How to Maintain & Repair Ubuntu Mate with GUI

Support & Help Requests
#1

Dear Community,
I have been using UM for the last year after step from Windows. The usage of the programs is fairly easy and the initial stap is generally with little problems. There is also an extensive amount of material to help people start with Linux.
When I ran into some problems the difficulty arises. I do not understand the way Linux works and do not know how to solve the problems. When I search the internet for help I run into an extensive amount of very knowledgeable people who know all about working with the terminal and can help with the most elaborate commands. This generally doesn’t help me coming from Windows and I even doubt if it is necessary. Yes it is needed if you want to become a professional, but I am a simple user, just trying to keep my PC and that of my girlfriend running.

What would help me (and probably many new Linux users) a lot is a tutorial (possibly on Youtube) that helps me through the basics to maintain and repair my OS using mostly or even only the GUI. This would be awesome.
Jim

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#2

Don’t mean to be discouraging, but I’ve been using Linux distros for well over 10 years now and I’ve seen no progress at all along the lines you want to see.

Distro writers have concentrated their GUI efforts on (1) installing the OS, and (2) using the OS and its apps.

Some Admin functions, like Network settings or Printer settings, have GUI interfaces where you can examine and change them.

But doing repair and maintenance work is something else entirely different, and it’s tied intimately to both the hardware and drivers specific to your PC – which no general-purpose GUI is going to be able to address.

Furthermore, you’re not learning “Linux” (as that is an OS, or more specifically, an OS kernel), but you’re learning commands to be used to administer the system – and that approach to system admin is not likely to change in the foreseeable future.

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#3

That is a bit discouraging and explains why there is hardly any info on the matter.
I guess I will have to try to wade through the command line maintenance courses in the hope to become a bit more savvy in the maintenance of our systems.

At the same time this is a cry out to the distro writers. The reason many people drop out of Linux is that whilst working with it is fine, solving problems and understanding the way it is working is still a crime for newbee’s coming from Windows. You have to become a semi professional just to maintain your own system. If there would be a distro that would be more user friendly in the maintenance of the system, I guess it would be flooded with people new to Linux ! !

Thanx for the info buddy
Jim

#4

While I understand your enthusiasm, I don’t share your optimism – about folks flooding to Linux.

Most folks use what is familiar – and like it or not, most companies use Windows PCs.

I have been around long enough to remember when that was NOT the case, when IBM PCs were new to the scene and most people did not even have a home computer. I worked for companies that used only mainframes, and then switched over to X-terminals, and then switched over to Macs.

Today, nearly every company uses Windows and most provide their employees laptops either for travel or to use at home – and those laptops run Windows.

In addition, every year, some “pundit” in the Linux community goes on about how THIS YEAR is going to be the year of the “Linux Desktop” – the year when millions and millions of folks “jump ship” from Windows and flood the Linux community. And … the year comes and goes, again, and that does not happen.

And to make matters worse, not so much on this forum, but on other Linux forums, one of the most common questions we get from Linux “newbies” is how to run MS Office, or how to run Internet Explorer (or worse, Edge) – and the simply answer is – you don’t! These folks rail on about being “Free from Windows” in one breath, and in the next one, they want to continue using Windows-only apps because they don’t want to learn anything new and different, they just want a free version of Windows to use – which, of course, Linux is NOT.

Personally, I don’ think that providing GUI tools for Linux sysadmin work would really make any noticeable difference, either in the number of folks joining the community or in the folks staying. There are lots of support forums for providing such assistance, and there are number books out there containing step-by-step instructions for maintaining Linux systems. IF folks aren’t willing to use those, then they need to stay with Windows.

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#5

As another who remembers such oddities as “pencil and paper,” I have to agree. In my experience, even few Windows users use those tools on their own systems. I can’t count the number of times someone brought me their computer, exclaiming, “My computer’s broke! It’s ruined! A virus is gonna steal my WHOLE LIFE!” followed by a wonderful impression of Lucille Ball, “Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhh!”

