LINUX vs WINDOWS: the graphical gap is still there
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- čas přidán 18. 06. 2024
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#Windows #Linux #apps
00:00 Intro
00:42 Sponsor: Take back control of your internet connection
01:39 Managing Devices
04:20 Managing Services
06:15 Firewall Configuration
07:18 Device Security
08:41 Backup and Versioning
09:45 Advanced Configuration
11:15 Command line: not enough
12:53 Sponsor: Get a PC that runs Linux perfectly
13:55 Support the channel
GNOME Dconf video: • 20+ things you never k...
Device manager lets you see all the components of your PC, and the devices plugged into it. It lets you check for drivers, fix various problems, set some options, and view some logs related to your devices.
On Linux, this thing has no equivalent. We do have a third party app called HardInfo, but it's not an actionable application. In KDE, you have the same thing, with the Info Center.
Device manager is an important tool on Windows, and it would have a LOT of uses on Linux as well. I wish we had something like that.
Linux runs services in the background, for printing, bluetooth, network, virtualization, the graphical server or compositor, and a lot more things, generally managed by systemd on most distros.
And almost no Linux desktop has a complete graphical user interface to manage these services, turn them on or off, enable one at startup or not, or view logs related to this service.
On GNOME, you have an extension called systemd-manager, but no way to configure them, or select options, or enable autostart. On KDE, you have a services page in the settings, but you can basically just start and stop them, no other action is available.
As far as I know, only OpenSUSE has a decent services manager, that is baked into YAST, their configuration tool.
On Windows, the services app might look like it's 20 years old, which it probably is, but it lets you start and stop services, select if you want to start them manually, or at boot, or completely disable them, and it lets you set policies for various services failures, like restarting the computer, restarting the service, or opening another program.
Another thing that is not entirely available in our desktop environments is a graphical tool to configure the firewall, and general system security.
KDE has a config module in their settings, so that's handled. And yet again, OpenSUSE has a firewall config tool in Yast, which works really well.
For GNOME, there are third party tools you can install, depending on the firewall the distro uses, like firewall-config for firewalld, but these are rarely provided by default.
Linux desktops also don't really have an equivalent to the Windows "security center". GNOME has the basics of such an implementation, with their device security page, but it's not actionable.
Anyway, we could add here some information depending on certain libraries, apps, and kernels we use, if vulnerabilities have been detected, we could have access to the firewall settings, apps that have incorrect permission...
And then we have backups. A lot of distros ships with a third party backup tool, like Déja Dup, or Timeshift, but they generally only ship one or the other. We sort of need a complete solution that works ideally for both.
What I'd want is to right click on a file in my file manager, and have a "versions" menu item. What I'd like is a system settings option, native to the desktop environment, that lets me configure a backup, and restore it.
The windows registry is a horrible, horrible thing. It's illegible, it's super messy, modifications can result in a horrendously broken system, and generally it's better left alone.
But it does surface a LOT of options for applications and the system. And not all Linux desktops have an equivalent.
GNOME has dconf, which has a lot of various settings you can tweak. KDE doesn't have that.
Yast has a bunch of additional configurations available graphically. - Věda a technologie
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There is a reason linux does not have a device manager. Most drivers are built into the kernel. Linux usually boots without any issue. Only nvidia driver tend to be an issue. Wifi is no longer an issue in debian 12. Stop complaining and write your own services manager for linux. If you want to have a gui firewall abager then recommend to the distro developer to add it. I am doing my own spioff of debian 12. Trying to enable the compositing manager by default. Broke my theme in debian 11. I plan to include gufw firewall gui in my spinoff.
So, uhh... as someone with a Radeon RX 6650XT graphics card in Linux Mint....do you have any advice for how to check if that low power mode default is an issue in my distro, and how to deal with it if necessary?
I would also like to add that there's still no system monitor that comes even close to Task Manager's usefulness, power and accessibility. The mere fact that by default it groups processes by main task and gives them readable names/window names instead of just displaying the binary's filename is already enough to give it the crown over everything else on linux DEs. It's so easy to parse stuff in it
I had an ide freeze in linux and it was hell trying to kill the process. That was the day I switched back to windows for the 4th time.
Also I never got to trackpad to feel/scroll right. Even after adjusting the setting which took me forever and help from a friend because there are multiple settings file and the right one depends on the specific system you are using.
And no I am not just used to how it feels on windows. It also works fine on mac.
the task manager comes with alot of 3rd party malware when you install it sadly
I was about to complaint the same, I cannot find a way to monitor which app(or say process) is taking how much bandwidth in system monitor. The network down and up speed of a connection can be seen, but how should I know which particular app is sucking all my data.
@@kumarutsav1123 Nethogs is what you need, or atop with the network kernel module extension.
Since going to Mint, the only time I open the terminal is to grab a neofetch screenie :D HOWEVER, I totally agree with having an optional graphical way of doing things!
Yeah for most things, it’s not needed, especially in Mint, they have a lot of tools!
@@TheLinuxEXP top 10 graphical tools for linux someday? 🤔
shoutout mint, havent used it but i love that its there :)
@@bruhsoulz3347 I've tried so many! Vanilla looks like my next stop :)
I generally have the same experience on Mint, with the exception of configuring the GPU, but that isn't Mint's fault. The Nvidia configurator is shit. I kinda wish someone made a third-party tool to configure it.
