SALUTE
I have barely watched Breaking Bad
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Let's have another good week everyone 
ctrl-C didn’t work?
ctrl-C in the terminal, unless it’s being overridden, sends SIGINT to the currently running program which typically causes it to close. It’s really useful for closing programs when you don’t know how to do it otherwise (like I don’t know if
pingeven has another way to close it) and when you use it on the command line it just discards what you’ve typed and drops you to a new prompt. Although text editors usually override it (like on nano (best editor) it just reports your cursor position and doesn’t send the SIGTERM). ctrl-Z also sends SIGTSTP which pauses the currently running program and moves it to the background and if you want to use it with nano (you do, it’s really convenient) you can just edit your nanorc file to enable suspension and map^ZtosuspendSide note, but a really common exit command is
q, which is probably what the utility wantedI use nano, good editor...
So like where was I supposed to learn this? Arch wiki doesn't say any of this shit.
I think the guide probably assumes you already know about ^C, but as for the utility, a good way to learn about any terminal program is its man page. Just type
man [program]and it’ll bring up the man page which explains how to use it. Just press/to search the page,q(or^C) to close it, andhto bring up the help menu. Seriously,manis essential and I use it all the time, and it’s generally your first go-to for a quick summary of how to use a program. When I was first learning how to use the terminal I literally just typedman basha lot lolEdit: also, typically
[program] --helpor even-hwill print a brief list of options for use with that command. The bashhelpcommand can also be used for the actual bash commands (likealias) which typically don’t have man pages (unless you count bash’s) as opposed to the external programsEdit2: I should say that none of this is specific to arch, it’s just general unix stuff but I think the arch installation guide assumes you know it already
Why the fuck would I know that lmao. Idiot proof, I was told.
More arcane secrets, kinda reminds me of the text interpreter in Sierra games vs Infocom ones.
man bashthough... I could man bashLmfao whoever told you arch was idiot proof was wrong. Like, it’s not gentoo but it’s not always straightforward either. I was actually talking to someone once about installing arch and I was like “it was actually pretty easy. Well, I did have to debug a couple kernel module conflicts…” lol
manandman bashfor stuff about the shell itself are your gateways to most of the other arcane secrets. Just knowing the basics and knowing how to look stuff up is enough to do basically anythingDEBUG A COUPLE KERNEL MODULE CONFLICTS
Unironically I love linux people, stay silly please.
Surely it would be good to include those in the install guide, right? Like at all? I might have installed Arch right if I knew this. Thank you btw!!!
Yeah it’d be helpful, but none of this stuff is actually specific to arch so I think the install guide just assumes you already know it. That’s the thing about arch, it’s not actually that complex, it just doesn’t prioritize accessibility which isn’t necessarily a good thing. Like, the developers describe it as a “medium to advanced distro” which, more so than the assigned difficulty level, kinda shows how the developer approach it in that they think of difficulty as just another option in distro choice rather than an objective flaw. It’s definitely not for everyone. It can be really fun if you’re actually into tinkering around with it, but it’s definitely not for everyone and there’s actually a lot of advanced users who do know how everything works, but still prefer to use other distros just because they don’t want to go through the effort of maintaining an arch system (like the nerdiest, most tech proficient guy I know just uses kubuntu lol). That said, don’t let this discourage you from running if you want to. It can be a really rewarding experience building putting together your system from scratch and it really is doable if you just put in a little effort to figure it out, and the wiki really is good at explaining how everything works (I’ve only had it bork itself by deleting the kernel during an upgrade once!
)
Your welcome!
Seriously though it’s great. Not fancy as, say, emacs but very easy to use and you can still do a lot with it. I actually do all my programming in nano
Lmao really, that's super cool. I just use it to edit config files in whatever arch basted distro but it is appealing somehow.
It’s not just on arch! It comes with most distros, and I’m sure it’s available on bsd too, though maybe not out of the box since it’s a gnu thing. I know it at least used to be available on mac because I used it on a macbook lol. At school I even use it on the windows machines in wsl and there’s probably a native version too, but you cannot make me use powershell lol. It’s also pretty easy to just compile from source on whatever system you have
Lol neat, til.