Compooter take symbol, compooter fuck symbol, symbol reincarnarnates as a stick, which is what is currently in my ass. Sideways, even. Symbols don’t fuck around here for longer than it takes to be forthsworn, but this just a warning to warm you up, and this is how we know these compooters work.
The more you know about computers the more you realize its just magic rocks, and that magic, rocks.
its all transistors man all transistors
It’s more like the Sphere of Knowledge. The more you know about Linux (or pretty much any subject) that more you become aware of subjects you don’t understand. Whereas when you don’t know that much, there are fewer categories for which you are aware of your lack of understanding. Know unknowns vs unknown unknowns.
It’s like owning a car for 20 years. Even if you don’t want to, you’ll eventually understand more and more.
Me who started working on my own OS from scatch 2 months ago.
Now know more about what I don’t know. For sure I have no clue how Linux works.
What I tell people: “When you get used to using an operating system that respects your rights, you don’t wanna go back.”
I’ve been on Arch full time for 6 years, I still get frustrated, sometimes I get stumped, but I NEVER want to go back to windows
It’s like asking “How does toilet paper work?” Meaning to say you don’t have to know all the details about how it comes to be but can just use it and appreciate it does work. And you also know it would be really messy and with poor hygiene without.
OK but you can start a great argument by asking a group of people how many squares of toilet paper they use per wipe
Maybe not the best metaphor but I approve your message
It was a shitty, yes. I probably would have said “it’s like asking how food works” if I had been eating when I wrote it
It’s magic
libmagic is just one tiny part of the linux ecosystem
Touche
I tried slackware when win 3.1 was hot. I would have went a lot further a lot sooner if I could have gotten my modem working
Everything’s a file.
Lots of things are files. See Plan9.
Linux: You’re a file.
Windows: No! You’re a file!
*Linux smiles maliciously*
24 years exclusively running it.
Short answer: magic.
Long answer: a stressful full week trying to get everything right, followed by a long, blissful period forgetting how hard it was to get it up and running like magic.
my experiece is just stuff getting fixed and breaking rsndomly tbh.
So many factors at play.
The number of packages installed, the use of externally unsupported repos, the distro you use, reliability of their packaging system, how much you deviated from the baseline customization, and probably more.
Keeping track of everything off what and how much you changed may prove difficult. But it helps taking notes of how you solved the more complicated issues.
With time you learn to live with the inevitability of something breaking. You update less often, and only when you really have to. Repairing stuff becomes less overwhelmeming with time.
Those weeks were a lot more stressful, and longer than a week, when I used Slackware and started installing stuff that wasn’t packaged for Slackware. I would dread new software. It was the Unifi controller that finally put me over the edge: I wasn’t even willing to give it a shot. I ran the controller on my Kubuntu desktop for a few weeks until I switched the server to Debian.
It felt like a house of cards. Nudge one of those cards by, say, updating a library, and you could easily break something else.
“If you want to know how Linux works, ask a Slackware user,” is the old saying. It’s true…we had to know, because we didn’t have a choice not to know.
After a dozen of those stressful weeks I decided to write down everything new I learn if I can.
Lemme just fully quote the Arpaci-Dusseaus OSTEP real quick
🙋♂️: “How does Linux work?”
👨💻: “…does it?”
… And there are a lot more of those random guys around now.
Statistically yes, but also you’re noticing a lot more because Lemmy creates those guys. Source: random guy. (Although I’m actually the low end “who the fuck knows” on the IQ chart version of this meme.)
I think M$ has had a lot to do with it recently, although lemmy certainly offers a helping hand
Microsoft makes you want to leave, Lemmy tells you it’s not so bad and pushes you to do it.
because Lemmy creates those guys
I confess, I’m perhaps complicit in that.
All I know is I survived the Debian installer. But at what cost?
Has it been a while since you used it? I know the nonfree firmware thing used to trip people up if they weren’t already aware of it, but that’s a nonissue now. Debian isn’t any harder to install than any other graphical distro.
Nah, the installer is much more tame than it used to be. I just like to poke fun at ye olden times.
I did make a huge recent mistake by using an NVIDIA GPU on Debian. Every time it updated was playing Russian roulette with “is this gonna break my system and send me into six hours of troubleshooting?” Til I finally said fuck it and swapped it with my brother for his AMD card. And I haven’t had a single issue since.
I like Debian, but NVIDIA drivers just refused to play nice for any extended period of time.
