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Haha, how have you managed to avoid Linux re-installs? I almost always eventually break something horribly while tinkering. Always my fault, but still requires

by fhood 9y ago

Haha, how have you managed to avoid Linux re-installs? I almost always eventually break something horribly while tinkering. Always my fault, but still requires a reinstall.

Scramblejams 9y ago
Oh if I'm screwing things up just to learn, I don't count that, and I've done that plenty of times on all operating systems I've used. Not the OS's fault, even for Windows. Just part of the fun!
btschaegg 9y ago
I had the same problem until I realized this is actually a distro problem. Most distros focus very much on making the installing and configuring "easy" (still leaving much room for debate), but in turn make their system so rigid that it's pretty much unthinkable to fix lower-level problems during updates. Often, the software they package is ancient, which also doesn't help. If you're interested in avoiding that, try a rolling-release distro (updating frequently) with good documentation and a sane low-level setup.
- greenyoda 9y ago
  Is there a particular distro you'd recommend?
  - btschaegg 9y ago
    Hardly; I personally settled with Arch and am pretty pleased with it, but I understand that it's far from everyone's cup of tea. Their documentation is excellent though, and can be a great help with problems on other distros, too. You just have to be aware that your distro might not do everything the same way when you use it. I've heard good things about OpenSUSE Tumbleweed, but I have never tried it, so I can't vouch for it. If you have the time and energy, I'd recommend you to look at a couple of distros yourself and see how much of the "dirty hands" part you can grasp yourself from the documentation. Can you fix GRUB or their equivalent yourself? Is there documentation on how to do things without a GUI? I'd say those are certainly a good sign. As a bad example, I wasted a whole afternoon once trying to uninstall a botched Radeon driver in the TTY on Fedora (since it screwed up Xorg beyond repair). Their documentation was abysmal[1]. That's the stuff you want to avoid. [1]: In fact, in the end, it turned out I had to set a magical environment variable that was never mentioned in the small paragraph there was in the docs. Oh, and of course, the driver was botched because of a system upgrade I couldn't revert. Edit: OTOH, if you're more patient than me (and don't screw around with e.g. PPAs because you want a new-ish version of certain libraries), you might find using ZFS for your main drive to be a good idea. Make a snapshot, upgrade and if something breaks: revert and wait for a fix. Edit2: Also, if you're going to try a rolling release: Don't wait too long for updates and find the news channel where breaking changes (and the necessary upgrade steps) are communicated. It's important to know about those, and it simultaneously helps you in guessing how often they're about to happen. Arch's feed is on their landing page, for example.

by fhood 9y ago

Haha, how have you managed to avoid Linux re-installs? I almost always eventually break something horribly while tinkering. Always my fault, but still requires a reinstall.

Scramblejams 9y ago

Oh if I'm screwing things up just to learn, I don't count that, and I've done that plenty of times on all operating systems I've used. Not the OS's fault, even for Windows. Just part of the fun!

btschaegg 9y ago

I had the same problem until I realized this is actually a distro problem. Most distros focus very much on making the installing and configuring "easy" (still leaving much room for debate), but in turn make their system so rigid that it's pretty much unthinkable to fix lower-level problems during updates. Often, the software they package is ancient, which also doesn't help. If you're interested in avoiding that, try a rolling-release distro (updating frequently) with good documentation and a sane low-level setup.

greenyoda 9y ago
Is there a particular distro you'd recommend?
- btschaegg 9y ago
  Hardly; I personally settled with Arch and am pretty pleased with it, but I understand that it's far from everyone's cup of tea. Their documentation is excellent though, and can be a great help with problems on other distros, too. You just have to be aware that your distro might not do everything the same way when you use it. I've heard good things about OpenSUSE Tumbleweed, but I have never tried it, so I can't vouch for it. If you have the time and energy, I'd recommend you to look at a couple of distros yourself and see how much of the "dirty hands" part you can grasp yourself from the documentation. Can you fix GRUB or their equivalent yourself? Is there documentation on how to do things without a GUI? I'd say those are certainly a good sign. As a bad example, I wasted a whole afternoon once trying to uninstall a botched Radeon driver in the TTY on Fedora (since it screwed up Xorg beyond repair). Their documentation was abysmal[1]. That's the stuff you want to avoid. [1]: In fact, in the end, it turned out I had to set a magical environment variable that was never mentioned in the small paragraph there was in the docs. Oh, and of course, the driver was botched because of a system upgrade I couldn't revert. Edit: OTOH, if you're more patient than me (and don't screw around with e.g. PPAs because you want a new-ish version of certain libraries), you might find using ZFS for your main drive to be a good idea. Make a snapshot, upgrade and if something breaks: revert and wait for a fix. Edit2: Also, if you're going to try a rolling release: Don't wait too long for updates and find the news channel where breaking changes (and the necessary upgrade steps) are communicated. It's important to know about those, and it simultaneously helps you in guessing how often they're about to happen. Arch's feed is on their landing page, for example.