Linux

Why are there so many distros out there? What’s the difference between debian + kde and manjaro + kde? They look the same, they work the same. I don’t get it.

They visually look similar because both are running KDE with pretty much all the defaults, as it happens both Debian and KDE don't diverge too much from the recommended defaults as long as they work well. But under the hood, Debian and Manjaro work completely differently: one uses apt, the other uses pacman. The way those packages are maintained, compiled and distributed is vastly different, with different kinds of QA testing.

Ubuntu is a derivative of Debian, so it doesn't look that much different but Canonical does tend to provide newer packages than Debian does. But Ubuntu also has a lot of flaws so spinoffs like Mint and Pop_OS! take on Ubuntu as a base and "fix" it to their liking and hopefully the user's too, which, given how popular Mint is I'd say they're pretty successful in that goal.

Also why do things have to be complicated?

It doesn't, but the amount of options and choices in how to do basically anything on Linux can certainly look very overwhelming. You can click on it in your file manager, you can add it to /etc/fstab, you can use a systemd mount unit. They're different ways of automating and configuring what ends up being mostly the same: mounting a filesystem and setting permissions on it, and they come with different defaults.

You're running into the particular area of trying to mount an NTFS Windows partition on Linux, which is nothing like what Linux expects to it fakes a few things to make it work, and that makes everything owned by the same user by default. If you do it from your file manager, it'll get a temporary mountpoint in like /run/user/1000/media/YOUR DRIVE but is mostly intended for when you plug in a USB or something. You probably found /etc/fstab but then that made all the files owned by root, and you can temporarily change that with chmod and chown but once you reboot and it gets mounted again, it'll revert back because it doesn't actually store those fake permissions as to not break Windows.

It’s just problems, after problems, after problems and i didn’t even start gaming.

Yeah, some people end up particularly unlucky in that department. Eventually, over time, it feels as easy or easier than on Windows. It's just, you have years of experience on how to make Windows do the thing, and Linux is completely new to you. I had a very similar experience a couple years ago when I was forced to learned macOS because the job would only issue MacBooks. Everything felt way overcomplicated and eventually you start thinking the Apple way and it goes more smoothly, you understand better how it works. I mean, how alien is it to just open disk images and copy .app files to /Applications and that's how you "install" things?? And you get used to it and now I wield the macOS terminal like I do on Linux.

What do i need to do to install a AUR package? A wall of text on the wiki, 20 minutes videos, yay. Ok let’s call it a day.

So, this is why people don't like recommending Manjaro. It's ArchLinux with a coat of paint, but still relies on Arch's infrastructure for the AUR. ArchLinux is well into advanced Linux: it's a box of legos you have to assemble in the shape of a Linux distro yourself. So yes they do expect you to do a fair bit of reading, but Manjaro doesn't, and it's a real problem that has caused a fair bit of drama at its time. The AUR is great, but to make another analogy, the AUR is more like a recipe book: you don't download premade meals, you have to bake them yourself (compiling source code into binary) to have your meal (the generated package file). Sending beginners that route is a recipe for a bad experience.

Ironically, yay is the name of one of the tools that helps install AUR packages.

Do i need to live another life to make linux work?

No, but it does take some initial commitment to get to the nicer part of the learning curve. The first install is always pretty rough, you will destroy it, that's fine, you have to learn first.

Ok let’s call it a day.

Honestly by the post you should have done that earlier. As with anything, when you're frustrated with it you stop learning, you start making it much harder than it needs to be.

It's fine to take a step back and reboot into Windows and try again the next day. It doesn't have to be all or nothing, plenty of people have started by using Linux for just one task that's easier to do on Linux, and eventually you start thinking of migrating more workloads to Linux over time. You're restarting your computer learning journey from pretty close to the start, give yourself a break, computers aren't worth getting pissed off at.

I doubt this is a real post, but on the off chance it is, sorry you're having issues, but Linux probably isn't for you.

