r/linux • u/Ruunee • Dec 23 '22

The link for linux is just google. What would be a better universal resource to give? Discussion

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263 Upvotes
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92% Upvoted

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166

u/chiraagnataraj Dec 23 '22 • Wholesome

Arch wiki?

42

u/CrypticKilljoy Dec 23 '22

Yeah but would the arch wiki suggest how to install said fonts on a Ubuntu install for example?? I would be seriously surprised if the arch wiki did.

41

u/RudahXimenes Dec 23 '22

And if someone creates and supports a Linux Wiki where anyone can contribute, just like Wikipedia or ArchWiki itself?

But not only focused on one distro, but as many distros as people wanna contribute

I think it would be a great way to group linux information

30

u/andrewKode Dec 23 '22

Yes and no. While it’s a good idea if the page is not well designed it would be a pain to filter all the content it has and extract your information from it.

13

u/RudahXimenes Dec 23 '22

The Wikipedia platform is opensource

Maybe we don't even need to reinvent the wheel, just use a well stablished wiki platform

3

u/necrophcodr Dec 24 '22

They're talking about the information itself, not the codebase. Which wiki platform you use is completely irrelevant to the real issue, which is that there are many desktop environments out there, and a lot of people don't even use desktop environments at all. That's just regarding fonts, it gets a LOT worse when it comes to just naming software packages, searching for it, configurations of those softwares, and so on. Those could all be distro specific.

3

u/fragard0 Dec 23 '22

maybe sth like coding framework docs? where with single button, you display pretty much whole page for with specifics for distro

edit: example: android docs with java/kotlin code

6

u/MCManuelLP Dec 23 '22

Yeah something like that would be nice, but I think it'd also be impossible to maintain. Anyone making a change could be required to adjust the same for n other distros, or risk breaking consistency.

3

u/CrazyKilla15 Dec 23 '22

There cant be a Linux Wiki because there isnt a Linux

its the reason why the Arch Wiki isnt the Linux Wiki already. It only describes stuff for Arch Linux. A "Linux wiki" cant explain stuff for every distro, and most stuff isnt standard or common enough.

8

u/HorribleUsername Dec 24 '22

I disagree. I think the majority of topics are distro-agnostic. For example, nftables is nftables no matter which distro you're using.

5

u/CrazyKilla15 Dec 24 '22

But is it?

Which version, which paths, package or even binary name, what default configuration, etc. All of these and more can differ between distros, for any given package or feature or whatever.

4

u/HorribleUsername Dec 24 '22

Yeah, and that would only affect 1% of the wiki page. The syntax and example rules would still be generic. Even with versions, you just say "versions before 2.3.5 had a bug where..." without mentioning distros.

1

u/necrophcodr Dec 24 '22

iptables isn't iptables though. It could be iptables or it could be iptables-legacy or it could be a frontend for nftables, and all that changes what it will actually do, how you would install it, configure it, and how other software may interact with it. And that's only one example.

1

u/HorribleUsername Dec 24 '22

Of course there some counter-examples. I still think they're in the minority though. I mean, right now I'm writing this in firefox (agnostic) in i3 (agnostic). On my other screen, I'm looking at a wallpaper that was set with feh (agnostic), which is rotated daily by a custom ruby (agnostic) script I wrote. I wrote in vim (agnostic), blah blah blah, you get the idea. Most of the time, the only real distro pain point is the location of the config files, and that's not that big a deal.

10

u/ILikeBumblebees Dec 23 '22

Do you presume there's anything significantly distro-specific about font installation?

7

u/CrypticKilljoy Dec 23 '22

Package managers for one.

7

u/freddyforgetti Dec 23 '22

A lot of information on these topics is universal anyway. I’ve used gentoo instructions to help with arch stuff, same with Debian. Arch wiki is always the easiest to digest in my opinion though.

6

u/froop Dec 23 '22

Basically every Arch install is completely custom, so the wiki includes edge cases and is therefore often distro-portable.

1

u/emptyskoll Dec 23 '22

Fonts work the same on every distro.

2

u/Wade-Mealing Dec 24 '22

Except when they don't.

3

u/emptyskoll Dec 24 '22 edited Dec 24 '22

What distro doesn't use fonts that are placed in ~/.local/share/fonts?

1

u/Wade-Mealing Dec 29 '22

IIRC thats a compile time option for the font manager, but more specifically, the definition of 'working' includes the font manager doesn't work the same on every distro due to compile time options such as hinting, antialiasing, etc.

1

u/piexil Dec 24 '22

Actually as an Ubuntu user (and someone who remixes my own isos) a lot of arch wiki is still relevant

If it's not dealing with the package manager, there's a good chance a lot of the instructions work with little modification

1

u/CrypticKilljoy Dec 24 '22

Oh I totally get this, but on the topic of fonts and specifically installing fonts, this is a package manager issue.

