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Questions tagged [discussion]

The question you're asking is designed to solicit opinions or best-practices on a particular topic, with the goal of reaching community consensus.

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368 votes
7 answers
46k views

Why is Kali Linux so hard to set up? Why won't people help me?

I've installed Kali Linux, or I'm trying to install it. Why is it so hard? Why doesn't it recognize my hardware? Why do I need to set up so many things manually? Why can't I install the applications I ...
Gilles 'SO- stop being evil''s user avatar
141 votes
2 answers
10k views

PSA: Please don't post images of text

When asking or answering questions, please don't post screenshots of text. This is a very bad idea because: You can't copy/paste the commands into answers, google searches, local files to work on a ...
terdon on strike's user avatar
106 votes
6 answers
16k views

What should we do about Kali Linux questions?

It's well-known that we have a quality problem in the kali-linux tag. Some statistics corroborate this perception (though not to the extent that I'd expected): 16.4% of the kali-linux questions have ...
Gilles 'SO- stop being evil''s user avatar
93 votes
0 answers
677 views

RIP schily (Jörg Schilling)

According to a post on the Unix Heritage Society mailing list, prominent FOSS developer and Unix enthusiast, Jörg Schilling passed away on Sunday, 10th October 2021. He was an active member of this ...
Anthony Geoghegan's user avatar
78 votes
26 answers
6k views

Getting to know you: who are you and why do spend time on unix.se?

I thought it would be a nice idea if we could have a question thread where everyone posts an answer where they introduce themselves, talk about themselves a little bit, and tell the community their ...
Faheem Mitha's user avatar
  • 34.4k
65 votes
5 answers
1k views

User insulted by editing their answer?

I made an edit to an answer. I feel the edit is a clear improvement in terms of spelling and format. The user sent me an angry email and rolled back the edit. I thought it was funny, so I made the ...
Philip Kirkbride's user avatar
63 votes
5 answers
4k views

Why I closed the "Why is Kali so hard" question

UPDATE: The question is now here on meta: Why is Kali Linux so hard to set up? Why won't people help me? As the regulars will know, there seem to be many people out there who think that Kali is a ...
terdon on strike's user avatar
60 votes
3 answers
1k views

Are we abusing "Request for learning materials" as a reason to close?

Request for learning material, from what I gather, is a request for links or pointers to offsite learning materials, or books, courses, etc. In fact, How do we feel about requests for learning ...
garethTheRed's user avatar
  • 33.1k
47 votes
2 answers
684 views

Are hats in fashion this year?

Last year, Stack Exchange ran Winter Bash 2015, in which users earned hats which they proudly displayed upon their gravatar. There was a leaderboard of hatters, mad or not: It's that time of the year ...
terdon on strike's user avatar
46 votes
0 answers
613 views

2014 Community Moderator Election Results

Unix & Linux's 2nd moderator election has come to a close, the votes have been tallied, and the 2 new moderators are: They'll be joining the existing crew shortly — please thank them for ...
Shog9's user avatar
  • 101
45 votes
21 answers
2k views

Community Promotion Ads - 2013 [duplicate]

As it is December 2012, we are now going to reset our Community Promotion Ads for the new year. What are Community Promotion Ads? Community Promotion Ads are community-vetted advertisements that ...
44 votes
8 answers
971 views

Users deleting their questions after receiving answer as comment (stop answering in comments)

This is related to Should we discourage people that delete their question after they receive an answer?, and to the AskUbuntu Meta question Please stop posting half answers and dumb advice as comments....
Kusalananda's user avatar
  • 316k
43 votes
53 answers
1k views

A better, cooler name for the Chat Room

Our chat room is called "Unix and Linux". While this is all good, most (all?) of the other chat rooms in all the other Stack Exchange sites have funnier, cooler names than just their site names. Who ...
Faheem Mitha's user avatar
  • 34.4k
42 votes
9 answers
907 views

Why answer a question not worth your upvote?

I see it most often on the sed/awk/grep/perl type questions, but it does happen pretty frequently I think. A lot of times you'll find like 4 or 5 answers on a question with 0 votes and it just boggles ...
mikeserv's user avatar
  • 57.2k
41 votes
4 answers
927 views

Has something happened to shift keys recently?

