cross-posted from: https://lemmygrad.ml/post/6028275
After being extremely annoyed with how Microsoft was trying to force me to use their worthless Outlook programme, and learning that Windows 11 (which they’ve also been pressuring to try) is polluted with advertising, I decided that it was time to migrate to another operating system. Somebody recommended EndeavourOS to me, and after backing up my valuables and following these instructions, I am finally trying a better operating system.
If I’m being honest, my first impressions are… not good.
One of the first things that I notice is that I can’t easily modify the /usr/ directory. I tried to install Java there but the OS would not let me because I lack the permission. How do I get the permission? I don’t know. I am guessing that it has something to do with Terminal Emulator, and the fact that I have to use this program so much immediately tells me that this OS was made for programmers in mind, not ordinary users. On Windows, I could click an executable, click a few more buttons and be done with it, but here the OS wants me to mess with a
DOS promptterminal.Then there is the scaling. I managed to adjust the scaling while keeping the resolution so that everything on my screen didn’t look microscopic. The problem is that when I open certain tabs or windows, they stretch out so far that the monitor can only show part of them. Here’s a screenshot so that you can see what I mean:
This is just lousy design. I can shrink the window, but not by much.
I want to uninstall a font. How do I do that? Well, I read on the EndeavourOS forum that I need to run ‘pacman’ (meaning the terminal) to uninstall a font. Nobody elaborated on that. So after entering the terminal, typing ‘su’, then my password (another annoyance), then entering “pacman -R /usr/share/fonts/noto/NotoColorEmoji.ttf”, the terminal spits out “error: target not found: /usr/share/fonts/noto/NotoColorEmoji.ttf”, even though I am 100% certain that it is there. I would just remove it by simply clicking it and deleting it, except that the OS refuses and tells me “Error removing file: Permission denied”.
Speaking of which, I actually find this more annoying than Windows’ worthless ‘administrator’ function. At least I could simply click the administrator function and be done with it. The process here looks much less straightforward.
I want a calendar with scheduling, which is part of the reason that I am quitting Windows. I downloaded the Orage application hence, then I clicked on ‘orage-4.18.0.tar.bz2’ in my downloads folder. My cursor spins like something is loading, and… nothing happens. I don’t even get an error message.
There are some other things that I could mention (where’s the color filter?), but these are the worst offenders. I’m not calling it quits on EndeavourOS, and I am sure that eventually I’ll get the hang of things, but so far this has been unenjoyable.
Oof, I wish I could spend an afternoon with you teaching you some very basic linux things. I wish there were an easy way to share my knowledge with you, because with literally an afternoon spent together with me (or any other semi-knowledgable linux user who enjoys teaching) learning, you’d be in a much better place to understand how to interact with a linux system.
But through text like this, in this medium, I’m just not going to be very helpful! We need to talk about overarching linux concepts, like, how the file system works (because it’s pretty different from windows), what package managers are and how to interact with them, basic command line functions, stuff like that. And I just can’t be responsive to your questions in a forum like this!
I’m sorry your experience has been so unpleasant! EndeavourOS is a great distro (it’s what I use), but it certainly isn’t beginner-friendly. On the plus side, if you get comfortable with it, you’ll understand computers better than ever before!