I’m not sure how funny this will be, but here’s how I broke my system twice in a single case. Step by step:
Migrated from Manjaro KDE to EndeavourOS KDE. Kept the previous home directory.
After a few updates, there was a problem with Plasma. Applications were not starting from the panels or the .desktop files (they worked from the terminal. The terminal emulator was in startup and worked that way)
After a few google searches, found out that downgrading glibc would do something, so downgraded… Worked for a while
While using pacman -Syu, I always checked for warnings (foolishly thinking that the downgraded and ignored glibc would cause a pacman warning if it broke dependencies) and there were none. So, the updated OS stopped working due to unmatched glibc. BREAK 1
To fix it, I opened one of my multiple boots (another EndeavourOS) and made a script using pacman -Ql and cp to copy new glibc related files into the broken system (because I was too lazy to learn how to do it the correct way with pacman and chroot didn’t work because glibc is needed by bash).
Turned out the script I made was wrong and I hadn’t checked the intermediate output from pacman -Ql, which was telling cp to copy the whole /etc /usr and other directories. (just if I hadn’t given the -r to cp) BREAK 2
In the end, I just made a new installation, this time with a new home and hand-picked whatever settings I wanted from the previous home, Viva la multi-HDD
You can attach a fake one in software via XVFB (X Virtual Frame Buffer). It’s a little involved if you aren’t familiar with X, but it only took me an hour or so to get setup. Then you don’t need any hardware at all, and can set whatever resolution you’d like.
Somehow I found ways to remove and break the GUI multiple times in multiple ways in multiple distros.
Different scenarios, different times, different issues trying to “fix”. My usual fix after this was always to copy what I think I still had important and then move on with a reinstall.
Recently I have been playing with ZorinOS and broke it in the same way by fidgeting with pipewire. Distro hoped to Fedora Silverblue due to the immutable filesystem. I wonder if I will break this one in a way I cannot revert it easily with rpm-ostree. I almost feel challenged.
All these people saying “Just use LibreOffice” are missing the point: if they ask about a program, then that means they have a usecase for said program.
This isn’t StackExchange; let’s not repeat that cycle.
I admire the respect you have for those who ask questions like this, but I think I disagree.
If there is something egregiously wrong with the premise of what a person is seeking to do, and there are no qualifying statements in their query about why they do in fact need to do this specifiic thing in this specific way, chances are high that they are uneducated about why the premise of what they’re trying to do is flawed, and they are best served by being course corrected. Giving them the answer they’re looking for to continue the bad thing while hiding your suggestion of what they should be doing instead in a footnote is just enabling them to double down on the short term path of least resistance that will probably come back to bite them again later.
If they really did know what they were doing with regards to doing an otherwise unsafe and/or unsupported thing, or if the restrictions tied their hands from using the obvious replacement solution, it either should have appeared in their question prompt, or it should be in the first replies to the first round of answers.
I say, withhold outdated advice unless the context of the conversation makes it explicitly clear that the old advice is genuinely required and not substitutable with current advice. But also don’t be smug, rude, dismissive, or standoffish about it. Don’t argue with someone who says they really do need a specific solution.
That said, this only applies in really cut and dry cases like this one, where there very clearly is an indisputable thing you shouldn’t be doing, and a drop-in replacement you should be using. The ones I hate are moreso those you may see on StackOverflow where the question is like, “how do I do <X> in JavaScript?” and five of the seven responses including the accepted answer offer a solution in some big dumb framework or lib that they apparently expect you to just incorporate into your project.
If there is something egregiously wrong with the premise of what a person is seeking to do, and there are no qualifying statements in their query about why they do in fact need to do this specifiic thing in this specific way, chances are high that they are uneducated about why the premise of what they’re trying to do is flawed …
You are probably right about this. Still, as I said to another user, I just feel it’s a bit of a slippery slope from a stance of concern to full-blown-StackOverflow-ignoring-the-question.
If they really did know what they were doing with regards to doing an otherwise unsafe and/or unsupported thing, or if the restrictions tied their hands from using the obvious replacement solution, it either should have appeared in their question prompt, or it should be in the first replies to the first round of answers.
I can agree with this.
