Everything is a file. Your past, your present, hopes and dreams, loved ones: it's all a file. That's the true goal of Linux.
But not all files are equal. Some files are not even files.
I'm gonna file a complaint…
Make sure to use a good file, not just those shitty soft metal pieces that have problems even with aluminum alloys.
Is a link to a file... A file?
Yes.
Symbolic links are files that act as pointers to other files.
-- Source
A hardlink is the original file.
Thanks for the clarification ! I guess everything is a file in Linux ?
Used to be. But then systemD attacked...
What in systemd is not a file?
Of course it's all stored in the filesystem, so there isn't anything that isn't technically a file.
But, for instance, while as before you'd have a simple log file you could access directly, now you have a binary blob that is inaccessible without systemD itself.
The are other numerous better exceptions that are better examples than systemD. DBus, for instance. InfernoOS is an interesting example of taking the "everything is a file" to heart.
And yet I have to jump through a thousand hoops before my drives will mount on boot.
I was just adjusting my fstab today... Genuinely blows my mind how far Linux has come and I still have to delve into hard to read text files to open my damn drive when I boot my computer.
I'm using Gnome Disks and never had to edit fstab for years.
Yeah I ended up installing gnome disks on my kde bazzite install because the default disk management wont do it without jumping through hoops but gnome disks has a nifty little check box and then problem solved.
Why this can't just be default I don't know because every other OS I've used has it figured out.
Usually both KDE and GNOME includes all kind of programs as default for many tasks, however both side have a better program for something than the other. As a result, going purist is not the best option all the time. Distros that choose KDE or GNOME try to minimize the package size by not mixing these two a lot because nowadays many DE related programs come with a lot of dependencies. Naturally Gnome Disks also has dependencies that you will only install because of it, unless you already have other Gnome programs.
I always choose the best program that does the job so I end up with both KDE and GNOME dependencies. Flatpak kinda helped with this issue though. I tried going purist once years ago but when it comes to productivity, I always ended up with the program that works the best, so a lot of dependencies. I don't care anymore since I started using SSDs.
The more I try to learn linux the more I hate linux, this fragmented crap is not helpful and only adds pointless road blocks.
It is easier for me to strip all the privacy invasive bullshit from windows 11 than to setup a usable linux install.
I feel like that shouldn't be a sentence I should ever have to say.
Fragmentation is not a bad thing but I agree that instead of making programs deeply related to their DEs, they should keep that minimal if that's possible. Like I mentioned, Flatpak mostly solved this issue. Bazzite uses almost everything from Flatpak which is actually good from this point of view (while it might have other challenges on its own, like not everything is on Flathub, gets better though).
I would say even Ubuntu with telemetry is leagues better than a cleaned Windows 11 when it comes to privacy, but I understand what you mean.
Not sure when did you switch but if you're kinda new with Linux, it just needs time to recalibrate your knowledge. Once you learn the best for your every need, things like these won't be an issue. I wish the defaults would always be the best. Some distros actually pick their pre-installed programs really well, but most distros usually go with default suites, like if it's KDE, then everything is KDE because of the integrity.
I have been trying to switch to linux for over 10 years, I have been using bazzite with some success for a few weeks. I have been using windows since the dos days and I am a windows system admin with 10 years of experience. I can make windows do unholy things with little effort. Granted thats mostly because I have 10 years of experience but in those same 10 years I still know fuck all about linux because between the seemingly purposely unhelpful community and all this stupid segmented bullshit I can never get it to actually do anything so I just say fuck it and harden another windows install.
Finally Bazzite seems to be making some of that stuff a little easier but then I still run into quality of life shit like not mounting all of my installed drives by default like literally every other OS I've used.
P.S what is a DE? I'm sure it's basic knowledge for linux veterans but I have no idea what that means.
DE is for "Desktop environment". Most distro let you choose from quite a few. The two best known one are Gnome and KDE, i believe. But there are many more.
"Desktop environment" might just be two words without much meaning to you. If that the case, in the linux context, a desktop environment is basically the GUI to your computer: file explorer, desktop, taskbar, general setting manager and so on.
Thank you for clearing that up.
I see. Well, while GUI has improved a lot on Linux in recent years, if you still want to know it fully, you'll need to learn the CLI part. CLI on Linux is really powerful and that's why you usually won't find any forum replies related to GUI. That might seem a down part for people who are new to Linux, however it makes it easier for the people who are trying to help. Sadly you can run into jerks and gatekeepers everywhere but fortunately they are not a big portion, they just talk loudly.
