using CD commands, but I think it’s easier and a little more intuitive to just use your file manager and navigate to the folder that way. Once you’re in the correct folder, you’ll want to right click on an empty space and select “open and terminal.” Now you’ll have a terminal open and it will already be in the correct directory. From here you’ll want to run the “start-tor-browser.desktop” script. To do this, simply type ./start-tor-browser.desktop and you’ll be able to follow along from there.
Running programs from a Tar image typically involves running a script. You just have to change the name of the script to match whatever they have in the directory. Auto complete is your friend here. You don’t have to actually type the entire name of the script, you only need to type the first few letters and then hit tab.
Woops I did actually mean tar.gz files lmao
I always show people single click printer setups.
Linux (and sometimes Android) is the only platform printers actually work reliably.
You have to click? I turn on my networked printer and every Linux machine on my network sets it up whether I wanted them to or not.
Which printer?
An Epson XP-830. Full disclosure: When it was brand new it was a severe pain in the ass because it wasn’t supported by CUPS yet, I had to go out to Epson’s website and download a driver in .rpm fromat and install it with alien. Bought it a couple months before I abandoned Windows for Linux and had to make it work. After about a year CUPS suddenly knew what to do with it and it’s Just Worked™ ever since.
My printer worked out of the box under Windows no driver or anything needed. Maybe I got lucky.
Using Linux isn’t hard. Switching to Linux is hard.
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Imagine being this unironically toxic… in a meme community.
I am convinced you breathe that gas that broke the ozone layer.
Yeah, sure, we like to promote it because it’s… harder??
To be fair, comparing terminal to the registry is not comparing apples to apples. The registry is more like a complicated config file full of barely documented options. Still miserable to work in, but that’s beside the point.
The terminal equivalent to windows is Powershell which id say is much more favorable.
That’s even more complicated than half the stuff normal users on Linux do
I have been using Linux for more than 15 years and would consider myself a semi-advanced user, but that thing in the screenshot - it scares me.
It is nothing but opening regedit, going to the path described in the text, and adding a variable with a certain name and value.
It can even be done by a single powershell command line.
I’m starting to think Linux users like yourself aren’t as technologically capable as you guys claim you are.
Spread the word! Linux is easy to use and for everyone!
- A linux mint user
Why do that when you can just use a GUI?
KDE plasma 6 has a GUI setting for the equivalent feature.Registry editor is a gui tho
A terrible one that’s basically a weird file browser for binary data and crap.
True, but one could say the same about terminal in Linux lol, I know it’s gotten a lot better, but I remember many times having to edit archaic settings via terminal commands because of weird driver issues, don’t even get me started on trying to fix GRUB entries lol
The registry is worse. They maliciously hide basic settings and leave you to figure it out without any documentation.
The terminal is actually consistent, Grub entries are consistent and have documentation, editing plain text is way better than manipulating binary data with a jank tool.
I guarantee that most Windows users, including the techy type, had no clue that the feature described in my post was even possible or existed. Point is, this is not a system level setting, it’s a basic setting that can easily be done with a simple GUI checkbox/button/switch just as KDE plasma has done. Window’s hiding it, not only inside the registry, but even hiding it from the registry as an unmarked option with 0 documention, is utterly ridiculous.Is maliciously hiding it any different functionally for an end user compared to having to look up the setting/command needed to modify a setting?
I am a techy windows/Linux user and I just have used winaero tweaker to disable all the junk (since back on win 7)
Im glad KDE plasma and Linux in general have been making strides at having more easily accessible options
I will add, I agree with your point in general, just don’t think it holds much weight for normies (or even intermediate users) because of the end user experience being functionally the same in many circumstances.
What if I told you you can create and set a registry entry with a single line of powershell
What if I told you I’d rather bash my skull in than use powershell.
That’s ok too. If you’re not comfortable in the cli you can switch to a more gui focused windows distro. Most of the same functionality is there.
Invoke-Command -Sick-Burn $user Write-Output "Nice"Now that’s just uncalled for.
I’ve moved to WinPE for its immutability.
Powershells great tho
You can run a batch file too with your skull, although I do not recommend.
You can install gentoo with a single line of bash
Imagine not having all your system settings in plain text files 😬
What if I told you you can make a backup of a config file and edit a single line in a conf file, all with a single line of bash?
sudo cp config.conf config.conf.bak.$(date +"%Y%m%d%H%M%S") && sed -i 's/^\(CONFIG_NAME\s*=\s*\).*/\1new_value/' config.conf
Wait, this is actually a good tip lol
I even have to tell stupid windows to interpret the bios clock as UTC.
Or set the clock in Linux to local time
Pay no attention to gconf, dconf, GSettings, or whatever else there is.
Or messing with text configuration files in various different formats
I’d take plain text files over the registry any day of time.
GNOME
LiNuX uSeR iNsTaLlInG A BrOwSeR haha
yeah uh…
sudo apt install firefoxsudo xbps-install firefoxsudo pacman -Syu firefoxnix-env -iA firefox
Bro I think you got too many package managers in your setup. Prob this is gonna cause conflicts.
Ahahahah imagine writing a short story to install a browser
Yeah, totally.
