KDE Discover gets update to prevent you breaking your Linux system

Quoting: Purple Library Guy

Quoting: pleasereadthemanualChromeOS is a good example of how usable GNU/Linux can be with the right motivation. Android is another example.

My wife has a Chromebook. I actually think it's a pretty bad example.

I've never used the operating system or one of the myriad devices, so I couldn't say. I also haven't used an Android device before.

These are just opinions I've heard repeated often—though I've never been a fan of Google's user interfaces. My question is: are there any GNU/Linux distributions with a better user interface and experience?

Quoting: HolzkohlenWow, some of you actually complain about Linux becoming more user-friendly. How have you not outgrown this edginess? I was like that as a teenager. I cringe hard thinking back on that time. Maybe you should try something more obscure than linux eh? Have you heard about the anti-mainstream super edgy OpenBSD? No apt nor discover you need to worry about. And I guarantee that Linus won't even consider using that ever. How does that sound?

I've seen so many of my Linux friends switching back to Windows because of issues like this. And I would have too if I wasn't such a stubborn idealist on this. So, is this the way to go, Linux staying in it's quit niche, not ever being noticed by the game industry, because you are simply not able to install Steam on one of the most popular Linux distribution?

And in the next thread we as Linux users are crying again for market share and more attention in general... how does that fit?

Quoting: Rooster

Quoting: BeamboomIf you just want to play Windows games, install Windows.

No.

That is not an option for me either! Not anymore, with all the comfort we now have to play Windows games in Linux.

Quoting: pleasereadthemanual

Quoting: Purple Library Guy

Quoting: pleasereadthemanualChromeOS is a good example of how usable GNU/Linux can be with the right motivation. Android is another example.

My wife has a Chromebook. I actually think it's a pretty bad example.

I've never used the operating system or one of the myriad devices, so I couldn't say. I also haven't used an Android device before.

These are just opinions I've heard repeated often—though I've never been a fan of Google's user interfaces. My question is: are there any GNU/Linux distributions with a better user interface and experience?

Well, it depends. ChromeOS has an excellent user interface and experience if you want to browse the web and do the occasional minimal document but only in places with Wifi, and nothing else ever. The moment you want to do something as advanced as . . . save a file locally, it sucks. Its software ecosystem is pretty much limited to the browser and Google Docs and whatever else you can do directly on the browser. And we recently found out, when it told us menacingly, that it stops doing updates after a few years--the better to encourage you to buy a new Chromebook, I guess. There's no upgrade path, you just have a computer that's going to gradually get more insecure until you stop using it.

If you want what a typical Windows user would consider a normal, as in full-featured, desktop or laptop computer experience, where you can use different kinds of software and play games and stuff, Mint is way better than ChromeOS.

Quoting: Purple Library GuyI really don't understand what all this argument is about. Like, there are people actively upset about it being more difficult for the attempt to install a package using apt to result in the system getting hosed. Like they're actively mad because in order to do that they will now have to check the apt man page or something and add a "let it hose my system" option when they do the command, instead of just typing "Do what I say" when apt tells them they're about to hose their system.
These are the same people who say nobody should be using the command line unless they have some idea what they're doing . . . which I would normally figure at a minimum would involve having given the man page a once-over before starting to use a command, which would mean those approved-of people would be in a position to know they needed to add "--let-it-hose-my-system" or whatever to the command if they want to let it hose their system, so the change isn't really a barrier.
These are also the same people who say Linus was an idiot to type "Do what I say" in the first place. So they're saying that the new fix isn't going to stop anyone, who isn't the kind of idiot they don't want using Linux, from doing anything, ever. And yet it's terrible.

Really, WTF?! This is incredibly silly, even if you're going to be a "Linux should only be for techies who want to learn by breakage" gatekeeper. There is no use case where a Linux techie learning how to use the system should have as their objective to make their system become headless by trying to install a wrongly packaged package. If you want to delete the GUI or some other important part of the system, there are various ways to do it and that isn't one of them. This isn't a case where you've got a command some people will want to use to do a certain kind of thing and it is now harder for them, this is literally a thing nobody should ever do and it is now harder for them, and this is a problem because . . . a good operating system should have a nice supply of gotchas, so the users get hair on their chests? What?!

