femboyteacheslinux

[femboyteacheslinux]

downloading packages

learning to use the computer

no post yesterday was feeling sick. on another note I enjoy this much more than I thought I would, the funny little numbers that I get showing that people are enjoying my autistic yapping made me feel much happier than I thought so thanks guys :) also this is probably gonna be biased heavily as packages are things that linux users are very argumentative on so be aware of that.

how that we have a system with a UI and is functioning we need to figure out how to download things so that we can have a custom experience. unlike windows linux has most packages you would want easily downloadable from the terminal, or through a store environment, so no silly browser stuff that looks like malware. the easy way to download packages is through the store environment, on KDE this is called discover, on gnome its called software and on mint its called mint store or something like that. and these are very convenient to download what you want. although a slight issue comes from this method. it looks nerdy, and feels slow. the main draw of linux is that you get to have full control over your system. you are a 1337 hacker who knows everything about computers and your google searching skills to find a random reddit post from 10 years ago from a guy with the same issue as you are top notch, you cant be caught browsing a store environment. theres also the part where if you know what you want to get its faster to open a terminal and type in a quick command and poof you have it. its also just good to know how these stores work as oftentimes they are just a visual version of what you will type into to the terminal anyway. debian based systems this covers things like ubuntu, mint, debian and if you dont know what your is its probably debian. (debian is kinda like big dad to all linux distros) if you dont want to search if your system is debian based just type 'apt' into your terminal and if it says something along the lines of not found then your arent debian and you should search it but if it says pretty much anything else your on debian. (just read the message, your smart you can figure it out) debian based linux uses a package manager called 'apt' which is short for aptitude im pretty sure and it has a big back end of aptitude but we wont touch that as I dont know it and its way out of scope for just downloading stuff. so we are gonna start with a simple package as an example to download. we will start with the most well known app on linux neofetch. ill tell you the command and break it down. 'sudo apt install neofetch' so first we start off with sudo, this is universal on all linux versions unless you try to not let it be, what it does is sets your user to be ran as root. that sounds complex so let me simplify it. root is the big mama of the system and everything bends to its will, sometimes you will have an app that needs to leave your user directory and giving it sudo will allow it to be ran as the big momma root and do that (this does not mean run something that doesnt work as root, that is very stupid and will cause you to loose your system) so after the sudo we have apt, this is the package manager your basically going up to it and saying hey I need to make a change to an app, then it asks what do you need then you say your next part of the command which is install and the package manager goes 'yep what do you need to install' and then you tell it neofetch and then the package manager calls you a nerd trying to farm karma on unixporn and then shows you download bars until its done. very basic and works great. now if you noticed you need to tell the package manager what you want it to do, as a rule of thumb all package managers dont just install packages, they handle every tiny detail of packages, they manage them entirely. so if you feed that you want to update your system instead it does that, you want to remove stuff? it does that.

updating debian system to update your system is actually 2 commands sudo apt update sudo apt upgrade if you think this is dumb you would be right and I 100% agree with you. but heres the breakdown, sudo we already talked about sets your system to big mama, apt goes over to the pacakge manager and says I need something done. and update does not do what it is called what update does is syncs the packages. basically it tells your system what packages can be updated. then doing the sudo apt upgrade actually upgrades the packages to the newer version. if I annoyed someone for saying its dumb they will 100% tell me why its like this so hopefully I did that so you can find out why because I frankly do not know nor care to take the time to know.

removing packages debian edition following the same logic as before I hope you can guess what the remove command will be but its 'sudo apt remove *package*' so if you dont want neofetch anymore type sudo apt remove neofetch and then its gone, afterwords best practice is to hit your system with a big update to make sure all the files are gone and its up to date but its your system the joys of linux is that you can wait literal years between updates.

searching packages with debian quick note, if you dont know what package you want but you have a general idea of its name you can type sudo apt search followed by what you remember of its name and hopefully it will find it for you, otherwise you just use the good ol duck duck go to find what you want. fedora distrobutions ok to be frank I have used 2 total fedora distrobutions, one of them being nobara and the other one being bazzite and I hardly touch packages on bazzite so this is rough memory that im using to install a package you use the command dnf (yum my beloved is gone, ::sad face:: liked typing it because it was fun) if you read that giant section on debian distributions then this will look quite familiar and if you didnt im not typing that much again, read it if you want or deal with the spark notes. sudo dnf install neofetch thats the command heres the quick breakdown

sudo, this puts your system into top dog mode called root, basically running an app as administrator. here its good because we are installing stuff to the entire system but dont run random apps with sudo or else you can mess up more than just your system. dnf is the package manager, it handles anything to do with packages on your system. install does the suprising thing of installing. and neofetch is a place holder for whatever app you actually want if you want neofetch have fun and install otherwise switch it to whatever other app you want.

