My crippled kernel count is around 6, how about yours?
Another big part is learning how to set it up in a way that it’s functional and productive the first time and then STOP FUCKING WITH IT.
Uhm, zero? With ten years of using Linux? What did you do to fuck up the damn kernel? o_O
The “starting over” part is what made it take so long for linux to “stick” with me.
Once it became “restore from an earlier image”, it was a game changer!
My game changer was circa 2014 when I broke something and got dropped to a basic shell and for the first time instead of panicking and immediately reinstalling I thought for a moment about what I had just done to break it, and undid the change manually. Wouldn’t you know it booted right up like normal.
The lesson here: if it broke, you probably broke it, and if you know how you broke it, you know how to fix it.
It’s the same as learning anything, really. A big part of learning to draw is making thousands of bad drawings. A big part of learning DIY skills is not being afraid to cut a hole in the wall. Plan to screw up. Take your time, be patient with yourself, and read ahead so none of the potential screw-ups hurt you. Don’t be afraid to look foolish, reality is absurd, it’s fine.
We give children largess to fail because they have everything to learn. Then, as adults, we don’t give ourselves permission to fail. But why should we be any better than children at new things? Many adults have forgotten how fraught the process of learning new skills is and when they fail they get scared and frustrated and quit. That’s just how learning feels. Kids cry a lot. Puttering around on a spare computer is an extremely safe way to become reacquainted with that feeling and that will serve you well even if you decide you don’t like Linux and never touch it again. Worst case you fucked up an old laptop that was collecting dust. That is way better than cutting a hole in the wall and hitting a pipe.
No no no! When you break something in Linux systems you fix it. Starting over and reinstalling everything is what you do when you mess up on Windows.
Funny I did not expect so many people that resist starting over. Next time I’ll give fixing stuff a shot :)
It is more about being lazy.
In most cases, where you havn’t destroyed your filesystem, you can just boot another Linux from a USB stick, mount your filesystems to /mnt, chroot into it, and then investigate and fix there.
See the Archlinux wiki, even if you do not use Archlinux, it is great: https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Chroot
