Bell curve of Linux distributions

Yikes, I forgot about the All-Snap Ubuntu Desktop!

Oh snap
- Snaps?
  
  Got my new laptop with Ubuntu, s they offered to install it on it instead of windows. (The license costs of windows was as high as doubling the mem to 64 GB, no contest what so ever) It was on the laptop for a few min (sync install to backup location on NAS) before Debian was installed. When looking around, I just couldn't get to grips with it. (couldn't be bothered as well to be honest, as OS replacement was already planned, I just wanted to nick the graphical config)

You can turn them off, but good luck keeping firefox up to date.

Yeah but at this point you're fighting against the OS, might as well switch to a distro that already works the way you want.
- Yea… switching requires work though. I got enough of that already :D
  
  Sure, that's why I endured Canonical's BS for almost a year, but when I started my new job I just installed Arch even though Ubuntu was the "safe" choice.
Ah yes, vendor lock-in in desktop linux.

I don't get why anyone thinks this is acceptable in any way.
- I kinda hate it, but I’m also too lazy to switch on my main desktop. Every new install gets Fedora though.
Or just use Waterfox or LibreWolf?

It's 2 seconds after the latest optimizations.

and apt is awful.

Man, why do people hate apt so much? Maybe because I'm a filthy casual but I never really had any big problems with apt.
- Compared to Pacman it's very slow. I had several problems when I used it. but if it's good for you, then use it.
  
  If you think apt is slow you've never used dnf.
  
  I even forget that it exists sometimes.
  
  Could be because they have more users slowing down the repo servers, especially for debian as it's used by a huge proportion of docker images, which tends to pull a bunch of packages during the build process eating tons of bandwidth.
  
  maybe you are right.
  
  I mean I prefer Pacman too, but yeah, maybe because I don't use Ubuntu / Debian that much so I can't really say.
  
  I like pacman too but I will probably never get comfortable with its arguments. It's worse than tar which has already become a meme. apt is more intuitive to use.
  
  After a month of using arch, I'm still considering aliases for pacman.
  
  At least I can remember "Xtract Ze Vucking File" for tar, but whenever I want to do anything more than -Syu with pacman, I have to look it up.
  
  "Xtract Ze Vucking File" for tar
  
  Hey thanks! I should be able to remember that too.
  
  pacman -Syu, pacman -Syyu, pacman -Ss, pacman -Qs, etc. etc...
  
  Right, but if you don't already know what those arguments mean, then its not exactly super obvious as to what they do.
  
  For example, I've been told that you're generally not supposed to do pacman -Syyu because it can result in partial upgrades (unless I'm remembering the wrong set/combination of flags, which would just be case in point...) - I tend to remember flags by associating them with words.
  
  For example, the common flags for tar was brought up in one of the sibling comments here, but at least I can remember them by:
  
  x: eXtract
  
  z: Use gzip for the operation (which originally I remembered as "the file has .gz" in its extension before I knew what gzip was)
  
  v: verbose, giving the details about what its doing
  
  f: file, the file name you're wanting to work with
  
  c: create archive
  
  t: test archive (I use this with the v flag to see what is in an archive before extracting it)
  
  But with Pacman, even after using it on and off for a couple of years, I can try to estimate what the flag names are, but have no idea if its right without double checking:
  
  S: Sync with repositories
  
  s: No idea on this one
  
  y: Also no idea on this one
  
  Q: Query (search)
  
  u: Allow upgrades (?)
  
  Really I think its the fact that some of the flags can be used in different combinations which have different effects - like passing z to tar doesn't change the effect of the flag whether you use x or c. Yet apparently -Syyu and -Syu are valid but one does a proper supported upgrade, and one does a partial upgrade which is not supported and is generally not recommended unless you know what you're doing. I also know of no occasion where passing the same flag to tar multiple times mutates its behavior as well.
  
  That makes it feel like an anti-pattern to me, similar to using magic numbers in programming. Maybe there is a valid reason for this decision (such as why the Linux kernel uses magic numbers in syscalls) but the result is still that it feels incredibly foreign to me, despite having 10 odd years of Linux experience under my belt.
  
