Hello everyone! I know that Linux GUI advanced in last few years but we still lack some good system configuration tools for advanced users or sysadmins. What utilities you miss on Linux? And is there any normal third party alternatives?

  • kbal@fedia.io
    53·
    9 days ago

    I’m willing to entertain the possibility that the linux world may be lacking in some things, but I’m pretty sure “configuration tools for sysadmins” is not one of them.

  • flashgnash@lemm.ee
    404·
    10 days ago

    I generally don’t miss anything graphical, once I learn how to do something from the cli I rarely feel the need to do it graphically anymore as it’s usually a lot slower

    The obvious one would be Photoshop and paint.net of course but krita does the trick

    • user_naa@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
      107·
      10 days ago

      I maybe need to correct my post. I am talking about system utilities like Device Manager or something else.

      • atzanteol@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
        145·
        9 days ago

        Why would I want gui for those things? CLI is often a better interface. Being able to grep lsusb rather than scanning a gui for an entry is much better. It’s easier to pipe to an email as well. Screenshots don’t allow copy/paste…

        • Tlaloc_Temporal@lemmy.ca
          21·
          9 days ago

          As a newcomer to CLIs, GUI are great because you don’t need to know what you’re looking for. I can just open the devices window, and they’re all there, with most of the extra hardware stuff that’s not actually a real device already cleaned out.

          To do the same with a CLI would take me 10 minutes of looking up what the hardware commands are, 5 minutes figuring out flags, and 30 minutes researching entries to see if they’re important. Even just a collapsible list would make that last step so much easier. And no, I can’t grep for what I need, because I don’t know what I need, I just know something in there is important with a vague idea of what it might look like.

          Once I figure that all out for one thing, the best I can do is write that to a notes file so I don’t need to search so far next time, but there’s a good chance that I’ll need a different combination of commands next time anyway.

          Not hating on CLIs, just wishing I could figure out how to use them faster.

          • 9488fcea02a9@sh.itjust.works
            5·
            9 days ago

            apropos - command to list relevant commands tldr [command] - shows the most commonly used flags/options for that program

            apropos comes installed by default (on debian at least), tldr needs to be installed with your package manager

            As someone who cannot even remember tar flags (inser xkcd here), tldr is very helpful

            Your 45 mins becomes 5 mins now. Hope that helps

          • Tekhne@sh.itjust.works
            3·
            8 days ago

            Another really helpful tool is to use the fish shell instead of bash. It has tons of useful features, but my favorite is by far the autocomplete. It parses man pages to provide suggestions for flags, subcommands, even passed arguments, and each item in the results list has a description, and it’s all searchable by hitting shift+tab.

            fish autocomplete subcommands

            fish autocomplete git

            That’s what leveled up my cli game from 0-100. It’s a massive difference in usability and discoverability. And unlike things like nushell, it’s close enough to bash that you won’t feel confused if you have to use bash instead.

          • esa@discuss.tchncs.de
            3·
            9 days ago

            The name is constructed from two parts:

            1. ls: list
            2. usb: usb

            It lists usb devices that your machine (/kernel) knows has been connected; they may not necessarily be usable.

            E.g. I have some sound output device connected via USB to one machine. On most of my machines I’ve switched from pulseaudio to pipewire¹, and I figured I’d bring that machine closer to the others so there’s less variance. Unfortunately the sound output device didn’t want to work with pipewire. The problem manifested as no sound and pipewire not listing the device. lsusb helped me know that the machine at the very least recognized the device, but wasn’t currently able to use it. (It did actually also show up as an error in dmesg -H, but reinstating pulseaudio let the device work again as normally. So now I just have to live with a situation where some machines use pipewire because bluetooth and others use pulseaudio because … usb?¹)

            ¹ There’s a memory of ALSA vs OSS I didn’t want to be reminded of

              • esa@discuss.tchncs.de
                1·
                7 days ago

                I think I wouldn’t find it particularly useful, as I’m used to the quasi-programming I can do in a terminal. The shell commands take some time & effort to learn, but once you’re over that hump, being able to extract and compose information is really good. The primary shell tools I’d miss in a gui are |, jq, awk, sed and grep/rg, as well as for, if, while, variables, and having everything in one lightweight window.

  • TechnicallyColors@lemm.eeEnglish
    252·
    10 days ago

    Maybe tangential but this reminded me of how much I hate setting up systemd timers/services. I refuse to accept that creating two files in two different directories and searching online for the default timer and service templates is an okay workflow over simply throwing a cron expression next to the command you want to run and being done with it. Is there really no way we can have a crontab-equivalent that virtually converts into a systemd backend when you don’t need the extra power? I feel like an old person that can’t accept change but it’s been a decade and I’m still angry.

    • Atemu@lemmy.ml
      7·
      9 days ago

      This is a configuration declaration abstraction issue. Systemd timers and services are more like primitives.

      In NixOS, we have an abstraction that allows simple declaration of a service and timer that runs some script.

      As an example, I use this to export my paperless for backup daily in a way that is safe (paperless itself cannot run during that time, guaranteed by systemd) and simple:

      https://github.com/Atemu/nixos-config/blob/ca0d39eb98c62424208487f973573478268048b4/modules/paperless/module.nix#L59-L95

      (Even without NixOS domain knowledge you should be able to follow what’s going on here.)

