If you are the “computer person” in your family, you probably have experience screwing with, breaking, and fixing whatever OSes you have used over the years.
The refreshing difference with Linux is that the software and the people who created it are not trying to prevent you from doing what you want with your computer.
I’m sure this will draw some criticism but I’ve found duck.ai to be extremely helpful in troubleshooting minor issues with my Linux mint installation and recently with accessing and understanding SMART hard drive diagnostic data. It’s very helpful in figuring out which commands could be useful in the terminal and in understanding exactly what each terminal command is doing. Of course finding answers in forums and manuals is still relevant and important but as a beginner, this has been a fast and easy way to get advice.
That makes sense. It cuts through the RTFM bullshit, and gets you a clear answer without unnecessary ego.
Good point. I don’t know why I didn’t think about this sooner, i literally use it for other programming stuff.
I’m still gonna have to dual boot for the foreseeable future, but I force myself to usually boot mint unless I want to play any vr/multiplayer/racing games (which is often, unfortunately). But I do really enjoy how much you can do in linux and learning it.
Same with arson
What’s the Venn Diagram of “childhood pyromaniacs” and “Linux users” look like?
Wait, you guys are getting better? /j
im still stuck in vi hell… help… cannot exit program
All jokes aside, why do people even bother with vi?
It’s powerful, lightweight, and ubiquitous. If you do sysadmin work, remote into a random machine, and need to update a config file, it probably has vi installed already. It’s also extensible enough to use as a full IDE.
Personally, I like it because of how fast it feels and because I can do everything while keeping my hands on the home row of the keyboard.
Software developer here.
I only recently switched from vim to VSCode and I refuse to use any editor without vim emulation.
Regular expressions for quick and efficient and precise search and replace, modal editing which allows me to type di" to ‘delete inside current double quotes’ (needs vim-surround plugin), typing 123gg to go to line 123, press % to switch between any pair of marching braces, brackets or parentheses, and all sorts of such efficient goodies.
It’s not only efficient, vi has a whole concept, a philosophy how you can build quick editing commands. It’s not like remembering random shortcuts like Ctrl-C Ctrl-V. Once you understand the language, it becomes second nature and you can translate something you want to do into 5 key strokes which would need 100 otherwise or would involve the mouse and clicking and selecting etc.
I’m not even that good at vim, I’m just using the surface features.
It has very good reasons why every notable editor provides some form of vi editing emulation.
