linuxmemes

dotfile bros:

-what GUI?

I think there should be a standard for config files, where it defines all of the options and possible values, so that an app can be made to modify them.

Yeah, some distros have GUIs for system settings, like openSUSE and Mageia, but advanced users will often even take that as a reason to not use those distros, because they themselves don't need that on their system. And because not many advanced users use these distros, it's hard to recommend them for noobs, because it makes it more difficult to find help resources. Kind of a stupid situation...

This could be paraphrased as "GUI for the GUI settings, non-GUI for the non-GUI settings." It's not surprising to me that parts of Linux that run on systems that don't have GUIs do not have GUI settings. I understand the frustration, but building those is more work, and more things that can break, go out of date, etc..

What if Linux presented its config files in an app like regedit? Would that be easier? I doubt it. But with complicated data structures, making a first-class app just to edit a specific text file or set of files on disk is a very low ROI for engineering hours.

Nowdays Windows horse has the same head but it basically never even had a butt at all (or third party butts at some point).

Since suggestions in the comments are just words of apologists, do you have a proposal for a solution, or is this just a rant post?

All I’m getting right now is a vague idea of some Master GUI that resembles the cockpit of a commercial jet that no “average user” is ever going to try and decipher, anyway.

NixOS has the potential to do really well here. The Nix language has a rich enough type system to generate GUI forms for every field, and there are several projects being worked on that allow editing NixOS options from a GUI. They're still very janky, but it's definitely possible to get to a point where a layperson could operate them without breaking their system.

reminds me of the one time I tried to configure a proxy on fedora KDE and then realizing most apps don't even use the inbuilt proxy settings and there are three separate ways to configure it that are only accessable via the terminal and it is pain

I'd just like one standard for all config files. Yaml, json, whatever...let's just choose something and standardize.

I used to dislike editing text config files but once you have one written you've got a template for the future. So long as the documentation is throughly written it's not too bad to follow.

Desktop Environments are decoupled from the underlying system. It makes switching DEs very easy but integration sucks.

I needed to flush dns on my Ubuntu machine. I googled it found a command for an older version. But of course the underlying stuff changed since then and that command doesn't exist anymore.

The command to flush dns on Windows has been the same for decades. On Linux half the stuff I learn is going to be obsolete in a couple of years and that knowledge can't be carried over to other Distros because they do it differently.

I also had to manually build and install a driver for a very common realtek wifi chipset that is not even new.

You ever try to put together a GUI? I absolutely get why they look like crap! Although I have been having fun playing around with egui.