• 2 Posts
  • 57 Comments
Joined 1 year ago
Cake day: June 23rd, 2023
  • gomp@lemmy.mltoLinux@lemmy.ml•Anyone knows if it's possible to color command line commands as you type them (kind of like an editor)?
    202·
    1 month ago

    beware fish shell syntax works drastically differently from other POSIX shells

    Come on, that’s scaremongering :)

    On interactive, day-to-day use, fish syntax is basically the same as bash or any other shell: you type your commands, hit enter and the command is run. Only when it comes to scripting (or writing complex one-liners, or copy-pasting stuff from the web) are there appreciable differences. In those cases, until one is accustomed to fish, running the command/script in bash is still an option.

    Let me be 100% clear: yes, fish will complain if a wildcard doesn’t expand to anything, and there are other minor things that may impact typical interactive use. I’m just saying there is basically zero learning curve if you want to try fish and that you can just fire up bash if you hit a wall in a moment when you can’t afford to investigate because you need stuff done.

    If I had to say, the most hassle with fish is that people assume you are running POSIX shell and so you have to know how to adapt instructions to your shell. For example, someone may say “add expor SOME_VAR=some_value to your .bashrc” and you need to be able to translate that to fish. Also, there is very specific software (in my system, it’s just sdkman, an utility that manages which java development tools are installed/available in a shell session) that only works in POSIX shells and needs some adapter for fish.

  • gomp@lemmy.mltoLinux@lemmy.ml•A strange "terminal emulator" idea I got, tho I bet this exists
    7·
    1 month ago

    I bet that doesn’t exist: nobody would put work in a program that lets just restricts what you can do with zero usability advantages (ok someone might)

    If you fear you might run unsafe commands just save whatever you are comfortable running in scripts and restrict yourself to run those instead of manually typing commands you don’t fully remember/understand.

    BTW: topgrade will detect what needs updating in your system (your distro’s package manager, flatpak, python stuff, … whatever) and update all the things

    BTW: “terminal emulator” is the program that shows you text in a window, the program that runs inside it and validates/interprets your commands is a “shell” (the one you are using is most probably bash)

  • gomp@lemmy.mltoLinux@lemmy.ml•Is there a better way to browse man pages?
    6·
    2 months ago

    Here’s what I get in fish when I start writing a rsync command and hit tab to ask for completions:

    ❱ rsync --append-verify --progress -avz -
-0  --from0                               (All *from/filter files are delimited by 0s)  --delete                   (Delete files that don’t exist on sender)
-4  --ipv4                                                               (Prefer IPv4)  --delete-after         (Receiver deletes after transfer, not before)
-6  --ipv6                                                               (Prefer IPv6)  --delete-before         (Receiver deletes before transfer (default))
-8  --8-bit-output                          (Leave high-bit chars unescaped in output)  --delete-delay                 (Find deletions during, delete after)
[more lines omitted]
  • gomp@lemmy.mltoTechnology@lemmy.ml•AI is a Lie.
    211·
    2 months ago

    It may not be a scam per se, but it certainly is a misnomer at this point… it’s one of those words (like “enterprise” or “pro”) that have been appropriated by marketing and devoided of any meaning. AI as a word will gradually die while people gradually realize it doesn’t mean anything. Marketing consumes words (and people too).

  • gomp@lemmy.mltoLinux@lemmy.ml•Are we going to see arch based immutable distros in the near future?
    111·
    3 months ago

    Honestly, IMO the end-user benefit is mostly that it sounds cool.

    All the benefits I’ve heard (including the ones in this discussion) don’t actually derive from “immutability” but from releases that stay the same for longer (which is what “more stable” used to mean), or the ability to roll back your system to some “known” working state (which you can do with snapshots and in a plethora of other ways).

    What immutability means is that users are unable to alter their system, or at least not expected to… basically, it means what in corporate lingo would sound “altering your system is not supported” and that the distro actively makes it hard for you to do so.

    This means users will not break their system because they followed badly some instructions they found on some badly written forum post anymore and blame the distro for it, but it also means that users who actually have a reason to alter their system and know what they are doing will have a hard time doing it (or be unable to), which is precisely why I left macos and went back to linux for my work computer some ten years ago (I spent half a day doing something I could have be done with in five minutes and said to myself “never again”).

    For the team/company that builds it, an immutable distro will likely be easier to test and maintain than a “regular” one, which should then indirectly benefit the users (well… as long as the team/company interests are aligned with the users’ of course: shall windows get easier for microsoft to maintain, how much benefit would trickle down to its end users?).

    Users who switch to an immutable distro should see a decrease in bugs short-term. In the longer run, I’d expect distros (especially the “commercial” ones) to reduce the effort they spend in QA until quality drops again to whatever level is deemed appropriate (if bread costs less I’m still not gonna buy more bread than I need… same goes for quality).

    Basically, it all boils down to “immutable distros cost less to maintain” (which, don’t get me wrong, is a net positive).

    I must say I find it slightly concerning to have heard several “veteran” linux users say that immutable distros are so great that they will install one on their parent/child/SO/friend’s PC but on their own.

    It’s also a bit unnerving to notice that most of the push for immutability seems to come from companies (the likes of debian/arch/gentoo/etc. are not pushing for immutability AFAIK, and they certainly don’t have the initiative in this field).

    I’m not sure how much immutable distros will benefit the community at large, and… I’m not even sure they will end up being very successful (windows/macos follow in whatever makes is more profitable for microsoft/apple, linux users have choice).

    I hope that immutable distros will prove both successful and good for the user community at large.

    edit: Forgot to explain the positives I hope for: since immutable distros should require less effort, I hope this will lead to more/better “niche” distros from small teams, and to distros with bigger teams doing more cool stuff with the extra manpower