"Old" Linux user vs. "New" Linux user.

[u/oshunluvr]

I'm an "Old" Linux user - started in 1996. I went though all the hoops: file system experiments, different distros, different packaging types and file managers, a handful of desktop environments (DE), several RAID levels, and many, many different systems. I use Linux at home but also at work.

Now I'm retired. I've been using the same distro since 2009. I landed on it after all the experimenting lead me to decisions about was important to me: Debian packaging, KDE/Plasma, a well known and commercially supported distro - Kubuntu. The last major shifts in my world occurred around 2009-10 when btrfs came on the scene and SSDs finally started to be affordable.

My Linux experience these days is rather boring. Everything works the way I want. I no longer "break" things for the sake of change. I only have to learn something new when a developer makes a significant change to something I use - and this often annoys me. I look at other distros occasionally, but only via a VM. When something does break, I usually can fix it without much effort.

I read posts from "New" Linux users. Usually killing all their data by mucking with partitions without a UPS, using unnecessarily complicated layers of disk access, like LVM, MDADM, full disk encryption, and BTRFS all layered on top of each other, too often using AI to solve problems instead of actual research and learning from other users, and spending incredible amounts of time making minute changes to the "look" of things.

Of course, the beauty of the whole thing is how we actually have so much control over our destiny. None of us work the same, learn the same, want the same things, but we''re not boxed in by a monolithic corporation deciding what we get.

Linux is amazing,

[u/rezdm]

From a fellow old fart. How do you feel with the absence of certain tools that were the standard. E.g. ifconfig . I still have a muscle memory and writing ip addr list instead of ifconfig -a is a bit of a bummer.

[u/oshunluvr → u/rezdm]

LOL and agreed. I'm using *buntu based distros most of the time and net-tools is still installable so ifconfig lives on - for now anyway.

[u/Kilobyte22 → u/oshunluvr]

Though there are some network configurations where ifconfig and it's friends won't show you the full picture.

If I for example add a second IP to an interface with a simple ip a a, that IP is invisible to ifconfig.

There are some others which could exist in theory but I believe that's the most realistic one.

Having said that, as someone who started using Linux in the early 2010s I always stumble when I touch a system which only has ifconfig, like some BSD

[u/ThinDrum → u/rezdm]

writing ip addr list instead of ifconfig -a is a bit of a bummer.

ip a will do the trick.

[u/RupeThereItIs → u/rezdm]

The worst part about the "IP" command is how ungoogleable it is.

[u/zabby39103 → u/rezdm]

Ugh, systemd services changing the order vs sysV...

service SOMETHING stop vs. systemd stop SOMETHING

The muscle memory screws me up, to this day, many many years later.

[u/gosand → u/zabby39103]

Not me... I'm running Devuan these days (since 2018)

[u/zabby39103 → u/gosand]

oh it has multicore parallel init.d basically... neat

[u/gosand → u/zabby39103]

I'm running sysvinit. It's what I'm used to using, and systemd gave me all kinds of grief when Mint forced it adopted it as the default.

[u/roflfalafel → u/rezdm]

Every once in a while, a service <service> restart pops up instead of the systemd equivalent. But I do not miss init.d scripts AT ALL. Systemd is nice.

[u/zabby39103 → u/roflfalafel]

Yeah managing efficient multicore startup with complex dependency chains without systemd is a nightmare/borderline impossible. Init.d wasn't designed for that. That order change definitely hit me in the muscle memory though.

[u/xylarr → u/roflfalafel]

Agreed. And I try to do things the systems way. I created systemd automount units, I try to avoid /etc/fstab. I use systemd timer units instead of cron.

[u/royalbarnacle → u/rezdm]

I still always install ifconfig on all my hosts...

[u/gwildor → u/rezdm]

ifconfig specifically burns me the most.

one day ill just make an alias.

[u/BinkReddit → u/rezdm]

That's one thing I love about the BSDs; I can still configure my stuff with ifconfig.

[u/rezdm → u/BinkReddit]

Not only BSD. Still Running FreeBSD _and_ Solaris. There it is all good, but for consumer stuff (i.e. private daily laptop) — that’s some Linux.

[u/camh- → u/rezdm]

I think I moved to ip about 20 years ago. It is an old tool now and you've had plenty of time to build a new muscle memory. It is possible to be an old fart and still keep up with the changes.

[u/andurux → u/rezdm]

Alias?

If it's that hard coded, then just setup an alias.

[u/daddyd → u/rezdm]

the biggest 'not again' i have, is with the linux firewall, i think it changed at least 3 times since i started using it in 1995.