It’s not really broken, couldn’t get the microphone to work with any program

    • SzethFriendOfNimi@lemmy.world
      372·
      5 months ago

      Ok. I’ve downloaded, tar and gunzipped the files for it.

      Then did a make build and then make install. Now my system won’t start. What do I do?

    • Sabata@ani.social
      3·
      5 months ago

      I have saved 3 reinstall or 1 week of troubleshooting in only 3 “fuck around and find out” incidents.

      • Lettuce eat lettuce@lemmy.ml
        4·
        5 months ago

        Same, it’s saved my butt so many times. Once in the middle of a tech conference, I was messing around in the terminal with my networking and borked something really bad.

        I spent 5 minutes trying to get my networking back but couldn’t figure out what I had screwed up and ended up breaking it more.

        I just went into Timeshift and restored to the beginning of that day and in a few minutes I was back up like nothing had happened.

  • Evil_Shrubbery@lemm.ee
    45·
    5 months ago

    In the olden days, I would have spent hours to fix it, completely forget everything I’ve done over the course of those several hours and then having to reinstall it bcs I’ve broken something else in those unsuccessful attempts and now dont have the energy to figure out this clusterfuck too.

    Ahh, good memories.

      • Evil_Shrubbery@lemm.ee
        161·
        5 months ago

        That was a decade+ ago, closer to two.

        I’ve always had far more driver issues with Windows.
        I have a niche laptop that for mic & speakers doesn’t really have drivers for that exact ID and a close (working) match are ancient, so can’t avoid crackling sounds. No issues out of the box with Linux.

      • bl_r@lemmy.dbzer0.com
        1·
        5 months ago

        on a thread about someone having a weird issue with linux

        someone shares related story involving troubleshooting for hours

        “You’re really selling me on Linux. Sounds like a nightmare”

  • Lexi Sneptaur@pawb.socialEnglish
    38·
    5 months ago

    Got into an argument about this once. The other person insisted that if I wipe my hard drive and reinstall, that I’m a pathetic moron who doesn’t deserve to use a computer.

    In fairness, it’s usually better to fix things so you can learn, but dang they were toxic.

    • Gestrid@lemmy.caEnglish
      6·
      5 months ago

      To be fair, at least with Windows, if you do a reinstall I’ve always found that it never runs quite like it used to. I’ve sometimes had to deal with some weird quirks afterwards. A friend of mine who kept switching between Google Android and open-sourve Android on his phone said the same thing. Every time he reinstalled Google Android, it simply wouldn’t run as well as it did beforehand.

      It’s like taking a plumbing pipe out and putting it back in. Or taking apart a car engine and putting it back together. It never quite fits together the way it used to anymore.

      • Sonotsugipaa@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
        101·
        5 months ago

        I had the opposite experience with Windows (7 up to 10), every now and then I would have to reinstall it to get some random feature working, which made the system run smoothly for a while - which checks out, considering Windows’ affinity for software rot.

        Then again, I increasingly debloated it as time went on, which I’d assume contributes to its instability.

    • jelloeater - Ops Mgr@lemmy.worldEnglish
      2·
      5 months ago

      People like that are why more folks don’t like Linux and tech in general.

      Bro, gatekeeping computers is something children do.

      “You much get invited to a lot of parties?” is generally a good response. “Everyone makes mistakes, you’re living proof”.

  • spikederailed@lemmy.world
    36·
    5 months ago

    You learn plenty by breaking and reinstalling. I don’t considering it an invalid option for a home user. I had to reinstall MacOS7/8 and Windows 95/98 so many times as a kid. Learned a lot doing it, sysadmin now 🤷‍♂️

  • teft@lemmy.world
    24·
    5 months ago

    Pffft. I just boot from a live cd so changes are gone at reboot. Why install if you’re just going to break something?

  • Allero@lemmy.today
    202·
    5 months ago

    Second approach is better as it teaches you to fix and understand the system you’re working with

    Of course, this is a more complicated and energy - demanding approach, though. But if you wanna stay on Linux, you better figure such stuff out, this will be invaluable in the long run.

    I should also mention that Debian, despite the Bookworm introducing more user-friendly options, is not a newbie-centered distribution and fixing things in there tend to be more tedious for an inexperienced user.

    The upside, however, is that once you’ve set it up, everything will just work. But first you might face some pain.

    • towerful@programming.dev
      6·
      5 months ago

      I wish there was a way to see what the default values in a config file are for a given distro.
      I’m guessing there probably is, and I just don’t know it.

      Maybe I should just make / a git repo…

      • BaumGeist@lemmy.ml
        2·
        5 months ago

        Without knowing a better way, my go-to solution woukd just be getting an full installation image and diffing my files with the files on it

      • thevoidzero@lemmy.world
        2·
        5 months ago

        Don’t modify the config in /etc/, copy them in ~/.config/ and then modify them. You’ll always be able to just look at the /etc/ for defaults.

