this post was submitted on 16 Dec 2024
74 points (89.4% liked)

Linux

48637 readers
1341 users here now

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).

Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.

Rules

Related Communities

Community icon by Alpár-Etele Méder, licensed under CC BY 3.0

founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
 

Hello everyone! I know that Linux GUI advanced in last few years but we still lack some good system configuration tools for advanced users or sysadmins. What utilities you miss on Linux? And is there any normal third party alternatives?

(page 2) 50 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] circuitfarmer@lemmy.sdf.org 15 points 2 days ago

My Linux experience has been command line training. Now I avoid GUI stuff like the plague if I can help it.

[–] ubergeek 15 points 2 days ago (4 children)

A decent GUI LDAP client.

Yes, I know, I can use slapcat and all... But holy hell, I'm tired of writing basic LDAP files to populate a new domain. And, no, I really don't want to spin up a webserver just to run a web based GUI that I NOW have to ensure is locked down.

load more comments (4 replies)
[–] D_Air1@lemmy.ml 6 points 2 days ago

I've recently gotten into using cockpit. I just wish it was as expansive as openSUSE's yast.

[–] westyvw@lemm.ee 10 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

Given that windows administration is powershell these days they kind of are similar.

Windows is missing so much in their guis abilities (like copy text) that I wonder what there is you are missing.

Edit: Although this is not an admin function, one thing that bothers me about windows, A LOT is that the file explorer does not show free space while I am in the current directory. Dolphin will do it even for SMB shares. Also you can click the drop down and examine all drives right there instead of have to back to the left and ruining your view in explorer. And don't get me started about how you can't split views in Windows explorer. This is just one everyday task where windows GUI is lacking in features even though it is not an admin tool.

[–] pr06lefs@lemmy.ml 11 points 2 days ago (2 children)

One thing I kind of miss is autohotkeys on windows. It was relatively easy to do things like set keyboard keys to act as mouse keys. I did that once when I was getting over tendonitis.

These days I have a keyboard with mouse keys on it and a trackball also with mouse keys. I can use the middle button on the trackball and scroll with it, but I can't use the middle button on the keyboard and scroll with the trackball, which would be more ergonomic for me. Haven't figured that one out yet.

That said, I mostly don't miss GUI stuff. I use a tiling window manager and command line utilities to do most things on my system. Its kind of primitive I guess, but the benefit is it works exactly the same on remote systems, headless servers, etc.

[–] Takahe@lemmy.nz 8 points 2 days ago

I have replaced autohotkeys with https://github.com/espanso/espanso

It does everything I need it to, although I am not sure if it can do the mouse button things you need

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] algernon@lemmy.ml 11 points 2 days ago (1 children)

I have Emacs, and I have my NixOS configuration. That's all the GUI system configuration I need.

[–] Telorand@reddthat.com 8 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Why use NixOS, when you could just use emacs?

[–] algernon@lemmy.ml 12 points 2 days ago (1 children)

My Emacs needed a bootloader.

[–] Atemu@lemmy.ml 5 points 2 days ago

That should be our new slogan:

NixOS: Your Emacs' bootloader.

[–] SolarPunker@slrpnk.net 4 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

I would like something to change my monitor output at a system level, for example I could emulate a CRT screen or decide my aspect ratio. Something like RetroArch shaders but in a more high priority level.

[–] AliasAKA@lemmy.world 7 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

HWMonitor / cpuID / cpuz. One of the frustrating things is not having good driver level support for certain mbs with system monitoring utilities, so you can’t see fans and some cpu stats (like per ccd temps etc on Ryzen processors). Specifically things like it87 boards

[–] PrefersAwkward@lemmy.world 5 points 2 days ago (1 children)

HardInfo2 may be interesting to you

[–] AliasAKA@lemmy.world 2 points 2 days ago

I’ll check this out, thanks! I really just need to figure out how to build in the driver level stuff for my chipset. Even this I think just pulls from lm-sensors which needs the low level drivers to populate the appropriate files to read from.

[–] PrefersAwkward@lemmy.world 5 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

Well KDE had this awesome process management tool, I think it was called ~~System Monitor~~ or something. You could tune process priorities with IO and CPU. They deprecated the tool though, I think because nobody wanted to port it to QT6

EDIT: It's not System Monitor. I can't recall the name, but there used to be an app that let you set niceness / priorities of your processes.

[–] intelisense@lemm.ee 3 points 2 days ago (1 children)

System Monitor is very much still alive, and I'm pretty sure it is updated to Qt6. I was using it only yesterday on Plasma 6...

[–] PrefersAwkward@lemmy.world 2 points 2 days ago (1 children)

You're right. I can't recall the other utility's name. System Monitor is fantastic, but I just wish I could set the niceness and all that like you could on the old utility.

[–] intelisense@lemm.ee 3 points 2 days ago (2 children)

That would indeed be a nice feature. I'm sure they would welcome the suggestion!

load more comments (2 replies)
[–] FourPacketsOfPeanuts@lemmy.world 6 points 2 days ago (2 children)

It seems impossible to set display scaling from the command line. Anything that fixes that would be nice.

[–] user_naa@lemmy.world 7 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (3 children)

What is your DE? On KDE Plasma Wayland you can just use kscreen-doctor output.HDMI-A-1.scale.2 to set it to 200%

And it seem like CLI not GUI issue :)

load more comments (3 replies)
load more comments (1 replies)
[–] oshu@lemmy.world 3 points 2 days ago (3 children)

I've been using linux for over 25 years and I don't understand this post. One of the strengths of linux is that you don't need a gui to do sysadmin.

load more comments (3 replies)
[–] eugenia@lemmy.ml 4 points 2 days ago (12 children)

I personally would like a systemd gui. There have been several attempts in the past, but none is maintained.

[–] Ephera@lemmy.ml 6 points 2 days ago

On openSUSE, I've apparently got at least this thing for looking at SystemD services:

Allows viewing the services for the different boot targets, as well as the service files. You can also start/stop services or change their start mode (on boot vs manual).

Well, and there's a JournalD viewer with filtering:

Not the most developed GUIs, but...

[–] notabot@lemm.ee 4 points 2 days ago (3 children)

SystemD is far too much of a poorly thought through mess to have anything like a sane GUI configuration, it doesn't even have a sane textfile based configuration. We're going to have to wait fir SystemD to crumble under it's own weight and be replaced with multiple, simple, cleanly designed components before we have any hope of a sane config again. Sort of like we used to have before a certain someone/some company (depending on how conspiratorial you're feeling) decided to come along and muck it all up.

/rant

Thank you for coming to my Ted ~~Talk~~ Rant. You may gather I dislike SystemD quite a lot.

load more comments (3 replies)
load more comments (10 replies)
load more comments
view more: ‹ prev next ›