A big part of learning Linux is screwing up computers and starting over.
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Timeshift is a good piece of software doing a tired trick.
The new hotness is copy on write file systems and snapshots. I can snapshot, instantly, then do a system update and revert to the previous snapshot also instantly.
Instead of using symlinks files, like Timeshift, the filesystem is keeping track of things at the block level.
If you update a block it writes a new copy of the block (copy on write). The old copy is still there and will be overwritten unless it is part of a snapshot. Since the block is already written, snapshots don't require any data to be copied so they're instant.
Once you finish the system update, all of the overwritten blocks are still there (part of the snapshot) and reverting is also just a filesystem operation, theres no mass data to be copied and so it is also instant.
It does use disk space, as allocated blocks AND snapshotted blocks are stored. It uses less than Timeshift though, since Timeshift copies the entire file when it changes
ZFS and btrfs are the ones to use.
Didn’t quite follow what you were saying completely.
Are you suggesting a new program over time shift or change the file system type like ZFS and Btrfs?
I’m using Ubuntu and not sure if I seen those before. -
OpenSuse Tumbleweed helps because you can create a btrfs snapshot at any moment and then roll back to it if you get in trouble. And it does this automatically whenever you update the packages.
I wanted to give OpenSuse Tumbleweed a go yesterday, but the live USB got stuck at “Loading basic drivers” so I couldn’t even get to being able to install it.
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That also sounds like a good way to stop learning!
wrote on last edited by [email protected].
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My crippled kernel count is around 6, how about yours?
I haven't majorly fucked up any recent systems (almost botched the steam deck once or twice but nothing that required a reinstall), but god 10 years ago I probably reset my arch dual boot like five times lmao
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My crippled kernel count is around 6, how about yours?
It's the same as learning anything, really. A big part of learning to draw is making thousands of bad drawings. A big part of learning DIY skills is not being afraid to cut a hole in the wall. Plan to screw up. Take your time, be patient with yourself, and read ahead so none of the potential screw-ups hurt you. Don't be afraid to look foolish, reality is absurd, it's fine.
We give children largess to fail because they have everything to learn. Then, as adults, we don't give ourselves permission to fail. But why should we be any better than children at new things? Many adults have forgotten how fraught the process of learning new skills is and when they fail they get scared and frustrated and quit. That's just how learning feels. Kids cry a lot. Puttering around on a spare computer is an extremely safe way to become reacquainted with that feeling and that will serve you well even if you decide you don't like Linux and never touch it again. Worst case you fucked up an old laptop that was collecting dust. That is way better than cutting a hole in the wall and hitting a pipe.
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"Starting over" is how we learnt Windows in the 90's too
Giving our computer ghonorrea by downloading Napster mp3s
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My crippled kernel count is around 6, how about yours?
I haven't had any issues with the kernel yet. The worst thing that I can remember doing is messing up the systemd boot entry on my Arch Linux install.
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OpenSUSE Tumbleweed Gang.
The only distro I haven't been able to break after 6 months (well, I have, but I've been able to snapper rollback every time)It's the first rolling distro I have tried, and I've been running it for about 3 years now without any real problems. I think maybe twice there have been updates that cause issues, out of hundreds of updates per week. It's surprisingly solid.
Not everyone would want hundreds of updates per week of course, but it's up to the user to decide how often to install updates. Unlike Windows, the updates don't intrude, and they are fast.
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Didn’t quite follow what you were saying completely.
Are you suggesting a new program over time shift or change the file system type like ZFS and Btrfs?
I’m using Ubuntu and not sure if I seen those before.Snapshots are one of the features of copy on write filesystems like ZFS or btrfs.
It looks like Ubuntu has btrfs support, so you could do things like configure the package manager to automatically snapshot before a system upgrade.
https://blackstewie.com/posts/install-ubuntu-24.04-with-proper-btrfs-setup/
That looks like a current guide for setting it up
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My crippled kernel count is around 6, how about yours?
Unbootable systems in the dozens. I think I've only fucked up the kernel itself a few times. But grub or other bootloader tons, desktop environment tons, and getting into states so broken the only readily available option was reinstall, dozens.
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It's the same as learning anything, really. A big part of learning to draw is making thousands of bad drawings. A big part of learning DIY skills is not being afraid to cut a hole in the wall. Plan to screw up. Take your time, be patient with yourself, and read ahead so none of the potential screw-ups hurt you. Don't be afraid to look foolish, reality is absurd, it's fine.
