@26:07 he says as a business he’s considering Linux on his computers because of Windows privacy violations. It’s great to hear someone with such a wide audience talking about using Linux.
@26:07 he says as a business he’s considering Linux on his computers because of Windows privacy violations. It’s great to hear someone with such a wide audience talking about using Linux.
Well the only one who seemed to actually like Linux at LTT was
Anthony(don’t know her new name)Emily. Once she went to the background after her gender transition, enthusiastic Linux coverage more or less disappearedLinus mentioned that Emily (her new name) has been internally pushing for a Linux gaming revisit on a recent Wan Show, so hopefully something comes of that.
Also an upcoming tech upgrade video will be for someone who’s switching to Linux.
Hopefully the next Linux challenge goes well for them . From what I remember Linus somehow broke his fresh Linux install by just install steam lol . Can’t wait to see Elijah switch to Linux
I’ve done a whole NTSB breakdown on that incident before, but here’s what I hope is the short version:
He was using Pop!_OS. Pop!_OS’ desktop environment was at the time kind of a fork of Gnome. I think now it outright is a fork of Gnome.
It just so happened that a version of the Steam .deb package went out with a buggy set of prerequisite data such that if it encountered a “weird” desktop environment it would declare itself incompatible with this which would make APT uninstall the entire GUI stack, right on down to Xorg. It wouldn’t happen to distros using more mainstream desktops like Gnome or KDE or xfce, but it did effect weird things like Pop!_OS.
This bugged version was apparently the latest version published when the Pop!_OS install image Linus used was made, so that was the version in the apt cache on Linus’ Pop!_OS machine.
In the time between the creation of that install media and the filming of the episode, the bug had been reported and an updated version pushed to the repo.
At no point during the install-first boot process, or while launching the Pop!_Shop did Pop!_OS update the apt cache.
Linus tried to install Steam via the Pop!_Shop’s GUI. behind the scenes it saw the error about incompatibility with the desktop and threw a dialog box that said “Failed to install Steam.” The system was not harmed or altered in any way and continued working correctly.
Instead of googling “popos failed to install steam” to see if there’s a way to fix it, he instead threw a small bitch fit about how Linux doesn’t work and you have to use the terminal for everything. He googled for “how to install steam with the terminal” or similar, and found the command “sudo apt install steam.” Most guides online for installing things using APT tell you to run an update and probably an upgrade command first, I do not know if Linus found instructions that omitted that or if he skimmed too aggressively.
Running the command “sudo apt install steam” printed a lot of STDIO to the terminal including a large list of things it was preparing to uninstall, followed by a plaintext warning in bold text that read (paraphrasing) **WARNING! This operation is very likely to seriously damage your computer. You should not do this unless you REALLY know what you are doing. To continue, type “Yes do as I say.”
It is my belief that Windows trained Linus to ignore such warnings, because Windows constantly throws errors about “this may harm your computer” basically every time it asks for administrator privileges. Linux does not do this; Linux usually accepts a ‘y’ or even just hitting the enter key with no input to mean “yes proceed,” sometimes when it wants you to really stop and think it’ll make you type the whole word “yes.” Having to type that whole sentence feels almost like “update your last will and testament to continue.” I think a lot of users learned it would do that from Linus’ video.
He did so, the computer dutifully uninstalled the entire GUI stack and dropped him into a terminal.
I mentioned above, but it definitely tried to make absolutely sure by requiring the exact string
“Yes, do as I say!”
With punctuation and capitalization required.
They’ve even tried to add more protections after the video to make sure that’s what you meant to do
A think to note is that it was completely salvageable. I believe it’d be just a matter of running
sudo apt-get install pop-desktopand he’d be back on track. Meanwhile, on windows, download a sound card driver from manufacturers site, click “install”, and your OS won’t ever boot again, not in safe mode, not in recovery from live usb, not anyhow, because it always tries to load all drivers, including broken ones for some reason.I dont remember the specific details, but it was a bug in that install version that…
MintPop_OS! (Thanks Joo)? I think it was? was slow to fix until the video came out or something?Anyway, long story short, He did ignore a warning, but what happened shouldnt have happened regardless, and it was totally something a novice could do, especially since, as a novice myself, most internet searchable help for linux issues boils down to “run this command, it’ll fix it” with no real broader explanation.
That doesnt mean he isnt an ignorant cunt in a thousand other ways though.
Long story short, there was a bug with apt that Pop!_OS didn’t patch before the release. They did so after the latest version at the time was released. Had he updated his system before trying to install Steam, it’d never happened, that’s the worst part.
