Random Chitchat 2012-2016

[PureTryOut]

I find Linux somewhat difficult to use, coming from a Windows background.

Sure, it's different, but that's not a reason to not try to get used to it

First, the console irritates me. Every other moment it picks a different behavior, I never know whether, for example, history browsing using up and down arrows will work or will display garbage characters instead. It just sometimes works and sometimes doesn't.

Strange, I have never heard of this bug before, neither with bash or zsh. Have you made a bug report about it?

What I miss the most in the console and more or less generally everywhere on Linux is the Ctrl+left / right arrow jumping over words. That's just such a natural way to navigate long commandlines, I can't fathom how Linux guys can live without this.

Might not be in by default, but I'm fairly sure you can configure it to do so. Again, make a bug report/feature request, maybe someone will add it.

Then there's software, of course. There's nothing quite like the Visual Studio IDE and its integrated debugger, together with its ecosystem.
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On Linux the debugger IDE integration has always been super-slow and awkward. In MSVC, I just hover the mouse over a few symbols and I know what I'm looking at, what the values are etc. On Linux, I'd die of exhaustion typing all those commands and watch expressions.

I don't really know that much about Visual Studio, I have only used it with some simple school projects. I just know it randomly broke on me, and it takes hours to install and/or update.
It includes all kinds of "features" I do not need. That may be a plus for someone else, but not for me.

Have you tried out Code::Blocks (assuming you're doing mostly C++)? From what I hear it's a quite capable IDE, with integrated debugger (using gcc I think).

Then there's discoverability. In Windows I can click around in the GUIs and I find all the system settings I ever need. In Linux, I need to learn obscure commandlines to do basic operations, let alone some tinkering.

Honestly, I find that the benefit in Linux. I'm constantly lost in menu's, while I just have to learn 1 or 2 commands, and it'll do the same thing. Sure you might have to search for a bit if you have to use a new command, but you'll get to know the regular commands really quickly, you'll be amazed. And depending on the programs you use you can have the same menu's like you're always used to.


Anyhow Linux is surely not for everyone, but it has become a lot better in the recent years. It's really popular under developers, which is why I don't really understand why some developers do not like it. But having some Linux knowledge could be really good for you, it gives you a better understanding of underlaying systems. And of course, it's open-source. IMO an OS should not be closed source such as OSX and Windows.

I would recommend setting up another pc, or a dual-boot, with Linux, and try it out again. If you encounter any problems, please just file bug reports, so the developers can improve it for you.


@DrMasik I wanted to switch over my personal server to FreeBSD, but am still hesitating. Is it possible that FreeBSD does not have any support for BTRFS file systems? It seems like it only supports UFS (which Linux sadly doesn't support), ZFS, and EXT2/3 (not even EXT4).