We give children largess to fail because they have everything to learn. Then, as adults, we don't give ourselves permission to fail. But why should we be any better than children at new things? Many adults have forgotten how fraught the process of learning new skills is and when they fail they get scared and frustrated and quit. That's just how learning feels. Kids cry a lot. Puttering around on a spare computer is an extremely safe way to become reacquainted with that feeling and that will serve you well even if you decide you don't like Linux and never touch it again. Worst case you fucked up an old laptop that was collecting dust. That is way better than cutting a hole in the wall and hitting a pipe.
See that would be a good analogy if the fail was fun.
Making a shit painting is still fun.
Having to reinstall my OS because I ran pacman -Syu and now my computer won't boot, and now I have to spend hours making things work again: not at all fun.
Having my server run out of memory and freeze up instead of having a sane out of memory behavior the day before a long trip: not fun
It's also archaic, niche information. Do I want to learn how to make a kernel version that didn't get installed right show up in grub? Fuck no. Do I want to google for the 100th time what command exists to register the encryption key for my hard drive in the TPM? Fuck no. What an absolute waste of life.
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My crippled kernel count is around 6, how about yours?
Two. The first time I had nvidia related issues with nobara, so I removed nvidia drivers for reinstallation... And couldn't figure out how to get them back. The second time I had used mint for long enough that I felt confident enough to nuke windows partition. I used gparted and nuked the whole disk instead.
Not counting the times I tried fedora and it killed itself with the first updates and then with multimedia codecs.
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Snapshots are one of the features of copy on write filesystems like ZFS or btrfs.
It looks like Ubuntu has btrfs support, so you could do things like configure the package manager to automatically snapshot before a system upgrade.
https://blackstewie.com/posts/install-ubuntu-24.04-with-proper-btrfs-setup/
That looks like a current guide for setting it up
Thank you for sharing!
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It's the first rolling distro I have tried, and I've been running it for about 3 years now without any real problems. I think maybe twice there have been updates that cause issues, out of hundreds of updates per week. It's surprisingly solid.
Not everyone would want hundreds of updates per week of course, but it's up to the user to decide how often to install updates. Unlike Windows, the updates don't intrude, and they are fast.
It seems to hit that right balance of bleeding edge while SUSE are still testing the packages for a bit to ensure there aren't bad updates. Fedora sounds interesting to me as well, but I'm not going to fix what isn't broken.
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My crippled kernel count is around 6, how about yours?
I think we are using linux very differently.
Mine is two and one of those was a dead ssd. -
My crippled kernel count is around 6, how about yours?
Uhm, zero? With ten years of using Linux? What did you do to fuck up the damn kernel? o_O
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It's the same as learning anything, really. A big part of learning to draw is making thousands of bad drawings. A big part of learning DIY skills is not being afraid to cut a hole in the wall. Plan to screw up. Take your time, be patient with yourself, and read ahead so none of the potential screw-ups hurt you. Don't be afraid to look foolish, reality is absurd, it's fine.
We give children largess to fail because they have everything to learn. Then, as adults, we don't give ourselves permission to fail. But why should we be any better than children at new things? Many adults have forgotten how fraught the process of learning new skills is and when they fail they get scared and frustrated and quit. That's just how learning feels. Kids cry a lot. Puttering around on a spare computer is an extremely safe way to become reacquainted with that feeling and that will serve you well even if you decide you don't like Linux and never touch it again. Worst case you fucked up an old laptop that was collecting dust. That is way better than cutting a hole in the wall and hitting a pipe.
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My crippled kernel count is around 6, how about yours?
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My crippled kernel count is around 6, how about yours?
So, when you say crippled kernel, do you actually mean you tweaked the kernel params/build to the point that it failed to boot? Or do you just mean you messed up some package config to the point that the normal boot sequence didn't get you to a place you knew how to recover from and need to reinstall from scratch?
I think I'm past the point where I need to do a full reinstall to recover from my mistakes. As long as I get a shell, I can usually undo whatever I did. I have btrfs+timeshift also set up, but I've never had to use it.
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My crippled kernel count is around 6, how about yours?
I've never in 15 years of Linux use and tinker have ever screwed a kernel. And I compiled LFS once.
