this post was submitted on 24 Jun 2023
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Linux
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One thing I suggest is:
You're trying to get something working but it isn't going anywhere? Try again later.
First, because of the obvious calming down, since stress can affect the person's capacity to solve problems.
Second, I've noticed how many things on Linux have some degree of similarity and/or relation to one another. So trying other things in the meantime can give you the needed insight for solving a previous problem.
A good refinement of this advice is to keep a Q&A sheet in your Dropbox or in Google Sheets or something, because writing down your answers that you discover can help you remember them, and can provide a backup plan in case you forget the answer and need it later, and can remind you to circle back to a question later when your toolkit is bigger.
Edit: also, it helps manage your backlog - you can make a rule like "if the unanswered count ever gets to ten, I'll sit down with an experienced user and try to clear them all"
Boosting this advice. When I started using Linux as my daily driver (14 years ago), I got into the habit of taking notes on everything: troubleshooting solutions, bug fixes, how-tos, configurations, useful software, etc. It's not the Arch Wiki, which is a treasure, but I can solve a lot of my own issues just by looking up what I've done before.
Good advice to be honest. Luckily I have a lot of patience so I think I should be fine in the end.
And don't skip over reading things! I also run Arch with KDE and honestly with almost all problems I have, if I carefully read through either the Arch Wiki (this will probably be your most valuable tool) or the error message that comes up, the answer is usually in there somewhere, it just needs digging up.
Also: if something with a GUI crashes and doesn't give an error message, try running it in the terminal. So like, if Firefox crashes and doesn't give any info, try opening up a terminal and running
firefoxfrom there and the terminal will tell you everything that's going on. (It'll be a different command if you're using a flatpak but that's the general idea.)Amazing how many situations in which this can be applied!