The Linux learning curve

I actually used OpenMediaVault on a Raspberry Pi 3B+ before I even bought my Synology NAS let alone my TeraStation. I’ll just say that Pi was not up to the task of running a RAID5. It became extremely unreliable.

I tried to install OMV on the TeraStation, but I think there was some hardware compatibility on the TeraStation that prevented me from doing that. So, I had to find something else, and that’s where I found Webmin and Debian.

I had picked up the TeraStation at a university surplus store, and it did not have the stock OS installed on it. I found an ISO of the Buffalo OS for it, but the installation always ran into roadblocks and error messages.

Before I even got Webmin and Debian installed, I was cursing the sky because I thought this was going to be a lot less of a pain than it was.

So, I just had to find something that would work AT ALL, and that’s how I ended up here.

We all have to start somewhere with Linux, right? I’ve been using Windows heavily since Windows 95! So I thought I could handle this without breaking much of a sweat.

After all, there was a GUI, right? It’s necessary but not sufficient. It could really benefit from a more guided experience to start and then let you take the training wheels off if you want to.

I believe we’ve done far more than most in terms of making Linux easy to use.

Jamie and I have both written books about using Webmin to manage Linux systems (published 20 years ago, but they have been updated over the years and merged into the Webmin documentation: Documentation | Webmin), Virtualmin also has a ton of documentation (Documentation | Virtualmin — Open Source Web Hosting Control Panel) and online help (many options in Virtualmin have tooltips), we have tens of thousands of answers to questions here in the forum going back decades, and I check the forum every day.

If there is something that is hard about using Virtualmin or Webmin, and our documentation doesn’t cover it sufficiently, we always welcome specific feedback. We don’t always have a good solution, sometimes the concept or the underlying software is complicated and we can’t change the concepts or the software, but if there’s something we can do to make things easier, we’ll try.

At this point, I don’t think there’s a good argument that operating a Linux server is harder than operating a Windows server. In fact, I think the opposite is true. Linux has better package management, a much bigger community, far more free resources online for learning, and the solution of last resort (looking at the source code) is available for Linux while it isn’t for Windows. Servers and networks are hard because they’re complicated and folks want to do a whole bunch of different things. But, Linux is more accessible to more people and more empowering to people with limited resources than any tech in history.

There are some cranky folks here on the forum, and some who persistently answer with what they think you ought to be doing instead of what you actually want to do (sometimes with good reason, sometimes just because they’re also coming from a place of ignorance and they don’t know it), I’ll admit that. But, also keep in mind, this place is free…nobody is paid to respond here. Not even “Staff”, we don’t make enough money to pay for people to monitor and respond in the forums, so when you see any Virtualmin Staff answering here, it’s because we want to help not because we’re being paid to help.

If someone needs more hand-holding there are ways to pay for support that can adjust for specific needs. Not just from us, there are folks here who do contract work often beyond what we can do (we don’t offer system administration services, we don’t log into customers systems to fix things unless it’s a bug we’re trying to figure out, but there are contractors who will).

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Thank you.

And I want to emphasize that many people here have been very helpful to me pointing me to where I need to go, and I’m grateful for it, especially considering that they are not being paid. I hope I can pay it forward somehow in the future.

Yeah, I have seen a little of the crankiness too, but most of the responses I have received have been useful and friendly.

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As Shoulders said The best if you want to start with linux is Ubuntu (I remember Zorin OS which was targeting Windows User)

But indeed everything you said about the documentation is true. It’s a mess to start with linux.

You can check: DistroWatch.com: Put the fun back into computing. Use Linux, BSD. The popularity might not be (Depend) relevant

To see if you find 1 distro (Linux derivative) which suits/fits you.

If you are building a NAS you need NAS Tools not Webmin.
Try looking into openmediavault may work on your

Yes… I saw a YouTube video recently where he had OpenMediaVault and CasaOS on the same box and the results were delightful (once he sorted the port 80 conflict).

Add a vote for OpenMediaVault as a NAS
Add a vote for Webmin/Virtualmin as the easiest way to admin webservers.

One issue with “easier” systems, is that you inevitably find yourself with limitations and lack of reliability.

The philosophy behind the Perl programming language (which, of course, rocks Webmin) is that “Easy things should be Easy, and Hard things should be possible”. This applies to Linux as well. If you can do something easy, but not something hard, then you have a brittle and limited system. Windows tends to be brittle and limited.

Once you figure out how to do something hard in Linux, you can script it and move on. The key indicator that Linux has you, is that you will gladly spend an hour to script a five minute task, only so that you never have to do that task again.

Eric S. Raymond has written 2 books that speak to these things (both online). One is called “how to be a hacker”. The other is the art of Unix programming. This chapter covers all the reasons why you must both hate and love Linux ;-):

http://www.catb.org/esr/writings/taoup/html/philosophychapter.html

OpenMediaVault was my first thought when I picked up this box, but sadly, it would not install. I got errors.

I don’t remember what they were since it has been three years. So, that’s why I’m on Webmin.