      All that’s needed in order to cause a systemd timer to be created for this service is to declare the startAt = "daily"; at the bottom.

  • ubergeek@lemmy.todayEnglish
    181·
    10 days ago

    A decent GUI LDAP client.

    Yes, I know, I can use slapcat and all… But holy hell, I’m tired of writing basic LDAP files to populate a new domain. And, no, I really don’t want to spin up a webserver just to run a web based GUI that I NOW have to ensure is locked down.

    • Atemu@lemmy.ml
      11·
      9 days ago

      LACT. Though I don’t know if it can OC Nvidia, Nvidia support is quite new.

      • umbrella@lemmy.ml
        8·
        9 days ago

        til about this one, nice. i wish discoverability for linux software was better.

        • WereCat@lemmy.world
          7·
          9 days ago

          Same here. I’m using CorrCTRL for my 6800XT and the VRAM OC is not working properly, will give LACT a try

          • Atemu@lemmy.ml
            1·
            8 days ago

            Chances are that it doesn’t work there either. What actually does the OC is the kernel; the GUIs merely write the desired values into the correct files in /sys.

        • dubyakay@lemmy.ca
          3·
          9 days ago

          I usually just feed my questions into three different LLMs plus ddg with site:reddit and then check consensus. As good as it gets.

          But then last time I’ve managed to discover DeadBeeF through IRC.

          • umbrella@lemmy.ml
            3·
            9 days ago

            yeah thats how i find them, we have good app stores on linux that could use some community curation though!

            its common on linux for software to be abandoned, only for a fork to pop up elsewhere and it gets annoying.

  • pr06lefs@lemmy.ml
    121·
    10 days ago

    One thing I kind of miss is autohotkeys on windows. It was relatively easy to do things like set keyboard keys to act as mouse keys. I did that once when I was getting over tendonitis.

    These days I have a keyboard with mouse keys on it and a trackball also with mouse keys. I can use the middle button on the trackball and scroll with it, but I can’t use the middle button on the keyboard and scroll with the trackball, which would be more ergonomic for me. Haven’t figured that one out yet.

    That said, I mostly don’t miss GUI stuff. I use a tiling window manager and command line utilities to do most things on my system. Its kind of primitive I guess, but the benefit is it works exactly the same on remote systems, headless servers, etc.

  • manicdave@feddit.uk
    11·
    9 days ago

    I’d like some kind of visual task scheduler instead of having to read up on how to do cron jobs every time.

          • DrDystopia@lemy.lolEnglish
            46·
            8 days ago

            Dystopia is having to learn a whole new system and manually punch in commands in VIM instead of just entering “0400” and clicking “Every day” in a GUI simply to run a scheduled backup because some cyberpunks think it’s cool to stare at the black and green terminal emulator into the early morning and think that everybody else enjoys doing the same so we really don’t need a GUI.

    • GunnarGrop@lemmy.ml
      5·
      9 days ago

      I’ve completely switched from cron to systemd timers for everything. I feel like they are a lot easier to remember and keep track of! Plus, getting logs for free is pretty nice as well

  • algernon@lemmy.ml
    143·
    10 days ago

    I have Emacs, and I have my NixOS configuration. That’s all the GUI system configuration I need.

  • arglebargle@lemm.eeEnglish
    10·
    10 days ago

    Given that windows administration is powershell these days they kind of are similar.

    Windows is missing so much in their guis abilities (like copy text) that I wonder what there is you are missing.

    Edit: Although this is not an admin function, one thing that bothers me about windows, A LOT is that the file explorer does not show free space while I am in the current directory. Dolphin will do it even for SMB shares. Also you can click the drop down and examine all drives right there instead of have to back to the left and ruining your view in explorer. And don’t get me started about how you can’t split views in Windows explorer. This is just one everyday task where windows GUI is lacking in features even though it is not an admin tool.

  • JustEnoughDucks@feddit.nl
    8·
    8 days ago

    I really miss Microsoft AD configuration GUI.

    Wait, no, that sort of group you have to make through Entra, formerly Azure admin center, wait no they actually wanted a SharePoint site for the group, wait no you can’t do that through entra even though you can see the groups, you have to do that through O365 admin center, wait no you can only make a SharePoint aaand teams group there, you have to click more -> SharePoint admin center and then create a new group there, but not the default, you have to click “show more group types”, but where can you modify the members of this group? Oh you can just go back to O365 admin center to do that. Now you want to make some small access changes to the force-created email for the group? Oh well you have to go to Exchange admin center for that. Wait, not Outlook admin center? No they are named different things just to make it easy.

    Now someone who made an event involving the group is on holiday so I have to remove it, I can do that from exchange admin center right? Well actually the easiest way to do that is to log into Exchange from a power shell terminal through the GUI pop-up and terminal commands. But wait, the search for the event actually doesn’t work there ever, even with the exact name? I guess I will give myself rights to the calendar, reboot Outlook, go to the calendar, remove the event, go back to the terminal, remove my rights to the calendar, restart outlook.

    Actually, I don’t miss Microsoft sysadmin tools.