Cyno

So what do I do if I want to install VSCode? The official installation guide on their website says to download the deb file, why is such a big and popular tool not in the repository right away? Or better yet, if this is the officially endorsed why how are we to figure out the proper alternative?

Git Fork is absolutely amazing. It has a good (unlimited) free trial but it is well worth the one time purchase too.

I wonder what kind of support for development do you get? Honestly I've only had obstacles when I switched, for example the docker installation was much more complicated on linux than on windows+wsl. Even installing python was problematic because apparently 'upgrading it yourself can brick the system', at least if an older version comes with the OS?

And lastly it's the simple thing that pretty much all tools work on windows natively but on linux you have to find workarounds, which is definitely a problem when it comes to productivity.

So what are the benefits, what does linux have that windows doesn't in this context?

Thank you very much for such a detailed answer! This is exactly the type of stuff I wanted to learn in advance from some generalist tutorial because honestly, I feel bad constantly asking such basic questions and there's no guarantee there will always be someone like you to answer them. In retrospect it's probably the smarter and simpler option to just google the command docs online, I just wanted to do it "right" since I heard all the praise about man command and you never know if you're working offline.

I'll check out nala, could be a good learning tool, thanks!

That gives me a list of over 2000 rows inside of the terminal that i cant apparently search or sort -.-

Then I tried to be smart and do man dpkg -l to see if that has any options on how to use it better, and instead i got another huge text file that i cant search or navigate through properly

So then i googled how to open it in an editor and tried man dpkg -l | nano, which does open it for a second and then crashes, i just get "too many errors from stdin, buffer written to nano.12608.save" in the terminal

ofc something as simple as map dpkg -l | vscode doesnt work either

I'm just tired

I dunno if I agree with this. Using windows and the office suite is taught in schools, at least in europe, and has been even when I was in school around 2 decades ago. Regardless of that, it is very user-friendly with intuitive simple UI and various wizards that guide you through every process step by step and generally speaking you dont have to do much, if any, manual configuration or tinkering if you dont want to.

I'm not saying linux should be the same and its obvious the priorities are different as you say, but I disagree that all OSes are about "detective work and figuring it out". I dont think bashing your head against the wall is a good way of learning anymore. I dont think even asking questions every time on various forums is a good solution since there is no guarantee you will get a correct answer, especially with linux - chances are much higher in my experience you will get an opinionated and possibly wrong or outdated answer.

As mentioned in another post I'm more of a reading than video-watching person but I'll take any resource I can get. I saw in another thread that someone recommended this video but it is 6 hours long so i haven't really delved into it yet

I want to use the terminal and I'd prefer the simplicity and reliability of a single command over various GUIs, but it doesn't feel like it's consistent or simple with the terminal either. For example with VSCode, it doesn't have apt-get install vscode command (at least not listed on its installation pages) - it recommends manually downloading the deb file and then apt installing it.

https://code.visualstudio.com/docs/setup/linux

I just don't know whats the proper / good way of doing it anymore. The popOS shop is horrible, you cant stop running installations cuz it freezes and stops giving any feedback, sometimes it breaks and doesn't open fully, the UX is bad, but i dont know what else to do. At least with the shop I have a clear list of installed apps and a place to uninstall them, if i do it with the terminal I have no idea where they end up living.

Haha no worries, that's also a common linux experience :P

I'm trying out popOS and even the native package manager (popOS shop?) installs most applications as flatpaks afaik? I have no idea where they end up being compared to windows' program files or what kind of defaults they install with. I started putting my custom downloaded AppImages into the ~/Applications folder and then used AppImageLauncher to actually have them show up in search.

Then I will run into something like docker which is not in the shop and has a ton of commands you have to run in order to get it to work, like uninstalling conflicting packages, installing some certificates and keyrings and i dont even know what - it was supposed to work better than on windows but it is nowhere near as neat as there!

Then I install samba (again, not available in the popOS shop) and I have it running but i have no idea whether it's set to automatically run or not. Searching for it with GUI tools doesn't show it as installed anywhere so in this case i have to rely on the terminal. The popOS store does have a list of installed apps but the search field gets disabled when you go into this screen because it's only used for browsing the shop, not through your installed apps?

I’d say that the best learning resource you can have is a spare computer specifically dedicated to exploring Linux, with which you can install and break and configure and break again without worry. Learning Linux can be like playing a roguelite, and I mean that also in the sense that it can be fun.

This is what I do but the issue is that I have no feedback on whether Im doing the right thing or if im making the life unnecessarily difficult for me. Games will slap you and make you redo something if you fuck it up, linux just makes you live in agony until sometimes breaks and you dont know why.

Isn't there a lot of overlap though, at least between OSes that are of the same type (like debian/ubuntu)? How to set up users, knowing that you need to manually configure automatic mounting of your drives, knowing how/when to use flatpak or apt or .deb, where to install apps... These are not really intuitive things, especially for someone coming from windows, and most "how to install linux" guides don't really go into these in any meaningful way.

For instance at first I thought I could just keep a list of apt commands and make an "easy to reinstall" linux script at one time, and that lasted for whole of 10 minutes before I realized every app needs manual intervention in one or another way, or has a different way of installing. Also, as many people I just prefix everything with sudo to get it to install, but who knows if that is the correct thing to do? not me at least

I've only gone through the reddit thread and tbh most people seem to be bashing this method and pointing out flaws? It doesn't seem like a magic bullet solution and dual boot seems like the better option, at least for now.