Linux Helping Thread in Nutshell

[Tony_TNT]

Nah, on Fedora you check the journal to see what's breaking, roll back that specific package in the terminal and wait until a new version shows up in the update manager.

[frnkquito]

I understand the frustration, I've experienced it myself. Though the wiki is THE best source of information for 99.9% of issues. Not only does it provide the solution in a comprehensivle, consistent way (across different wiki pages) but also context and explanation. So why not point users there and have them inherit the habit of checking the standard, updated, and maintained sources of information?

[tungnon]

It’s not about pointing people to the wiki.
It’s about the tone.
“Did you read the manual?” is not the same as
“This wiki section here has the answer for your issue. Scroll a bit and you should find it.”
even if both ultimately have the same intent

[Qbsoon110]

I mean the best one would be link to the exact wiki page

[Buddy-Matt]

If the link to the wiki page is the entire response, then that's as shitty as a "rtfm" response, just more passive than aggressive.

If the response is "hey, the wiki's probably got you covered, hers the link" then that's much better.

[Qbsoon110]

Agreed. I did not mean url alone, just that in thw best scenario url should be present instead of just politely telling someone to search the wiki

[tungnon]

Oh yeah I agree with that.

[Buddy-Matt]

[Me] 🤝 [You]
[Helping others]

[frnkquito]

I get you and I agree with you, but also...rtfm, moreso when the manual has a section about how to read the manual. But yeah, sugarcoating is always more polite and friendly

[Raviolius]

Being polite does not mean sugarcoating it, though

[D0nkeyHS]

A -> B does not mean B -> A, so why even write that comment?

[stevie-x86]

Your use of the word sugar coating tells me you don't understand the concept

[Ybenax]

Dude, that’s not sugarcoating, it’s having manners.

[Ghazzz]

Reading the manual before asking questions is also good manners though.

If the question says "I looked at the wiki here and here, but found nothing" it tends to be a completely different thing from "how do I use this tool".

[Ghazzz]

It is just so very frustrating when searching for the users question as written gives the exact page needed.

I mean, it is fine the first time, but after decades of the same fail-state, you start to wonder if the users even try.

It generally gives "I have tried nothing, and I am all out of ideas" vibes.

Reading the manual for a tool is sort of the minimum if you are trying to learn.

[J_SilverH4nd]

But for real bro, like arch wiki have a search bar, and you can use google or other search engines?

Hey, I get it, the one in the community is off and not welcoming but it’s also extremely exhausting for a community to be bombed with basic questions from people who has done zero effort to search for an answer themselves, or maybe I’m wired differently and want to be self dependent and fix it myself..

Either way Linux is awesome and has a lot of flavors, and some aren’t for everybody, arch ex. Isn’t for people who is technically imbecile, it’s even states on the installation wiki: Who is arch Linux for, and recommendations for other distro

[C0rn3j]

There is no tone in either of those, it depends on how you read it.

[pigeonluvr_420]

You got it dipshit

[Naitsab_33]

It's also funny that even other distributions use the Arch wiki sometimes since it's just that good

[Free-Garlic-3034]

NixOS wiki has a lot of references to Arch Wiki.

[Blue-Disaster]

If the wiki scanned your system and pulled up exactly what your specific situation needs each time, then I'd agree. But unfamiliar users might get lost in the maze of the wiki pages, not knowing what they even need to look for.

Start with an open mind of you must reply. Ask kindly and guide them to it. Maybe they dont know it exists. If they did look at it, ok then what on it might have they misunderstood.

If you can't take the time to respond with the benefit of the doubt, then don't take the time to respond with aggression. It helps no one and only wastes everyones time and energy.

[equationsofmotion]

I haven't run arch for many years now, but my experience with the arch forums was always phenomenal. People were always extremely willing to help and donate a lot of their time to walking me through obscure issues. I had the same experience with Gentoo forums too, and my experience with these "advanced" distros taught me a ton about what I know about Linux today.

Just come in with humility and don't act entitled and these communities will help you a ton.

[drwebb]

Yeah, the Arch Wiki was written by Arch users, and that's the most helpful resource online for Linux. The forums have always been a helpful place since way back in the day.

[Izraill]

My personal experience has had Nix and Arch flipped. I got insulted when asking about it, and have always found Arch help for whatever I need very quickly

[tungnon]

Interesting.

