I somehow broke my Debian bookworm install…

If you reinstall enough things, enough times, it becomes a kink.
- OSSexual
  
  sigh. here we go again...
  unzips archive
  
  Open Source Sexuality
  
  GNU/OSSexual
- Ventoy ftw

Use Timeshift, use Timeshift, use Timeshift.
- 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?
  
  What
  In the off chance that this isn't a joke, does your distro really not have timeshift binaries?
- I have saved 3 reinstall or 1 week of troubleshooting in only 3 "fuck around and find out" incidents.
- saved me when I deleted the wrong partition.
  
  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.
- I guess I'm the only one timeshift always fails for.

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.
- You're really selling me on Linux. Sounds like a nightmare
  
  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.
  
  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”

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.
- It's great when you're young and have the spare time and energy on such things.
- 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.
  
  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.
- 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".
- I'm a pathetic moron
  "so there would be two of us then, eh?"

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 🤷‍♂️
- You learn a lot more by reading and fixing. That's simply not possible with Windows.
- Fuck around, find out and learn.
  
  find out and learn
  But you repeat yourself
- Whenever we (Brother and I) broke our W95 install, it was a pretty high stakes race against the clock to get it to work as expected again, because if my dad got home from work and found out about the broken machine, there would be consequences (him being frustrated, us not allowed to play C&C red alert or Warcraft II)
  
  Warcraft2 <3

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

i, too, nuked my bookworm install today after fiddling with Nvidia drivers. keeping /home on its own part is such a lifehack

Button #3: Restore TimeShift snapshot.
- 1000% this. Just use BTRFS and avoid all the pain...
- Honestly kicking myself for not having this setup on my last Linux install
  Good news is it's setup on my current install
  Sometimes I learn my lessons the hard way... Multiple times.

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.
- 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...
  
  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.
  
  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
  
  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.
  
  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.

with great power comes great resposibility.
use sudo wisely, or not at all.
- use sudo wisely, or not at all.
  You also just work as root all the time, right?

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.
- No, that's how it usually goes these days.

Refresh OS feature in popos has been a game changer for me

There's a cheat button called sudo snapper rollback in OpenSUSE, it can be had in other distros as well.
- AKA the "I cooked my install" button.

Laughs in Fedora Atomic

As a gentoo user, spending hours trying to fix it is usually the better option.

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.
- Not really the case with user-focused distros these days. I have far more driver woes when I have to deal with Windows.
- In fairness, I suck at Linux. Ubuntu and Linux Mint are relatively easier systems. No one I know has issues with Ubuntu fwiw
  
  newer hardware still will have issues…
  
  Mint broke all the time for me last time i tried using it. After reinstalling it for like the 8th time, I just decided to take a break from Linux. This was like 6 years ago though.
- 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.
  
  If I had a nickel for every "its just install and forget" distro recommended, I could buy a windows license.
  
  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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
  
  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.

Yesterday I tried to format and encrypt a usb drive, accidentally encrypted the main drive and it wouldn't boot to a snapshot before that. Decided to go for EndevourOS (Arch BTW) instead of Tumbleweed because I found Tumbleweeds installer too complicated.
- [*]

It's funny seeing this like literally a couple days after I decided it would be easier to reinstall my Mint sysyem than to fix the audio issues Pipewire was causing. I'm back on PulseAudio and haven't had issues since.
- I've been on Linux for about 15 years now ... I'm no pro and I've never really advanced in anything with the terminal
  I tried doing stuff years ago but then I came at a crossroad ... either spend my life learning the dark arts of the terminal and all the details of how every major system works ... reinstall every time I have a new problem that I caused ... or just leave everything alone and never tweak or adjust anything.
  For the past few years, I just install the latest stable version of anything I use and never bother touching or tweaking anything ... never had a problem since.
  
  For the past few years, I just install the latest stable version of anything I use and never bother touching or tweaking anything ... never had a problem since.
  And that's exactly how I'm trying to approach everything after the reinstall. I like tinkering with my system, but after a couple months it really starts messing with everything.

My wifi card just stops working after a resume from suspend. I cannot get it to come back after resume. After some time fucking with it, I just turned off suspend. And turned on close lid = power down. EZ.
- I had this happen with my touchpad and started with the solution you did.
  I figured out how to restart the touchpad at the kernel, which fixed it. Then, I figured out how to run those commands after it wakes from suspend.
  Works like a dream now.
  
  Lol I should probably grow up and figure out my problem instead of putting the bandaid on it.

Why doesnt the mass public liek Linux!?