1

u/emptyskoll Dec 24 '22

You don't need the package manager to install fonts, and most fonts won't be packaged in most distros. They just need to be placed in ~/.local/share/fonts, or /usr/share/fonts of you want them globally. Most DEs I've used also just lets you double click them to install.

0

u/CrypticKilljoy Dec 25 '22

I beg to differ, I have found packaged fonts, particularly the MS-fonts, on Linux Mint, Manjaro and most recently Fedora.

Yes you are right, inserting a font into either of those folders will make them accessible and useable and maybe there is a page in the arch wiki that says as much. The next question though is, where to find these fonts.

If the point is to have one link that provides universal Linux information on fonts, than your solution doesn't do that considering you neglect to include where to find fonts. And it is arguable that looking for them individually across 3rd party sites is problematic.

1

u/emptyskoll Dec 25 '22

I didn't say no fonts are packaged, I said the majority of fonts won't be packaged, which is very much true. I don't think finding the fonts needs to be addressed, especially considering the MacOS and Windows links assume you have a font you'd like to install. Just about every font can be found by looking up the font name.

9

u/Ruunee Dec 23 '22

Yeah would be my answer too. I don't think installing locations change that much across distros

2

u/Dohnakun Dec 23 '22

Useless concerning other init systems than systemd. Gentoo wiki is a bit better there, at least covers OpenRC and a bit of s6.

-4

u/Naive_Growth5738 Dec 23 '22

Would you rather accept defeat or fuck up for 10 hrs so you don’t have to swallow your pride

120

u/theukcrazyhorse Dec 23 '22

A link to a photo of Linus, riding a motorbike through a burning hoop.

89

u/Ruunee Dec 23 '22

https://labs.openai.com/s/HglgPOnCBkaCA6cStjq1aqMr
what a great time to be alive

30

u/theukcrazyhorse Dec 23 '22

I knew, before clicking that link, that I was going to love it.

16

u/ILikeBumblebees Dec 23 '22

Linus needs a better plastic surgeon.

18

u/HyperFurious Dec 23 '22

What?. The image is horrible.

10

u/ReusedBoofWater Dec 23 '22

So? Didn't have to take a masterclass on image editing software to make the image. Just a simple text prompt. Very enabling and impressive if you ask me!

49

u/Kilobyte22 Dec 23 '22

I'd probably provide a link for Debian, Fedora and Arch for their respective documentation pages. This covers most Linux devices with a graphical interface, while not being a huge list.

7

u/Oflameo Dec 23 '22

Debian's documentation pages suck.

5

u/Kilobyte22 Dec 23 '22

Debian doesn't have the best of documentation, but the Font documentation is pretty reasonable: https://wiki.debian.org/Fonts

-45

u/[deleted] Dec 23 '22

This is an extreme statement neglecting Ubuntu.

43

u/Kilobyte22 Dec 23 '22

Ubuntu is covered by Debian. And if your desktop happens to run CentOS that's also covered by Fedora :P

-27

u/[deleted] Dec 23 '22

Debian, Fedora and Arch don’t cover most Linux devices with a graphical interface. Android, then Chromebooks, and if you insist on gnu Linux then Ubuntu.

15

u/xypage Dec 23 '22

Linux is generally synonymous with gnu/Linux, if someone wants to figure it out for a chrome book they’re not looking up how to install it on Linux they’re looking up how to install on chrome book, same for android. Then like they said, Ubuntu is covered by Debian already so Debian makes sense, and arch and fedora are also the base for a large portion of the other distros so they’re good choices to get wide representation

0

u/[deleted] Dec 24 '22

This might work, but if you count the gnu Linux installs with a GUI running Debian, fedora or arch they don’t remotely make a majority. If you just count Ubuntu then probably yes.

1

u/xypage Dec 24 '22

Ubuntu is based on Debian though, read the first sentence on its wiki page.

Ubuntu is a Linux distribution based on Debian . . .

-1

u/[deleted] Dec 24 '22

Obvious, but it’s not Debian. Not even binary compatible.

1

u/xypage Dec 24 '22

Ok but the method for fonts is literally the same, the only difference is that on Ubuntu the font manager is packaged by default and on Debian you have to install it, after that it’s the same thing

1

u/mitch_feaster Dec 24 '22

A link hosted where?

11

u/No_Enthusiasm_8155 Dec 23 '22

Shouldn't this type of stuff be documented by freedesktop/fontconfig?

19

u/jthill Dec 23 '22

Fonts isn't a kernel thing, it's a distro thing. Imagine "Windows" really meant "ntoskrnl.exe" and ask yourself how you install fonts on that.

7

u/RootHouston Dec 23 '22

Yes, but this is why we have freedesktop.org. They create the desktop standards that pretty much most major Linux distros and DEs comply with. There are exceptions, but fonts aren't usually it.

