Ideas for the Linux Category

Software & Operating Systems Linux
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Good morning everyone.

I am making this thread in an attempt to resurrect the Linux section into something more than a glorified help desk or pump and dump for generic Linux questions. I have received some suggestions by members that are no longer interested, but at one point were, in this section and have made it my mission to remedy it.

Aside from a culture shift in some of us, I think what’s needed is a fresh range of topics and threads to get people going. Some ideas and suggestions (in no particular order):

  • DIY
  • Applicable Linux
  • Current Projects
  • Knowledge Base

Many of these have similarities to each other, but vary enough that anyone interested in one particular topic over another won’t be deterred from making a thread.

I’m not doing a poll because of two reasons, abuse and minimal effort. Alt/Non-accounts can vote and it requires no further input. I want this to be a mega brainstorm session to get this session going and rather than 100s of “Ubuntu won’t get past GRUB” we can have a sticky for that. The goal is not discourage posts but to actively change the quality of posts.

DIY

This can be reserved for DoItYourself projects that specifically require a Linux operating system. Raspberry Pi, building a pipeline, standing up a mail server (to deGoogle yo’self), etc.

Applicable Linux

Similar to the DIY, this is more of a meta discussion or thought process of why you would use Linux. This isn’t for world domination or mass adoption, but for self hosting, home automation, learning to be a better programmer/sysadmin, taking on computing as a hobby. Whereas DIY is the how, this would be more of the why.

Current Projects

Show off the goods. What are you working on? Again, this would be a project, class, or task specifically requiring Linux. Pictures, specs, source code, screenshots, whatever you feel like sharing. Mandatory Fun, if you will. CoMmUnItY eNgAgEmEnT.

Knowledge Base

In an attempt to curtail the overwhelming (sometimes) help desk threads, we could start our own wiki in the Linux section going over common troubleshooting, networking, and system configuration. This is not an attempt to become StackOverflow, ask questions and seek guidance. This is not going to result in Help Desk threads getting closed immediately. This is not going to result in spamming links to Linux wikis (I hope). Rather, this will be a home for people experiencing standardized/common Linux issues that they can get resolved without creating an account/making a post and forgetting to check/etc.

These are just some ideas. Add more, critique and criticize, add and remove, do what you do.

What I am NOT looking for:

  • Turning everything into a Windows versus Linux discussion.
  • Turning everything into a distro X versus distro Y
  • Ruining the discussion because you don’t like NVidia/AMD

The first one shouldn’t need any explanation, but here it goes: You’re in the Linux section, stop talking about Windows. Linux has enough merit to stand on its own without putting down other operating systems.

Second, distros don’t matter. Plenty of books exist that are distro agnostic and work perfectly well. Linus Torvalds uses Ubuntu, so can you. Richard Stallman uses Gentoo, so can you. Everything else in between is acceptable as well. I will go full Medieval Admin Abuse on you and /dev/null/delete/edit posts if this gets out of control. If you have a question specific to Ubuntu, ask away, but these topics are able to remain distro agnostic.

Last, hardware doesn’t matter. Who cares? Use what you like, don’t judge others for their decisions. AMD is great and Nvidia is great. Intel is okay.

Alright, enough of this. Let me know what you think, let each other know what you think, and together we can Make the Linux Section Great Again.

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I bought a new SSD just to put Linux on my laptop to do software defined radio on. I’ll make a thread when/if I get somewhere with that.

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For the knowledge base, and I know this exists else where on the internet, but a full glossary of all the various acronyms.

Often I take a look in a Linux thread and it is half readable words and half alphabet soup so it gets very confusing very fast if you are not a wizard and results in a lot of time going between 2 sentences and about 8 other tabs to find out what it all means.

Edit: made further worse by some of them referencing other acronyms so it is a rabbit hole of looking up random letters hoping you get the correct result and then looking up what the decoded words relate to and then finally finding out what it all means in context.