deleting things with fedora to delete things its quite simple 'sudo dnf remove *Package name*' its quite simple and very similar to the apt syntax if you bothered to read it. works great, yet again will remind its recommended to update after to make sure stuff is all gone and your system is updated to update your fedora system

updating your system is properly set up as 1 command this time instead of the 2 that apt likes to use and its just a 'sudo dnf upgrade' and you can update individual packages with sudo dnf update package name

searching things with fedora sudo dnf search package name this will bring up all packages with a name of that which you searched, its cool. I ran out of text space so if you are on arch (which you should not be following this guide while on arch) i hate to be that guy but read the documentation, if you do have questions about it though a simple DM to me and when I finally check tumblr again I will try to resolve your issue. Docs https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Pacman in all theres a ton of behind the scenes differences that I might get into in a couple weeks when im getting into more than just the basics but as of now just knowing what to type is good enough holy this was much larger than I thought it would be, so enjoy the read or don't. its your time to spend not mine. also I kinda dont know what i will cover tomorrow so if you have an idea or topic that is good for new users to learn about I would love to have reccomendations (I want to slowly get more and more complex and deeper into the system but I have to explain the basics first) also if this didnt tell you enough full documentations can be found at their respective wikis debian: https://www.debian.org/doc/manuals/apt-guide/index.en.html fedora: https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/quick-docs/dnf/

[femboyteacheslinux]

Picking a GUI

making your computer look pretty 1 package at a time.

my last post was honestly a bit bland on which linux distro to pick as a beginner so this one might be more spicy IDK theres no proof reading and I more just rant on paper about linux stuff. also im pretty sure tumblr keeps flagging these big ass technical format things so I might change the style to something human readable(ew)

like I said in the last post we are going over the Graphical User Interface or the part of the computer you are going to be seeing and looking at. when picking a GUI there are 2 trains of thought, window managers and desktop environments. if you are coming from windows you are going to be used to a desktop environment as they are the most straight forward and thats what we will start with. for your desktop environment there are 2 main ones that people reccomend and then there are some smaller ones that you could use. the main ones are known as Gnome, and KDE Plasma. in terms of raw usage most people will prefer KDE but where gnome begins to shine is with its mods and extensions. on its own gnome is fairly basic, it is a bit goofy and is honestly annoying to use, but once you spend around 30 minutes to an hour figuring out how to harness this system it suddenly becomes way better and in my opinion takes an edge out over KDE. gnome is a more unique desktop environment compared to KDE and if you want a distinct and unique experience than thats what I would reccomend. if you are nervous about linux and want to stay close to something familiar and something you understand then KDE follows a much better system much like how windows is ran. now keep in mind that both of these are very modifiable and can make one look and behave similar to the other so the best practice would be to download both and choose which one you like more, and if thats too much work then you can just google images for each one and decide there. away from the dominant forces in desktop environments you have some smaller ones like cinnamon. if you chose to use linux mint as your distro of choice than this is the one that comes pre installed. it is very reminiscent of windows and works great. personally I find the style to be a bit bloaty but that's probably on me for not spending enough time figuring it out. another Desktop environment to mention is XFCE and all of its forks. in my opinion these dont function to well unless you spend a large amount of time modifying them to look and play to your use case, and with the time spent on this I would rather use a window manager. if you have used this more than I have I would love to be proven wrong though. away from the install and play items now its time for the hyper nerd stuff that makes you look really cool on r/unixporn. window managers. there are 3 types of window managers actually, tiling window managers, dynamic window managers and stacking window manager. ive only ever used 2 of them so my review of the third is going to be hot garbage but stay with me. first off what is a window manager? a window manager unlike a desktop environment is designed to just have windows opened, theres not really a status bar unless you want one specifically, and most of your apps and items are opened from either terminal or from key binds. I find these to be cool as hell and hyper efficient. this is my preferred way to use linux mainly because its pretty.

tiling window managers. these automatically arrange your windows for you, you open a window and it arranges it in a tiling pattern. this one is very keyboard heavy and is my preferred style of window manager. in this catagory you can use things like I3, sway (which is basically a better version of I3 but correct me if im wrong) ive started working on a sway config files but I have been hella busy so its more of a dream right now. but in summary this category is about heavy keyboard usage over anything else. I only mentioned 3 but thats because its near impossible to name every single one, many have a specific use case that I could not begin to understand. after tiling is the stacking window manager, this one relies more on the mouse as opposed to the keyboard usage with the tiling window manager, stacking window managers rely on you to palce things where you want, overlapping happens and can look very pretty if used correctly (example being anything on unixporn, if you ever get curious what something can look like just go there) I have not used these alot as they dont follow my work flow so I cant make any recommendations on it but people seem to like KWin and openbox alot so maybe id start there if this sounds interesting.

