So i really wanted to ditch windows once and for all so iāve tried Linux for a week trying different distros (debian, manjaro, ubuntu, opensuse, mint) and first of all why? Why are there so many distros out there? Whatās the difference between debian + kde and manjaro + kde? They look the same, they work the same. I donāt get it. Also why do things have to be complicated? Iāve installed debian, installed calibre to manage my ebooks, created a library from an existing library on my hard drive (not the one with debian installed), ERROR! All the files are read-only. What??? Iāve followed multiple guides on how to change permissions and finally solved the problem. Now letās restart my pc. files on the hard drive are read only WHAT??? Fuck debian, letās go on manjaro. No problems at all on calibre. Managed to create the library as easy as i did on windows. My question is: whereās the fun in this? Itās just problems, after problems, after problems and i didnāt even start gaming. I mean i tried installing retroarch and importing my saves but of course nothing works. Read this guide, read that guide. Nope. Nothing works. Ok, fuck retroarch letās customize the appearance of my desktop: move some icons on the panel, center this, adjust height, move this on the left, spent 30 minutes tweaking, very niceā¦ kde crashes, all back to default. Letās download some apps. I want as many apps that i already know as possible. Letās see if jdownloader is available for linux. Yep thereās one. Nope, not for manjaro (officially). Thereās a AUR package available. Nice. What do i need to do to install a AUR package? A wall of text on the wiki, 20 minutes videos, yay. Ok letās call it a day. Do i need to live another life to make linux work?
How? Iāve installed Debian with KDE, downloaded the .deb from steam website, learnt to install that using sudo dpkg -i steam_latest.deb, opened the app and iāve been welcomed with a text inviting me to press enter to continue, pretty simple. The program downloaded stuff, steam is ready now. Not bad. Repeated the exact same thing on Debian with xfce, that apparently doesnāt come with a software installer, nothing works. An alert says i need to download dependencies (i know dpkg doesnāt resolve dependencies). Whereās the āenter to continueā? How is this my fault??
Mistake number 1, Debian is not beginner friendly.
Mistake number 2, this is windows mentality, if itās not in the package manager itās too advanced for you for the time being. Beginner friendly distros would have had steam in their package manager.
You could have also double clicked the Deb file, but this is a bad way, dpkg does not resolve dependencies, so you would need to figure those out and install them by hand, which can be tedious at best.
You lucked out, your system had all of the requirements met.
No such luck therez remember when I told you to use the package manager? This is why. Possibly missing something stupid like an i32 library, which you could manually install, but you shouldnāt, youāre making things hard for yourself for no reason other than wanting to avoid beginner friendly distros.
Itās your fault because like Iāve been saying since the beginning youāre trying to use Linux as if it were Windows and getting frustrated because it behaves differently. Trying to do this will be frustrating and you will become angry because nothing works like you expect, but you must understand that itās not that things donāt work, itās that they work differently.
You might be thinking this is stupid, an installer should install everything it needs, right? Nope, thatās a windows mentality, in Linux the main idea is that an installer only installs what itās supposed to, any dependency should be system-wide. Why you might ask? Simple, imagine if every single GUI app had to include itās own copy of the full GUI library it uses, your system would quickly become bloated, not only that but each program would open itās own copy of the library using more and more memory, not to mention the interoperability problems between programs using different versions of the same library. In Linux the standard is for programs to use system libraries, itās the convention, just like how on Windows it is to not (which has its own set of problems). This is why package managers are important, theyāre not just downloading an executable and running it, theyāre doing lots of stuff behind the curtains, all of it can be done manually, but like you found out itās troublesome, so best is to avoid.
If i got a beginner friendly distro how will i learn how to use linux properly?
So if an app is not a package manager iām fucked?
I tried, it did nothing, i went online to search for a solution.
This is mental. This shouldnāt be a thing even for pros. I need 15 minutes to install an app? Sorry i wonāt go out this evening, i need to install an app and god knows what can happen.
Well, yes, of course. Also i read some contradictions in your post: the installer only installs what is supposed to, but it needs dependencies to actually make the app usable. But thatās what package managers do, right? Different apps could use the same libraries but also different ones, so the system could become bloated nonetheless. I donāt see how is this beneficial for the user.
