ericjmorey

I was just guessing based on the SwapWindow name. That you copied definition doesn't help me understand what it's supposed to do.

I'm surprised that [Super] + [Tab] and [Alt] + [Tab] aren't exactly what you're looking for because System(WindowSwitcher) seems like the name of something that would do exactly what you're after.

I haven't installed COSMIC, so I can't test it all out myself right now. But it feels like something that should exist as you described.

Please tell us more about what specifically you're stuck on.

Maybe having an unmaintained extension repo the same way they have an experimental extension repo would allow them to be be even more aggressive and and make it easier to find maintainers for orphaned repos which could be moved back into unstable.

I find that books and resources on basics are hard to find motivation to get through. I don't have a problem researching for an hour or two when I'm stuck on something that I want to accomplish, but that same information would be impossible for me to focus on if there's no immediate motive to read it. Knowing that some information might generally come in handy later is often not enough for me to stick with it. So I don't think people really mind helping people with "basic" questions, but their availability can unreliable.

That said, there are a lot of good suggestions in both threads you started and if you can stick with any of them it will probably be a big boost for your comfort level in using Linux.

I heard all the praise about man command and you never know if you’re working offline.

Now you can open man pages in your favorite text editor with all the associated navigational conveniences!

I’ll check out nala, could be a good learning tool, thanks!

A lot of people who try nala never switch back to apt, I hope you find it more pleasant to use.

Nice article.

why bother? Why I self host
Most of this article is not purely about that question, but I dislike clickbait, so I’ll actually answer the question from the title: Two reasons.
First of all, I like to be independent - or at least, as much as I can. Same reason we have backup power, why I know how to bake bread, preserve food, and generally LARP as a grandmother desperate to feed her 12 grandchildren until they are no longer capable of self propelled movement. It makes me reasonably independent of whatever evil scheme your local $MEGA_CORP is up to these days (hint: it’s probably a subscription).
It’s basically the Linux and Firefox argument - competition is good, and freedom is too.
If that’s too abstract for you, and what this article is really about, is the fact that it teaches you a lot and that is a truth I hold to be self-evident: Learning things is good & useful.
Turns out, forcing yourself to either do something you don’t do every day, or to get better at something you do occasionally, or to simply learn something that sounds fun makes you better at it. Wild concept, I know.

Contents
IntroductionMy ServicesWhy I self hostReasoning about complex systemsThings that broke in the last 6 monthsThings I learned (or recalled) in the last 6 months
You can self host VS Code
UPS batteries die silently and quicker than you think
Redundant DNS is good DNS
Raspberry PIs run ARN, Proxmox does not
zfs + Proxmox eat memmory and will OOM kill your VMS
The mystery of random crashes (Is it hardware? It’s always hardware.)
SNMP(v3) is still cool
Don’t trust your VPS vendor
Gotta go fast
CIFS is still not fast
Blob storage, blob fish, and file systems: It’s all “meh”
CrowdSec
Conclusion

It can be exhausting to know just enough to see results that aren't quite what you're after, but not quite know enough to refine it to get what you want. And you're supper close to it. Here's some things to fill the gap (and correct a misunderstanding or two):

gives me a list of over 2000 rows inside of the terminal that i cant apparently search or sort

The dpkg -l command can be postfixed with a search pattern:dpkg -l lib* will return all packages with names that start with lib

    
||/ Name                                 Version                           Architecture Description
+++-====================================-=================================-============-===============================>
ii  libaa1:amd64                         1.4p5-46                          amd64        ASCII art library
un  libabiword-3.0                       <none>                            <none>       (no description available)
ii  libaccountsservice0:amd64            0.6.55-0ubuntu12~20.04.7          amd64        query and manipulate user accou>
ii  libacl1:amd64                        2.2.53-6                          amd64        access control list - shared li>
ii  libaio1:amd64                        0.3.112-5                         amd64        Linux kernel AIO access library>
ii  libalgorithm-diff-perl               1.19.03-2                         all          module to find differences betw>
ii  libalgorithm-diff-xs-perl            0.04-6                            amd64        module to find differences betw>
ii  libalgorithm-merge-perl              0.08-3                            all          Perl module for three-way merge>
ii  libamd2:amd64                        1:5.7.1+dfsg-2                    amd64        approximate minimum degree orde>
ii  libamtk-5-0:amd64                    5.0.2-1build1                     amd64        Actions, Menus and Toolbars Kit>
ii  libamtk-5-common                     5.0.2-1build1                     all          Actions, Menus and Toolbars Kit>
un  libansicolor-perl                    <none>                            <none>       (no description available)
ii  libapparmor1:amd64                   2.13.3-7ubuntu5.3                 amd64        changehat AppArmor library
ii  libappindicator3-1                   12.10.1+20.04.20200408.1-0ubuntu1 amd64        Application Indicators
ii  libappstream4:amd64                  0.12.10-2                         amd64        Library to access AppStream ser>
un  libapt-inst1.5                       <none>                            <none>       (no description available)
un  libapt-pkg                           <none>                            <none>       (no description available)
un  libapt-pkg5.0                        <none>                            <none>       (no description available)
ii  libapt-pkg6.0:amd64                  2.0.10                            amd64        package management runtime libr>
un  libarchive-tar-perl                  <none>                            <none>       (no description available)
un  libarchive1                          <none>                            <none>       (no description available)
ii  libarchive13:amd64                   3.4.0-2ubuntu1.2                  amd64        Multi-format archive and compre>
un  libarcus3                            <none>                            <none>       (no description available)
ii  libargon2-1:amd64                    0~20171227-0.2                    amd64        memory-hard hashing function - >

dpkg -l ?lib* will return all packages with names that have lib in the second third and fourth character positions.