Maybe it's just me, but it seems like people's shift keys are getting flaky. Maybe it's a manufacturing problem, but I'm afraid it's not. Why would someone go to the effort of capitalizing some words ...
Jeff Schaller's user avatar
  • 66k
41 votes
2 answers
532 views

stepping down as moderator

I think the time has come for me to step down as a community moderator here. I never ended up being as active as I intended to be, and now I have a new job which is going to leave even less spare time....
mattdm's user avatar
  • 39.3k
40 votes
33 answers
2k views

Let's compile a list of canonical Q&As

A few of us were talking about this the other day in chat, as we are now quite a bit larger and with several thousand Q&As, there are certain questions that are asked very often. Things like ...
terdon on strike's user avatar
40 votes
4 answers
882 views

My questions keep getting downvoted without any proper explanation as to why

I am relatively new to this site and I use StackOverflow as well as U&L very sparingly as I find that most of what I want to know is already there. However, one thing that I keep experiencing here ...
Yuki.kuroshita's user avatar
40 votes
1 answer
740 views

What do moderators wish the users of Unix & Linux (.SE) knew?

As we welcome our new rulersmoderators (congratulations!), and they discover the ropes of moderation, it seems to me the ideal time to ask this question. What do moderators wish the users of Unix &...
Stephen Kitt's user avatar
38 votes
8 answers
1k views

Lots of surprising downvotes to new users

We seem to have a particularly large number of (sometimes reasonably well asked) questions being downvoted recently. Here are three examples, where I don't think the question has been too badly asked. ...
roaima's user avatar
  • 104k
37 votes
4 answers
738 views

Linking man pages, but where to?

When linking to man pages (example: man man), what are good target sites? Why? I often use whatever Google finds when I search for man whatever, which in practice usually is http://linux.die.net/man/ ...
hyde's user avatar
  • 1,266
36 votes
39 answers
3k views

Community Promotion Ads - 2014 [duplicate]

It's the time of the year again, namely it is December 2013, and so we shall now refresh our Community Promotion Ads for the new year. What are Community Promotion Ads? Community Promotion Ads are ...
36 votes
1 answer
469 views

Is it bad to repeat a question if an existing one is hard to find?

Sometimes I have a question that I know I have seen on here before. I try searching for it as the first step. If I can't find it that way, I click "Ask a Question" and type in the title, because ...
Wildcard's user avatar
  • 35k
35 votes
4 answers
844 views

why are we not encouraging posting answers as an answer but not via comments?

I have seen many cases, every time exact answers are posting via comments instead of answers. So I would like to get clarification, is that the encouraged way here? I have seen at Stack Exchange ...
Raja G's user avatar
  • 5,681
34 votes
5 answers
331 views

Is it acceptable to transcribe images?

More often than I'd like, I see screenshots of terminal emulators while browsing through the newest questions and the "First Posts" review queue. If, given the context of the post, it is clear that ...
Fox's user avatar
  • 7,983
33 votes
3 answers
1k views

Should I stop referring Kali users to U&L from AU?

I'm more active on Ask Ubuntu and normally refer Kali users to U&L by telling them: We're sorry, but this site is all about Ubuntu and its official derivatives as posted on https://wiki.ubuntu....
Fabby's user avatar
  • 5,786
33 votes
3 answers
567 views

What’s it like being a Unix & Linux moderator?

Inspired by this SF&F meta question, and given the upcoming moderator election, I thought it would be interesting to ask current and past moderators what it’s like to moderate U&L. (Blatant ...
Stephen Kitt's user avatar
32 votes
1 answer
279 views

Why shouldn't [sunos] be a synonym of [solaris]?

At least one person objects to making sunos a synonym of solaris. Why? Solaris in everyday speech means SunOS versions 5.0 and above. (Officially, it means 4.0 and above as the last BSD major release,...
Gilles 'SO- stop being evil''s user avatar
31 votes
2 answers
527 views

Do we like hats?

UPDATE We're in for the hats this year. We just submitted the form! Last year, Stack Exchange ran Winter Bash 2013, in which users earned hats which they proudly displayed upon their gravatar. There ...
terdon on strike's user avatar
31 votes
1 answer
570 views

Should we discourage people that delete their question after they receive an answer?

There is a user who seems to be (systematically?) asking a series of basic questions and then, apparently as soon as someone answers them, deleting them before they receive an upvote (or, obviously, ...
jasonwryan's user avatar
  • 71.2k
31 votes
4 answers
1k views

A contest to cleanup old, abandoned questions

Almost two months ago I posted here about a possible contest to celebrate our anniversary. The anniversary was last month, but we're going to do a contest anyway, like the husband that comes home with ...
Michael Mrozek's user avatar
31 votes
1 answer
235 views

Suggested change of tag definition for Anaconda

Seems like the vast majority of questions here with the tag anaconda refer to issues with the Anaconda Python and R Data Science package, yet the formal definition of the anaconda tag here is "...
K7AAY's user avatar
  • 3,660
30 votes
3 answers
527 views

What about latecomers?

