What feature/utility/app are you surprised is not installed by default in Linux distributions?

mFat@lemdro.id to Linux@lemmy.ml – 142 points –
202

I think most people (including myself) prefer a minimal desktop by default, and then proceed to install only the software they need. Nevertheless, it always surprises me when I log in to a system that doesn't have vim.

For almost all users, especially beginners, nano is just simpler faster and better. A lot of distributions are bundling it, and I am finding indeed systems without vim at all.

Although most of the times while vim is not installed vi is. Even often together with nano.

Man I tried to use vi once because I started with vim and wanted to see what all it was before, and holy shit vim really is IMPROVED

Especially for beginners, micro would be even better.

I'm surprised there aren't more distros that come packaged with it. If someone's used a graphical text editor in the past decade, then they know how to use micro. The only distro I know of that has it by default is Garuda.

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I disagree. Don't get me wrong, vim is amazing and all that, but I think nano is easier for new users to grok out of the box, making it a better choice most of the time. What it lacks in features it makes up for in transparency.

100% agree about the minimal set of desktop apps, though. That drives me crazy.

Just my 0.02$.

Edit: silly mistakes and clarification

In all distro I tried, I always found Vi.

Vi is standardized in both POSIX and Single Unix Specification.

You've never used a minimal Linux distro for cloud servers then. Some don't ship any text editors. Others ship only nano. Part of the reason why I think learn vim because vi(m) is everywhere argument is retarded. It's factually incorrect.

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less, I don't remember what distro it was, but there wasn't less. There was more though.

I think more was a DOS tool

It was, but it was (and still is) a Unix tool. I believe POSIX still requires that more be provided (even if it's just less secretly).

The original Unix more could only go forwards. Someone wanted to make something like more that could go both forwards and backwards, so he called it less as a joke (because "less" is a "backwards more"). For the past 40 years, everyone's realized that less is much better than the original more, so nobody uses the original any more.

(MSDOS took the idea of "more" before "less" caught on).

Also, sometimes they have an old version of less. There was a change in the past, I don't know, five or so years that made the "exit if less than one page" flag behave better. I don't remember the specifics but it made using it as a fit pager way better. It used to be that it was difficult to have it act like cat when the output was less than a page. But newer versions support it.

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git not installed in ubuntu based distro was the shock for me.

I believe ubuntu doesn't have it installed by default.

Ubuntu wants you to use snap for all your app needs. I think their plan is to make repos only for os maintenance and installation and nothing else.

Git. I feel like that is a pretty important part of any linux os nowadays

htop

What's the point to install htop when top is being preinstalled like 99% of time?

Much easier and faster to get useful information out of htop.

With all my respect, there is nothing difficult to get information from top.

A Doom-clone. I mean, come on.

Seriously tho, Gparted for how useful it is.

Nano (or pico). I had to use vi one time 😭

Which distro doesn't ship nano? I've only ever seen this in embedded or docker contexts.

Condolences for your vile experiences, though.

I think Debian doesn't cause I used it in some containers

The Debian LXC containers ship without nano, the normal (net/dvd/cd) install have nano.

Yeah I find that nano is on basically everything but alpine or other minimalist distros for containers. As long as I have access to it on the host I'm doing okay.

🤕 <-- he was forced to use vi

I remember using nano in college when I was a baby dev. I would write everything locally then paste into nano. I don't remember if the professor gave us an FTP link or if I was just trying around but I pasted the server address into the file explorer (I think nautilus, I don't remember) and it managed to connect. It made it all so easy.

Good times, writing assembly in nano lmao!

tmux, htop, vim

What distros don't include tmux and vim? Ubuntu has had them for at least a decade.

by default?

My work laptop came with Ubuntu preinstaled and didn't have tmux nor htop.

Vim is not present by default in at least debian and arch. Although vi is present in every distribution I believe.

I can see that being the case for the Desktop variant. For the Server variant you get vim and tmux out of the box.

I am surprised that vi is often available, but not vim. It's really annoying on many RHEL based distros, because I am so used to typing vim. Otherwise there is just git I deem essential.

Nowadays vi is just a symlink to vim.tiny, so you're actually running vim (in vi mode).

No. If you have vim installed that's true on many (some?) systems. As I said some distros have vi available, but not vim which is the annoying part.

The original vi has not been maintained for many years. Most distributions, including Debian, Fedora, etc, use a version of Vim which (mostly) is similar to how Vi was.

From Fedoras wiki:
"On Fedora, Vim (specifically the vim-minimal package) is also used to provide /bin/vi. This vi command provides no syntax highlighting for opened files, by default, just like the original vi editor. The vim-minimal package comes pre-installed on Fedora."

From the vim-tiny package description on Debian:
"This package contains a minimal version of Vim compiled with no GUI and a small subset of features. This package's sole purpose is to provide the vi binary for base installations."

R.I.P. Bram Moolenaar. You made me think of it when you said go is unmaintained. I went to vim.org to see who is taking over vim but the security certificate is expired.

