Your everyday Linux maintenance experience

Honestly my Windows 10 experience wasn't much different.
Atleast I can actually fix most of the issues that pop up on Linux
- I was struggling to get an OS installed on my cousin's dell at one point. This machine came with that Intel Optane...shit with a spinning rust hard drive, I was replacing it with a straight-up NVMe SSD. Windows would get well into the install process, and then bomb out with an error that was something like 0x123a039f34798cd76eb1 UNDEFINED ERROR. This of course was in the Windows installer, which isn't a functioning desktop environment, so I had to type that manually into my laptop to google it, and got very few results.
  I tried Linux Mint, and it apparently had the same problem. It said something like "BIOS Storage config error. Unable to mount file system. It may be that such and such setting is incorrect in the BIOS. See this page for further details." The last sentence was a hyperlink to a wiki that discussed the problem, which opened in Firefox because this installer runs in a live environment, AND IT HAD A QR CODE LINK IN THE ERROR MESSAGE to the same page so you could easily copy the link to an external device. Y'all that was a white glove concierge deep tissue massage of an error message.
  
  …and that was the last time I tried to install windows, or so I imagine the end. :)
  
  One time, when I tried to install the Windows installation tool on a stick, an error said something like (German) "Aus irgendeinem Grund konnte die Installation nicht abgeschlossen werden". "Aus irgendeinem Grund" literally translates to "for some reason".
- All other times, reinstall OS and keep /home/.
  
  I will pretend that i haven't seen that "other" there
- Last time I tried Windows (with Windows 10), I actually struggled properly installing my graphics drivers. IDK what the issue even was, but after trying unsuccessfully for a while I just wiped the Windows partition and stuck with Linux.
- Yeah, with Windows I just pray it won't break, cause if it does I might as well reinstall. And of course installing Windows, installing drivers and updating the system takes hours. How they made it that slow is beyond me.

And then you suddenly start cooking blue stuff in your mobile kitchen.
- jesse we need to compile
  
  And package!

It’s funny, but as an adult now… I’m more concerned my ADHD is like this. It’s so annoying. I don’t even mean to do it. I set out to clean my desktop computer files and the next thing I know I’m painting the garage. Oh and ESPECIALLY if something is important. My mind creates these distractions or ‘focuses’ which allow me to fully set my mind on something, as long as it’s to avoid doing something else… 🤦‍♂️
- Yeah last week I found myself thinking "blazeknave what the fuck are you doing?? You're prepping online research, for your meeting in five minutes. How did you end up sorting the linen closet? Fuck you man! "

What distro is buddy using 💀
- Gentoo
- Void... not my idea though, for the meme I mean, I stole it.
  
  He voided it
- Arch probably
  
  I use arch and as long as you don't have a buttfuck of unnecessary daemons and aur packages (which can be said for any distro imo), it's as simple as sudo pacman -Syu

It's either this or everything works for years literally without a single problem.
- I once deployed a small service in 2016. It was a sort of configurable API, that other companies could post information to. Every company’s information came in a different json structure, but I built the thing to be able to accept a new structure, with new configuration data (no new coding needed for new formats).
  Then in 2019, I was interviewing for a job and they asked me to talk about something I’d built that was reliable and I was able to report that this little service, running in docker compose, had been up continually for the last two years with zero errors.
- I remember installing Uhuntu back in 2012 as middle schooler, and never encountering any error at all.

That's me running Debian. Or rather...

\ FrankenDebian.

I'm on Debian and that kind of stuff basically doesn't happen. For the first couple weeks I broke stuff every once in a while because I didn't know how Linux worked, but it's basically been smooth sailing on all my computers for about six months.
Contrast with the Windows 10 on the same laptop which just the other day decided it doesn't want to play anymore. I guess I ran an update the last time I touched it (like a month ago) and now it won't boot. Debian boots perfectly. Even in safe mode, I can't boot into Windows and Automatic Startup repair refuses to work even using both the recovery USB and installation media. Probably going to have to reinstall Windows from scratch.
- On that note, maybe just remove windows? Thats what I did. Some folks report that „really necessary apps“ would also run on a vm.
  
