22h ago

Just installed mint yesterday, I get it now

I thought it'd be a pain but installing programs through the terminal is actually so nice, I never would have expected it

105 comments

I once installed HP shitbox printer drivers from the command line in 30 seconds, and the shitbox printer just...worked.
My heart soared higher than the eagle. I touched the face of the one true FOSS God, and felt that thing when astronauts have epiphanies about the Earth. 10/10, would recommend.
- The moment I loved the FOSS community was when I went on an Linux IRC channel, complained about my wifi not working, and some stranger messaged me detailed instructions with a patch in 20 minutes that completely fixed my issue.
  
  At the same time it encourages people to just trust whatever people are telling them to input in the terminal, which is potentially dangerous.
  
  Piping curl into sh is sadly a very common install method these days
  But you are right
- I once plugged my linux laptop into the scanner and it just worked
  I spent days tinkering with proprietary, outdated (seriously, win XP as target) programs that provide sort-of drivers, and nothing worked, on windows.
  
  I think that is just wildly amazing that printer drivers in Linux so often just work. I plugged in a wireless printer the other day and the hardest part was connecting it to the network. Once that was done BOOM Ubuntu found it and I could print. Those driver maintainers are doing a great job!
  
  Funnily enough, you have the Apple folks to thank for that.
  sane-airprint is a Mac invention, but Macs use the common Unix printer system, so Linux benefits from it
  
  Capitalism vs Communism on a small scale
  One is "We're not making profit anymore, so not paying anyone to do this. Also not publishing the source because of IP.", the other one is "I have fun doing this, I think I'll adapt the driver to my printer. Open ofc, so others can benefit, while all others, including me, benefit from others achievements."
- Mine worked out of the box on mint. Like, it detected the network HP shitbox and I could print, no user intervention. I was floored.
  
  Same on most distros I've tried recently. Fedora, OpenSUSE, CachyOS, Bazzite. Not vanilla Arch obviously

105 comments