What feature/utility/app are you surprised is not installed by default in Linux distributions?

RegalPotoo, 9 months ago

htop. I get that top is ancient and just about part of the definition of a standard Linux system, but damn is it unfriendly

dmrzl, 9 months ago

bash-completion

mfat, 9 months ago

This and command-not-found

JWBananas, 9 months ago

Lately, jq

gamma, 9 months ago

awk for the modern age

Foreverwinter, 9 months ago

neofetch

coltorl, 9 months ago

One of my two only used commands. The other being yay.

RegularIndependent98, 9 months ago

File manager necessary actions and plugins

joel_feila, 9 months ago

No time shift or equivalent in neon.

vsis, 9 months ago

tmux, htop, vim

cows_are_underrated, 9 months ago

I was surprised that gnome ships with comes with it in default.

JWBananas, 9 months ago

What distros don’t include tmux and vim? Ubuntu has had them for at least a decade.

vsis, 9 months ago

by default?

My work laptop came with Ubuntu preinstaled and didn’t have tmux nor htop.

Vim is not present by default in at least debian and arch. Although vi is present in every distribution I believe.

JWBananas, 9 months ago

I can see that being the case for the Desktop variant. For the Server variant you get vim and tmux out of the box.

rattking, 9 months ago

Not a specific distro per se but I’m shocked by how many minified docker images do not include which I’ve wasted so much time trying to figure out why a build failed with some tool missing after I explicitly installed that tool only to find deep down in a script somewhere a tool=$(which tool) >/dev/null in there failing and eating the error message! Remember folks always which which first to avoid such issues ;)

gamma, 9 months ago

type -p is a shell builtin though, and one character shorter :)

Although you may prefer tool=$(command -v tool)

cmeerw, 9 months ago

jed

Turtle, 9 months ago

The first couple commands I run after install:

<span style="color:#323232;">$ sudo apt install vim
</span><span style="color:#323232;">$ sudo apt autopurge libreoffice*
</span>

cows_are_underrated, 9 months ago

I actually like Libre office very much, since it’s a good open source office software.

Turtle, 9 months ago

I’m not suggesting it’s bad, I just don’t use it much and it’s always preinstalled.

stepanzak, 9 months ago

Which office suite do you use?

schnurrito, 9 months ago

Some people don’t need an office suite at all.

Turtle, 9 months ago

When I need an office suite, Libreoffice is the one I use, but it’s so infrequent that I reinstall writer or whatever part I need at the time and then uninstall again.

The main reason it bothers me is I will see it being updated frequently (and they’re not small updates) - and I’ve probably never ran the thing since the last OS install most of the time.

spez, 9 months ago

Mission Center, it finally brings a task manager like UI on Linux. Alternative for people not wanting to use a TUI like htop.

shotgun_crab, 9 months ago

Definitely git

spez, 9 months ago

Which one doesn’t have it?

leirda, 9 months ago

at least Arch (and derivatives) and Guix. probably a lot more of them

gamma, 9 months ago

Comparing Arch’s base +base-devel is kinda unfiar, there’s only 54 packages total there.

FooBarrington, 9 months ago

I always use:

• tealdeer (tldr implementation that’s not slow as molasses)
• ripgrep

spez, 9 months ago

Thank you so much for listing tealdeer. It’s way more faster than tldr.

qyron, 9 months ago

Let’s try the other way around: what default apps are pre installed that really don’t need or should not be?

I get that most distros try to give a good out of the box desktop for the average user, while also saving time for who is (trying to) providing services or building machines to sell but it can get annoying booting into a fresh install, take a look at the defaults and go “nah, that’s going away, and that, that and the other”.

I’m not advocating for LFS but sometimes I wish we could get an option to install just what is necessary to make the hardware run and a chosen desktop or window manager and from there install whatever we may need.

OldPain, 9 months ago

Sounds like Arch.

vrighter, 9 months ago

seconded. That is exactly how I built my system, starting from a minimal install

RickyRigatoni, 9 months ago

coreutils.

ClemaX, 9 months ago

ncdu for analyzing disk space usage in TUI.