Thatās like asking how will you learn to swim if you start in a pool where you can reach the bottom. First of all under the hood Ubuntu and Gentoo are 99% the same, the main differences are philosophical, almost everything you learn for Ubuntu will carry over to any other distro. But if you try jumping straight into the deep end you will be overwhelmed. I mentioned Gentoo because you usually compile your own kernel when using it, how can you possibly learn Linux without compiling your own kernel!? But the majority of people who know Linux nowadays have never done so, and you shouldnāt need to either. The same applies to all the thousand paper cuts youāre inflicting to yourself for choosing a distro whose philosophy doesnāt include being beginner friendly.
For the time being, yes. But hereās the thing, if everything else is working, figuring out how to install a package manually is simple, but if youāre struggling with 100 other things you will be overwhelmed by it. Tell me, when was the last time you downloaded an .APK from a random site on the internet to install something on your phone? Itās the same thing.
Weird, that used to work last I used Debian based with KDE.
Nope, I could install that in 1 min, because I know what Iām doing, so I know how to install dependencies. But you donāt, so you shouldnāt try to install stuff manually. For starters I would have added a PPA instead of manually installing a .deb, that way the package would get updated and apt would install the dependencies automatically, if that wasnāt an option or I was feeling lazy I would have just installed using snap/flatpacks, or if I had to install using a .deb, I would just use apt to do it to autoresolve dependencies. The fact that half of what I said there sounds like gibberish is the reason why you shouldnāt do it. Itās equivalent of someone who canāt even use Android properly asking you how to install an APK not on the play store, first learn the basics, then you can do complex stuff.
No contradictions, letās go over one by one
Yes, but each dependency is its own package, so when you install one package you might be installing several. But if you try to install one package manually (via dpkg) you donāt get the packages it depends on (because dpkg is a glorified unzip, it doesnāt know how to fetch dependencies).
Exactly, unlike dpkg, apt does know how to install the dependencies, so it would do it automatically.
Yes, but youāre missing the point, a single library doesnāt weight that much, a dozen copies of that same library do. You installed KDE, so you probably had these apps (among others):
The KDE library is 150/200MB, so on Windows each of those application on itās own weights at least 200MB, so probably youāre looking at 2GB for 10 apps that use the KDE library. On Linux they weight very small amount, because all of them use the same KDE library which is installed system-wide. Maybe some of those also use other libraries, but if you install anything else that uses that same library the library wonāt be duplicated the same way it is on Windows, where each installer is self-contained and brings all of the libraries it needs to work.
There are two main advantages:
And the disadvantages are:
So overall it has 2 huge benefits and no downsides as long as you use the package manager.
It was Debian with xfce.
Wasnāt this the OS of freedom? Hmmm
I tried to install ISO image writer on Ubuntu, on my laptop. Went straight to the package manager, no terminal bullshit, downloaded it, open button is greyed out. Fantastic. Stable version btw. Solved by uninstalling and installing another version available on the manager. Linux is literally problems after problems after problems.
Like, download the APK, enable Unknown sources, tap on the icon? I donāt use android since 2017 but iām pretty sure is the same, isnāt it? Not an happy comparison.
When i want to uninstall and app and all the dependencies connected to it (autoremove, right?) is Linux able to tell if some of those dependencies are necessary for other apps and āwhitelistā them?
Yes, youāre also free to shoot yourself in the foot. Do what you want, Iām trying to prevent you from hurting yourself, but youāre free to do so of you so wish.
Ubuntu already comes with an iso image writer.
What program? How did you run it? What are you trying to do, you need to be a lot more specific,
Package managers only have one version, so that shouldnāt be possible.
Again, at least once you didnāt installed it via the package manager, so at least once you shot yourself in the foot. Iām guessing it was the first time, and you installed a snap/flatpacks which maybe required especial permissions for accessing USB devices.
Yes, itās the same, try explaining that to your grandma who doesnāt know how to answer a call and youāll quickly tell her to first learn to use the basics before wanting to enable external sources and installing random stuff from the internet.
Yes, it keeps track of which things use what, autoremove removes things that were installed as dependencies but nothing else depends on them now. So for example if you uninstall Ark and that was the only thing using unzip, running autoremove would get rid of the unzip library.