Linux

D'hoe...

the truest form of Linux, without all the GNU bloat, well done! :)

Couple days ago I accidentally removed a package, not fully understanding what would happen. Ended up logging out thinking nothing of it. Couldn't log back in as there were zero sessions available. Also, for some reason a huge on-screen keyboard kept popping up a lot when I'd click on the login panels things.

I am very grateful my distro came with Timeshift by default and that I had a backup from the day before to fix everything. Also glad Rescuezilla allowed me to install Timeshift and restore.

Doesn't matter who you are or what you believe, it's definitely a rite of passage to break your system once. That is something I'll always agree with.

Last week I accidentally overwrote my configuration.nix file with garbage. If you use NixOS this should fill you with horror. If you don't, that file contains a description of your entire system -- all the packages as well as many settings tweaks to anything from GUI apps to core kernel & systemd options.

I have now learned my lesson and started using git to track my changes. Tbh, I was naively expecting to be able to roll back to a previous config and pull out my configuration file, but that's not how it works. Happily I had already split out the most difficult to reproduce sections into their own files (mostly networking stuff), so it wasn't that catastrophic, but it still turned a few minutes of tinkering into a couple hours of forehead-smacking.

Lol Nvidia has quiet the reputation in the Linux world. Keep at it though. We all make mistakes.

If you are trying a new install go for something with timeshift or Silver Blue, OpenSUSE snapshotting. You can trash the whole setup, then reboot to the previous state. A catastrophic failure becomes a 1 minute fix.

Ahh, baby steps.

Around fours years ago I was still using Arch and I somehow decided to try LFS on my main machine (bare metal unfortunately). Started compiling coreutils but as I forgot to specify the build directory to gmake, my /usr/bin directory was being emptied to make space for the coreutils compilation process. Bricked my whole installation.

Now I'm smarter than four years ago as I mainly use NixOS.

Does anyone sell 'Yes, Do As I Say!' stickers?

You could possibly recover from that on console, just install few metapackages. And have backups.

Average .ml purges

Nice day to move to nixos ;)

(it was nvidia related)

lel we got 'im, boys. /s

TimeShift. Life saver, and great tool for learning without having to worry about breaking shit permanently.

congrats you're ready for the next step: a declarative package configuration like (non-)guix or nixos

FWIW each new install is faster, especially if you write down the "weird" steps.

I feel your pain 😅🫠

Yeah, just to add another confirmation to the other comments, if you have a separate home partition you can reuse it with a new / partition and expect it to work fine. The only stuff that gets saved in your home folder is comfiguration files for your apps, along with whatever actual files you have stored. You can even swap distros (Ubuntu/Arch) and keep your home folder, though sometimes the config files and settings don't translate perfectly.

If anything can be salvaged, I'd suggest backing those up, and then proceeding to make a fully fresh install. That will ensure you don't come across issues inherited from the previous blunders, and also, I think, will give you the chance to take the same steps, but wiser than before, and so able to avoid the issues you either caused or came across. (Also something I'd recommend maybe around every 1~2 years, precisely because of being able to restart but wiser)

Reinstall using btrfs as the root files system and enable automatic snapshots. The data on your home partition will be fine, just make sure the installer doesn't format it.

ctrl + z

I accidentally interrupted a system upgrade, breaking networking and package manager, among other important bits

Yes.

I wouldn't do it without tests and "enough" experience.

I would backup first.

Then I would install an atomic distro because I wouldn't want to care about this ever again

Recently upgraded a laptop that had been on the shelf for 5 years up to latest version. Flawless one-step upgrade! nixos. Things never get in a tangle where installing and uninstalling packages leaves random artifacts behind. If you saved it to version control, you can return to a past system configuration and the only thing different is your home directory data.

And yes, if you have a home partition and root partition, that's exactly what you can do. That's the beauty of that approach. But back it up!

I've done the same thing (Nvidia related) on a machine hooked up to an expensive scientific instrument. Didn't get any other work done that day... Ugh.

Try to fix it.

The best way to learn something is by hurting you.