Once you learned the CLI, it's almost always the same and it changes very little in time. This is the hard part and normal user don't need to know CLI anymore, which is why the desktop Linux adoption gets better nowadays. But if you're a power user, you'll need to learn the CLI, at least the parts you require.
what is a DE?
Sorry, I should've mentioned it at least once. It means desktop environment. You may also see people talk about WMs, those are window managers. Every DE has a WM, but if you decide to use a standalone WM, you'll need to install every other software yourself which normally come as bundled in a DE. Of course, I'm not talking about distros that come with WM options. Those usually cover the software part pre-installed. If you don't want to configure anything on yourself, DEs are the safe choice here. If you enjoy configuring everything (at least I'm looking at it that way) to your needs, you usually do that once (and upload your configs to your personal repo, that way when you need a reinstall, you just pull your configs from git and you're ready to go). That's why Linux veterans seem to prefer WMs a lot. There is no limit to configuration, this is both pro and con, depending on where you stand.
Regarding not auto-mounting, the main reason there most likely security related. Again, I agree that more distros should offer more visible options related to that, though some distros already do that. But it should stay as a choice. There are differences between Windows and Linux and this is one of those. If you're talking about the filesystems on the disks installed in your PC case, they'll auto-mount if they're a Linux filesystem. As default, this won't happen with NTFS partitions.
Regarding not auto-mounting, the main reason there most likely security related.
I would be inclined to agree with that if it didn't auto mount my external drives, if you aren't mounting media in the name of security removable drives is the thing you generally block.
If you're talking about the filesystems on the disks installed in your PC case, they'll auto-mount if they're a Linux filesystem.
It doesn't on Bazzite for sure, these are new disks that were formatted at install with BTRFS. They aren't old drives ported from another system. Even with a native file system it still refused to mount unless I did so manually.
As for the command line, I fully intend to learn CLI in linux and thanks to all the fucking around I had to do I'm already on the way. But to put in in context I would never try to start off a novice windows user with powershell or command line as there are very few things you can't do with some part of the GUI.
I can navigate both with ease because I grew up doing it, but someone new is not going to know how to use it or feel comfortable with it so I will provide any instructions needed through the GUI unless absolutely necessary. once they have become comfortable then I walk the through the more advanced stuff if they care to learn it and if they don't then I don't pressure them.
Regardless I have it working now but the idea that I had to jump through all those hoops just to have basic functionality leaves a very bad taste in my mouth.
Why this can’t just be default
Because not all distributions use gnome. Some distributions try to install as many graphical tools as they can and other distributions try to minimize the size of the install and let users decide what tools they want installed. Talking about defaults applications in Linux doesn't make much sense. Each distro is free to choose the apps they want to include or not.
Gnome has nothing to do with my question other than it's just the tool I had to use to add basic and expected functionality.
Mounting a disk on boot is not a new or alien concept it should be default, there is no excuse not to for the average user.
Some distros use KDE which is Qt which means that to install a gnome app (which uses gtk) you need to also install shitload of other dependencies. Fresh installs usually don't mix KDE and Gnome apps. There a different default for them. So saying that a Gnome app should be default for Linux doesn't make much sense.
I mainly use Gnome apps and this is what I'm getting on my system:
apt-get install konsole
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree... Done
Reading state information... Done
The following additional packages will be installed:
kactivitymanagerd kded6 keditbookmarks kio6 konsole-kpart kpackagetool6 kwallet6 libhfstospell11 libkf6archive-data libkf6archive6 libkf6attica6 libkf6auth-data libkf6authcore6 libkf6bookmarks-data libkf6bookmarks6
libkf6bookmarkswidgets6 libkf6breezeicons6 libkf6codecs-data libkf6codecs6 libkf6colorscheme-data libkf6colorscheme6 libkf6completion-data libkf6completion6 libkf6configgui6 libkf6configqml6 libkf6configwidgets-data
libkf6configwidgets6 libkf6coreaddons-data libkf6coreaddons6 libkf6crash6 libkf6dbusaddons-bin libkf6dbusaddons-data libkf6dbusaddons6 libkf6doctools6 libkf6globalaccel-data libkf6globalaccel6 libkf6guiaddons-bin libkf6guiaddons-data