  I still need that Windows partition for two reasons:
  (1). I need Windows because my audio interface uses a proprietary driver only available on Windows. It simply does not perform as quickly on Linux. It's for real-time audio recording and production, so I need absolutely every clock cycle I can possibly spare. For that reason, a VM is out of the question for this particular application. On Linux with JACK, it uses JACK's default USB audio driver, which is really good but not as fast as the custom driver ostensibly using FocusRite's hidden features. It's not Linux's fault, it's FocusRite's for not supporting Linux and mine for "backing the wrong horse" about ten years ago when I bought it. To my knowledge, Linux pro audio was simply nowhere near as developed as it is now. It is only this exact piece of hardware, which I currently cannot afford to replace, that requires me to keep any copies of Windows alive. Other than for similar reasons where users are trapped, Windows sucks as an audio production operating system, whereas Linux with JACK is great.
  (2). I need the Windows partition as it is because there is some old but important work there that I need to finish. I wasn't very organized about where I saved my work, i.e. things are all over the place. Eventually, I have to spend several hours moving the project files and effects off the drive. Since these projects were recorded on Windows, I will probably have to move all my Windows-exclusive effects to Linux. Yabridge actually does an excellent job for this, but it's not painless.
  I'm currently in grad school for engineering, so I won't have time to bring over my project files until at least the summer. But even then, all the compatibility layers are starting to add up on Linux. The projects I want to work on were nearly maxing out the CPU and RAM on Windows. Really, I need a hardware upgrade, but I can't afford that for a long time.
- Same here. I came from Arch-based (which was already reasonably stable), and Debian is just flat out unbreakable in my experience.

I literally didn't even boot Windows for a month and then when I did, I got BSOD on boot, and it gave me some bullshit about not being able to find a device. How's that for maintenance? I can't say I miss it.

Must be doing something wrong if this is the everyday experience (especially for production). And there's the ones wanting to experiment, which is a different thing. I guess that's why this is a meme.
- LTS and no tinkering are for production. And yes, they will be stable AF.
- You got the joke.
  I'm proud of you.
- For me this video is the norm because i frequently experiment. There rarely is a problem wich doesn't require me fixing 3 different problems

This is after the third reboot, and automatic updates were off and I never accepted an update. All I wanted to do was sideload obtanium into the Facebook spy mask and I thought it would be easier than figuring out why it wouldn't show up in adb on Linux.
- All I wanted to do was sideload obtanium into the Facebook spy mask and I thought it would be easier than figuring out why it wouldn't show up in adb on Linux.
  Those are certainly words.
  
  obtainium is a catch-all apk installer/updater.
  Facebook spy mask I'm not sure.
- did you try universal android debloater?
  
  I didn't know about this project and will look into it for future use when family inevitably complains about their phones every time they get a new one without asking me what I think of it first. It's the quest 3 headset I was talking about. It does come with some apps I haven't tried that give the impression of bloat but I would be surprised if the device is within the scope of the project.
  I did manage to install obtanium and in turn a bunch of other stuff though. Just needed to wait for windows to reboot an additional time, and now it seems to take an additional keypress to get rid of the lock screen before the password box. I'll probably just try to find the time to figure out what was wrong on the Linux side of things for the future.

Been running Fedora since June of last year, and it's the most "boring" distro I've ever used. It's been rock solid and I haven't experienced a single issue. None! I have an all-AMD build. The funny thing is that I recently installed Ubuntu 23.10 on a different PC, and I managed to break it after a couple of hours 😂
Been using Linux on and off since 2008 (ish).
- I pulled out of the Redhat world around 2002 and only recently got back into it via Nobara. I have to agree, Fedora is boringly stable and still pretty cutting edge.
- Same here. I switched to Fedora last year and it's been so easy...too easy 🤔

This is why I use Arch. I enjoy the tinkering. One day Arch won't be enough and I will have to install Gentoo. You will probably never hear from me ever again after that. Mostly because I will be too busy compiling firefox again after a minor update.
- Firefox-bin: hello there 😎
  
  Updating system once a month: who said that?
- Take a look at nixos. All the tinkering you could dream of with all the stability you could ever want

I just turn on the Ubuntu computer, play games, Clic the occasional button to install updates and then keep doing my stuff. No maintenance stuff needed unless I mess something up on purpose with tinkering.
- average Ubuntu enjoyer. Though I've gotten bored so I updated it to 23.10.

