Post by @jk@mastodon.social

RE: https://mastodon.social/@jk/117477882756050251

i've literally just had to look this up again. i've had to look it up every 2 weeks for the last 17 years

i can remember places i've been to (or only seen in photos) decades ago, and navigate them successfully. i can describe images i saw once when i was a kid. but i have literally no 'verbal memory', i can't remember movie lines, or lyrics to any of my favorite songs, and when it comes to programming, and terminal commands? well. i've been using linux distros for almost 20 years and still, daily, look up things like "linux how to find files with extension". it is NOT a good operating system for me

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mcc

@mcc@mastodon.social 26 min. ago

@jk instead of learning any of the unix commands or flags I simply got good at rapidly writing whatever tool it was I wanted to run in perl

josef

@jk@mastodon.social 4 hr. ago

on my windows install i hit "ctrl-alt-E" and it opens the program Everything. i type filename and the result appears instantly

on linux i type "find . --type f filename" and the syntax is wrong. so i try "-type" and thats wrong. so i type "man find" and theres a wall of text about symbolic links and shit. so i go into google and type "linux find command syntax" and twelve pages of slop results come up. i click one and it slowly loads. theres a wall of text which is even worse than the manpage

Michael Dwyer

@mdwyer@mastodon.social 32 min. ago

@jk Well, there's the "locate" command... But it has to have been installed, and it's indexer "updatedb" has to have run after being configured correctly, but make sure you are using the right docs, because there's also mlocate and slocate and plocate that do the same things but differently, and by the way if you're using cron then the config is in a different place than if you are using systemd timers and...

...and hell yes there are reasons people don't use Linux.

viviridian :viv_wink:

@viv@snoot.tube 4 hr. ago

@jk Everything is incredible tbh. best file search tool i have used ever

josef

@jk@mastodon.social 4 hr. ago

@viv it might be the best computer program that exists. there's got to be better ones, but i can't think of any

josef

@jk@mastodon.social 4 hr. ago

of course, i eventually got this desktop linux program which attempts to be a clone of Everything. it's just like the windows one, but worse in every minor way. the search itself also isn't very fast, or up to date, because NTFS has the big brain clever index, and linux file systems don't have that, since linux isn't YET as technically advanced as windows was 25 years ago

josef

@jk@mastodon.social 4 hr. ago

the point of linux, for its users, is that you don't even know what software is installed on your computer because there's so much of it, always changing, and you'll never understand how it works. taming the software, cutting through it with a machete, laying paths and pipelines to make your life slightly easier later on, pruning the undergrowth and fixing stuff as it inevitably decays and is overtaken again by foliage, thats the whole point. imo its not a usable workspace, its a nature trail

Ret

@ret@furry.engineer 4 hr. ago

@jk when ps aux | wc -l on a new, clean install is over 100, is there even any hope of understanding it anymore?

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josef

@jk@mastodon.social 4 hr. ago

the fact that i have to put a series of xrandr commands in some file somewhere (not my .profile, maybe xinitrc, who fucking knows at this point) which must run at the exact right time, because both of the GUI apps to configure display settings are broken in different ways that cut off part of the screen when my laptop is connected to a projector? that is indiana jones cunningly placing a bag of sand on the weight-sensitive pedestal. this sense of adventure and drama is what the linux users crave

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