Just installed mint yesterday, I get it now

If you or someone you know wants a taste of that experience on Windows, try out winget or chocolatey.

Niw you are doomed and there is no going back. Welcome to the gang;)

tab completion works in more places than you might expect
ctrl-a/ctrl-e for start/end of line
ctrl-u to clear the command you’ve typed so far but store it into a temporary pastebuffer
ctrl-y to paste the ctrl-u’d command
ctrl-w to delete by word (I prefer binding to alt-backspace though)
ctrl-r to search your command history
alt-b/alt-f to move cursor back/forwards by word
!! is shorthand for the previous run command; handy for sudo !!
!$ is the last argument of the previous command; useful more often than you’d think
which foo tells you where the foo program is located
ls -la
cd without any args takes you to your home dir
cd - takes you to your previous dir
~ is a shorthand for your home dir
- Nice list, TIL about Ctrl+U and Ctrl+Y.
  If I may add, Ctrl+X into Ctrl+E opens $EDITOR to edit the current line.
- alt-. also pastes the last argument of the previous command (useful if you need to modify it a bit)
  instead of any shortcuts starting with "alt" you can also press "esc" followed by the second key, e.g. pressing "esc", releasing it and then "a" is the same as pressing "alt-a" (useful if you have only one hand available, or if alt is not availalble)
  if you put a space before a command, it will not be saved in history (useful sometimes, e.g. if you pass a password directly as an argument)
- Makes me realize just how illogical and bad these shortcuts are
  
  I believe, these are Emacs shortcuts. There's also set -o vi in bash, but I've never used it, so can't vouch for it.
- I've been using the commandline for so long but was always too lazy to look up the rest of these commands after ctrl+a/e and ctrl+r THANK YOU!!!
  post this commend again and again! There's always lazy idiots like me who will be helped that way!

Just wait until you find the fun TUI utilities, ill share a few:
Shell: Fish (has powerful auto-complete, very fast, written in rust)
Montior: Btop (monitors all system resources and processes)
Fetch: Fastfetch (perfect for showing off on !unixporn@lemmy.world, for !unixsocks@lemmy.blahaj.zone Hyfetch is reccomnded)
Brower: BrowSH (its a browser in your terminal)
Text Editor: Vim (the best text editor, remeber to use esc + : + q to close or wq to write close vim. However when you open vim you can never quit)
File manager: Ranger (if cd + ls is too inconvenient)
Games (yes you can even play games in the terminal): 2048, Chess-TUI, NSnake, and Micro Tetris
More cool TUI tools

Every now and then I have to analyze some data at work, and gladly I have full access to my work station, so I have WSL2 with Linux, and I wouldn't know what to do without all that Linux CLI goodness. A mixture of Pipes, xsltproc, jq, Python to get the numbers out of millioons of log lines or xml or json files. If I was stuck on Windows the tasks would be tedious.

I installed mint yesterday and am having a PAIN installing anything not in the software manager. Currently stuck on teamspeak as my first thing to try. Got a tar.gz and can't find anything well explained online (as of yet, it was already 3 hours just to get mint to dual boot and I was exhausted)
- With .tar.gz software usually the steps are:
  Extract the archive
  Find a file with the .sh extention - that's the shell script. It will most likely be named something like install.sh
  Make it executable - by right clicking and enabling it in the properties or by opening a terminal in this folder and using a command:
  
  chmod +x install.sh
  Run the installer in the terminal:
  
  ./install.sh
  It might ask you to run it as root and quit. In that case put a sudo before the command above and it will ask you for your password
  
  sudo ./install.sh
  And tbat's it, installation should begin. Follow the instructions in your terminal.
- Can't say for TeamSpeak, but will say for Linux: setting everything up and figuring out your steps in edge cases is the hardest part. Once you figure it out, it gets so much easier.
- https://flathub.org/ is a great way to manage linux apps/programmes. Very easy and several other benefits

Isn't it fun? It's like owning your car and learning what everything actually does, and figuring out how to fix it. And having an amazing community to boot!. I enjoy it.
- I'm thinking of making Linux my daily driver apart for some software I need for work. People are super positive about it on here, but isn't it still the case that some peripherals won't work? Or that I'll spend a ton of time making the system work instead of actually using the system?
  It would be for gaming that I'd use the Linux installation mostly.
  
  Speaking from personal experience but pretty universal one at that.
  Once terminal kinda "clicks" you will get the urge to tweak stuff. It happens because there is bunch "demo apps" that are just cool to mess around with but simply don't get known on co-orperate OS. Check this as example.
  If games you play or tools you use can be fitted to linux, at some point you will port 80% of your workflow just messing around during the tweaking. Like when you do your first rice.
  And after that you can confidently chose if you want to add on to that or continue dualboot.

Also, updates.
"hey computer! Update!"
"Sure thing, here is a list of 57 packages I will update, y/n?"
"y"
"ok... done!"
👌
- plus it makes you feel like a hacker for a few seconds
  
  Underrated comment
- But how do Linux users handle the crippling loneliness of their operating system not pestering them with ads on every update? How else can you know if your computer loves you? Where is the warmth of the corporate embrace?
  
