agentmax wrote: |
---|
Isn't Bash kind of a prereq on Linux? I don't use Linux, so speaking from absolutely zero experience, but I thought you had to install/write your own applications and do most stuff from a command line until you get some GUI-based apps installed. |
Most Linux distro's come with a GUI software package manager. I use Fedora, it installs most of the common packages as flatpaks. There is no need to write your own app to do this. As I understand it, Arch Linux is different in that one doesn't get anything except the shell initially, so one has complete control of exactly what is installed.
Of course it is very handy to be able to do stuff with the shell as well. Using the package manager
dnf from the shell is straight forward:
$ sudo dnf install <package name> #install a single package
$ sudo dnf update <package name> #update a single package
$ sudo dnf update #update the whole system
Of course there are a bunch of other options too. Other package managers such as
apt on other distros are similarly easy.
It is possible to do a major upgrade (say Fedora 34 to 35) with dnf as well.
The overriding thing is not to be scared of the shell. It probably is quite intimidating reading the man page for bash: it seems complex and arcane. Personally, I don't find any worse than learning C++. One can start with easy things, then increase gradually.
The syntax seems complex, but it s very powerful, For example:
$ touch file{1..3}.tx # create 3 txt files with brace expansion (file1.txt, file2.txt, file3.txt), oops forgot the last t
$ rm fi* # remove the files we just made
$ !tou:s/tx/&t # history substitution to fix typo
Anything after the # is a comment, one wouldn't normally write them in interactive mode.
With the last command, the
!
introduces a history substitution, referring to the previous command that starts with
tou : our previous
touch command. The
:s introduces another substitution, the
/ delimits the start of the old string
tx. The second
/ delimits the new string, the
& is a shortcut for the old string (we want to append to it),
t is the bit we want to append.
If that was too hard, one could just use the up arrow to get to the required previous command, and manually edit it.
Personally, I quite like the ability to do almost anything, it's just a matter of gradually learning the syntax.
I am not trying to convert anyone, I feel it is OK to point out some good points about the things I like :+)