Recently, while reviewing late answers, I've noticed a latecomer. The question was asked few years ago. Person who asked has accepted some answer(which in detail explained how to solve the problem). ...
MatthewRock's user avatar
  • 6,776
30 votes
1 answer
278 views

Rename [screen] to [gnu-screen]

Many people think that [screen] refers to screen as in monitor screen and use this tag inappropriately. Examples: Screen brightness adjustment not working in Ubuntu 14.04 Unable to start X Server ...
Arkadiusz Drabczyk's user avatar
29 votes
3 answers
268 views

Better answer after accepting?

I asked a question and got an answer that solved my question, so I up-voted and then accepted. Then someone else posted a new answer which included the information of the first answer plus many ...
Philip Kirkbride's user avatar
29 votes
4 answers
2k views

What is the Linux tag for?

When should the linux tag be used? Should it be added to any question when the OP is using Linux? Should it only be used when the question is about the Linux kernel or GNU/Linux operating systems? I'...
terdon on strike's user avatar
29 votes
1 answer
409 views

New Design Launched

Hi All, Unix and Linux site has been officially launched!. Thank you for your design feedback and congrats! I ended up taking the mascots off the header. I agree with you that they made the site a ...
Jin's user avatar
  • 101
28 votes
2 answers
445 views

2019 Community Moderator Election Results

Unix & Linux's third moderator election has come to a close, the votes have been tallied and the two new moderators are: They'll be joining the existing crew shortly—please thank them ...
Jon Ericson's user avatar
28 votes
3 answers
447 views

Do I ask here or on Super User?

I visit Super User now and again, and I get amazed by the amount of Unix & Linux Questions asked there. Seems like many don't know of the existence of this site (or they simply resist?). This ...
tshepang's user avatar
  • 63.9k
28 votes
1 answer
588 views

Editing questions recently put on hold (don't do trivial edits on recently closed questions)

I've already mentioned this to a couple of editors in the /dev/chat chat, but I think it may be worth mentioning in a Meta post as well. Please don't make trivial edits to questions that were ...
Kusalananda's user avatar
  • 316k
27 votes
5 answers
359 views

Can we get rid of the "for advanced users" part of our description?

Why have we burdened ourselves with the phrase "for advanced users"? I see many problems with this: Do we have a definition for "advanced"? Why would we want to keep "beginner" users out of this ...
Sandy's user avatar
  • 3,222
27 votes
2 answers
484 views

How to get reputation here on Unix & Linux stack exchange?

I want to be part of the community, helping to upvote good answers, and answering questions. But, I need to get 15 reputation to do those things. It seems to me the only way to do that is to ask ...
superboot's user avatar
  • 101
27 votes
2 answers
512 views

Should I be happy about the tumbleweed badge?

I earned the tumbleweed badge. It's description: "Asked a question with no votes, no answers, no comments, and low views for a week." This sounds quite negative. (Why) should I be proud / happy about ...
Tim's user avatar
  • 1,023
27 votes
2 answers
429 views

Is it OK to ask question about etymology of command names?

Is it OK to ask questions like "what is the etymology of hdparm command name?"? General topic matches https://unix.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic ("Shell scripting", "Applications packaged in *nix ...
reducing activity's user avatar
27 votes
1 answer
493 views

Unauthorised web scraping of Unix & Linux?

Today I wanted to show a question in "Unix and Linux" to a workmate; more exactly this question: Create self-signed certificate with end-date in the past He used the "Duck Duck Go" search engine, and ...
Rui F Ribeiro's user avatar
27 votes
1 answer
484 views

Somebody downvotes my old answers en masse and without any reason

Is that normal? Should I take some action on it? How to figure out who is it? https://unix.stackexchange.com/users/68714/gena2x?tab=reputation
gena2x's user avatar
  • 2,377
26 votes
2 answers
1k views

Unix C API calls ontopic?

I don't really have a question in mind, but I'm thinking of the kind of things that are covered in APUE(2e) which is POSIX, SUS, etc. C API mostly. Obviously generalized C programming is not ontopic, ...
xenoterracide's user avatar
26 votes
1 answer
783 views

Potential U&L impact from TOS change on Imgur

I've just become aware of Imgur TOS change on May 15th 2023 could cause the loss of thousands of Stack Exchange images!, which quotes: We will be focused on removing old, unused, and inactive content ...
Jeff Schaller's user avatar
  • 66k
25 votes
2 answers
517 views

Do we still like hats?

Last year, Stack Exchange ran Winter Bash 2014, in which users earned hats which they proudly displayed upon their gravatar. There was a leaderboard of hatters, mad or not: It's that time of the year ...
terdon on strike's user avatar
25 votes
4 answers
432 views

What else can I do to make my question well-received and improve my chances of getting answers?

I’m new to the UNIX & Linux site and I would like to ask a question. There is some guidance in the Help Center, but what are other actions I can take to make my question well-received and improve ...
Jeff Schaller's user avatar
  • 66k

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