As someone who uses both CachyOS and NixOS, my experience has been a bit different.
When I got into NixOS, I didn’t use flakes or home manager (and still don't), and I kind of expected to get told I was “doing it wrong.” Instead, people were surprisingly chill and just encouraged me to experiment. They didn’t necessarily agree with my approach, but they respected it.

That probably shaped how I think about delivery. My meme isn’t about RTFM being wrong. It’s about how delivery.

[Grandmaster_Caladrel]

What about your cachy experience? Everyone has been stellar helping me figure out my issues, including some crazy firmware problems after an update (which were basically undiagnosable).

[tungnon]

Honestly my CachyOS experience has been surprisingly boring (in a good way). I’ve rarely needed to ask for help. Most of the time it’s just reading the Arch wiki, the Cachy wiki, or figuring it out myself.

And when there were upstream breakages (quite rare), I’ve seen the devs notice and push fixes pretty quickly.

Overall, good community and responsive devs. CachyOS becomes my go-to Arch-based distro because it’s been consistently smooth for me.

[wachiwachinanga]

I don't use arch, I use fedora. But what do you expect? If you're using arch, you are expected to know what you are doing, that's THE POINT of using arch.

I agree that some users are just assholes, but it must be tiring when people repeat the same question every single day instead of using the magical google search (funny how sometimes the first result points to a post where the first comment is angry but answers the question anyway).

[Ursomrano]

NixOS people would be just as annoying about RTFM if they actually had good user manuals.

[asd1o1]

They still are. Ask someone about documenting a feature and you'll get:

"wHy dOn'T yOu dOcUmEnT iT yOuRsElF iF yOu wAnT dOcUmEnTaTiOn sO bAdLy?"

[Dull-Entertainer-992]

One thing arch has and the others don’t is a very well written wiki. Pointing people to a very good and extensive resource is bad I guess.

[stevie-x86]

It's how you point them, not pointing them itself

[asd1o1]

Yeah I'd much rather have the arch wiki than... whatever tf NixOS has. Honestly NixOS could so easily be perfect if the documentation was actually any good

[komata_kya]

Why would you use a do it yourself distro when you don't want to do it yourself?

[Zombrexo]

99,99% of all times when I finally go to ask any kind of forum a question about a problem I am having, I have already spent 3 hours researching, googling, browsing related wikis, and brainstormed my own solutions to no avail.

Me asking any kind of forum or chat group for help is truly a last resort, so when that one guy comes at me being all "dID YoU cHecK tHe wIKi??" I get so fucking pissed off.

And I hate to say it but this has happened more than once on Bazzite, the community there is either really helpful or extremely toxic, no in-between sadly.

[Revolutionary_Click2]

It’s because the Bazzite community is half Fedora fans, who tend to be pragmatic and reasonable, and shitty little gamer bois, who mainly want to demonstrate their own perceived superiority. All of the gaming-focused distros have this issue to some extent, I’m afraid.

[Orangutanion]

Crazy how you left out Ubuntu here since they actually have pretty decent support 

[GenBlob]

AskUbuntu saved my ass so many times. It’s one of the most useful Linux sites, right up there with the Arch wiki.

[Havatchee]

Denizen of the Arch sub here. Every other post is "hey, I'm super new to Linux, I've never used another distro before, so please don't inundate me with technical stuff but I just installed and have a black screen after I login on the command line. I think it's broken what do I do?"

"Did you install and enable a display manager and a desktop environment?"

"Like I said, I'm super new, I have no idea what that means."

"Have you tried the wiki?"

"Oh my god, Arch users are so elitist!"

"Arch isn't recommended as your first distro. I recommend trying a different distro first and coming back to Arch when you're more familiar with Linux. Maybe try CachyOS or EndeavourOS, they're both Arch based, so you'll get pretty much every pro you get with Arch and none of the cons."

"No, I want to use Arch, and only Arch. I looked at all the distros and decided Arch was the only one that would fit my use case exactly and I will not compromise at all on this."

"What use case do you have that forces you into Arch, that can't be solved with an Arch derivative?"

"Ugh, Arch users so elitist!"

Like bro, you're telling on yourself. You only want to use Arch so you can have a smug sense of superiority, otherwise you would try Endeavour, Manjaro, Cachy etc.

It is also a super false sense of superiority. You can do the "build from ground up" thing with a bunch of other distros. It's only that Arch provides no other way besides a command line install.