Should have updated the install materials or just automatically force an update upon install. Competency should never be expected from the end user.
I would agree. If you watch the video, you’ll see that Linux Mint’s onboarding process walked Luke through using the Update Manager. Pop!_OS didn’t. Also apparently Pop!_Shop doesn’t or didn’t perform an apt update upon launch for reasons beyond my understanding. Anyone familiar enough with Pop!_OS to know if that was or still is the case?
The funny part, to me, is that the command he ran was so dangerous that Pop_OS required you to type out the entire phrase
“Yes, do as I say!”
With correct punctuation, or it won’t continue
If it was just an “Okay” box or a “Y” to continue, I don’t think he’d have gotten as much flak for that one
I honestly hope they don’t do another dumb Linux challenge. Linus and Luke both have pre-prepared excuses why a conversion to Linux will fail, for them personally. Stuff like “we can’t run Photoshop” level shit. Dumb “no shit Sherlock” type nonsense.
That means they won’t actually try, they’ll just “do it for the content” and give up again after a month or whatever. The videos will be well done but will ultimately conclude that “Linux still isn’t ready for us” and they’ll leave a bitter taste in any real Linux user’s mouth, because their excuses will be pathetic and the efforts put in will be demonstrably minimal.
I’ve said this several times before.
There were a couple episodes where they had iJustine on as a guest. I think they built a server for her? Anyway one episode they did was they set up a Mac and a Windows PC next to each other, and had Justine use Windows and Linus use MacOS for a series of routine computer tasks. Both found stumbling blocks. Both of them, when hearing what the task is, said to the other “Oh you’re going to struggle with that.” I remember specifically Justine saying that of taking a screenshot on MacOS because apparently the key combination isn’t intuitive, it’s something like Cmd+6 or something?
Why didn’t WIndows and MacOS both get declared unfit for use by normies the way Linux did? They did a similar “here are some tasks to complete” challenge which wasn’t well thought out; how would most people “sign a PDF?” Why would “enjoy HDR content” be on there other than “lol it doesn’t support this.”
I also recall another older episode where (do we retroactively call her Emily for appearances in older videos?) walked James through the process of installing and running games in Linux. Which I think would be a more valuable series of videos than “some guys who fully intend to go back to windows at the end of a month try to slog through Linux unaided I guess.” Do a 30-day Learning Linux challenge, where some newbies who genuinely have a goal of switching platforms do so under the guidance of a veteran user.
I’ll even put my keyboard where my mouth is. I’ve used Linux full time for 10 years now for work and play, I do not currently own any working Windows systems. I’ll volunteer to be that mentor character on camera.
IIRC, it’s cmd+shift+a number between one and four depending on what kind of screenshot you want to take (full screen, window, etc.). Definitely not intuitive.
I only have any idea because I’m required to use a Mac at work. Just went and tested; cmd+shift+4 starts a “select an area to screenshot” process.
I love the Mac shortcuts for screen capture, I’ve even added them to my Linux Gnome desktop shortcuts to do the same.
Well, to each their own. Also, I can’t say whether this applies to you, but it seems likely that one might evolve a key shortcut preference from one’s early exposure. Mine was Windows and, eventually, Linux.
I like shortcuts involving the Print Screen button because the label is clear to me and because I can take a screenshot with a maximum of two buttons rather than three, none of which clearly express “screenshot” to me.
Regardless of the reasoning, I doubt we’ll come to an accord, but I respect your preference.
I also stayed with windows, then went to Mac before Linux.
However the simple reason I chose these shortcuts is because I have a 60% tenkeyless keyboard, so there is no Print screen button! 😁
That makes sense. I’ve had various percentage keyboards, but never not had a print screen button.
The part you are missing is that they are making content that aligns with the majority of their audience. Most people will put in a similar level of effort. Most people don’t care, they just want it to work with the least effort possible.
I really miss Emily, hope she comes back soon, but I understand her wanting to be on her own for a while, but honestly her videos were the best ones always.
Emily has always been a delight in everything she’s done.
But even as she’s appeared in videos a lot less, It’s nice to know she’s still advocating for FOSS at LTT. Hopefully that will again result in more coverage of the kind of stuff she used to host before her transition.
Jake prefers Linux, too. He rolls his eyes all the time at Linus’ insistence on running Windows servers, and he’s the guy that maintains a lot of that side of the business.
Luke was also advocating for Linux. He said that it was much better in terms of productivity.