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im so goddamn triggered right now. literally shaking.

tbh tho

I’ll think about it and write something up about this topic over the weekend.

Thank you for opening this topic and inviting me to this! Lets make the Linux Section great again!

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Updated this:

To have table of contents and a Common Terms section. I also made it a wiki so anyone can contribute and not have to wait for me.

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I was about to send you (AdminDev) a PM regarding some of my ideas about the Linux section, but I might as well leave them here out in the open for everyone to judge.

About the wiki:

I personally don’t mind if the threads in Linux section suffer from this, but
if I understood correctly the wiki should be beginner friendly, so let’s make sure it actually is.

Second, guidelines for the “reborn” Linux section: While we are not 100% sure what the this new Linux section will eventually have, would it be a bad idea to make a pinned post and separate rules, or rather, guidelines and explanation what L1T section is and how to structure your threads and so on. Or update this:
About the Linux category AND add a short video to it. I mean, we all treat documents and manuals like George Clooney does (well, at least I do):

So why not have someone (maybe Wendell if he has time for it) record short 1-3 min video about how things (should) work in Linux section? This would be helpful for both new users who just joined the forums, and old members who want to get a grasp of the new restructured Linux section.

I had some other ideas too, but can’t remember them now. I’ll share when I do remember them again.

And if there’s anything a Linux noob like me can do please let me know. I’ll be happy to help. :slight_smile:

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Oh of course I am not saying dumb everything down, just have an in house section that can be referenced quickly and easily for it.

When I have more time I will make an attempt at an example of rock dumb noob friendly explaining, maybe not as a template but just to show what makes sense to me, though I am not the populace so it may take a few revisions.

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I would say you could achieve the intended resurrection with a more generalized list of sub-sections like Linux Networking, Linux GUI, Linux Beginner Command Line, Linux Kernel Development, Linux Gaming, etc. Maybe avoid going into precise details and let threads fall into a handful of general categories for simplicity and to remain inviting to new Linux users. Most new users are intimidated once they see complexity.

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I know I sometimes use likes inflationary, but this deserves a like and my support. I like the formats, although I’m not sure about “Applicable Linux”. Even with the discription I am not entirely sure what you mean. As for the rest, I agree with every single word!

However, this is going to be a lot of work. Also, I’ll need to evaluate where I can best contribute here. I use Fedora as my daily driver but I don’t really do a whole lot of interesting stuff with it and I could do everything on Windows too. When I need to do something new I binge read docs and forums until I get stuff working for me and then never touch it again. When I run into problems I often take the approach of nuke from orbit and pave over. So, I would suck at writing a wiki :thinking:.

Good idea! Coming up with a good format is going to be important though.
Maybe we even can do something like a decronym bot like on some subreddits. :thinking:

hmmm … maybe this could work. I do use documentation regularly and I prefer a written format but it has to be structured well and be up to date.

I second that.

Very good points. :+1: Maybe it would be better to have more categories. :thinking:
Does anyone know if it is possible to show a thread in multiple categories?

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Unix Acronym list:

http://www.roesler-ac.de/wolfram/acro/all.htm

Could always pull from here.

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I wonder how receptive the community would be to a project that detects the user’s distribution, kernel, and video card, and automatically installs the proper drivers and libraries needed for Linux? Basically a glorified bash script + UI. But it might really simplify a lot of installations and have the added benefit of de-cluttering some of the support posts.

EDIT: Plus we could (wendell permitting) brand it L1T and if it got around on the internet might serve to increase the userbase here as well.

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Remember how when you used to buy a video game, and on one of the pages in the manual, it showed the HUD and gave a breakdown of things?

Something Like:

9AEB71F88F3C3F9DFEA3BB680FAB221062E621C31920×1080

I planned on doing this for the different DE’s. But kept forgetting. Now I have no passion for doing this.