Having used Linux full time since last November, I have to agree. There's a serious lack of graphical tools for the the guts of the system. But this is also a great opportunity for the developers at Gnome, KDE and other DEs. An opportunity to look at how MacOS and Windows have done things, look at what works and what doesn't and make something new. Being last has the nice advantage of being able to see what the people who came first messed up.
Yes, but most of the Linux developers hate Mac and Windows and are puzzled why the entire world doesn't understand the simplicity of /sudo -f -l -s -ausofy -l:linux.central -tensify -bullshit
My experience with Windows is that control panel is a mess. And there is the registry, which is eeew. If only windows developers followed the simplicity and variety of the KDE configuration panel.
@@michaeleber4752 exactly 😆
@@michaeleber4752Interesting comment from you.
AI will, hopefully, be able to come up with solutions, eventually.
"Windows still has the edge" Well, technically yes, you can't uninstall Edge by normal means, so that statement is technically true
I uninstalled edge but ofc by using a powershell script
My biggest butt-ache with config files is the ones that start BLANK so you have to look up EVERY SINGLE option to check if it even exists and what magic chant you need to type in the config.
This is especially painful in:
MPV (where you have no other way of setting options and have to create the config files yourself);
SAMBA, where RTFM is not even a solution since the manpage is kilometers long;
SSH Client configuration since you get to write everything yourself in a file you created
For Samba's simple file sharing it is way simpler to just use some file manager that knows how to set it up. Nautilus used to know that, had some problems and Intried manually, but did not make it; I went to other file manager to get it done.
It's really sad when people won't go through the effort of supplying a text file they already have.
@@FlorinArjocu Yes, I think I managed to set smb up using dolphin on my computer.
As a new Linux user something I would also like to see is a "see in terminal" shortcut for these gui settings, would make learning where and what everything does a lot easier. For all I know it does exist in which case let me know
This is a very good suggestion.
What i really like about dconf and dconf editor is that they're essentially a bunch of config files and an app that parses those config files and then represents its variables and entries as graphical widgets. You don't have to forsake the "everything is a file" philosophy, it can still be accesses through text editors and all while having graphical tooling that looks mostly like a regular settings app to view and edit all of it. It's basically the registry done right, although i still would prefer if many of its options were available in the gnome settings app itself
This is exactly what I hate about windows: Having to click through a graphical menu, thinking this could have been one change in one config file.
But yeah the option still exists so you have a point
But if all those options were available, people would complain that it's as complicated as KDE Plasma. 🤣
For KDE there is systemd-kcm. It's as powerful as YaST, when it comes to configuring systemd. Log viewing, config editing, slice management, all of that goodness, and more, is there. The "services" section in the systemsettings app explicitly refers to KDE-related user-services only.
Nice, I’ll check this one out!
There's also "systemdgenie" on KDE.
@@rubisetcie lmao yea, systemdgenie seems more up to date than systemd-kcm
EDIT : a tree view would be nice as even the cli tool has one x)
systemd--kcm is unmaintained. It's forked by kde now SystemdGenie
I forget it's pkg name but KDE even has a graphical equivelent of Taskmanager that's really greate I wish more flavors shipped with it I believe it's called Ksystem monitor or something like that. I forget if manjaro kde ships by default or not but I know i found it there then it's always now one of the first installs I do on my vanilla arch or endevour os installs.
He's making a to-do list for some developers with a lot more time and experience than I have. Create these tools and Linux will be more enticing to non-users, and maybe Windows will see some serious competition.
If only I had the time to learn how to code this type of stuff, I’d gladly get started!
Sadly, I'm a web developer, otherwise I'd help. I've been known to be out of my element when dealing with really architectural C programs though
i couldn't justify prioritizing this, over other more fundamental computer science pursuits. i also don't see this replacing my developer day job, as it probably won't pay
@@ThisAintMyGithub Hasn't React evolved native desktop features yet?
@@CTimmerman not without Electron afaik but it depends on what you mean. It would definitely be slower (and suboptimal) to use React to build out desktop apps though
Hopefully as time goes on, the Linux community works on making your ideas real and usable.
08:40 is that you?
sudo rm -rf / *
extremely unlikely 3! decades to do something about it kind of goes like this; developer decides to do some of those things starts building code, then realises it's faster with a terminal anyway and deletes his code wondering why he wasted his time to start with. Its the difference between design 'forcing' a programmer to make something to a design specification because it's their job, and the other side you can write it if you feel like it, becoming largely no one feels like it for the most part so everything gets done _real_ slowly or simply not at all.
For 30+ years later, we have complained about Linux fragmentation (partial tools everywhere instead of one good central tool). This will continue for the next 30+ years. This is the strength, but also the weakness, of open source. There are definite some advantages to macOS and Windows being developed centrally.
@@sylviam6535 As long as you can 'trust' the proprietary nature of an entity creating said tools yes, I am exceedingly glad I grew up in the era of Atari vs Amiga it paved the ground work for not just distrust but a healthy dislike for both entities that today still can't be trusted anymore now than back then. (Intel Outside) :D
Been using Linux on my gaming PC for about two years now. Would love to change the HDMI output from Full to Limited and vise-versa to increase compatibility with my various displays and capture cards. If I had an Nvidia GPU, even their less-than-stellar Linux implementation has a GUI toggle for this. But I have an AMD GPU. And the commands that I have found online to change this setting are outdated and don’t work with 6000/7000 series AMD GPUs.
Why can’t we just have a toggle.