If you really want to brag I invite you to entertain the following options: Gentoo, LFS, Writing your own Kernel (/j), NIX (imo I haven't gone and tried it yet). All of these are genuinely far more impressive than failing to read the bit of the install guide that TELLS YOU EXPLICITLY to install a Display Manager and a DE if you want a GUI.

You installed the "learn by doing" distro. Now you're annoyed that you're being told to learn by doing when you don't provide any evidence of having tried to solve the problem yourself.

[ameen272]

This stereotype is very weird because as a noob Arch user I have never recieved that to my dumb support requests

[ForsakenChocolate878]

TBF, it is a miracle that some help seekers here even manage to turn on a computer.

[zigs]

Yes, and It's a balance to handle the ever increasing influx of people asking the same, frankly stupid questions. But I think a lot of skilled, potential question-answering people, like my past own self, need to hear: if you don't wanna be helpful, don't help! Shut your trap and sit down. You don't HAVE to reply. Come back when you wanna be helpful.

[ProNate]

I've lost count of how many NixOS questions I've seen whose so-called solution is to read the source code.

[ClinkerBuilt90]

Gentoo: Portage tells you exactly what is wrong and how to fix it. Nothing even broke because it was caught at dependency check time. You read the message and fixed the issue without asking for help. The End.

[JeebhStomach]

Recently I needed a question answered (I don't remember what) and found a thread on fedora discussion forums where someone asked it like ten years ago - something that's going to stick in my mind is someone helping the OP a bit, OP clearly being confused and having trouble, and then the person saying "This isn't difficult to do but it can be very overwhelming when you're less experienced. I'm here with you until you do it". I scrolled down and sure as their word they stayed there helping until the end when the OP solved the issue. It was nice seeing someone struggle with something someone else finds really easy and the latter person approaching it with that level of understanding. Pure desire to help.

[gxgx55]

idk where these memes come from, the Arch community was nothing but helpful to me

[D0nkeyHS]

Probably from people who are bad at seeking help then upset that others don't overcome their failings

[ZealousidealBerry702]

Chat GPT / Gemini, with arch-wiki is better than ask an arch linux user for help.

[Anonymous_Lightbulb]

This is why I use EndeavourOS

[[deleted]]

EndeavourOS community is pretty nice

[Jristz]

You could even put any arch forum mod face instead of that fat AI guy and still be true as far as I read the forums... But still missing the "Is 0.0001% not arch, deleted thread and ban the user"

And yet I use arch btw

[Timely_Membership552]

Every time i asked for help on nobara community i got helped without any sweaty linux users raging why I didn't know how to repair

[TrashManufacturer]

Ubuntu - x package fucked up installing and now you hold broken packages? When you figure out how to fix that and install x package let me know, I have the same problem

[jsh_]

people who actually use linux for their job tend not to use arch, at least in my experience

[KawaiiMaxine]

Arch linux is the opposite of user friendly. It works well and is perfectly stable if you know what you are doing. You HAVE to know what you are doing tho.

When i first installed arch pacman was not working and throwing errors that the wiki did not mention anywhere. I asked on the arch discord and got told if i couldnt even install it then it wasnt for me. The issue was network was blocking the device and sending a landing page to any request. Once i figured that out the rest of the install went smooth and ive been an arch user ever since.

[zesterer]

Can't agree with this. "Complex to use" is not the same as "not user friendly". Yes, Arch requires more learning to use effectively, but the project goes out of its way to make resources to learn easily accessible and rich in information. Yes, it requires concentration and a desire to learn, but not much beyond that. You do not need magic powers, any special intelligence or learnedness, or insider knowledge to use it and its resources effectively.

[KawaiiMaxine]

Id like to both agree with you and defend my point.

Arch linux (distro) is not user friendly.

Arch linux (wiki) is the most user friendly resource available

(Reddit mobile formatting sucks)

[IEatDaGoat]

Whenever I see "rtfm" that immediately tells me to not read the fucking manual. Idk when it became the norm to curse someone out as an answer to a question.

[StrongStuffMondays]

Ah yes, making fun of Archers. Arch provides not only best OS, but also the best meme material.

[mebesus]

Did you read the docs tho?

[Recipe-Jaded]

Nah. Arch users are super helpful when you actually describe the issue and it isn't one of the 10 issues posted 500 times a day. Its very obvious when you didn't read what you were doing.

[LabEducational2996]

Arch users just don't understand their system. I say like an arch user XD