I usually end up using something like htop for a quick overview, together with nvidia-smi when I do GPU-related stuff.
> any random hang-up is a forced restart, no way to kill offending process as EVERYTHING just freezes up.
I've not had this happen for as long as I've used Linux, besides GPU driver bugs/crashes that brought down the computer, but I've had this happen more frequently on Windows than Linux. Processes using up all CPU should make the computer a lot slower to use, but shouldn't bring it down. Processes using up all RAM should be killed by the OOM manager that you distribution should include (but anyways you should have swap setup to avoid the situation in the first place). Processes using up all disk space is a bit harder, but again shouldn't bring the computer down.
> a lot of things magically stop working or break, forcing me to spend hours on google to fix some crap by copypasting random nonsense into terminal.
I'm guessing the problem of having things stop working/breaking "magically" is a effect of random copypasting stuff into the terminal, not the other way around.
Linux does want you to learn about the system in order for you to not mangle it, which has it's good and bad sides. Think of it like a chef having sharp knives in order to do their job better, it's true that you could do more damage if you fuck up, but their job requires them to have professional knowledge about the tools they use, and the knowledge about how to use those tools in a good way.
That's the Windows way. It's a bad fit for Linux, because there is no one true obsessively-backwards-compatible Linux.
The good news is we don't need it: Linux isn't a black box, so we don't need to guess or study its behavior. We can look it up instead. The goal here is to construct understanding from documentation, as opposed to deconstructing behavior from testing.
Some great starting points to get your bearings are:
- https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Main_Page
- man pages
Having everything lock up I don’t think I’ve ever seen, only way I could see that happen is a runaway process eats all the memory of the machine, and somehow dodges the OOM killer. Especially if the machine is configured with no swap (don’t do that).
And I’m saying that as someone who doesn’t really like linux.
> forcing me to spend hours on google to fix some crap by copypasting random nonsense into terminal
Have you considered that “copy pasting random nonsense into terminal” could be the source of your issues?
On some systems you need to enable this feature first, so try it out once to see if it works and look up how to enable it, if it doesn't.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magic_SysRq_key
On most distros, you can also get into a command line, with the combination CTRL + ALT + F1 - F8 (try out which function keys do it for you and how to get back to the GUI). There you can use `ps`, `kill <pid>`, `reboot now` or restart the GUI. I'd keep a note of the exact commands on my phone just in case.
As a sidenote, I've had an issue on a good windows desktop PC where it freezes when watching YouTube or ither streaming services. I can still move the mouse for a bit, but clicking does nothing and I'm unable to even save it from a hard reset with Ctrl + Alt + Delete. Sometimes it won't happen for weeks, but if I'm unlucky multiple times in an hour. Look up "PC freezes while watching YouTube" and you will see I'm far from alone with this issue, Asus motherboards with new AMD processors seem to be the common factor. Haven't had this happen on Linux yet (dual boot) and I've tried everything to avoid these unusual freezes in windows, but nothing seems to help.
I am hoping someone comes up with a fully dis-arcaned distro. Especially ditch (or remap) goofy command line relics into the obvious and easily remembered. Why do we still use CP instead of Copy? Legacy stuff that greybeards would freak if it were changed. Let them use a greybeard distro and make one that is for joe user.
Yes, I use Mint and it is still full of arcane crap.
Also good to note: there's tons of problems uniquely with windows that I'm sure are just "computer problems" and "computer slowness" to you, and you never blame windows.
"Basic" in Windows is all stuff you can easily do with a mouse. Getting anywhere with Linux requires comfort with the command line, OK, but even after spending a decent amount of time, there are lots of system-specific and application-specific commands that you need to master to actually get the system humming. And a total rabbit hole when errors start to pop up. Getting a handle on all of this, being able to understand and fix errors, this is well beyond "basic" and the condescending attitude "just need to learn a few more basic skills" is a huge turn-off. Saying nothing is more helpful than telling someone they just need to learn "basic skills."
Linux requires being super comfortable on the keyboard, using cli nearly exclusively and recalling with perfect accuracy arcane letter incantations which if you know the guy who wrote the program and the full name of his dog makes sense but to everyone else is just random letters strung together.
It works on Windows also and in my opinion is better than the default on there too.
If something hangs I just kill or pkill it via the terminal.
I see people offering nice advice here but I mostly do ps aux | grep thing and then kill (-9) it... or killall :)
> any random hang-up is a forced restart, no way to kill offending process as EVERYTHING just freezes up.
I had the everything freeze up experience initially on a Dell laptop and frankly don't know what was the cause. Maybe missing microcode updates or old firmware? Nowadays it almost never happens (I don't remember it happening over the months). I have an app crash (like Firefox) ~once a month but it's so rare I barely notice.
Note: I also do this on macOS but it’s much less useful since there are very few commands to actually restore a session that’s locked up.
Unless you are dealing with a kernel panic, this will work.