You're obviously very enraged and not really interested in actually getting help for any issues you're having. You started your post screaming at Linux for not making sense to you, you haven't described what hardware you are trying to use.

You only described your issues with Debian and Manjaro, neither of which are beginner-friendly distros and aren't often suggested to brand new Linux users.

If you want to describe your issues in more detail, one at a time, with info about your hardware, your distro and version, and what the exact errors you are getting are, you might get some folks chiming in to help. But coming on here, posting a rage-filled wall of text ranting about how angry Linux has made you, that's not productive for anybody.

If that seems like too much work, then sad to say, Windows will be your home for the time being.

Do i need to live another life to make linux work?

No, but do bear in mind that switching to Linux will have a learning curve, and it sounds a bit like you're expecting to be able to do everything you did on windows on linux without having to change your behaviour.

My advice is to start off with all the defaults of whatever distro you are using, and only installing packaged software for it, and just getting to a point where it is comfortable.

Most problems on linux (that I've found) either come from hardware being faulty ir unsupported, or that the user doesn't understand how it works, but is trying to force it to work how they want it to. Both can be fixed with becoming more familiar with how Linux works.

This would also help you to understand why there are so many different distros (I do recommend distrowatch.com to quickly look up details about distros), as most differ in ways that require a bit of Linux knowledge to understand.

so tldr just stick with it and try and learn how it works meow :3

First of all, welcome.

Don't try to install many different distros in a short span unless you are a distro-hopper. Just pick one and do everything on that. Manjaro would cause problems especially if you enable AUR. If you want cutting-edge and still want to use GUI for management, I suggest OpenSUSE Tumbleweed.

For hard disk read-only situation, that happens with NTFS partitions for safety reasons. You can change that with Gnome Disks by setting auto mount and user options. Know that NTFS is a Windows file system and runs on a compatibility system on Linux.

It's better to start with beginner friendly distros. Some people even settle with one distro and use it without changing ever. Unless you want to discover under-the-hood features, most distros will look the same.

Also, things work differently on Linux. Once you get used to them, you'll find them more straightforward comparing to Windows. However, getting used to them might be a challenge for some people. Get ready to read Wikis.

Don't be hasty. Continue to use Windows until you feel ready while creating your ideal workspace.

Go for functionality before starting customization anything, you can do that anytime.

So i really wanted to ditch windows once and for all

Why?

so i’ve tried Linux for a week trying different distros (debian, manjaro, ubuntu, opensuse, mint)

Why? Choose one and stick with it, preferably a beginner friendly one like Ubuntu or Mint.

and first of all why? Why are there so many distros out there?

Because different people like different things and have different opinions. Some people like to have the latest packages and so they choose Arch, while others prefer to have a stable system until they want to upgrade core packages and so they go with Ubuntu.

What’s the difference between debian + kde and manjaro + kde?

One is Debian based and the other in Arch based. Debian uses apt, Arch uses pacman. Debian has a slower release cycle to ensure compatibility while Arch has a faster release cycle to ensure the latest versions of things are available. Like these there are thousands of small differences between any two distros. It's mostly philosophical, so just pick something beginner friendly and stick with it until you find a reason to switch.

They look the same, they work the same. I don’t get it.

They don't work 100% the same, that's like saying that a car and a truck are the same because they're both painted black and have a steering wheel. Under the hood they're very different.

Also why do things have to be complicated?

They're not, they're different. Doing stuff on Windows is also complicated if you don't know what you're doing, excepts you've had years of experience, in a few years Linux will feel easy and Windows complicated.

I’ve installed debian, installed calibre to manage my ebooks, created a library from an existing library on my hard drive (not the one with debian installed), ERROR! All the files are read-only.

Is the entire hard-drive read only? How did you mount it? What format is it on? You're skipping a lot of important questions, that if you had answered (or asked about this issue) you would know the problem. My guess is that you don't have ntfs-3g installed and the drive was NTFS.

What???? I’ve followed multiple guides on how to change permissions and finally solved the problem.

How? This might give us an idea of what was wrong with it.