  There's an app for that!
  https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/blog/microsoftteamsblog/microsoft-teams-is-now-available-on-linux/1056267
  
  We shitpost on Lemmy and start flame wars about vi vs. emacs, X11 vs Wayland, sysvinit vs systemd, snaps vs flatpak, etc.
  
  "Welcome to Costco. I love you."
  
  Sometimes I run the update command and there hasn't been an update since yesterday. I think that's pretty close.
  
  I really wanted mr. Satya to watch my screen with Recall 😥
- “Hey computer, I don’t like when you ask for that confirmation, just do it”
  “Oh, -y, I got you”
- Two clicks with the update thingy on Mint, if I could never have to use the terminal I might be tempted to uninstall Windows completely.
- New copypasta of 2025: ~~I use Arch btw~~ I use Mint btw
  
  It's actually I use NixOS fwiw

The Windows terminal has some very good commands. 'ssh username@server' can log you right into a Linux machine!
- Times like this make me miss reddit gold
  
  Just donate $5 to your instance or the lemmy devs.
  
  Just make a $2 donation to their host. Much better than reddit gold.
  
  Nope.
  
  Lemmy Lemon 🍋?
- I setup open SSH on windows so you can swing it both ways!
  My main gripe is it runs cmd.exe and I gotta powershell to jump into that. If you auto powershell it doesn't work right.

Welcome in from the cold. We have hot cocoa and blankets.

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.
- 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
- 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!

When the GUI fails, Terminal will have your back; can I get an Amen?
- When my computer starts to run out of ram and I immediately try and switch into the CLI so I can launch htop and kill the offender
  
  find the traitor and kill him!
- Amen. Hallelujah! AMEN! Ooh yeah brothers and sisters, AaaAAaAmen!
  PS: this is not a cult BTW
  
  It is, but it’s a very nice cult.
- amen

You've taken your first step into a larger world.

Honestly, it's a pain in the ass. The shortcuts are different from the browser, so you forget and hit Ctrl+V. Then you remember and hit Ctrl+Shift+V and get some scribbles around what you were typing
- They were there long before the browser. The problem is that they should work in the browser but they don't.

Just wait when you try AUR on arch systems. I was long time ubuntu based user but once I tasted rolling release and AUR I don't want to go back.
- It is going to make to want to go back
  Someday
  When you least expect it, and have a deadline
  
  For me that day was yesterday. Ran an update. Next bootup got a black screen.
  Saw it as a sign that it's time to distro hop again lol
  
  That happened to me few times, once GPU driver update, once grub update, both relatively easy to fix by searching the error on Endeavour forums and reading their official updates. And both of these issues was me not reading the update notes.
  And when I was once forced to reinstall it was matter of an hour at most to have PC with working environment up and running, thanks to separate home mount and keeping all my installation notes in one place.
  But one can do that with Ubuntu too.
  I learnt one lesson from my manny distro-hopping sessions in the last 12 years, allways separate home from system amd keep all essential installation scripts and files in one place.
- I was a Nobara user and I've gone back. Too many updates that Bork the DE/bootloader (TBF it's not as maintained as AUR) As for fedora... Random NVidia update borked the system too... But I'm resigned as my GPU being cursed rather than the distro being the isue

It's insane to me that Windows still doesn't have a proper package manager. When you need to upgrade a program you're expected to go to their website and download the latest version, or update it with its own update mechanism.
- They do, several third party options and of course the Microsoft store too. It's the users who are stuck in their old ways, which ironically is the harder way. Weird.
- i mean its just a matter that app makers avoid the windows store. the only companies i recall I remotely use on the windows store are nvidias control panel (which is ironically being depricated for nvidia app and updates itself).
  companies just don't want to use the windows store aome because of the fear at some point if microsoft wants to take a cut of profits, they could strong arm it like android/ios/game console OS. Linux has the advantage that people will trust that repositories wont be paid.
- At the same time if there's a software I don't use often I'm not wasting my time updating it every time I update everything else. So for example I haven't played a game on the Ubisoft launcher in about a year, next time I do it will update to the current version from last year's version and that will be it.

Madthumbs in shambles

I really like having a hotkey bound to the terminal window, so I can pop open a terminal, check something, and return to what I was doing.
https://community.linuxmint.com/software/view/tilda
- Why the hell did they misspell (and presumably mispronounce) tilde?
- FWIW, most Debians (which includes Ubuntu and Mint) have Ctrl+Alt+T set to open the default terminal program without needing to install anything else. This is usually reconfigurable in the system settings too if that's an awkward stretch.
  But I get that people like the drop-down terminals too, for which see also Yakuake and Guake.
  
  Before Tilde and friends, that's what I use. I prefer having a drop-down with the same terminal session.
  But that's a handy default.
- For a moment I wondered why I never bound a hotkey thusly, but it's because I simply almost always have at least one terminal open in each workspace.
  
  I don't really use a mouse or window switcher, so I prefer the dedicated hotkey. It's nice to have a single keystroke that brings me in or out of the same terminal across every desktop.

Yeah. Everyone I know that switched to Linux liked that as well.