Thank you for bringing this up. My main three gripes with Linux are
- That I don't know where stuff is. This is learned over time but is a pain to start out with
- That they way I do stuff or tools I use are often missing with Linux. Task manager, device manager, and other tools like them are extremely helpful for me getting stuff figured or done at all or in a timely fashion. With Linux they often seem missing, frequently turning a timeline of 5-15 minutes into an hour or more of trudging through the forums for an answer I can try in the command line without knowing or understanding why (since command line stuff is both explicit and frequently poorly explained).
- after dealing with the above two, software. This has gotten better over the years, that said, being able to install and go with software I know of and know how to use would be great. Mainly talking about random utilities and the like here, but they are a bother to be unable to use or require the cmd line to install, configure, and use.
In short, my point is:) thus:
I like /using/ my computer, not f**king with it.
Hm... I think your first gripe doesn't count, because it's not linux specific. Every new OS you start using is puzzling at first.
Your second point makes me wonder what you use and do on your system that you have the need to frequently use something like Task Manager. I can count the times I need to do something similar in a month on one hand.
Third: Which "random" windows utilities do you miss? I'm really curious.
@@chrishuhn5065 Considering how much of my use of Windows is muscle memory, it can count.
I use task manager as a "know thy domain" sort of thing. Handy to know what's eating resources, or not (like a 45 day backup process that recently crashed, thus showing no network upload).
Killdisk, 0Patch, bulk rename utility, display fusion, ear trumpet (windows specific need?), f.lux, handbrake, ninite updater, wiztree, and some from Portable apps like Rufus.
I'm opposite. When using a windows computer i get annoyed when i can't get at the gnu tools and basic utilities in used to. WSL helps but can't get to the whole file sys
All these are user problems not Linux problems. For me all three are more or less equally valid when attempting to use Windows or Mac OS
Thumbs up, the gap is still huge. Thank you for talking about this, you seem to be the only one who notices or cares.
Please do everything said here, developers.
But I believe nothing will change with their infighting.
Too much distro fragmentation.
1000% agreed. The fact that you CAN rely on the commandline for everything advanced is good, the fact that you HAVE to rely on it for a quick tweak or a driver update is just awful.
That sums it up pretty well
Well you forget, NVIDIA proprietary drivers aside, (and granted that is a pretty big aside), generally speaking drivers in linux are not a thing. It's a monolithic kernal meaning the device support is already baked in. In general your device either works or it doesn't. If you are going to get into patching the kernal yourself, you are in for a deep education in the inter workings of everything linux.
@@joshuapettus6973 very well, but recently I've had two programs installed via flatpak which I have to manually update every freaking time via command line, and I have no idea why, when in KDE Neon, its discover doing the updating for you. So yeah, even drivers aside, there are things only the command line does, when that shouldn't be the case.
On another video I commented just this how it's annoying that many things in Linux still require use of terminal and there are no graphical user interfaces available. I was instantly attacked by some kind of HCLinux gang. According to them not even checking printer ink levels require any kind of GUI. Interesting mentality this is.
Totally agrees with you, also, no way at all to join an Active Directory or other directory server via the CLI, no way to enable login for AD users on a computer, without going to the CLI, we can't have mass adoption in the enterprise without this. And, while scripts are fun, they break.
Yeah, even Apple realized this, they have their own Active Directory SSO called Kerberos SSO. And you know it's needed when Apple decides to play along with other standards rather than making up their own propriety bullshit.
@@apierror JTMS: You do know that Kerberos isn't developed by Apple, right?
I wish both Linuses would make these points clear again.
openSuSE too has its issues but its nice to have something that keeps me further away from manually editing config files than most of the rest.
As a note for the 6700xt problem - CoreCtrl is able to change profiles (and overclock/undervolt the card a bit). At least on my 6800xt. There's still the hassle of setting it up to autostart on login with the --minimize-systray option as it needs to run in order to work but it does a decent job as a GUI app. Using it mostly to adjust the fan curve.
I completely agree! This is an awesome app that I use as well, although I find it is a fairly heavy application it uses quite a bit of ram for something you want to just control the gpu
thanks,gotta try this :)
oooh. This might help MY situation. My 6950xt in some games in some GPU bound scenarios stutters so badly.
When I'm against vsync (for Freesync) everything's fine, then the instant I get pulled off the limiter the game slows down to like it's only running at 15FPS.
It also does this when I turn off Vsync and let the game free-run into a GPU bind.
Upvote for you for the tip!
You accidentally solved an issue I had, which proves your whole point!
I have the same GPU as you and had NO idea it was running in low-power mode.
This is a fantastic video that manages to give concrete criticisms with actual suggestions on what should be done about these issues and gaps in functionality. love it! keep up the great work :)
forgot to mention Windows' Event Viewer. Being able to view a 23743 line long log is nice and all, except when you're hunting down 1 specific error that you have no clue what's doing it so you don't know what to ctrl+F (and obviously, Windows' solution isn't perfect, nor is it necesarilly feature-rich, but again, _*it is a thing that exists and is extremely useful even for novices*_)
edit: some notable mentions
journald - systemd GUI front-end that exposes syslog [seems to be the tool I was looking for, will require more research]
journalctl - terminal-centric, tried & trusted (as mentioned by Entelin)
Cockpit - Redhat (thanks again to Entelin)
Metalog - available in the AUR, however incompatible with systemd (thanks to James Young for this suggestion)
True, that’s real good as well!