Just imagine trying to do this with Windows Powershell, without a package manager like chocolatey to make it simple like linux…
$workdir = "c:\installer\" If (Test-Path -Path $workdir -PathType Container) { Write-Host "$workdir already exists" -ForegroundColor Red} ELSE { New-Item -Path $workdir -ItemType directory } $source = "https://download.mozilla.org/?product=firefox-latest&os=win64&lang=en-US" $destination = "$workdir\firefox.exe" if (Get-Command 'Invoke-Webrequest') { Invoke-WebRequest $source -OutFile $destination } else { $WebClient = New-Object System.Net.WebClient $webclient.DownloadFile($source, $destination) } Start-Process -FilePath "$workdir\firefox.exe" -ArgumentList "/S" Start-Sleep -s 35 rm -Force $workdir/firefox*its four words
Could be three. Just make your only account the root user.
Make it two:
emerge firefox(Gentoo users only)emerge
its four words
By the time you reach writing 4 words on Windows, you’'l have enough mental exhaustion for it to be equivalent to a short story.
sudo pacman -S firefoxis also enough. -Syu is for updating.yay firefox
It’s been 8+ years since I last used Ubuntu on my laptop. I faced massive issues with staying on the latest version of Firefox because apt had a much older version, and installing using the gui installer wouldn’t replace the apt version etc etc. Probably a PEBKAC issue…
But, I do want to know- is this not an issue any more? Will
aptinstall the latest (or almost latest) version of Firefox? Can I update it from the inbuilt update tool in Firefox?When you choose a distro, you generally choose to follow what the maintainers give you as the “latest”.
Or you getsnap/flatpak/AppImage.I, personally, would go with AppImage, probably because I once made some myself and liked them.
Not unless you use the nightly repository.
Can I update it from the inbuilt update tool in Firefox?
Universally regarded as a bad idea on Ubuntu based distros as far as my research goes.
Probably a PEBKAC issue…
Staying on the OTB repos in LTS distros and then complaining about software being slow to update is like staying on the OTB mirror, and then complaining that your download speeds suck.
I’m a Linux noob through and trough, use Glorious Mint, but like… How to get a newer version of VLC, than distributed by upstream is probably the first thing I figured out how to do.
I don’t know why you are being an ass to me. I literally admitted that my lack of skill was the issue right at the beginning.
And then people wonder why noobs don’t want to bother with Linux.
Can I update it from the inbuilt update tool in Firefox?
Universally regarded as a bad idea on Ubuntu based distros as far as my research goes.
Why?
Dunno, but in every forum I’ve looked, people say not to use it, but let the updates go through the package manager. Sometimes even on threats of FUBARing your system. Could be that all these people are giving old info that’s not true, but I never tried it - don’t wanna go on the forums and start the thread with “I explicitly did what people say not to. How fix?”
The reason why is because of dependency hell and general packaging conflicts that could occur. You can go with the tar, snap, appimage or flatpak. If you do decide to use the system level package from a 3rd party, just be aware of the risks and be careful. The issue lay within the difference in standards, the usual target for these companies is Debian using the Debian packaging guidelines, while Ubuntu has their own, Ubuntu and Debian also have different release cycles which can lead to conflict with certain packages.
Perhaps, if you’re needs aren’t met maybe moving to a semi-rolling or rolling distro is best.Edit : typos
Oh, that makes sense, thank you. I’m really happy with mint. Pretty sure switching to the nightly repos got me most of what I need, for the rest there’s PPAs. Rolling release sounds tempting sometimes, trying out Plasma on a distro that supports it is also tempting, but so far I can’t be bothered. Mint seems to just work. :D
paru -S firefox
Voidtools “Everything” is how we mimic a fraction of your power thank-you-very-much.
There are literally dozens of us Everything users.
please elaborate what this is about?
It is a file search engine that replaces your regular earth in Windows.
The everything search engine is flexible and fully indexed file search engine that you can use to find any file anywhere on your network or local storage, instantly, and only a little bit slower than instantly on a very slow old machine.
sounds impressive
It’s what Windows search could have been. I don’t know what kind of black magic they’ve got under the hood there but I think it’s really just indexing and watching the file system for changes so that it can update the index in real time. This obviously doesn’t work for a network resources that change frequently but still, it’s very nice when you don’t know where the hell anything is.
Everything is still far superior than plasma search and I can’t imagine that gnome/other DEs get close to it neither. Fsearch is close but it needs to do a complete resacn every time you use it instead of scanning in the background like everything
Funny enough, the regedit of my work PC was already there with the value set (seems like I already did that a few weeks ago)…
Startmenu is still slower than my personal Linux machine.
Slower than Windows? No hate, that is impressive. What are you running?
Dyslexia moment
Ah I see, yes, probably…
I just tested it on my work laptop and it’s ridiculous how much faster search is now. Gonna propose to implement it company wide on workstations. I mean, I would do so in a heartbeat, but I still want our CIO to sign off on it.
For servers though, I’m creating the policy first thing in the morning. The slow search has been the bane of my existence for years (although admittedly I could’ve googled it many times and never did, so that’s on me).
Literally a KDE setting. In the GUI.
And nobody needs that, otherwise there would be a plasmoid.
