Noob Question Thread: Ask Any Questions About Linux!
I thought I'll make this thread for all of you out there who have questions but are afraid to ask them. This is your chance!
I'll try my best to answer any questions here, but I hope others in the community will contribute too!
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what is hyprland
why do ppl use the CLI for things like making and moving files? i find the GUI easier and faster as well as less prone to mistakes
what is wayland and xorg, and why does everyone argue about them
it's faster for me to type out cp -r source/directory destination/directory than it is to open a file manager, navigate to my source, ctrl-a ctrl-c navigate to my destination, ctrl-v. this is not always true. look at the work done by the plan9 people to learn more
idk what hyprland is specifically, but it's either a window manager or compositor or something for use with wayland.
wayland and xorg are ways to do graphical user interfaces in unix systems. wayland is supposed to fix problems that have long been solved or worked around in xorg. it's new and doesn't workor support everything. xorg is old and has problems but it works very well.
The CLI has many advantages over a gui. For one, actions are reific, repeatable, and scriptable. This saves time as you can reuse previous commands and edit them appropriately for the current situation. This makes it easy to look back and verify what you have done. The command line is also a much more stable interface. GUIs change all the time and it’s hard to remember where things might be located. The structure of the gnu operating system accessed via the command line facilitates the discovery of installed commands/programs and documentation. You can record these actions once and repeat them on many machines. You can script common activities (eg bulk file renaming) that make file and data management easier.
Hyperland. Don't know. Apparently reading someone else's comment, it has to do with Wayland.
Which leads to answering out of order about Wayland and Xorg. Both are windowing systems, major components of the GUI/desktop environment. Xorg, aka X or X11, is older than Linux; it dates back to the early 80's. It just wasn't designed to handle things like multiple monitors with variable refresh rate and all the wacky stuff we have now. It's amazing it's hung on this long but the sober fact is X is old and busted.
Wayland is the new hotness meant to replace Xorg. It works a bit different, some old software won't work with it so there have to be converters, and there's some issues with Nvidia compatibility with Wayland. There are very few people who just want to stubbornly stay with X, but Wayland still doesn't work well for their use case, which is why there is much discussion about it.
I use the CLI for things like making and moving files for a lot of reasons.
For example, when I ripped my DVD collection, I had an issue where the software generated file names like S4D2E3.mp4, or Season 4 Disc 2 Episode 3. I was able to copy-paste a list of the episode names of an entire season into a text file, and then using the CLI I iterated through the lines of that file renaming each video file and moved it to the correct storage directory. Saved a lot of manual F2ing.
Of course, I didn't type those lines of bash each time, I saved it as a script and then ran that each time.
Learn a little bit of regex, how to use vim, how pipes work, and a bit about stuff like imagemagick or pandoc or ffmpeg and you'll see why Bash is so handy.
Xorg is a display server for Linux ecosystem. Every ecosystem has a display server. It is what makes it possible for you to have graphical applications with movable windows that can talk to each other, or have a mouse cursor that can click on things.
Wayland is a replacement for Xorg because Xorg is old and its developers said an alternative is needed. Wayland has differences that I won't discuss here, but I'll be happy to do so if you ask.
Hyprland is a wayland compositor. A compositor is basically an implementation of wayland (there are many) and gives you a windowing system that you can run graphical applications through. It is usually a lot more minimal than having a full graphical desktop like KDE or Gnome.
Hyprland belongs to a class of comositors called "tiling", which forces windows to be in a tiling formation. In other words, windows do not overlap or stack on top of each other. Hyprland stands out in having a lot of eye candy and visual effects.
I use CLI for moving files, etc. After you use it for a while, you find out it can be more efficient, faster, and more pleasant to work with.
A wayland compositor and tiling window manager. The lead developer of the project is a Polish transphobic workaholic.
If you understand how shell scripting works you can easily automate menial tasks. CLI is also an interface shared by all operating systems so if you know how to work around in a shell you're not bound to any particular workflow/desktop GUI. Keep using GUIs though, they exist for a reason.
Both are display protocols that are in charge of displaying graphics to your screen. Xorg is over 30 years old while wayland is only about 15 years old. The polemic about xorg was that the codebase was unmanageable and the design architecture of the program was inherently flawed (example: screenlocker getting access to your entire screen including apps and desktop, making writing malware for x11 a 3 line python script). X11 was designed during a time when people were using actual real life terminals and mainframes. Wayland is much more modern and akin to how modern graphics APIs are handled (for the most part)
Wayland at its core has and always will be design by committee so a lot of the arguing is necessary (though sometimes long-winded) to make sure to not repeat xorg's mistakes. Protocols take months if not years to be merged into wayland and those protocols have to be implemented by wayland compositors themselves rather than sharing 1 program altogether like with xorg.
Watch this video for more information, explains it much better and is from an actual wayland board member.
Why YOU should write a Wayland compositor – Victoria Brekenfeld – HiP22 Berlin
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
Why YOU should write a Wayland compositor – Victoria Brekenfeld – HiP22 Berlin
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I'm open-source; check me out at GitHub.
IDK exactly what hyprland is. I think it is a Wayland DE or WM or something. Seems to be popular on unixporn.
I like CLI 'cause I use it a lot for servers and find a file manager to usually be more than I need, though sometimes being able to see all the icons in a GUI or whatever can be nice. I also use a linux server that I manage through the terminal, so I am used to it.
Wayland and xorg are display servers. They basically help draw windows on the screen, and help with input to different windows and things. Xorg has been around a while and has good support, but has security issues. The main one that I know of is that all keystrokes are sent to all running apps in xorg, so making keyloggers is really easy. Wayland is more secure in that regard, but has performance and stability issues, especially on nvidia GPUs. People argue about them because people like to argue, idk.
Edit: Wayland user in case you want to know bias.