I think wildcarding a grep would be faster and then start selectively filtering. Regular expressions (regexp) is really powerful but I haven't invested the time in really learning it.
@@JimAllen-Persona Again, you need to know how to do that. Event Viewer just works. Handy for less technical folks, and remote troubleshooting.
It's a harmful waste of time. Normal users aren't going into event log or journelctl anyway. Advanced users will not use the gui tool regardless. Everyone in between should be directed at learning the real tool instead of some distro specific gui tool that only applies to the tiny minority of linux systems that even have a gui in the first place. Spending a developers time on literally anything else is time better spent.
journalctl -g ssh Bam, done, now can replace any linux "event viewer" like application and it works everywhere, and you didn't even need to waste a month of some developers time to build a minimally functional and likely broken gui tool so that you could avoid remembering the name of the actual tool that does this.
@@entelin How many people reading your comment will recall "journalctl -g ssh"? I won't remember, because I just used copy & paste, just like the majority of Linux users. If this was a GUI tool, everyone who actually wanted to use it (like myself), would actually just open up the app. It's better to have it and not need it, than need it and not have it. Plus the "real tool" is the one that the end user, wants to use. Saying the CLI tool is the "real tool" is not helpful, condescending, and does a dis-service to the Linux community.
There's also a graphical gap when it comes to the GUI. It either looks like something out of the '90s such as certain flavors of XFCE or like something released by Fisher-Price like GNOME. There's very little in-between regarding a lightweight modern but functional look, at least as far as I've seen. Using Windows as an example, it's like going from Windows 95 straight to Windows 11 and none of the greatness in the middle.
Bravo!..Yes on a device and services manager. I was a PC tech for 20+yrs..For any Windows hardware issues device manager was my 1st stop. (other than won't boot, dead board,etc.)
Wow! An honest set of comments about Linux!
One more graphical gap - partitioning disks.
Nick: Keep up the great work!
I think partitioning disks is extremely easy with GNOME disks or KDE partition manager?
@@TheLinuxEXP correct! I've not only partitioned, wiped disks, and automounted through them without many issues. (Could use some helpful hints, but great nonetheless)
@@TheLinuxEXP I'm sure that the key Linux distro managers have heard your show, and understand where they should put their development priorities. This is a major gap, and for Linux Newbies (such as myself) I am looking for exactly this stuff when I evaluate if a distro is right for me. (That's why I love Turnkey and Cockpit, by the way.)
@@TheLinuxEXP I feel those are good starts but they don't enable slightly more complex operations. Things like ZFS or MDADM configuration and management is missing. Managing user permissions to file locations on a network is also missing. I mean we encourage everyday users to always make sure that they use things like backups and redundancy and then require them to drop to the command line to actually configure those things. Many regular users who could be using linux just give up and instead go out an buy a Synology NAS instead even though just running linux would be more powerful and create less waste if they just reused an old computer. All that doesn't matter though if regular users can't figure it out. I would also argue that clear, easy to use and understand graphical applications for file management is more important that most other GUI applications. If I screw up a config file and break my OS install it sucks but I just reinstall my stuff and move on. If I screw up a config file and wipe out my family pictures for the last 20 years there is no getting those back and you just permanently lost whatever user you had on linux to begin with.
One big problem with GUIs is that they are not easily describable. Run this, click here, open up this tree. You'll get a dialog box, set this, then that, OK, OK, OK and Save... Then next release everything is in a different place. Old instructions you find on the web for how to do something usually contain a large list of steps, sometimes with images, others times not and very often they are different, buttons are missing or other is no such "XYZ" tab you speak of. Or perhaps it works this way on say Windows 2012 but Windows 10 is different and Windows 11 even more different. Or the steps vary widely between different Linux distros. Many times I'm yelling at ChatGPT saying "But that button isn't there!".
Now granted this can happen with ASCII based conf files too but the instructions are generally more concise. Plus you can usually leave comments in the config file stating why you are changing the default or reference a URL about where you got the info to modify this file. You usually can't comment different clicks you did in a GUI.
GUIs can be good and useful but they often can be a pain in the ass. And it's usually easier to ssh into a remote server and fix a config as opposed to what? RDP for Windows?
This is something I agree with 100%. I love the command line and projects like Cockpit for doing some of these things via a web interface, but this would help a lot of tech savvy users in Windows that are struggling to learn Linux to come over and learn Linux. A lot of system administration in Windows is done graphically so their thought process gets wired to think that way.
Though I do got to laugh and say that Windows is making it harder to get at those graphical tools now by eliminating some of them and putting them in the new watered down settings app, or by just burying them in layers and layers of things to click through to where they may as well star memorizing commands to open them anyway.
9:51 Group Policy Editor is the better tool to take inspiration from for doing things you might do in the registry editor. Especially when it comes to sys admin setting things for whole classes of users.
openSuse power! What you're saying here is basically *the* reason I chose it as my main distro: I just don't want to lose my time tweaking textual configuration files with different formats and findable only after a couple of hours of internet search.
This, times 1000. Even more user friendly and popular distros like Ubuntu and Fedora don't have anything that compares to YaST. It makes system configuration and package management trivial compared with using the terminal for everything.
with how simple it is to make a gui, I'm surprised so many guides online have their fixes done through the command line. If I am walking my parents through diagnosing any issue, it is just going to be so much easier to talk them through a gui, than trying to verify they typed commands correctly.
Never heard of ssh?
