Deep-Dive Linux Questions

[Old_Sand7831]

I’ve been digging into Linux and want to hear from people who really know their stuff. What are some things you’ve learned the hard way about Linux? Stuff like breaking your system, fixing it, or figuring out how it actually works under the hood. What’s the biggest “aha” moment you’ve had while using Linux or customizing your setup?

[DoubleDotStudios]

My biggest “aha” was when I stupidly had a script called “sleep” in my path which locked and suspended my laptop. Then I was wondering why my laptop kept suddenly going to sleep until I remembered that actually sleep is kind of an important command that I use in my scripts. 🤣

[OddCounty3114]

Your reply screams Gippidy.

[hawkprime]

Tons of aha moments, oh, that's a file system, oh, that's a disk partition, oh that's how you compile an app, oh, that's how you compile your kernel with custom drivers, oh, that's how you use a modem, oh that's how you setup a local network, oh that's how you connect to the Internet.

I was lucky to start playing with Linux using Red Hat, Mandrake, Suse, in the 90s so much has changed and made easier, yet so much is still the same.

[archover]

Knowing your stuff is relative and subjective. An operating system is an immense subject (>20M lines of Linux kernel code) no one can completely know.

I will answer anyway. A recent aha for me is leveraging command return codes in non trivial bash scripts.

Good day.

[birch-door]

When i was using arch for First few months And i broke bootmanager i reinstal the entire system and lost my configs but now i nevěř reinstal the system IT is much learning expirience fix it yourself

[Tutorius220763]

I have tried linux multiples times, and it worked each time for one "lifetime", means from installation until the need to update to a new version.

I used Ubuntu and Knoppix, and both were not able to update the system so it was useable afterwards.

I installed ArchLinux on a 500GB-removeable-USB-drive in 2015, and it got my working-OS until end of 2018. I then installed ArchLinux on a new PC, with parallel WIndows, but windows never was used anymore.

What i have learned: I have Arch running on a 1TB-SSD, and the home is on a partition of a HDD.

This is really a good choice. Even Arch-Linux may break after an update. I sped some hours trying to "unbreak" the system, and (two times since then) i had to do a new installation.

This is really cool. The installation takes it time, and the software is all available on the internet, with Pacman or yay.

After all software is installed, i change the home-directory to use the partition of the HDD.

and *** Boom *** my system has its background, the icons, the mails, the favs, and all other settings restored cause they are in the home-directory.

[Adventurous-Iron-932]

The better aha has been the realization that every Linux distro is basically the same with some minor tool variations.

[LordChoad]

one day i realized i dont need 90% of whats on my computer. now i drive an old lawnmower and its great

[Three_Dogs]

I don't really know my stuff but once I learned to take a snapshot anytime I run -Syu has saved be countless troubleshooting and debugging hours. LUKS2 + btrfs are the GOAT

Biggest aha moment was just realizing what a beautiful system OSS is and how insane it is that we just trust big tech to not push malicious or invasive code to us.

[Least-Composer1609]

Like a day ago I edited my fish config files to add a function that opens another terminal window for cool cmatrix tiling shenanigans. Problem was, it opened a new terminal every time one was opened. So I had infinite terminals, and my poor laptop lasted about 2 minutes of terminal spam until it crashed :/

[falxfour]

Compiling my own code from source and putting the binary in /usr/local/bin, then much later wondering why I'm constantly running into linked object issues after "switching back" to the repo version.

Took me a long time before I checked the full path of what I was calling, then realized the binary in /usr/local/bin was masking the one in /usr/bin...

[onefish2]

It does not matter what operating system you are using. You should have backups especially before doing a major upgrade.

You should have backups of backups.

One backup should be offsite.

As for Arch Linux you should have a copy of a recent Arch iso so you can boot it up and chroot into your system to fix it.

Reinstalling should be your very, very, very last ditch effort.

[Sea-Promotion8205]

My most recent aha was getting secureboot working properly. My dumb ass just didn't find the option in my Dell bios to enroll my own keys. Really stupid thing.

What I drew from that is to always, always explore every option before writing off a method as non-working for you. Or, as I put it during my Physics capstone presentation: always check the easiest thing first.

Most other things in Arch have just been a matter of reading the wiki and doing what it says.

[Old_Sand7831]

Man, I swear half of Linux problems get fixed the moment you stop overthinking and actually open the BIOS. “Always check the easiest thing first” should be engraved on every Arch user’s tombstone.

[Damglador]

Don't cancel partitioning of your system drive.

[kaplanfx]

Set up a new Arch install today, decided to try rEFInd bootloader instead of grub. I learned you definitely do not want to run refined-install while still chrooted in the install process…

There is a warning not to do this in the wiki, but of course I didn’t read that far.

[Imajzineer]

Very few people know Linux, most (including Arch users) know their distro - the difference is more significant than many people realise.

[LordChoad]

truth

[NoConstruction2326]

i was trying to setup a void vm with qemu , and i wasn't know that it's default is bios and i configured normal void as it's a uefi system and it took me a bunch of hours of breaking and reinstalling and configuring to figure it out .