I run Arch by the way

Community will crucify me for this, but Linux DE maintenance is the bane of my existence.
Shit "just works" until it inevitably doesn't, and it takes Linus himself to figure out how to unfuck it due to the absolutely insane level of version churn packages & distros see over the years, making most resources short of "just reinstall it" a fools errand.
Servers? Beautiful. Desktop environments? I literally can't anymore... Having something go to shit when I REALLY need to get something done has forced me to always have Windows on hand.
Which has turned into "Windows primary" and "Linux DE secondary " over the years. I hate Windows, I yearn for my plasma desktop, but it's almost always more reliably stable without maintenance for longer in my experience.
/rant
- in my case it's the exact reverse, simples things need complex paths to be done on Windows
- I don't understand what people are doing to their machines. I've been using Arch Linux exclusively for ~10yrs now and only ONCE had a problem when upgrading Java. That was fixed in about 10mins after reading the Arch update notes.
  Most recently I've been running AwesomeWM for 2yrs and it's been so bloody stable and simple. I found KDE just as stable before but a bit heavy for my taste.
  
  Exactly this, I've had the same install of the "most unstable de" -arch btw for about 8 years and its fucking fine, yes sometimes you have to remove some old dependancys... the command line had always told me exactly what's wrong and a quick google later if I'm unsure, blamo it's fixed like new... haven't used Windows in about 10 years
- This sounds about right. Currently everything on mine works. But it's like... For how long?
  Edit. Actually almost everything lmao. YouTube drains crazy battery ATM. Probably hardware acceleration not working.
  
  This. This exactly. I'm wanting to teach my kids how to use Linux and first I want them to get used to it so I'm exposing them to computers through gCompris... So one of the features of the software stops working I don't know why I uninstall it I reinstall it. Same problem. So now I've got to go figure out what's wrong with the OS itself that's causing that problem in the software or just reinstall it, the OS that is, because that'll only take a few minutes to kick off and I can just leave it alone and it'll finish whereas the OS troubleshooting could take days or it could be something I never figure out.
  Not to mention wrapping wifi drivers... 😭
  For fun, I once decided I'd figure it out. I was doing a job where I had free time at work and there was spare hardware sitting around so I decided to go ahead and do it.
  PAIN. So painful.
  I love Linux, but I like to work on whatever I want to work on, not what the OS decides I need to work on that day.

This is why I run Debian. 😀

I just turn on my computer and it works, sometimes I have to answer a couple questions zypper asks me when updates do weird things and cause dependency issues but that's not difficult

paru -Syu
I don't need anything else.
- Occasionally running the -Scc flag if your drive isn't huge too I guess
  
  IIRC I have set it to only keep 2 versions of packages (it's in pacman.conf).
- Pretty sure paru without flags defaults to that, so you don't even need the "-Syu" portion! 👍
  
  Cool, thanks!
- Til about another aur helper. Thanks!