Very happy to see this video,as i have been thinking about this since i used linux a couple of days ago.
linux is an inspiring open source project that,in my opinion keeps windows in check somewhat,since they are aware that linux is a viable option,but it has a very bad reputation for the average user with its terminal theme.
i tried mint and the initial experience was surprisingly pleasant,however it had it's flaws.
-no hdr
-no task manager
-bluetooth didn't work for me
-couldn't write to my drive directly without "elevated privliges"
-anything extra i wanted to do needs a program that need something terminal related,or compiling,which made me feel exhausted and frankly disgusted using
the biggest one was the options i had for playing a video as a desktop background,all that i fouind(which were installed from software manager)just played the video covering my original desktop with the icons,which promptly sealed the deal for me to revert to windows and be done with it.
i REALLY hope linux becomes more user friendly,it has great potential,but for the casual user it's such a pain to work with and just not ready
I remember my very first experience with Linux. I got RedHat (which was the big guy at the time) and installed on my computer. Since we were an IBM shop it wore an IBM Token Ring network card. After hearing all this talk about how great it was I was surprised I had trouble connecting to the network. And could not find anything to even tell me what was going on. After a day or two of searching I discovered there was no LAN software installed. So I did what everyone did. First I search on the internet with no results. Then I went to an only group and asked about installing a driver. The response? Download this code from some unknown server. Download my distro software. Download this one tool and then REBUILD THE KERNEL INCLUDING THE DRIVER SOFTWARE IN IT. Needless to say it immediately left my computer.
I remember talking something similar with you when I started linux, it seems you changed your mind since.
I do not mind the command line much, but it is incredibly frustrating to just tweak something quickly or to recommend it to someone.
I grew up with DOS and then Windows which was just an adhoc GUI when I felt like it. It took some time to adjust to windows when they finally, nearly took away the command line. I'm still happy using terminal in Linux to do some things.
Thank you for giving more insight into this topic, people really need to make a "Linux JW (Just Works) edition," that has a GUI for everything you'd need to tweak and maybe even a help document that teaches you stuff in a easy to search through and understand manner. I think it'd help with Linux adoption a bunch, also have some sane defaults and better Nvidia support
(I don't mean just instlaling drivers. Idk what it's like on other distributions but on Endeavour you gotta edit a few configs iirc to get your full performance in some games, with "Kernel modesetting" and idk how to do it on Dracut and can't seem to find out how. I could do it easily on Mkconfigio or whatever that Endeavour OS used before)
I like how GNOME looks and it's simplicity, but the latter is often too much simple. I find many base apps not sufficient or lacking useful features. But that's looking far away - even Tweaks has things that matters and weren't ported to the system settings, like touchpad behavior for right click.
Yeah, that's purely a choice GNOME makes, I'm not a fan myself of their choice, but they actively remove options because they see it as 'clutter', 'confusing', etc.
COSMIC is coming to solve it
I hate how I can't create a new file using right click in Ubuntu 💀
I agree 100%. On Windows, even advanced users and system admins never ever open the terminal. Many users don't even know Windows has a terminal/cmd. This is an amazing achievement by Microsoft, since the XP era that almost no one has to touch the terminal to do absolutely anything on Windows and we gotta agree that that's amazing. Linux DEs should learn from this. And hardcore Linux users should stop feeling "superior" just because they know the terminal and don't mind it. Just because you love the terminal, doesn't mean that in 2023 it's "acceptable" to depend on it so much... it is not. That is in the most part also helped by the fact that absolutely ALL software even the nerdiest one has full GUIs on Windows, like Openconnect, XAMPP, etc where on Linux they are "CLI only".
GUIs are powerful because they are both the app *and* the documentation for it.
A good GUI can teach you a ton about how certain systems work way faster and way more intuitively than a manual ever could.
Can't really get better than learning how something works and how to use it simply by navigating through it via a GUI.
A GUI for configure sound settings like sampling rate kHz and bit depth would be nice.
For device management you forget, Nvidia aside, devices don't need driver updates in linux. Those come with the automatic kernal updates. So for the system info to not offer it in the GUI makes sense.
I have to regularly have to use cli on windows for repairs, like 'sfc' and 'dicm'. lately have had to use 'diskpart' a lot to fix usb drives to recover locked partion.
I'm going to have to agree with this. While I've learned a lot of the command line, I'd really like a GUI for stuff like systemctl to make managing processes a lot easier, particularly when I may not know the exact service name for something yet and I have to either dig through the docs or just keep typing what I think it might be until I find out (and as I'm used to Arch but learning Fedora for my server I don't always know the Fedora name for stuff and have to google it [although on Fedora Server I'm not running a GUI because server]). I also wouldn't mind a simple task manager-like program, while I know htop exists there's definitely something to be said for just being able to right-click and kill process (not to mention the Ctrl+Alt+Del or Win+Shift+Esc to bring it up being very useful if you've got a stuck fullscreen program, such as a game, and need to kill it).
I agree, having used Ubuntu (with KDE DE), and Manjaro for a long time, Windows is still much easier to use. Interestingly, finding software has become easier in Linux through software center applications. Finding software has become harder in Windows, but when you find it runs, in Linux not all software runs properly. And still you can find more software for Windows. They have ruined taskbar in Windows 11 but I use free 'ExplorerPatcher' application (which has to be updated before every Windows 11 update, otherwise causing problems...) which turns taskbar to Windows 10 style. Microsoft Office is also still the flagship application in Windows. LibreOffice, Only Office, etc. have all problems unless you deal with relatively simple documents.
