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.
Continuing slickJujitsu’s line, the reason they want you to install yay is because it’s an “AUR helper” meaning it can pull programs from the Arch User Repository. Arch (and arch based distros like endeavor) have their own repositories with curated programs chosen by the distro maintainers which pacman will pull from, but the AUR has every program you could imagine.
yayandoctopiwill install from both places so once installed you shouldn’t have to worry about the distinction again. A more “beginner friendly” distro would have them preinstalled for you.Software management does seem to be the biggest hurdle for new users though so you aren’t alone. Unless you’re trying to install some incredibly niche software, downloading a file in your browser is almost certainly going to be 100x harder than using the package manager. The package manager will keep track of all your programs and keep them updated for you, while self-installed programs it doesn’t know about it can’t keep updated for you.