I don’t use Linux too much, but this matches my experience… I have a raspberry pi 3, running a home automation server.
One day I go to upgrade a plugin for it. It tells me I need to upgrade the home automation server first, so I go do that. It fails because my Node.js install needs to be upgraded too, so I do that. Then, I try to upgrade the home automation server again, but that now fails with a strange error. Stack trace says something about a missing C++ lib in my Node.js install, so I look it up. I try to install the missing library, but it gives more errors. I do more searching and find loads of other people with this issue, my raspbian version can’t support this C++ library version without first being upgraded. Damn, well, it’s midnight and I have work in the morning, I don’t have time for that. I try to get my home automation server up so I can go to bed, but it fails due to problems with the Node.js install. Can’t go to bed without this server running or my smart home accessories don’t work. I try to downgrade to the previous Node.js version. This fails with another error. Couldn’t upgrade, now I can’t downgrade, I’m stuck. I read a thread on GitHub… other people are reinstalling the OS from scratch and starting over. Damn… I start trying to backup my config files so I can do this too. One more check of another post on GitHub and I find some guy shares a command to downgrade Node.js without a fresh OS install. Perfect! I run this, restart my home automation server, and go to bed. Maybe I’ll try to figure out this problem another day.
- See, this is why BTRFS is a good idea.
  I borked one of my installs today by accident. I'm not even sure what happened... I upgraded the kernel, then weird things started happening, then X just froze, I restarted, runit would't even go to phase 3 of the boot process, X couldn't load, just gave a bunch of errors. Oh well, BTRFS to the rescue 😊. This is where things get interesting 😂.
  I was on the phone with my wife while I was trying to bring back a snapshot of the volume... have no idea what I did, but I managed to wipe the root subvolume 😂. Not like just empty, but completely gone 🤣. OK 😬. Let's see if the snapshots are still there. Yep, still there. OK, recreated the subvolume and tried to load a snapshot of it, this time, wuthout talking on my phone 😂. Worked like a charm 😊. Restart, sure enough, it loads grub and the OS, everything's back to normal 😊.
  Start using filesystems that can make snapshots, like BTRFS or ZFS. Sure, they have a bit of a learning curve, but trust me, it's worth it.

Classic! Love this clip!!!
- Do you know how I can find it on the Web? I wanted to find it the other day but I didn't know what terms to use... I was like "clip where nothing works"????
  
  I mean it's right here, just link to it?
  But yeah if you search "hal fixing a light bulb".
  
  It’s from ‘Malcolm in the Middle’

This can for sure be me when setting stuff up. I'm currently playing around with self-hosting some stuff on my local network, you wouldn't believe the amount of tabs I have open on my desktop, plus on my phone, plus on the laptop I'm using as a server.
This definitely isn't me on a day to day basis though. For the most part, unless I'm actively tinkering, Linux just works.
On the headache-inducing side of things though, I'm currently trying to figure out why I can't run Wordpress over Docker on my laptop. It quickly uses up all resources and even then spits out a "error connecting to database" message when I try to access it.

My Fedora Kinoite box is fucking effortless, it updates in the background just needs a reboot from time to time. I have scripted updating the containers that host my home services, I run the script from time to time and it pulls a new container image and recreates the container, updates the systemd services to match the new container ids.
- I love Kinoite so much!

This is accurate. Getting error codes in coding is like buy one get an additional 100 free
- Fix one, get 100 for free. Why? Because there was a delicate balance and you ruined it!
  
  Oh well don't blame the player blame the game

Type yay hit enter.. Sometimes reboot, sometimes just suspend... Its all pretty wild

This is where the Breaking Bad episode came from?!
- From the prequel with his first wife. Really informs the character's backstory.

NixOS was like this for me in the first 1 or 2 weeks, after that it's been a breeze and very easy to keep my desktop and laptop configurations synced.

yay
- -Syu
  
  Running yay by itself automatically does that.
  
  yay.

I reference this video every time I go to fix something simple on the farm. Gotta fix the tools I use to fix the tools.

Every time I boot to linux to test something
- I've got to have [insert tool] software. If I install that then I need [other tool]
  
  but to get [other tool] working with my system, I need an exact version of [library] which breaks about a dozen other tools and libs, and symlinking the [library].so file in the hopes it will work breaks [this one particularly important tool] and then I'm now spending the weekend trying to hunt down a way to compile a custom fix for that to make all the others work...

"daily" maintenance for linux??? i think we call that "eier schaukeln" in germany.

- Press the ESC key.

There’s rot

So damn true lol.
Trying to create an insecure Netflix desktop entry that runs excluded from the VPN (because netflix sucks) in a profile that allows DRM.
But the result, worth it.