up next is the dynamic window managers this is the one ive used the most as ive used hyprland the most out of any window manager, (its the linux femboy window manager had to mention it) as its designed to be pretty. the main interest in this catagory is that you get all the benefits of both a tiling window manager and a stacking window manager. in my experience they seem to follow a tiling window manager until you want them to break that flow. if you want to figure out your work flow and which one suits you these are probably the best starting point. ones I would reccomend here is hyprland, its pretty but does eat a decent bit of cpu and all that stuff so maybe not on a super low end pc. but if you spend to time to make it look good HOLY does it look good. besides this one I havnt used too many others, ive played with awesomeWM a bit and it seemed pretty cool so id check that one out if you dont want hyprland. (probably for the best)

in summary linux has a ton of options and it scares people, dont let it scare you and just make a choice. I know it sounds hard but even if you just throw a dart at a board and choose randomly everysingle one of these can get your tasks finished so just choose what sounds like fun and if its not you can always download a new one.

keep in mind everyone is at their own point in a linux journey so if you need help feel free to reach out, I will always help to the best of my abilities, and there are probably some elitists who would be willing to help (kinda)

[femboyteacheslinux]

getting started with linux

how to ditch daddy microsoft and switch to the nerdy OS

you might get a bit nervous with the sheer amount of versions there are. I could list some here but then it would be the same issue again so im not gonna. in the end linux comes out to 4 different versions that you can choose from comfort. the first one is the easiest to use, easy meaning that it has everything you would need on it without too much issue of needing more. here we have linux Mint, very stable (it wont break on you) and very straight forward. as anyone who has used mint and they will tell you it just works. not much more to say as it just does it all for you. then we can take a step forward into the intermediate category. this one houses 2 version of linux called Debian and fedora, personally I dont like fedora for no reason other than bias but it does work well here in the intermediate catagory its placed here as you might need to install some things that you want before getting started. and in the download process it expects you to know a bit more that we can get into later. Debian will behave mostly the same as linux mint apart from 2 big differences, your system will have less stuff on it, working great if you didnt want that software installed to begin with saving you storage space, and the GUI that comes with it (GUI meaning graphical user interface, its the part of the computer that you see and are actually using instead of a terminal text console. its why linux mint would look different than windows) Debian linux Does not come with linux mints display as a default option. besides those 2 differences they are very similar to use. then in the other direction is fedora linux, as I said I am not a huge fan of this one as I dont like its package manager. (package manager is the safe and easiest way to install apps and programs) but it does work well and is fairly safe these are placed in tier 2 difficulty as you have to be somewhat willing to open a terminal now and then to install an app, not difficult in the slightest but the idea of big black wall of text can be scary for users switching over from windows. then in the 3rd category we have Arch linux, this is my personal favorite as I can do whatever I want with it. the difficulty comes from that freedom though. you need to understand atleast a decent portion of how computers work to get this to be installed on your system or you will spend around 8 hours struggling to install it like I did my first time. the pros of this is that if you know what a certain software does and alternatives you can choose those alternatives VERY simply the cons is that you can mess up your install and stare at your screen like a deer in headlights at 2:15 am. these are the main versions of linux that people will use, oftentimes when another version is mentioned its one of these ones with some changes here and there. like Ubuntu will be one you hear often and that is just a fancy version of Debian with more apps installed. making sure one is right for you is quite simple, with "how much do you want to use the terminal" and if you answer never choose mint, if you answer "I can write in it sometimes" choose a tier 2 version and if you asnwer "my terminal is a place to learn" than arch is great for you. now there is 2 secret answers that I would not recommend

Gentoo linux, its a great operating system, fast, built for your system but it takes way too long waiting for stuff to be usable that by the time you get it done you wont want to work on that anymore, in gentoo you compile everything from source which works great in projects like linux on a console, or a small device you dont need to update often. but for your main machine it will just take too damn long to be useful, ive installed this one before and it took about 4 days figuring out what it wanted and waiting for compilation. not worth it in the end as the performance was not enough for me to care. only choose this one if you answered "I enjoy watching progress bars" as your terminal response. then I have to mention the big kahuna of linux, Linux from scratch. this one is not really a computer to use but more of a project to learn how linux works. this is like gentoo if you decided that having the source code given to you was too much help, if someone making sure the system worked together was too much effort. basically this is to make once to understand how it works then never touch it again as it is not good. only choose this one if you chose "I want to see my CPU reach the temperature of the sun as my eyes peel away from reading documentation" as your terminal response next time we cover GUIs what are they and how to use them, Ofc if you have any questions feel free to reach out and ask. remember we are all learning together