2:40 That's spot on.
Until Linux devs, specifically those who set the direction, get that not everything has to be done through the terminal and that this approach is setting them back and one of the main obstacles to Linux getting a wider adoption we won't see much progress.
The terminal is a great tool, but no on is perfect.
There are places/task where a GUI is much more practical and objectively better than using the terminal.
Even in other instances, there's nothing wrong in also having a GUI option where possible. There's a good reason why Mint is so popular.
The command line is like using a pencil and paper. Once you learn how to use your fingers, you can do some amazing things.
Well, if you're using Btrfs (and you should if you really want file revisions/backup), YaST 2 has a tool to do exactly what you've mentioned: backups for home and root partitions, comparing files between different snapshots and so on.
YaST 2 is just amazing and I think it should get an UI revamp, not only reorganization like SUSE did "recently", but really rewriting YaST to feel more modern, it doesn't need to loose its technicalities, just look more like a Qt6 or Gtk 4 application. Also making YaST faster would be amazing, sometimes it takes fairly long to load simple things, like Grub configurations. Besides that, my love for openSUSE comes not only from its stability and glaring performance, but also from YaST 2.
And about the other things, I was thinking about this for a long time already, if I end up having enough time I'll try to address some of the concerns of this video, I really miss those graphical tools and I'm thinking about writing some of them myself, I never used them on Windows TBH, but I feel like they're handy, mainly for newcomers.
To be honest having come from windows the LINUX shell is leagues ahead of the Windows Command prompt ! once you understand it it is just a breeze to work with the command line in any unix based system.
Graphical tools are also an accessibility necessity. Some people have a harder time typing for CLI due to various conditions that make it painful or impossible to do so. It's also much easier navigating options in a GUI than having to query for your options in CLI. Sometimes those queries aren't even listed under "help" or "man". Also, a lot of documentation doesn't explain how to use CLI commands. They typically only list required fields. Not even how to properly format those fields, or what is valid. Windows has the same problem with their CLI apps, you have to find tutorials online that explain exactly how they work.
What you say is true to a point. I recently started using OpenSUSE Tumbleweed on my home PC and I still have not been able to work out how to get all my drives mounted automatically. I really can't work out why having internal drives unmounted is a default behaviour. I could understand something like blocking whatever the Linux equivalent of 'auto play' is called from running on USB devices but surely it is relatively simple to differentiate between internal (on SATA and NVMe connections) and external devices when setting such behaviours. Also it doesn't help that nearly all the guides for pretty much any Linux based task use the command line. And that's before I start trying to run Windows games...
Darn freaking right. I used the Windows Device manager to turn off the touch screen to my laptop in order to increase battery life.
Especially the Task Manager. I think I use that thing daily even if it's just to see the load on the system resources while I run a program.
I also kept using Service Manager to turn several services like the local SQL server on and off. That thing really uses a lot of RAM.
Perfmon is the tool I miss most - try capturing things like CPU usage by specific process or disk queue lenght to a file on Linux. In perfmon it can be configured easily by few clicks.
Wow, very true this!! I too had felt this gap when I started my Linux journey, a decade ago ... the only bright side though, was running firefox from the terminal, which gave the nooby me, the cognitive connection between the things I gcc'd and actual programs.
I now realize , yeah I actually wish I had all these tools via a GUI because troubleshooting can be very time consuming. but ive learned a lot. I miss all these benefitt from windows. altho they still look windows xp esque(doesnt matter tbh).
2:47 I just installed that program you mentioned hardinfo from software manager. And saved to bookmarks. It's great.
There's actually a really nice web-based management interface called cockpit. Not sure if it's preinstalled on any distro, but it has a services page where you can browse, start, stop, enable, disable, mark and view logs & relationships of services.
It's mostly meant to be used on servers, but it works fine for desktops. As such, it also has a general overview of the system, logs, network (including settings for firewalld firewall), account & disk management, can manage podman containers and libvirt VMs, can check and run updates and has a built-in terminal emulator.
Stacer is one of many apps I've recommended for Linux, since you can manage System Services, Startup Apps, as well as clean up junk data thats left of the system taking up space. It doesn't have an awful lot, but it's simple and straight to the point that a Beginner/Novice user can easily use without knowing what's what.
Hi. I like your sweatshirt in the Safing add segment. Could you share where you bough it? Maybe it's available at my place as well.
If I had a second computer I would definitely use it on one of them. Mainly because I google a lot of stuff although there are some really good command line browsers I could use instead.
i am just in the process of trying to repair my DE after an update caused it to stop working
it took days just to reach the core of the issue (and i still am not quite sure how to fix it)
something which could've taken less than an hour if i could view logs and manage services from a graphical interface
(i'm using an alternate DE and DM for now which is actually a huge bonus on linux's part to be able to just swap something that broke temporarily)
these tools are important!. thanks for the video
I agree that a gui application is required to access configuration files that keep with the desktop gui and itself configurable and controllable by admin.
The thing that really bugs me is why the linux community seems unable to realize these shortcomings. Or why some people even complain about YaST, being a user friendly surface for practically all of the system configurations. By the way, YaST is an "ancient" tool on SUSE.
I would LOVE to have decent GUIs for several things on the server side, like DHCP, DNS, user management, and file shares.
