Yeah, this is more accurate.

Bacially, it’s excactly lke that. Every configuration is done through plain text files. Whether there is a GUI to control that or not, that’s a completely different issue. But, yes, even if there isn’t a GUI for it, you can manually edit the correspodning text files and get the desired result.

Meeh, nothing that nano can’t handle IMO. For quick edits (which is more than 90% of what you’d need to do for configuring this or that), it does the job just fine.

CMD is a toy if you ask me. Basically, there are very few options for customization regarding it, not to mention group policies, things that are really needed in production environments, like AD… nope, no tools to export “just this policy”, you export the whole thing, then you filter things out (you don’t actually export only one thing you need, nope, you have to filter/delete everything out and just leave that one thing you DO need in there, lol 😂), and then you import it back again… I mean, WTF 😂.

Ah, but we have PowerShell for that… yeah, right, as if I’m gonna learn your whole complex C# based syntax that just doesn’t make sense most of the time (this is done like this, but this other thing, that is very similar to this one, nope, that is done completely different 😤) just so that I can export and tweak this one policy I need to automate loading on new installs. And why am I even doing this? Because apparently, AD can’t handle that. Why? MS doesn’t seem to be interested in implementing that as a group policy across AD, just locally with no global control over it… go figure 🤷.

So I just use the quick and dirty approach regarding stuff like that. See what reg entries the policy changes, make a cmd script that does those changes via regadd, load that script as runonce in AD, done. Mind you, this doesnct actually reflect what is done in gpedit, it just loads the settings without gpedit ever knowing about that. Such BS, I hate it 😒.

Depends on your needs, but if it does the job for you, I wouldn’t budge either.

If you’re shifting from a distro that you got bored with, like Ubuntu (libs are outdated on LTS releases, so compiling stuff on it can be a PITA), and just wanna try something that you can tinker a bit more, but not break often, I would actually recommend Void (and BTRFS with snapshots of course). This, plus the fact that it has amazing tools/scripts that automate most of the building process is why it’s my personal preference. Arch is too cutting edge, stuff break often. Void is kinda this sweet spot. It’s rolling release, but not as bleeding edge as Arch. They’d rather opt for stability instead of bleeding edge, that is what I also like.

Yeah, it’s more like “learn allong the way”. Not that you can’t read books about the OS, but it’s a very fast shifing OS, way more than BSD variants. So, if you read a book published, let’s say, 10 years ago, some if the things in there might not apply now.

Just learn from forums/reddit, places like that. Ask questions, you will receive answers 😉. Start with something that works out of the box (Ubuntu or any other Ubuntu/Debian based distro). Poke it around, see how it works, try to install this or that, see how the dependency issues are resolved, etc.

If you’re a GUI enjoyer, try KDE as the desktop environment. Better yet, try a distro that comes with KDE by default (Kubuntu or KDE Neon).

I do it all the time. Why? Not gonna get paid any more when they call me for an emergency on a Sunday evening 🤷.

Know exactly how the poor fella feels 😞.