I know you were referring to Linux GUI as a sub section and this reply doesn’t focus on that. But just putting this out there if any one wants to do this. Because I don’t think something like this exists. At least, not from what I’ve seen. inb4 no one done this because its lame. :stuck_out_tongue:

But anyway it was going to be super detailed. Like the explanation of what “x” was and “x” was going to be defined and explained below the image. The Rome Total War game had a great user manual. So that was the inspiration. Something like:

Minimap

Here you can view “x”. By default this is very limited. However if you go to “y” ( as shown on screen ) you can change the view to be as zoomd in or out as you like.

Use Skill Points

blah abha ahkaskdhjheyu sd

Abilities

sdfjdhljshdkjfhueusdf

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If someone is good at graphic design. Maybe they can create info-graphics for us. Like…

Pressidium_blogpost_23_02_2017_Blog-post-1.png801×401 30.4 KB

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That could be a very good idea, or a very bad one. The problem I see is that someone needs to maintain it. For this to work out, it has to work reliably on many distros and essentially indefinitely.

I would never give someone my horrible copy pasta bash scripts, they would definitely break something somewhere. We’d need a couple of people that are good with that sort of thing and willing to contribute the time. I’d be willing to test though, beeing already used to nuking my systems. :grin:

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Yes, it would require some maintenance, but probably not near-constant. I think there’s certainly an active enough userbase here to maintain it, if people are willing. It would definitely be valuable, I think, to have a one-click resource we could give people to get them set up and gaming. It might lower the barrier of entry for people trying to switch over to Linux.

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That is definitely a start but it is still beyond the newbies. I was thinking along the lines of having it broken down to what the letters stand for, what the words actually mean as those can be confusing or just plain meaningless to some and then what the the tool accomplishes.

So something like SUDO is used all the time and someone new may not know that it is not a word but has a meaning.

SUDO: Super User Do
Function: Used for running commands as other users, originally as the superuser but has been expanded to allow commands as other users too.
Simple: Run commands as admin
See also: Superuser

And then links to braking it down further.

SuperUser: The Linux equivelant of an administrator.

Not quite right yet but something more like that. So it explains the acronym, the function and then in simple plain English what it means for the average, let’s say windows, user.

Oh and maybe an example of it in action or why it is needed.

DE: Desktop Environment
Function: Manages how your desktop and windows are displayed, look, feel and function
Simple: the Linux equivelant of Explorer.exe
See Also: XFCE, GNOME, OpenBox, Plasma, KDE, Cinnamon…

DNF: Dandified Yum
Function: DNF is a Package Manager, a general one stop shop for almost anything you need to install, no downloading and installing things through a browser needed, click to install and your package (program/installer) does just that. Don’t need the package any more? Go back to your package manager and click uninstall.
Simple: only half present in windows as add/remove programs and features, windows does not have a comparable management system (excluding windows store)
See Also: Package Managers, RPM, YUM, Ubuntu Software Centre…

Package Manager: A general one stop shop for almost anything you need to install, no downloading and installing things through a browser needed, click to install and your package (program/installer) does just that. Don’t need the package any more? Go back to your package manager and click uninstall.
Simple: only half present in windows as add/remove programs and features, windows does not have a comparable management system (excluding windows store). The standard in windows is going to a website and downloading an installer, installing and managing the program manually.
See Also: DNF, YUM, RPM, Ubuntu Software Centre…

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I would think the target user base of such a script installs one of various distros and either:

  1. Relies on the default video drivers
  2. Installs NVIDIA’s driver
  3. Installs AMD’s driver

If your needs go beyond that, then scripting isn’t going to be easy or possible.

So, I’m not sure what problem this script solves? Just AMD vs NVIDIA property driver switch?

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Go make that thread bro.

That post is :fire: :fire: :fire: :fire: :fire:

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Oh man. I am not sure I have the time right now or the longevity to look after it. And I am so basic that is about the only example I can pull off and even then it could be better.

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