      • Hello Hotel@lemmy.worldEnglish
        1·
        5 months ago

        Usually if its a boolean or nullable, a good config file will have a # uncommemt this line to enable this feature/disable this feature/bind to this IP address/give this thing a name that is at least vaugely hints what the option does. But yes, its still fairly annoying.

      • barsquid@lemmy.world
        11·
        5 months ago

        You should check out the Fedora atomic distros if you haven’t already. Making the system work more like a git repo is what they are doing with rpm-ostree. I am liking it a lot.

  • Tyoda@lemm.ee
    141·
    5 months ago

    My laptop’s mic seems to have some contact issues. It never worked for a second on windows. I put Linux on it, and it usually just works. When it doesn’t, some percussive maintenance does a quick job of fixing it. I guess I was dealt the opposite hand than usual.

  • Plopp@lemmy.world
    11·
    5 months ago

    There’s a cheat button called sudo snapper rollback in OpenSUSE, it can be had in other distros as well.

  • Ashyr@sh.itjust.works
    112·
    5 months ago

    This is why I’ve yet to make the leap from windows. I just don’t have the technical chops nor spare time to make my OS a hobby.

    • SpaceNoodle@lemmy.world
      11·
      5 months ago

      Not really the case with user-focused distros these days. I have far more driver woes when I have to deal with Windows.

    • nifty@lemmy.worldOP
      71·
      5 months ago

      In fairness, I suck at Linux. Ubuntu and Linux Mint are relatively easier systems. No one I know has issues with Ubuntu fwiw

        • 7U5K3N@lemmy.dbzer0.com
          5·
          5 months ago

          It’s a different world now.

          All jokes aside. Anything you use these days is going to be pretty stable, have all of your driver’s (unless it’s absolutely the bleeding edge) and play steam games.

          Hell Nvidia isn’t even an issue anymore.

          But I’ll qualify that by saying I’m on a 47xx i5 and a 1060.

        • Gestrid@lemmy.caEnglish
          2·
          5 months ago

          I installed Mint on a USB to give it a go.

          My wifi driver doesn’t work on it. I have to plug my phone in to use it as a tethered hotspot to get it to connect. And I tried what a lot of the guides said online. Nothing.

    • scifun@lemmy.world
      4·
      5 months ago

      Check Fedora Atomic. It’s pretty much an install and forget system (with auto upgrade enabled)

      Using Fedora Atomic is like having a dedicated team of fedora engineers manage your system and you only have to mess with your desktop settings.

      • Default_DefectEnglish
        61·
        5 months ago

        If I had a nickel for every “its just install and forget” distro recommended, I could buy a windows license.

      • Ashyr@sh.itjust.works
        1·
        5 months ago

        Thanks for the recommendation. I don’t look forward to the day I’m forced to upgrade windows because that’s when I’ll absolutely need to move over to Linux. I’m just not ready for it.

    • Gestrid@lemmy.caEnglish
      3·
      5 months ago

      I’d say I have the technical chops. I just don’t have the time and energy needed to try to fix something.

      I’m also the kind of person that, if everything’s not working exactly the way I want it to, then I need to fix it right now. So I know I’d waste hours trying to fix something that (for me) just works on Windows.

    • Rekorse@lemmy.dbzer0.com
      1·
      5 months ago

      This used to be a requirement but is now optional. For example, Mint, EndeavourOS, and PopOS all are distros that are simple to install and configure, even simpler than windows in most cases. Popos has a software store pre-installed that works exceptionally well and supports flatpaks too. Drivers work out of the box.

      There are still the distros that are more complex as a rule, and you can also mess up the distros I mentioned above, but you no longer have to wade through a dark forest to get your computer running correctly for basic use.

      Also if you game, the lutris and steam make it extremely easy to do. You really should try it if you haven’t in a while, its impressive what those two pieces of software can do now.

    • llii@discuss.tchncs.de
      1·
      5 months ago

      I just don’t have the technical chops nor spare time to make my OS a hobby.

      Windows is not immune to this, I tried to get a few years old wifi stick to work and it was a nightmare with different hardware revisions, old drivers that aren’t included in windows, bluescreens and a difference between using the USB 2 and USB 3 ports. With Linux it just worked out of the box after plugging the stick into the computer.

    • fuckwit_mcbumcrumble@lemmy.dbzer0.com
      33·
      5 months ago

      This is why I’ve gone back to windows on the machines I care about and don’t plan on going back. Open source software is cool, but it also kinda sucks. I’ll use Linux all day on servers. But my primary desktop is windows and my secondary desktop is Mac OS and I doubt that’s changing any time soon.

      • citrusface@lemmy.worldEnglish
        4·
        5 months ago

        Funny I’m the opposite - I have to use Windows bullshit all day long at work. The last thing I want at home is to deal with it there - pop_os is stable and works perfect for me.