That said, this only applies in really cut and dry cases like this one, where there very clearly is an indisputable thing you shouldn’t be doing, and a drop-in replacement you should be using. The ones I hate are moreso those you may see on StackOverflow where the question is like, “how do I do in JavaScript?” and five of the seven responses including the accepted answer offer a solution in some big dumb framework or lib that they apparently expect you to just incorporate into your project.
Fair enough.
Truth be told, I work in customer service, and have very little tolerance for bullshit, so I’m genuinely surprised to find myself as patient and giving-the-benefit-of-the-doubt as I am being. I guess this thread just reminded me a bit too much of the days of 2015. Lol.
Edit: Shit. Forgot to add the > at the quote at the top. My bad.
You’re not wrong, and I’m upvoting everything you say because I hate the smug SO people who ask why instead of actually trying to help.
But in this specific case, there’s literally no reason to use OpenOffice, it’s discontinued. People shouldn’t have to explain how to use a defunct software with an addendum.
It’s not an obscure programming language with an edge case, it’s a word processor.
You’re not wrong, and I’m upvoting everything you say because I hate the smug SO people who ask why instead of actually trying to help.
Yeah, I hate those people too. I appreciate the support.
But in this specific case, there’s literally no reason to use OpenOffice, it’s discontinued. People shouldn’t have to explain how to use a defunct software with an addendum.
It’s not an obscure programming language with an edge case, it’s a word processor.
I can see where you’re coming from. Still, I personally try to give them the benefit of the doubt and assume until demonstrated otherwise that they have considered alternatives and decided their current program is best for their particular usecase.
Is it naïve? Possibly. I fully admit that possibility.
Eh, I can see where you’re coming from, certainly, but I feel it’s a slippery slope from this stance to full-blown StackOverflow levels of ignoring-the-question.
So I am sort of an embedded developer, and I like to mess around with weird configurations. So the craziest experiment I did was trying to reflash a rasberry pi from a system running in the pi’s RAM. It honestly might have worked, but during the prep work I forgot to resize the filesystem before mucking with the paritions and had to reflash the normal way before I could try again. Ended up just turning it into a pihole instead, but I still learned a lot about pivot_root
About a year ago I somehow fucked up installing a new window manager on my tablet so badly I had to start from scratch - to this day I have no idea what happened there, but it just wouldn’t boot properly or anything after that 🤷 I needed it for school pretty quickly though so my top priority was getting it working again, so I set up a fresh install instead of continuing to fuck around.
Not the same level of destruction, but I fucked up my first ever install a couple months in trying to resolve dependencies related to python and wine, which is why I’m more interested in sandboxing whenever feasible these days. After only two months I guess I had been fucking around with linux long enough to have a little too much unearned confidence, lol
Installed python3 before it was made the native python on the dist. Half broke everything, including apt & python. So I uninstalled it, and then everything was broken. Finally got python3 reinstalled, and lived with it kindof working & awful distribution updates.
I have finally freed myself of that prison last month, by nuking everything and starting fresh.
You can have both python 2 and 3 on the system. It just depends upon which is the default as to how much you break it 👍 The symlink to /usr/bin/python is the important bit for most software. For deb-based at least, update-alternative is your friend.
I’ll happily say I must have overlooked something, but I did try using update-alternatives. I don’t remember all the nuts and bolts from the start, but it involves python3 and distribution upgrades. I spent a good number of nights over the years trying to unmess it up, and am happy to never think about it ever again.
Well done! Your curiosity will be rewarded. I would recommend learning some basic bash to start services, read the logs. Basic cli can really help with debugging when you encounter some new challenges (journalctl command for example).
Another thing I can recommend: When I started with Linux I bought a raspberry and used it without a gui to experiment so my shenanigans were less risky on my main pc. This was 3 years ago and now I’m working at a tech company managing 200 servers because the curiosity and empowered feeling never went away.
In addition, the “Search Bar” settings in Settings > Search, which let you choose between using the address bar for search and navigation or add the search bar in the toolbar, is also gone in Firefox 122.
This doesn’t affect me, but I’m sure there’s going to be a vocal tiny percent that absolutely hate this news.
A quick look at the documentation seems to indicate that they have not removed or officially deprecated the feature, only made it more complicated to configure it.
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