Amateurs. I can search for fixes while my computer is still broken!
(ctrl-alt-F1, ctrl-alt-F2, etc to switch to TTY, then lynx ddg.gg to get to DuckDuckGo)
this post was submitted on 27 May 2025
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This is true for any OS. If it's not working you can't use it to look up how to fix it. That's not unique to Linux.
Only linux lets you absolutely decimate the functional capability of your OS from within with ease. That is absolutely a linux thing.
As long as your installation stick is a live image and you keep it around, it also serves as a mighty tool to fix things with google and chroot.
In the era of 'smart' phones most people have what they need, other than the equivalent of a Windows installation cd (as others have said probably on a bootable usb these days).
But I think all of the ~~user~~ beginner friendly distributions have a gui settings and package manager that isn't inherently more difficult than windows straight out of the box (and is probably more straightforward). Macs are presumably marginally more stable due to the consistent hardware, but I have only ever had an issue with quite esoteric wifi and graphics cards, and not for a long time.
To be fair, this is true for Windows and Mac too, unless you aren't counting the simple scape goat of wiping and reloading lol
I'll use the scapegoat of most people with Windows aren't actively trying to do things that might massively break it, and additionally the vast majority wouldn't know how to fix it even with a second device on hand and would get someone else to do it anyway.
Also,
Windows is a mature, established OS, it is perfectly capable of breaking on it's own without the user's input
Look what kind of OS would not just break by siiting their without imput
As someone that has run Linux as my primary desktop OS since 1998, I can confirm this as 100% accurate.
I remember printing the gentoo handbook back in 2005 to have something to troubleshoot my install process.
Back when all I had was one computer with Linux and I got in trouble I had a bootable USB stick so I could load up a browser and search forums for a solution.
It was definitely fun in the olden days when you fucked up your xorg.conf and you had to use elinks to try to look up a solution. At least nowadays your smartphone can be that second working computer.
Xorg.conf was genuinely something I never quite grokked.
I mean, I get it, it's a conf file for Xorg... but in practice, either your X11 worked out of the box, or it just didn't, and no manner of fiddling with the config and restarting the server would save it.
You could install other drivers and blacklist others, and that would get it to work, but touching the Xorg config file itself and expecting different results was like trying to squeeze blood out of a stone.
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I unironically keep a tiny linux mint boot usb key on my keychain.
When I feel bad about myself, I remember that I have that on my keychain, and I think I can't be that much of a failure because that's pretty cool.
Hey, I'm impressed
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what? windows breaks and you need second screen... but grub never fails you. the meme is closed source propaganda.
Grub failed me 2 times since the last 5 years. I moved to systemd boot. This is systemd propaganda.
Me: I have been using Linux professionally for 20 years, I can edit fstab.
Also Me five minutes later: I am glad I have live boot stick handy.
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That's what the tty is for, or at worst a bootable thumbdrive, CD, or Floppy. If I can't switch to a tty, I boot a bootable drive, mount my harddrive, and chroot my install. No second machine required. It's rare that I fuck something up though. Rest assured it was some bullshit I was trying, zero to do with Linux itself. But I do remember Windows would just bork itself randomly for no reason at all. I'm sure Microsoft has all that resolved now, but man back in the day it was painfully often.
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I've been using linux since last December and I haven't majorly broken anything. Am I doing Linux wrong?
You are. You are supposed pretend, everything you know on Windows should immediately transfer to Linux. Try to do techie things on Linux the Windows way; borking your system. Finally claim Linux isn't ready for the average user, despite not using Linux like an average user would.
No, people like to pretend that using linux is hard for some reason.
It's not 2003 anymore.
You're certainly doing Linux! I've only had one bad break, but i had a backup (if you mess with f-stab, save a copy it before you do anything)
I guess I take that back, there was 1 time that I did mess up fstab and had to boot live and fix it. But that wasn't too bad.
Can't relate, I do not use Arch.
Comically, my Arch felt easier to maintain than ubuntu.
You know for a bunch of tech-savvy people you all seem to fuck up your installs a lot.
Linux can be booted from a USB drive, Windows is deliberately designed to be easy to install and takes less than an hour, and nobody's installing MacOS anyway.
I reckon it's because you can't resist tinkering and never READING THE INSTRUCTIONS
I reckon itβs because you canβt resist tinkering and never READING THE INSTRUCTIONS
I think you may have hit on the answer here. If you don't mess around with Linux, it will usually run fine for years. Mess around, and you can do things that only someone with you+2 years experience can undo.
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If I had a nickel for every time my phone saved me from massive failures in Linux, I'd have 4 nickels. "<.<
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Put a distro on a flash drive. Throw the flash drive in a drawer. If computer break, retrieve flash drive. Thereβs your spare computer. Now try doing that with windows.
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Getting a smartphone in 2010 was what gave me the confidence to switch to Arch Linux, knowing I could always look things up on the wiki as necessary.
I also think my first computer that could boot from USB was the one I bought in 2011, too. Everything before that I had to physically burn a CD.
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I remember these tough times. Doing all kinds of shit as a kid and the resolution was just to nuke it all and start anew.
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Iβve had this very experience with every OS I have ever touched. Itβs just that Linux encourages you to experiment while the more popular OSs discourage experimentation by making it as hard as possible to get things done.
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