Of course, ten minutes and a reboot or two later, it’s running as fine as Windows can.

No, GUI admin tools won’t make a difference. It doesn’t on Windows or Geek Squad wouldn’t be so successful.

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#6

IMHO there are already a lot of GUI options, the best unified one being SUSE’s YAST. Even if you are not running SUSE you just have to look a little for the specific problem you are having. Here is a good place to start: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/List_of_applications (most apps found there are available on all major linux distributions). Still CLI or TUI (Text User Interface) applications are the best for this kind of tasks.

#7

grenouille – good analogy! I wasn’t thinking about Geek Squad until you mentioned them.

It’s like the difference between driving a car and maintaining a car. The first is easy to learn; the second is something very different.

#8

There is no prerequisite for any alternate operating system to look and behave identically to Windows, Windows is not in any way a benchmark by which all other operating system’s should be judged. The Windows UI is far from perfect.

Essentially, Windows is the McDonalds of operating systems.

The issue most face when moving from Windows is one of familiarity and making any DE clone Windows defeats the purpose of moving away from Windows in the first place. You need to consider the fact that if the situation was flipped and you’d been using Linux all your life, you’d be making the same requests regarding Windows.

The harsh reality is that moving away from Windows is going to involve a considerable learning curve that has to be considered before making the jump to Linux.

#9

To be fair, Windows can be hard to administer, and trying to find solutions to uncommon problems is considerably harder than on Linux, in my experience. That’s why I think there are far more paid Windows admins than Linux admins - if Windows was easy to administer and troubleshoot you wouldn’t need all those professionals and companies selling you their services in the first place.

Rant aside, @JRuiter - what specific problems are you experiencing? If there’s one thing Linux has going for it is that there are communities of experienced users and admins lurking in forums ready and willing to help. So feel free to post any questions you may have. Sometimes a forum is better than a GUI :wink:

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#10

I can’t forget them. I’ve made a fair amount of money on the side over the years fixing what they’ve fixed.

#11

Thanks for asking,
There are several minor things that I dont understand, that can get me into trouble when trying to perform administrative tasks. At the moment we are running into:

  1. I am running Windows and Linux on the same PC. I used to be able to write files to my origional D (data) drive from Windows. During the year this was suddenly no longer possible. This was for my pc and at the same time for the pc of my girlfriend. This makes me think itś not a mistake in the system but a change in the permissions in Ubuntu MATE. I have been trying to study file and drive permissions but I cant find the crux yet.
  2. Sometimes they are refering to ‘just demounting and then mounting a drive’. I don’t know what happens if I demount a drive and how I find the drive back to mount it again to . . . . something ? !
  3. Regularly when I look for a solution to a problem there is a whole series of commands and explanation, in which I don’t understand the explanation nor the commands.

I obviously need some beginners ‘course’ to explain the basics.

#12

Well,

sudo fdisk -l

will give you all your drives.

And tell you how they are formatted, if it’s NTFS, windows shouldn’t have a problem with it. If it 's “linux” windows won’t see it.

#13

perhaps people from the Ubuntu Mate community should work together and write a document maybe throw in some videos and pictures that would guide a person either from windows or entirely new to computers on how to use Ubuntu Mate as their daily system, I know there is documentation and the Welcome but I mean for utterly new and basic users

#14

There’s a book!

1 Like
#15

All of us started there,

The community support here is very likely to ask you to USE terminal commands.
Terminal commands are a very efficient way to gather information or make changes.
It also helps avoid miscommunication amongst a multilingual community. A longer text explanation can create misunderstandings even for native english speakers

If a user wants a rapid solution and is prepared to copy/paste commands into terminal and copy/paste any responses problems can be resolved quick
more cautious users can always ask for more explanation, or research all the documentation for themselves

If community supported Linux distributions are too far removed from Windows for you,
maybe you would prefer a Linux commercial distribution with professional support like RHEL or SUSE?