Here is the way I look at it.
'Yes, do as I say' requires you copying that exact wording to proceed.
With them changing apt to except a --nuke-me option, some asshat will now put that in a wiki of 'how to do things on the command line' and someone will just copy and paste the command and nuke their system and say Linux sucks. Which is more or less already what Linus did, he copy / pasted a command, didn't read what the repercussions were, and just told it to 'do as I say'. The fact that apt has worked this way for at least a decade, and then someone comes along and ignores the warning then is shocked it nuked the GUI... I think points more to Linus being dangerous to himself and others, than it does Apt being broken.

Quoting: FrawoAnd in the next thread we as Linux users are crying again for market share and more attention in general... how does that fit?

That's exactly it. You can't have the "Year of the linux desktop" and also complain about some noobie safeguards. No one is forcing them to use discover and I bet they were never going to anyways. Some just like to complain.

Quoting: NociferJust a lucky guess here, but you sound like a web designer or at least an experienced UX guy. Kudos to you, we desperately need more UX guys in the open source part of the world.

Correct, graphic designer / web developer mainly in my work. =)

Another video is interesting :-) (they have it on floatplane, free access on youtube later)
I hope that nvidia react same way as APT devolepers :-D And try fix what he criticize :-D
In another point, some script which he used has already been updated and now has instruction how run script :-)

Quoting: AussieEeveeIs it necessary to be a Linux elitist?

Yes, the warning was tiny. Two lines, to be exact... In among a dozen lines of white noise. A novice user is not going to read all that white noise.

Linus being an influencer doesn't make his problem invalid either. This was a legitimate problem, and I'm glad to see they fixed it.

I don't consider myself to be a Linux elitist. However, I do have a problem with characterizing the apt-get installation that Linus encountered this way. When you are using a text based tool, then you have to expect the output to be text. There is not going to be some fancier way of telling you what's going on when you type something in. The warning was repeated. What was going to happen was specifically laid out. Linus had to override a safety protocol to do what he did.

The only part about what happened that gives any excuse to what Linus did is that he had apparently never run apt-get successfully before, so he had little information about what was normal behavior. The odds of this happening to someone the first time they run apt-get are incredibly low, so he got very unlucky.

Of course there were a number of things that he did badly to get to where he ended up.

His first mistake was that when he tried to install Steam from the GUI and it didn't work, he had a choice of coming to the conclusion that either the package was broken or that the system was broken. He decided it must be the system, which is the less logical conclusion.

So once he decided the system was broken, he tried installing the package using the more technical of the command line interfaces. What would apt have done if he had tried to use it? I'm not entirely certain, but he chose apt-get instead, which will tell you very specifically what's going on and then will do exactly what you tell it.

You say there were a dozen lines of "white noise." I entirely disagree. There was no "white noise" whatsoever. apt-get told exactly what was happening. There were lists involved, and you don't have to read every item on a list to get the idea, but that's not the same thing as "white noise."

I can remember when I first started using apt-get in 1999. If I went to install a package, then I didn't expect there to be a list of packages that would be uninstalled. If there was even one package listed to be uninstalled, I wanted to know what it was before I would proceed with the installation. If I saw a list of 88 packages to be uninstalled (it told him how many), there is no way I would just proceed with an installation.

I don't think it's unreasonable to expect to have to read text when you are using a text-based program. Does that make me elitist?

Now, to someone who was even slightly experienced using apt-get, it would have been painfully obvious that what Linus had to type in to proceed was overriding a safety protocol. Since he had apparently never installed even one package that way, he had some excuse for not realizing this (though to be honest, I can't imagine a time I wouldn't have realized that having to type in a whole sentence with an exclamation point at the end was overriding a safety protocol).


Last edited by CFWhitman on 24 November 2021 at 2:10 pm UTC

I think since of the defensiveness people have around these charges is just how knee jerk they are.

We wait sometimes 9 months long for certain bug fixes -_-
We make feature requests in the hope we'll see new features added in the next few years.
We patiently wait for Wayland to mature...

But then a Windows-centric YouTube celebrity had a relatively minor problem compared to what we're used to, and we start to see just how quickly things can change for us.
Add to this:
That person is not even a Linux user.
They're not going to be a Linux user.
To a lot of us the problem could have been easily avoided in the first place. (The "problem" wasn't a problem, so to speak).

The arguments or responses I'm seeing made in here is very much understandable given the circumstances.

It's a matter of principle which gets people backs up.