24 ms·

I mean, it can be both. The issue is sometime you do an "apt get" and it just doesn't work and the only solution you can find is "idk your apt cache is broken.

I mean, it can be both. The issue is sometime you do an "apt get" and it just doesn't work and the only solution you can find is "idk your apt cache is broken. Clean-slate your entire OS because at some point Apt crashed in a way that was unrecoverable."

seba_dos1 5y ago
I don't get it. Since 2006 I have never had to clean-slate my GNU/Linux installation, on both PCs or phones. I only ever did it out of choice, usually with new hardware being a pretext to try a different distro or installation method - which happened total a handful of times during those 15 years. Debian (and apt) in particular has never made me even worry that I'll have to reinstall my OS, and I'm sort of a power user who isn't afraid to break things, so I should be more likely to actually break it. How can my experience of using GNU/Linux as my only OS for so many years be so drastically different than what you describe?
- noirbot 5y ago
  Honestly, you're probably just better at using it than I am. I'm sure most of my "I guess I'll just clean-slate" moments could be fixed if I put in the time and knew the system better, but I don't, and in the moment where my computer is half-broken and the windowing system has stopped displaying any text on anything, or just not rending half of the icons, I have the choice of either making it a learning opportunity, or deciding I want to use my computer today for sure. Most folks who use Linux daily are just flat out better at Linux than me at this point. It makes sense - it's a self-selecting group. But that also means half of the instructions you'll find on a blog or forum or SO assume a lot more familiarity with the system than I have. I've been wanting to try a different visual theme on my computer - it seems easy to install a new one, and the repo I found just has a helper script that should install it, but all the docs also just say "and you can just uninstall it if you want", but there's no uninstall script, and I don't understand the install script well enough to know how I'd undo it if something broke. So I just haven't done it.
  - seba_dos1 5y ago
    That makes sense. I do however have an impression that GNU/Linux gives its user much larger surface to actually grasp what's going on, provided that they're actually willing to spend time on it. I have used Windows for quite some time before switching, and I'm also not unfamiliar with macOS, but when I had to troubleshoot some issues on these platforms I often felt like I have reached a dead end despite of me willing to spend time on it. I guess someone who's an expert with those systems wouldn't have such a hard time, but in my experience finding relevant resources to learn what's going on has always been infinitely easier on GNU/Linux, which in turn makes me much happier as a user. Problems always happen regardless of which OS you use, and my computer is a tool that I need to take care of in order to be able to do my work, so an OS that allows troubleshooting to be "a learning opportunity" rather than "a trigger for reinstallation" gains a lot of bonus points in my book. To be honest, I kinda felt similar with Android (I think it was LineageOS) at one point, which I have used for a few years on a secondary phone. The system shell went into some broken state where it didn't want to display any quick settings at all, and my search for how to debug such issues (or even just some information on where does it store its state) has been completely fruitless. Turns out nobody does that; I'd have to build my own image from scratch and dig into the source code to debug it, and I have decided that it's a bit too much and that I have better things to do. Rebuilding a single .deb package is fine, rebuilding a whole OS - not so much. Now I'm using GNU/Linux on my phone as well, and debugging things like that is much easier and more approachable, with tons of resources around the Web and people who are willing to help.

seba_dos1 5y ago

I don't get it. Since 2006 I have never had to clean-slate my GNU/Linux installation, on both PCs or phones. I only ever did it out of choice, usually with new hardware being a pretext to try a different distro or installation method - which happened total a handful of times during those 15 years. Debian (and apt) in particular has never made me even worry that I'll have to reinstall my OS, and I'm sort of a power user who isn't afraid to break things, so I should be more likely to actually break it. How can my experience of using GNU/Linux as my only OS for so many years be so drastically different than what you describe?

noirbot 5y ago
Honestly, you're probably just better at using it than I am. I'm sure most of my "I guess I'll just clean-slate" moments could be fixed if I put in the time and knew the system better, but I don't, and in the moment where my computer is half-broken and the windowing system has stopped displaying any text on anything, or just not rending half of the icons, I have the choice of either making it a learning opportunity, or deciding I want to use my computer today for sure. Most folks who use Linux daily are just flat out better at Linux than me at this point. It makes sense - it's a self-selecting group. But that also means half of the instructions you'll find on a blog or forum or SO assume a lot more familiarity with the system than I have. I've been wanting to try a different visual theme on my computer - it seems easy to install a new one, and the repo I found just has a helper script that should install it, but all the docs also just say "and you can just uninstall it if you want", but there's no uninstall script, and I don't understand the install script well enough to know how I'd undo it if something broke. So I just haven't done it.
- seba_dos1 5y ago
  That makes sense. I do however have an impression that GNU/Linux gives its user much larger surface to actually grasp what's going on, provided that they're actually willing to spend time on it. I have used Windows for quite some time before switching, and I'm also not unfamiliar with macOS, but when I had to troubleshoot some issues on these platforms I often felt like I have reached a dead end despite of me willing to spend time on it. I guess someone who's an expert with those systems wouldn't have such a hard time, but in my experience finding relevant resources to learn what's going on has always been infinitely easier on GNU/Linux, which in turn makes me much happier as a user. Problems always happen regardless of which OS you use, and my computer is a tool that I need to take care of in order to be able to do my work, so an OS that allows troubleshooting to be "a learning opportunity" rather than "a trigger for reinstallation" gains a lot of bonus points in my book. To be honest, I kinda felt similar with Android (I think it was LineageOS) at one point, which I have used for a few years on a secondary phone. The system shell went into some broken state where it didn't want to display any quick settings at all, and my search for how to debug such issues (or even just some information on where does it store its state) has been completely fruitless. Turns out nobody does that; I'd have to build my own image from scratch and dig into the source code to debug it, and I have decided that it's a bit too much and that I have better things to do. Rebuilding a single .deb package is fine, rebuilding a whole OS - not so much. Now I'm using GNU/Linux on my phone as well, and debugging things like that is much easier and more approachable, with tons of resources around the Web and people who are willing to help.