Now let’s restart my pc. files on the hard drive are read only WHAT????

Yes, makes sense, did you applied a permanent fix or a temporary one? Since we don't know what you did we have to assume you did a temporary fix, so it's like asking why did Firefox not opened after I restarted my computer if I had open it before.

Fuck debian, let’s go on manjaro.

That's a bad reason to switch distros, if you switch distros every time you run into something you don't understand you're going to run out of distros fairly quickly. Let me tell you right now, EVERYTHING one distro can do another one can, no exceptions. Something not working is a bad reason to switch distros unless you know why the other distro makes it work and are okay with the philosophical differences between distros.

No problems at all on calibre. Managed to create the library as easy as i did on windows. My question is: where’s the fun in this?

The same thing that's causing you problems is an awesome feature, Linux is very modular, you can build yourself your system exactly the way you want it. That is very fun.

It’s just problems, after problems, after problems and i didn’t even start gaming.

Well, yeah, it's an unfamiliar thing, I feel the same every time I have to use Windows.

I mean i tried installing retroarch and importing my saves but of course nothing works.

Why not? AFAIK RetroArch should have cross compatible saves.

Read this guide, read that guide. Nope. Nothing works. Ok, fuck retroarch let’s customize the appearance of my desktop: move some icons on the panel, center this, adjust height, move this on the left, spent 30 minutes tweaking, very nice…

Did you saved in the meantime? Let his be a lesson, save often, you never know when something will happen.

kde crashes, all back to default.

That's weird, I don't remember last time KDE crashed, but then again I'm not using Manjaro so maybe the current version there is broken? What was the error? Did you submitted a bug report? That might be an important finding.

Let’s download some apps. I want as many apps that i already know as possible. Let’s see if jdownloader is available for linux. Yep there’s one. Nope, not for manjaro (officially). There’s a AUR package available. Nice.

Not nice, don't use AUR on Manjaro, you will break stuff.

What do i need to do to install a AUR package? A wall of text on the wiki, 20 minutes videos, yay.

That's because AUR is not meant for people who don't know what they're doing. It's dangerous and unstable, the way to get an air package is to build it yourself, the way to get an automated tool to install them is to build the package for it yourself, this should prevent people who shouldn't be building packages from doing so. BTW, Manjaro is especially unsafe because it has an AUR manager in their official repos IIRC, which btw is called yay, so not sure if that was a joke.

Ok let’s call it a day. Do i need to live another life to make linux work?

No, you just need time to learn something new, instead of jumping around thinking that things would solve themselves. If you had started with Ubuntu you might not had either of those problems, and if you had learned what was wrong with the first problem on the first distro you would know how to fix it in every other distro and solve similar problems, just like you did with Windows before and now solving things there is intuitive for you.

Linux isn't for you. Trust me, as someone who doesn't really like using Linux all that much.

If you stick with it, pick one. Stick with it. Use its documentation, not online forums.

You can't use online forums because CLI on how to do things varies from distro to distro. So a command for Ubuntu is useless somewhere else, most of the time.

That results in following guides and having it stop working part way through. You will never get anywhere like this. When you eventually do get somewhere, you're going to take some time away, or you're going to break something on accident. Then you'll have to set it all up again and likely will have lost some data if you weren't careful.

I built a server PC for Plex and a few other programs, after a number of years running various temporary projects, like Raspberry Pi servers I felt semi-confident. It was going for about 7 months and now it is stuck in a grub menu and if I am able to get into the desktop everything is fucked up anyway.

Tl;Dr, you are having issues because you went with the most complicated distros. Run some normal ones like Mint in Virtual Machines, get a feel for the process to install a program -- 1) manually, 2) from the "Linux store" (package manager) 3) from GitHub.

Anything else is just asking for a frustration headache

What is the filesystem in that hard drive? I've used Calibre with multiple installs of different distros and never had any issues with it reading my library.

If you ever try it again just go for ubuntu. That distro hides a lot of the complexity from the user.