this post was submitted on 16 Dec 2024
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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?

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[–] [email protected] 59 points 1 month 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.

[–] [email protected] 37 points 1 month ago (12 children)

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

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[–] [email protected] 25 points 1 month ago (3 children)
[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

Just yesterday I saw one on Lemmy but I don't know if I will be able to find it again.

Found it! https://lemmy.ml/post/23671806

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 month ago

With the ever increasing complexity of systemd, the GUI will quickly get in par with Firefox in lines of code 😂

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[–] [email protected] 25 points 1 month ago (2 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

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.

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[–] [email protected] 24 points 1 month ago (2 children)

Setting per game frame limits and undervolting AMD GPUs is a lot more complicated than on Windows

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 month ago

LACT and Mangohud can do that pretty well

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[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 month ago

My Linux experience has been command line training. Now I avoid GUI stuff like the plague if I can help it.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 month ago (1 children)

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.

[–] wildbus8979 21 points 1 month ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 month ago (1 children)

oh... that look tits! Thank you!

[–] wildbus8979 8 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Found this not so long ago and it literally made me sad I don't manage an LDAP anymore!

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[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 month ago (1 children)

afterburner. i'm unable to oc my nvidia gpu :(

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 month ago (2 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (3 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 month ago (5 children)

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

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[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 month ago

Something to help visualise BTRFS volumes & sub-volumes (ie, free-space, etc)

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 month ago (2 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 month ago

I have replaced autohotkeys with https://github.com/espanso/espanso

It does everything I need it to, although I am not sure if it can do the mouse button things you need

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[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 month ago (1 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Why use NixOS, when you could just use emacs?

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 month ago (1 children)

My Emacs needed a bootloader.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 month ago

That should be our new slogan:

NixOS: Your Emacs' bootloader.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 month ago (2 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 month ago (5 children)

People still use Cron?

Use systemd timers which are very easy to configure.

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[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month 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.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 month ago (1 children)

regedit.exe, my favorite GUI app 🤣

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 month ago (5 children)

You can use regedit on Linux via wine!

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 month ago

You could try gconf

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month 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.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (2 children)

IrfanView. Nothing comes even close. I would probably move to Linux if not for that.

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[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

HWMonitor / cpuID / cpuz. One of the frustrating things is not having good driver level support for certain mbs with system monitoring utilities, so you can’t see fans and some cpu stats (like per ccd temps etc on Ryzen processors). Specifically things like it87 boards

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 month ago (1 children)

HardInfo2 may be interesting to you

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[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 month ago (7 children)

Maybe simple and easy to use GUI Firewall.

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 month ago (2 children)

It seems impossible to set display scaling from the command line. Anything that fixes that would be nice.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (3 children)

What is your DE? On KDE Plasma Wayland you can just use kscreen-doctor output.HDMI-A-1.scale.2 to set it to 200%

And it seem like CLI not GUI issue :)

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 month ago

Pretty sure any one using YAST is confused right now

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 month ago

I've recently gotten into using cockpit. I just wish it was as expansive as openSUSE's yast.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (5 children)

Well KDE had this awesome process management tool, I think it was called ~~System Monitor~~ or something. You could tune process priorities with IO and CPU. They deprecated the tool though, I think because nobody wanted to port it to QT6

EDIT: It's not System Monitor. I can't recall the name, but there used to be an app that let you set niceness / priorities of your processes.

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