Once you learn about BRTFS snapshots you'll never have this issue again
- Burtfuss

in my first couple years I basically kept spamming left "oops I bricked the dependencies again, welp time to get the usb out"

Sounds familiar

I just learned yesterday, that you have to switch vulkan packages (including lib32 version) if you switch to proprietary nvidia driver 😂 only to learn that I don’t have enough RAM for cyberpunk, after it finally started..
2x16gb is on its way 🥳
- Nvidia, fuck you
  
  It is going to be better in the future 😁
- Oh. Explain this one to me. Might be why I'm getting absolutely shit fps in helldivers
  
  I found out by checking installed packages using yay vulkan and saw that vulkan-nouveau (and lib32 version) where installed and lib32-nvidia-utils where missing (nvidia utils was installed) Installed lib32-nvidia-utils, removed both nouveau vulkan packages and clean dependencies using yay -Yc After reboot, it was working.
  On KDE you can check vulkan in the tool that is linked in the about page in the settings. But maybe only 64bit version, steam uses 32bit.
  Reference: https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Vulkan

Real shit.

I can't get sound to work probably on bookworm with an pretty old (10 yrs) system. It's so confusing between pipewire, pulseaudio and alsa.

How about NixOS where the OS automatically installs the correct software and chooses the right settings. Then you have the time fiddle on your config for hours 🌈

Hah. I'm sure once I read the rest of the responses I'll see the observation that 1 is just a slow route to 2

Reminds me of when I started using git lol.

Press both

Classic Scylla and Charybdis. Good luck on your odyssey.

por que no los dos

Would change distro to something easier to maintain (like Arch for example), rice the experience to the oblivion, keep it forever :3
- Easier to maintain... Arch?
  If OP managed to break a distro that releases once every 2 years and then only issues stable updates I don't think they'll cope well with a rolling distro.
  
  (that’s the joke, and then I replied with Gentoo being beginner friendly)
  Edit but you’re totally right, I wouldn’t be able to troubleshoot Arch or anything tougher
  
  Around 12 years ago, I was able to break Debian or Ubuntu installs on weekly basis due to certain packages being too old, something being missing from repos so being forced to compile stuff manually, dealing with junky 3rd party repos etc. Then after switching, I hardly ever messed anything on Arch while also spending less time tweaking it than I did with Ubuntu. Even if I did break something, it was my fault. And it’s not that I cannot handle Debian-based OS installs if I have to. I think those systems are fine if they work for you by default and stock repos contain everything you need (and it’s usually enough for servers) The problem is, it’s not always like that and you just have to add some custom package (prepared by you or someone else) every once in a while, not necessarily with an official support. This is just plain easier on Arch.
- Thanks, I’ll try Arch ^^ I hear Gentoo is also really beginner friendly
  
  If I may, please check out Bazzite it's essentially Steam OS for desktop.

This is how Tumbleweed cured my distrohopping—out-of-the-box Snapper meant painless rollbacks.

Terraform destroy
Terraform apply

laughs in fedora atomic debian could have a atomic version, ostree is distro agnostic

Re-installs are for ~~scrubs~~ windows users. We don't do that here. SSH from other machine, chroot from live usb, switch to TTY or even UEFI interactive shell. Fix your shit, and get to understand how it works while at it.
- Yes that's the "spend hours" part.
- Being able to do this is why Linux is so amazing. If Windows finds a corrupt file and can't repair itself, you gotta find the package it's part of (Windows update catalog), or create an ISO that's updated to do an offline repair. If the registry gets fucked, good luck fixing that.
  
  Exactly! I rant about this a lot, but I know at least couple of people who run with laptops that have broken audio. As it turns out, installing sound card drivers is not really an option as the janky-ass drivers that the manufacturers put out nowadays can irreparably brick your entire system. It is beyond my understanding why recovery, restore, and even safe mode would even try to load them in the first place, but, apparently they do, and then crash before you could even do anything, leaving re-install as the only option.
  Meanwhile, I rm -rf-ed my /boot directory the other day, and then df-ed a couple gigs of /dev/zero straight into /dev/sda. Got it back up running in just a few hours... of kicking myself for why would I do such a stupid thing.

Debian is not a good distro for desktop usage. You cannot change my mind.
- Can't change your mind? I'll just downvote you then :)

Linux is only free if your time has no value, and this is why.
- I know it sounds counter intuitive but the way Debian handles things makes it really easy to break things and not know how. All these scripts that automate tasks it's easy to try to change something manually and have a script that automatically runs break something.
  It would help if their wiki wasn't so painfully slow. How is it possible to have a website so slow it times out after like ten minutes of loading.