And I love the Windows Registry. It is SO MUCH easier to deal with than config files spread all over the place. (I had to deal with that a lot early on in my career supporting Windows 3.1 and DOS.) I consider the Windows Registry like DNA. There are a few things I can walk through and identify and modify as needed, but most of it are places where you don't mess with it unless you get direct instructions from the maker. Although, I have learned a lot more over the years of working with it. I had to learn in order to root out bad installs of Quicktime 1.0 that could not be automatically removed back in the mid 2000s.
Dealing with Linux config files is so much more a pain in the behind, mostly just trying to FIND the right config file to do what I want to do.
Yes to the first sentence, but I'm still not a fan of the windows registry system or how it's implemented.
Not sure if separate config files is better though
dconf could work like registry
A graphical interface would be so nice for this stuff! It's been hard to get used to config files and all that, just to do something that I'm used to having button for.
Not being bound to a graphical interface for administration, was the reason I left Windows. I know many people (and also some admins) like the "clickybunti" (German phrase for GUI) but this either left them with no reproduceable procedures or painfully to read descriptions.
The Plasma System Settings services page, afaik, is for kded services (Plasma internal services) and doesn't deal with systemd at all.
as a noob, while i appreciate having a gui almost always, one thing i dont mind doing in terminal is formatting drives and partitions, i kinda gotten used to it when i was distrohopping and encountering issues with my usb trying to nuke whatever distro was flashed on it, i learned quite a bit about filesystems and what they are and what some commands mean, both onn windows and linux :)
Systemd has tremendously improved the "administration approaches and config file syntax + location variation" between distros. If you're not using anything Debian or NixOS based, the learnings can be generalized.
Debian uses systemd too, what do you mean?
@@Tachi107 Debian and derivatives abstract a lot of system and service configuration into dpkg and change around config file locations.
I.e. instead of using localectl to change the system locale, you have to use "dpkg-reconfigure locales". Otherwise your changes may get reverted with a software update.
Noted. I will immediately begin working on implementing those constant notifications from Windows Security Center! Hopefully my PR gets accepted on all major DEs...
Well done! You nailed it. And the great part is, these are all achievable goals that will only add value to Linux and detract nothing. Great video!
I want to note that most of the shown graphical utilities are 20+ years old and are considered obsolete in modern versions of Windows and Microsoft is trying to replace them with a new (rather useless) settings app.
Eh, on Windows, I miss console utilities like lsusb, watch, tail and so on, which allow you to understand in real time what the system is doing and what is not right. But yes, having a graphical device manager would be nice.
Awesome video, Nick!
As the one about pdf editing, you've been able to point out a weak spot for Linux while remaining objective.
Yes, we need more graphical tools to tweak the system, and even though Windows doesn't do a great job about it (at all!) at least it tries. And yes, cli is fun and powerful but frightening and offputting for the Average Joes and Janes out there
So true! Everyone is waiting for the year of the Linux Desktop. It's not going to happen without these ideas and improvements.
Thanks for making this great well detailed video! This fully showcases a major part of why even I as a power user, much prefer Windows. A GUI is miles more user friendly than a DOS age terminal. Really hope Linux devs start making GUIs for EVERYTHING the command line can be used for.
You are totally right. I never thought about that.
Let's vote for some of those tools and then pay someone to do them.
Thanks.. Thanks.. Thanks..
Linux need all of this..
I also want Linux to have a disk format (fat32-Ntfs-and more) directly from the mouse menu like windows do.
Also disc encryption and decryption option too..
I am really missing an up to date version of system-config-uers, especially wotking with Pyhon 3. Managing users and groups through all the way too many Linux command line tools is very failure prone and easy to cripple your system with.
THANK YOU! You get it! I agree particularly with the last part of the "command line is not enough".
Every time I try using linux because I want to get rid of windows, I have to go back because it's dreadful how linux seems to treat me like a total noob when I'm a mid-advanced user, and I see myself utterly frustrated by trying to find "where do I change this" and all that the internet offers is "put this in the terminal"... but what the hell is that command? What does it do? how can I trust that you really understand the fine nuances of what I'm trying to do and that this magical incantation that you've provided does exactly that and doesn't have any secondary effects that I may not like? And once I hit enter, how do I undo it if I don't like the result? It's just completely unhelpful.
The linux way is "if do don't want to be stuck as a granny, just become a guru like us and shut up".
This is very thoughtful videos, excellent job! 🔥
I have tried many times to switch to Linux from both Windows and Mac OS ever since the late 1990's (Red Hat 6 was my first attempt). One of the few things that has kept me from going all in with Linux is the lack of easy-to-use tools like these. I hate Windows for a lot of reasons, but the services tool, device manager, and disk manager, among others, are very nice to use, and they are largely intuitive. Hopefully, the distro developers will understand the need and work on similar offerings. Looks like I need to give OpenSUSE another try.
completely agree that the command line is not enough. But I don't think having a GUI will eliminate the need to google stuff
Great video lot's of research there as usual.
great topic! one more tool is graphic Group Policy Editor - also for admins ;)
i agree with pretty much everything. my feeling about the windows registry is that although it offers some kind of standardized interface, the problem is that it's a mess because the settings are not grouped-by or linked-to an application
When you think about the openSUSE YAST gui apps not looking great, remember that they have to be simple, so that when you open the TUI version in the command line, it looks almost identical. This is a BIG deal.😀
We have to use corporate proxy server with authentication and configuring it in linux is huge pain in the ass! There is literally NO any distribution where graphical settings of proxy server just works. Even if it do so, you always should to manually configure apt or dnf and others. You should manually configure snaps and flatpacks. Appimage can work or can not. And it is a nightmare if it does not using enviroment proxy settings. Qt's... no comment. Ubuntu's comfired bug report about system update tools not using proxy hav'nt been fixed for 5 years or more. It's a pity but linux is not ready for ordinary people for now.