It reminded me of this grim realization I had in my grandparents house. They were getting old, I think one or maybe both were in a nursing home by then. The house was falling apart as they were. I was going up the deck stairs and a stair broke under my foot, luckily one of the very low ones. Some dishes had some mold on them in the cabinet. And now going to vim.org, the cert is broken.

You are actually correct. I just checked the manifest of RHEL and it provides vim-minimal and not vi like I assumed.

I noticed that it behaves a bit different than the version available on AIX for example which for sure uses real vi, but I never gave it a second thought. Interesting.

Also OpenBSD use different versions, I'm guessing their vi is the original since it can't handle utf-8. And iirc ex(1) is also a vim variant on Linux. I've never met anyone who actually uses ex though. ed(1) I think is just GNU ed. I am not certain about these versions though.

Yeah, at least some distros have VIM tiny or whatever it's called so my muscle memory benefits me.

Most distros I mess with have busybox installed, which as vi in it, but yeah sudo apt install vim is one of the first commands I run.

Solution - learn using vi. You already did most of the work by learmjng vim.

There is not really anything to learn. It is just lacking some useful features and shortcuts which make it slower to use. It's still much better than nothing.

Usually my biggest issue is that I am so used to write vim over vi. At least for small edits.

netstat curl and git

netstat is mostly deprecated and superseded by the ss command.

I had an error with Xampp starting the Apache server by not having netstat installed

IMO nothing. As long as it can detect network I can install whatever tools I need.

Agreed. The alternative is bloating the system with tools the user may not need. I'd rather just have to install a bunch of stuff on first use.

I couldn't install some Python socks package because I need a proxy to access the Internet, but I needed the package to install any updates through socks, so I couldn't install the package because I didn't have it

git rsync htop `

Add tmux and you've got almost everything I install on a fresh install of any distro.

Almost everything. The last thing is vim.

Definitely git

Which one doesn't have it?

useradd - I just wanted to give a friend my notebook for a python lecture and thought I could just add him as a new user. Apparently not by default.

Ran into this some time ago and learned that there is a more rudimentary command adduser instead but it does not do things like home folder creation

Seems like it would have to exist to create your initial login, unless you only had a root user

You can just manually edit /etc/passwd

I haven't used that since the 90s on HP Unix. Do you get to set default permissions for file creation there, and also add user groups?

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openssh-server, how can you connect to your PC from elsewhere without sshd ?!?

  • Multimedia/ h264 codecs ??
  • KDE/GSconnect
  • Something like Arch's downgrade package + an archive of package versions
  • Hardware video acceleration support is sorely lacking
  • Picture-in-picture in Gnome's Wayland (bug that a gnome-shell extension fixes!)

Multimedia codecs have a different license agreement than the OS so they aren't bundled by default for a reason

I don't care about the licenses. If I click on my media and it refuses to play because some codec is omitted by default, am annoyed nonetheless.

Most distros have a checkbox during the installer that will add non-free components. It's a separate EULA you need to agree to so they can't do it for you.

You may not care, but the distro provider's legal team absolutely cares about not getting sued for automatically bundling components with an incompatible license agreement

The non-free components I've seen on installers are usually for Nvidia's proprietary drivers. Not codecs.

Sounds like legal panic if you ask me. There's been no precedent for litigation on use of licensed codecs which most have been using either way prior in their builds and packages.

MPEG LA is (now Via Licensing Alliance) has been active in collecting fees and defending patents. There is no reason to assume they won't go after distros, particularly those who can pay given that they are willing to take on anyone else. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MPEG_LA

They have never gone after said distros all those ^many^ ^many^ years they have bundled licensed codecs in their ISOs. What changed?

Because those distros have (as we are talking about) distanced themselves from the patent encumbered codecs? When Google tried to get behind VP8, MPEG LA was right there to try and stop them by trying to get them into the pool.

Edit: I should have said many didn't Fedora opted out of compiling mesa with hardware accell, and it seems others did too recently. But that means it was there the whole time. I guess most distros, that have any money, are going to want shelter from lawsuits.

More annoyed when the distro doesn't even bother to document how to properly install the "missing" codecs.

Don't mistake this as condescension, but doesn't VLC solve all of that?

Nope. VLC uses system libraries, unless you install through something that ships its own dependencies like flatpak.

I've heard it's great for opening any file. Is it good with a bunch of file formats as opposed to media codecs?

VLC is good everywhere even though it cannot compare to MPV in number of features available. It will work for most people just fine.

Not sure why KDE/GSconnect would need to be preinstalled tbh. But I agree with the others

because kde connect is so well made and everyone with a smartphone should use it

I don't really want my smartphone notifs on my PC. It should be an optional addition, like it currently is.

I actually turned off the notification sync, I only use it for file transfers and the remote control features

Quality of life improvement. Plus it's normal for operating systems to have some kind of smartphone/smart device integration now.

Plus it's normal for operating systems to have some kind of smartphone/smart device integration now.

And I don't approve of this transition. It's unnecessary bloat. Just install it if you want it.

Only a Gentoo user can make that claim. Hope you are one.

That's not true lol

I am an arch user though

Guess what if you installed a DE, other than the tiling ones, it came with bloat.