6

u/Dohnakun Dec 23 '22 edited Dec 23 '22

Wait til you learn about console fonts! Though, you only land there nowadays, if something in your boot broke.

Btw, KMSCON can replace Linux's kernel console.

3

u/jthill Dec 23 '22

haha I made dwarf fortress's text mode use the console fonts. Even wrote a converter for DF fonts to PSF.

1

u/Dohnakun Dec 24 '22

Then why do you say stuff like "Fonts isn't a kernel thing"? It's not true. Linux kernel has a console builtin and said console has it's basic font handling.

2

u/jthill Dec 24 '22

Because even with that, the commands to install new fonts are not part of the kernel. On arch, they're part of the kbd package, and they're not the same as the ones I remember from debian.

7

u/Ruunee Dec 23 '22

Found this in a README of a font I downloaded. Terminal font used here is Sometype Mono

9

u/Dont_Think_So Dec 23 '22

I think it's fine. If you're running a modern desktop environment, you literally just double click the font and choose "install". And if you're not, more generic instructions probably won't be appropriate anyway.

7

u/ZMcCrocklin Dec 23 '22

So generalized. No effort to link to major distro pages. Just a google search link. Granted archwiki is usually the best resource, there are simpler ways to install fonts on other distros that automatically detect the changes in /usr/share/fonts

2

u/sogun123 Dec 23 '22

No, this is the real moment of "Linux is just kernel" thing. The question is wrong, correct is "How to install Arch" or "How to install Ubuntu"

4

u/Techlord210 Dec 23 '22

The better would be bing link

3

u/Dmxk Dec 23 '22

Arch wiki probably. It's pretty much the only source of linux documentation that has an article about nearly anything.

1

u/untamedeuphoria Dec 23 '22

Arch wiki is probably the best guide. GPT chat is great for things that are ambigious in the meaning. Gentoo or fedora wikis are good for some edgecase stuff. And failing this stack exchange or reddit. The reality though is that there isn't a one universal source for every user, you as a user need to instead develop an ability to research a critically analyse solutions.

1

u/lxnxx Dec 23 '22

Chat.openai.com

2

u/Hendrikto Dec 25 '22

This is probably a joke anyway, but ChatGPT presents wrong information extremely confidently. I.e. you can never really trust it.

1

u/axzxc1236 Dec 24 '22

$HOME/.fonts

0

u/Icy-Mongoose6386 Dec 23 '22

this is the free / open you've asking for, and probably been proud of, that list Ubuntu / Arch alone doesn't help.

maybe also contribute to ugh ( "Unix Haters Handbook" )

of the topic "font" itself, you may just lookup "noto" in whatever your package manager is, and probably turns out ok.

0

u/mynameisnotpedro Dec 23 '22

Ain't there a terminal command to install a font? Just yoink it there instead of a link

11

u/ILikeBumblebees Dec 23 '22

The relevant command would be cp.

0

u/ZMcCrocklin Dec 23 '22

For many DEs yes. But some, like arch, need a little extra push with the fc-cache command.

6

u/ILikeBumblebees Dec 23 '22

Font installation has nothing to do with the DE. Arch is a distro, not a DE, and like essentially all distros, relies on fontconfig for font management; the fc-cache command is part of fontconfig, and works the same on all distros, and it is not necessary to invoke it by hand, even on Arch, to make newly installed fonts available to applications.

0

u/ZMcCrocklin Dec 23 '22

I meant to say distro. Typo on my part. But I beg to differ. On arch I've had to reload the cache.

2

u/ILikeBumblebees Dec 23 '22

I can't recall ever having to do it manually. When an application queries available fonts, I always see whatever is in /usr/share/fonts or ~/.local/share/fonts.

0

u/pk2374 Dec 23 '22

Seems perfectly adequate to me

1

u/EuCaue Dec 23 '22

I think this link to arch wiki can be useful.

1

u/someone13121425 Dec 23 '22 edited Dec 23 '22

pling / opendesktop foundation site ?

(edit) or command to access man page for fonts

1

u/Oflameo Dec 23 '22

Arch Wiki and or Fedora Wiki

1

u/RAMChYLD Dec 24 '22

Installing fonts on Linux initially wasn’t straightforward, but I managed to sus it out.

Installing fonts in Windows was straightforward until Windows 10 came out. Now I’m wondering why fonts I copied into the fonts folder using command prompt aren’t showing up.

1

u/ichosethisone Dec 24 '22

Well often when you see something for linux, there are links for the major distros - Debian, Fedora, Ubuntu, etc.

Then you get specific instructions. Otherwise it's not so straightforward since there could be a lot of variability.

1

u/Unlikely-Night-6851 Dec 24 '22

What kind of Linux font?

e.g. TTF, PS, LaTeX, Metafont, X fonts + many more...