  I agree with that. My reply was to illustrate how cryptic sometimes the most common pacman commands are, and you have to refer to both --help and man pacman, though I find it easier to go to Arch Wiki or Google it generally. The tar flags are great! Pacman can be a bit confusing.
  
  s is for search, I believe. When you add the S flag, so it becomes pacman -Ss, it synchronises the package database and search within that database.
  
  y is refreshing local database or something like that? If you put pacman -Syyu, it will force refresh the master package database so that it can deal with corrupted databases or something like that. Pacman seems advanced to me but I just don't really remember / know my way around it that well.
  
  Q is for searching local package database.
  
  u is for system update, since it is preferable to rebuild the whole package database in your system to synchronise against the database containing the latest packages.
  
  I hope I'm somewhat correct. There are other flags but I don't remember them. It is elegant if you already are familiar with the commands, but otherwise, other package managers and program commands like tar are much easier since they contain English language imperatives.
  
  As for the magic numbers, that's the first time I knew of that concept. Quickly looking at Wikipedia seems to suggest that there probably are accepted use cases, though that might be historical and not entirely logical.
  
  Really, sometimes computers can be a mess, we're just used to that mess.
  
  Those definitions of pacman's flags sounds correct to me, at least when I correlate them to my (admittedly rough) memory of using them in the past. I generally ended up using yay for handling both Arch and AUR package management, but I did most of my package searching via DDG's !arch and !aur "bangs" to look at it on the web (or just yay likely-the-package-name) which explains my lapse in the Q/s flags.
  
  As for the magic numbers, that’s the first time I knew of that concept. Quickly looking at Wikipedia seems to suggest that there probably are accepted use cases, though that might be historical and not entirely logical.
  
  I won't pretend like I've seen every possible API out there, but the only time that I personally know the use of magic numbers made sense from a developer standpoint was in Linux's reboot system call which this question/answer does a good job of explaining the reasoning behind it but the quick rundown is that its a safety feature; A bit-flip could inadvertently trigger the reboot system call to be ran instead of something like say exec() which you definitely wouldn't want to have done on your PC while you're working (or even worse, something like a web server) . The magic numbers are required for the reboot system call to eliminate this possibility because its practically impossible to inadvertently pass in the exact correct numbers for the reboot syscall to another one in the same way that its unlikely you'd accidentally unlock the guard to a fire alarm and pull the trigger by just brushing up against it.
  
  (Okay, maybe that rundown wasn't quicker than the answer on stack-exchange... oops)
  
  I suspect any other use cases for magic numbers are very similar to this (a safety precaution against accidentally calling a destructive API) or some silly (and weak) "security through obscurity" type of principal. Somehow I doubt the "magic arguments" for pacman are for either though 😅
  
  Really, sometimes computers can be a mess, we’re just used to that mess.
  
  Oh yes for sure, computers are quite the double edged sword - vastly handy and important tools but also a royal pain in the ass way too often...
  
  That makes sense about the magic numbers! Though I suspect that that isn't the case for pacman's commands. This might be totally false but Arch is designed with simplicity and elegance in mind, and so short single letter commands to manage your entire system is preferred.
  
  Just out of curiosity, are you a developer or sysadmin?
  
  Apt install nala
Correct, apt is awful, apt-get, that's what you need. ;) You really need to tell apt not to install junk:

$ cat /etc/apt/apt.conf.d/00NoJunk APT::Install-Recommends "0"; APT::Install-Suggests "0";

I hate yum with a passion, but still wouldn't touch dnf when I have an alternative. As it earns my keep (alas, no deb based distro at work... yet), I've managed to hide all that perfectly in scripting/config management setups.
- What does that config do? Sorry I'm a new Linux user.
  
  When you install software, other packages are pulled in and installed. Some of those are necessary dependencies but some are just recommended (but not actually required). This setting makes apt only install the actual dependencies (no extras).
  
  I see, that's why sometimes there are lots of installed dependencies that you don't really remember needing when you use apt.