You probably also use systemd, another infamous piece of bloatware. /s

Gentoo has less bloat than Arch if really want to get into nitpicking.

I use systemd, but I do not use a DE.

Just because they contain bloat, doesn't mean they should, and that more should be added.

Oh yeah! That downgrade option sounds cool. The only time I kinda regretted being on Manjaro. VirtualBox 7 still doesn't have functional graphics. I tried downgrade, but that didn't work. Maybe I should have tried deleting the VirtualBox config 🤔

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ncdu for analyzing disk space usage in TUI.

I'm always shocked that other distros haven't made their own version of Yast from opensuse

I've tried yast and I'm still unsure what it was supposed to do. I just poked around, asked me if I know than I'm doing and then just left

It's just a general system setup and config tool. I'm assuming that, like me, you already know how to do all that stuff without yast but it's good for newbies and people that aren't super nerds. With all of the anti terminal stuff I always read about on the internet you'd think at least ubuntu would have their own version of it or something similar.

"YaST is a SUSE Linux Enterprise Server tool that provides a graphical interface for all essential installation and system configuration tasks. Whether you need to update packages, configure a printer, modify firewall settings, set up an FTP server, or partition a hard disk—you can do it using YaST."

But yeah, I actually hardly ever use it myself.

Ohhhhhhh, that makes sense, thanks for explaining!

Let's try the other way around: what default apps are pre installed that really don't need or should not be?

I get that most distros try to give a good out of the box desktop for the average user, while also saving time for who is (trying to) providing services or building machines to sell but it can get annoying booting into a fresh install, take a look at the defaults and go "nah, that's going away, and that, that and the other".

I'm not advocating for LFS but sometimes I wish we could get an option to install just what is necessary to make the hardware run and a chosen desktop or window manager and from there install whatever we may need.

Debian, sudo, at least when ever I install it without a desktop.

edit: I'm dumb af, it tells you right in the installer, I just never read it

I read that apparently if you don't input a password for root that it apparently installs sudo. I might be wrong about this but could be worth a Google

The installer says this when it asks you to type a root password. I don't know why, but for some reason the information is both right there and easy to miss.

Please tell me that this is some brand new feature they added yesterday or smth

The option to not set a root password and instead let the regular user use sudo seems to be mentioned in the installer for the first time around 2007, so it's been there for a while.

That kinda makes sense but I never would have found it on my own.

https://www.maketecheasier.com/assets/uploads/2020/08/debian-install-set-password.png.webp

Third paragraph. I'm not trying to be a smart-ass, I also installed Debian a few times without seeing it.

Why would anyone continue reading after "you need a password for root"? You just the rest of the paragraph is gonna be ramblings about what constitutes a good password and so on. And it is exactly that and then at the very end they tell you about sudo. No wonder I always missed it.

Ill have to check and see if thats in the TUI installer too. TY

htop, distrobox and in some cases Flatpak!

Edit: after reading the comments I want to add curl and git, seriously, why aren't those a default?!

nslookup quite a few times I'd try and resolve a domain name only to find out the command isn't available and I'd need to google what package adds it.

Mission Center, it finally brings a task manager like UI on Linux. Alternative for people not wanting to use a TUI like htop.

The first couple commands I run after install:

$ sudo apt install vim
$ sudo apt autopurge libreoffice*

I actually like Libre office very much, since it's a good open source office software.

I'm not suggesting it's bad, I just don't use it much and it's always preinstalled.

Which office suite do you use?

When I need an office suite, Libreoffice is the one I use, but it's so infrequent that I reinstall writer or whatever part I need at the time and then uninstall again.

The main reason it bothers me is I will see it being updated frequently (and they're not small updates) - and I've probably never ran the thing since the last OS install most of the time.

htop. I get that top is ancient and just about part of the definition of a standard Linux system, but damn is it unfriendly

bash and zsh shell history suggest box aka hstr. A bash history which is sorted by the times you use a command and not in a chronological order. Sooooooo good 😉

neofetch

One of my two only used commands. The other being yay.

Dude that is risky as hell, you use yay to install all of your things? With yay they have full permissions on your machine. Use pacman instead

What does that mean? When I've used yay, it only asks for sudo privileges when installing the package (and so does pacman)

I always use yay so I can easily find and use the history, the only time I use pacman without yay is to check the man page

I have a lot of SBCs, and have various ansible scripts that install stuff in "levels" depending on what I need.

Basic level is the "must-haves."

python 3-minimal, chrony, openssh-server, python 3-apt, aptitude, unattended-upgrades, boxes, figlet, dialog, apt-utils, git, htop, multitail, ncdu, sysstat, vim, tree, util-linux

There's, also "server level," "desktop level," and "demo level," for when I do training.

recently, I use btop in replacement of htop, really easy to use and pretty to look at.

emacs

I realize half of you people never touch it, but come on. It's not that large a package these days.

What that reasoning we should install sauerbraten because most people have plenty of hdd space and broadband internet. Better yet, just install all the games so we can relax every now and then between the hard work.

It pull 400MB of packages + deps on my machine

You probably installed the graphical one. emacs-nox is command-line only and significantly smaller.