Agree 👍 I love only xfce, but the lack of a graphical tool for managing users and local groups is annoying. I'm a system administrator and I can do it on the console, but I don't want to do it on my home laptop, and for ordinary users it's extremely inconvenient. yes, xubuntu, mint xfce, mageia, opensuse have their own graphical tools, but debian xfce, alma linux xfce and many other systems don't have them 😖
I would like to add network file sharing. You can grab a file using most built in file managers but if you want to mount a network location to your machine you have to go into multiple config files in the command line and pray you get the syntax and user permissions correct. When you mount a file in the file explorer it does it in the file explorer but doesn't actually create a mount point in /mnt. I have run into this trying to setup raspberry PIs as Kodi boxes as well as game installs for steam. I don't have the storage on my pi obviously so I can't just transfer the media files over but unless the application builds in its own file browser you have to poke around those config files.
I've been struggling to find a good backup solution. Everything seems to assume either a local backup, or that you can install the backup solution on the destination device as well. I'm backing up to a QNAP NAS. My options for what I can install are limited. At the moment I'm using rsync by command-line because I can run rsync on the NAS, but I really want a good graphical solution where I can set up a regular backup schedule and do it to my NAS.
I fully intend to home build my next NAS, which would give me the freedom to use some of the existing solutions out there, but until then, my QNAP NAS is what I have to work with.
I like restic. Even use it as a windows user.
i love config files.
And as a dev many repetitive task are way easier and faster to do with the T than GUI.
the problem in both cases is that if you don't know exactly what to do and how it's named searching the info can be a pain in the but. And even sometimes take longer than just using GUI. also note that if you forget yo do something in T or Cf you have to search it again while it's easier to rediscover it in GUI.
Also it's easier to make an error with big consequences in T.
Cf also have another problem is that you have to find them (and also find the right one of there are multiple in the app)
also ctrl+f work if you know exactly how the option is named.
another thing is logs most GUI display the error when it happens so you can easly search it on the net.
while you age to manually find them in a file (ctrl+f doesn't always works) or worse in the teminal (except maybe if there is coloring).
I have never been able to get temperature, fan, and voltage sensors to work on my Ubuntu box, but I think that is more of an ASUS issue with them not allowing the community to make a driver for my MB. It has been a while since I tried though. I was able to get my Nvidia cards fan control to work and keep it in Maximum Performance mode.
It still annoys me that I basically need two pieces of software to adequately back up my system and provide rollback functionality, especially if I want separate backups for the system itself and my personal files. There's plenty of software for Windows that allows me to have separate backups with their own settings in the same software.
Totally agree with you on this one. As a noob I feel I have to handle my machine with kid gloves all the time to avoid spending all my hours scouring forums and trying to assess suggested solutions in command line code that I don't really understand.
I mainly use Ubuntu & Windows 10, generally in Windows there are heaps of things you can to to files etc. by right-clicking, on Ubuntu usually little to nothing.
Also software the gives you a blank field for 'extra parameters', but then have nothing for you to click on to see what commands/parameters can be entered in there, really sucks.
Then on the Windows side, yeah I really hate the registry, I'd much prefer all that stuff to be in the folder for the program they are for, or maybe instead of 'HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE' etc, have 'Windows' 'Word' 'FireFox' etc, so you know where to find the stuff for a particular program
i think that gonna be massive upgrade for Linux
desktop environment is awesome rn
that and also the console with more understandable command shortcuts 🙏
Terminal is simply better for some things, just like gui is better for others.
Plaintext config files are wonderful for allowing changing configs using any tool you want.
Yes, all these things. It’s like my short list of why I have not completely switched to Linux.
Congratulations, beautiful video.
I like that you care a lot about switching to Linux for Windows users.
I agree with what you said, and I hope the major distros considered "easy" take your suggestions into consideration.
It is very important to land in a "Windows like" environment for those who decide to switch to Linux.
The domestic market of private users could in fact change the statistics of the diffusion of operating systems in favor of Linux
Thx for your work 🖖🖖
Yesterday I was trying out Deepin Linux 23 BETA. I was really impressed by it. Looking closely to the Deepin project now.
8:48 Thanks again for another great software recommendation: Deja Dup, just installed it.
Thanks for the video. I agree with your comments completely, after working with windows for 30 years and just starting to Love Linux.
I agree that device manager, services, backup and firewall should be parts of the operating system. This would improve the usability of Linux for the sysadmins. And you are correct, system admins can work with the command line much easier than regular users.
I have to admit that i do appreciate the fact that i have to go out and learn the stuff in Linux before issuing the command. And i know not to take a command from the internet and run it on my system. I prefer the time i take to review the data and the information. I find this as an advantage, because many of the terms used in graphical software are sometimes condensed and don't provide enough information.
One last point i would like to make, is that while working with windows and having to troubleshoot the errors, the information on the internet was not always helpful and rarely resolved the problem. Maybe i have been lucky, but i found that the information on the internet to resolve my linux issues were more accurate and helpful.
I could not have learnt as much as i did with out all the accurate and excellent help found on linux on the internet.
cheers!
👍😎