libkf6guiaddons6 libkf6i18n-data libkf6i18n6 libkf6i18nqml6 libkf6iconthemes-bin libkf6iconthemes-data libkf6iconthemes6 libkf6iconwidgets6 libkf6itemmodels6 libkf6itemviews-data libkf6itemviews6 libkf6jobwidgets-data libkf6jobwidgets6
libkf6kcmutils-bin libkf6kcmutils-data libkf6kcmutils6 libkf6kcmutilscore6 libkf6kcmutilsquick6 libkf6kiocore6 libkf6kiogui6 libkf6kiowidgets6 libkf6newstuff-data libkf6newstuffcore6 libkf6newstuffwidgets6 libkf6notifyconfig-data
libkf6notifyconfig6 libkf6package-data libkf6package6 libkf6parts-data libkf6parts6 libkf6pty-data libkf6pty6 libkf6runner6 libkf6service-bin libkf6service-data libkf6service6 libkf6solid-data libkf6solid6 libkf6sonnet-data
libkf6sonnetcore6 libkf6sonnetui6 libkf6syndication6 libkf6textwidgets-data libkf6textwidgets6 libkf6wallet-data libkf6wallet6 libkf6walletbackend6 libkf6widgetsaddons-data libkf6widgetsaddons6 libkf6xmlgui-data libkf6xmlgui6
libkirigami-data libkirigami6 libkirigamidelegates6 libkirigamidialogs6 libkirigamilayouts6 libkirigamiplatform6 libkirigamiprimitives6 libkirigamiprivate6 libplasmaactivities6 libpolkit-qt6-1-1 libqca-qt6-2 libqca-qt6-plugins
libqt6core5compat6 libqt6quickcontrols2-6 libqt6quickshapes6 libqt6quicktemplates2-6 libvoikko1 media-player-info plasma-activities-bin qml6-module-org-kde-config qml6-module-org-kde-kcmutils qml6-module-org-kde-kirigami
qml6-module-org-kde-newstuff qml6-module-qtcore qml6-module-qtqml qml6-module-qtqml-models qml6-module-qtqml-workerscript qml6-module-qtquick qml6-module-qtquick-controls qml6-module-qtquick-layouts qml6-module-qtquick-shapes
qml6-module-qtquick-templates qml6-module-qtquick-window sonnet6-plugins systemsettings
On KDE system you will see the same for any gnome tool.
Can people not read?, I never said gnome should be default in fact I stated clearly that it was just the tool I used. I said drives should mount on boot by default because it's basic functionality.
Oh, I thought you meant that gnome disks should be installed by default.
I said drives should mount on boot by default because it’s basic functionality.
Usually it's something you set up during installation. Linux philosophy is "don't do anything the user doesn't want to do". If someone wants to mount a drive he/she will set it up. But again, this will depend on the distro. There's no default for every possible Linux setup.
What really upsets me is when you ask you get 10 wrong answers and every one of them is condescending, angry or outright calling you and idiot for not having some niche esoteric knowledge that I shouldn't even have to know because this is just basic functionality.
Also I figured it out (on bazzite) so yay but it took literal weeks to piece together tiny bits here and there until I finally cracked it.
All fstab does is provide data for the mount command. Typically your OS just runs something like mount -a on boot and it mounts all the filesystems as listed in the fstab.
You can just run a mount command for your drive on startup as root. It would be doing essentially the same thing and its quite simple even for a new CLI user.
And there's the typical non-answer I usually get, a helpful answer would read something like;
To auto mount drives on Bazzite open terminal and type
sudo rpm-ostree install gnome-disk-utility
Wait for-ev-er..................
Reboot
open "disks"
select your disk you want to auto mount
you'll see an icon that looks like a window with a play symbol in it that is "Additionaal Partition Options"
click on it and select "Edit Mount Options"
you may or may not have to toggle user session defaults
check the box that says mount on startup
enter your password if asked and reboot to verify.
And those are admittedly terrible instructions but at least they actually answer the question instead of "just use fstab" like a new linux user would have any idea what that is or what to do with it.
And there's the typical non-answer...
There wasn't any question asked in the thread I replied to.
"just use fstab"
What I actually said was:
You can just run a mount command for your drive on startup as root.
Which is significant because its less verbose than the fstab
a helpful answer would read something like; To auto mount drives on Bazzite open terminal and type...
Its not a given that someone would know how to automount disks in X desktop environment. One can't provide a step-by-step process on something they do not know.
I forgot about this, but AFAIK you're still better off with fstab to give yourself all permissions for everything to work properly.
Text files are not hard to read. It's text.
Simplicity is definitely something to be valued, but for some reason Linux people equate "just a few shell scripts" with simplicity.
Sure there might not be much there, and maybe if you read all of those scripts you can understand them. But I don't want to have to read and manually maintain the shell scripts of my init system. That isn't simple for normal users. Simple is when the OS actually works reliably, and shell scripts are the antithesis of reliability.
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