    
||/ Name                     Version                  Architecture Description
+++-========================-========================-============-====================================================
ii  glib-networking:amd64    2.64.2-1ubuntu0.1        amd64        network-related giomodules for GLib
ii  glib-networking-common   2.64.2-1ubuntu0.1        all          network-related giomodules for GLib - data files
ii  glib-networking-services 2.64.2-1ubuntu0.1        amd64        network-related giomodules for GLib - D-Bus services
un  glib-networking-tests    <none>                   <none>       (no description available)
un  glibc-doc                <none>                   <none>       (no description available)
ii  klibc-utils              2.0.7-1ubuntu5.1         amd64        small utilities built with klibc for early boot
un  zlib1                    <none>                   <none>       (no description available)
ii  zlib1g:amd64             1:1.2.11.dfsg-2ubuntu1.5 amd64        compression library - runtime

Then I tried to be smart and do man dpkg -l to see if that has any options on how to use it better, and instead i got another huge text file that i cant search or navigate through properly

Yeah, man pages are overwhelming at times. There are ways to navigate them in the terminal, but I would have to look that up because I pretty much never do that. It's easier for me to just look it up online or open the text in an editor. Looks like you had the same idea with trying man dpkg -l | nano and man dpkg -l | vscode and you were so close to the end goal of reading the man page in a text editor!

Here are two ways you can make it work:

For both methods you will need to drop the -l so just use man dpkg.

Method 1:

Use the > operator to redirect the output of man dpkg to a file: man dpkg > dpkg.man(note that the file name after the > operator above can be anything you want the name of the file to be. I chose dpkg.man because it seemed like it would be easy to remember for me.)

Then open the file using nano or vscode:nano dpkg.mancode dpkg.man(note the name of the package for vscode is code)

Method 2:

Use the | operator to send the output of man dpkg to a nano filebuffer:man dpkg | nano

Then open file that was saved when nano returned an error message. In your case:nano nano.12608.savecode nano.12608.save(This second method feels a bit janky but it works.)

Since you were talking about using apt-get and apt to manage packages, I'll suggest nala as a more beginner friendly alternative that is more verbose and explicit about what it is doing. Give nala a try.

I hope this helps and that you can return to learning how to get things done using Linux with renewed resolve now that you've had some time away from it.

Keep asking questions! You're probably learning more than you realize already.

He made up hypothetical scenarios that nobody asked about, and then denigrated Rust by attacking the scenarios he came up with.

This seems to be the textbook description of a strawman argument.

It's also a microkernel and intentional not POSIX compliant (but it's close to compliant). I like the project, but it's very experimental on purpose, so we should set our expectations accordingly. I'd love to see it become a success, but it may not be or it may only be successful in a smaller niche than the current Linux ecosystem.

That said, it seems very open to new contributors. I hope more people can help it along.

dpkg -l will list all .deb packages installed on your system.

I'd say that someone like you is more interested in using the command line to manage your package installations, so you can safely ignore the popshop as a convenience for others who are less interested in the details of their system

https://www.baeldung.com/linux/ Also has very well written articles on specific topics and tutorials.

Follow up with what is sometimes called the Unix Bible: https://www.oreilly.com/library/view/unix-and-linux/9780134278308/

This is a great idea!

Motivation
The Python docs are ill-suited to novices.
The content of the built-in functions documentation favors precision and correctness over comprehension for beginners. While this style is great for experienced developers who already understand the finer points of Python’s design, the docs are confusing to novice programmers like a 12 year old who is not far on his journey of learning Python.
This guide is an opinionated and simplified description of Python’s built-in functions.
My goal is to provide definitions, in plain English, of each built-in function that comes with Python. Along with each definition is an example that is as simple as I can think of. I ran each example against the latest version of Python as of the time writing this guide.
I want to be able to share this with my 12 year old son or my 10 year old daughter, so that they can understand and use Python. My hope is that this guide also serves others who would like some plain definitions of what the built-in functions do.
A note for pedants: I am sacrificing precision and exactness in favor of comprehension. That means I will use substitionary language that I think will communicate more clearly than the exact terminology. If you’re looking for that level of precision, please refer to the standard library docs. Those docs are great for that level of clarity.
For the rest of us, let’s go!

That's a nice addition for those that want security over convenience. I wonder why it took them 11 years after this was written to add it.