In my earlier days of running Linux

Lol this is still me after 20 years of using linux

This was me back when I disto hopped. Screwing something up was really just an excuse to try something new.

Now I'm I'm in a comfortable rut, but after recently having to set up a new machine from scratch NixOS is starting to look tempting.

This was the way. Then you find Debian.

I switch distro once I start feeling that my current installation is too bloated and requires a heavy cleaning

Which is why I switched to nixos, so that I can’t bloat my system up with packages I eventually forget about

I reinstalled Linux when it crashes, or used Timeshift for years, but at this time I learned totally nothing.

Then I tried Arch manual installation, and it changes my mind.

Honesty just make /home a different partition.

Has saved me so much trouble in changing distros on my laptop.

I’ve settled pretty well on Fedora at this point but that’ll probably change at some point (mostly because I don’t like Ubuntu much and I work in a mostly RHEL shop)

Cool you did backups

have / on one partition and /home on another, when reinstalling, reformat or reuse / and set the other as /home again. Worked very well when I switched from Ubuntu to Manjaro last week when Ubuntu refused to boot up for me for no obvious reason.

BTRFS is your friend guys and gals ☺️.

I did this without having my distro broken. It was like "oh shiny, let me try this distro"

You give that up that strategy and lean into fixing shit when you put the time in to customize the OS and desktop/window manager experience... at that point you should understand your system well enough to make fixing it easier, and you are also afraid of having to redo some of your customization. That being said, you still should make regular system backups, especially if you are tinkering with the OS experience a lot.

The fresh feeling of a reinstall lasts for about a week.

Backup. Fuck it. Learn . Fix. Repeat ad nauseam .

When I decided to switch to Fedora, I wanted a safety net. I had a 500GB SSD, so I bought an additional 2TB SSD, so I could make full disk image backups and be able to store 3 of them (I used full disk encryption, so my disk image backups were the full 500GB). And I dutifully made backups, either monthly, before I made a big change, or before a major update. Been doing this for nearly two years now and I haven't used a single backup image even once. It's almost disappointing, in a perverse sort of way. I was looking forward to having to learn stuff by fixing things that break, but nothing ever does!

Ah, the Windows approach. The few times I worked with PC Repair shops, backing up everything and reinstalling the OS was the go to for most "repairs". Especially since it was faster and cheaper than just researching all the issues and repairing them the "right" way. Although to be fair, if the OS is borked enough, backup + reinstall IS the right way.

Do a snapshot and roll back. Actually faster and easier.

me running it on hyper v and reverting to a clean install snapshot the moment I write one command slightly wrong

If you have a separate /home and backed up your data.. well why shouldn't I?

Reinstall? Nah... I have a bunch of virtual machines, which I set up and customised the way I like. Then I back them up. Use a VM for a few months, back up personal data (if any), delete them, copy from backup, power up, install latest updates and go with it again. Depending on their function, I keep the VM for longer (gaming instance) or shorter (Internet/office) periods before replacing them. That's become just basic computer hygiene for me.

Now I just run suse tumbleweed with snapshots and if anything breaks I just recover from snapshot.

Then there's the cloud: "Oh, crap. I have a typo in a config file. I guess I'll destroy the machine and set up a whole new one!"

Used to end up doing that like once a month.

mostly happens with Ubuntu. i don't know if iam built to crash it but i always tend to break it. i have been using fedora nobara for the last couple of month and i didn't break it once

1. rm -rf /*
2. ???
3. profit

As a noob, I wonder what would be the right way to do it?

I've reinstalled so many times...

The Windows way.

I haven't properly dotfilesed all of my rice yet, so I'm just hoping l don't break something until I get that sorted.

Being able to easily and freely upgrade, experiment, and reinstall is one of the big perks of Linux. Carry on.

Timeshift makes all the difference, no more panicking after breaking something.

Early days? I do this even today if I don't have enough skills to fix it.

I’m on Unraid now and have most of my services migrated to docker containers but on my previous build, I was just running Ubuntu Server a majority of the time.

I got a little scared thinking about all of the manual configuration I’ve done over time to this build and knew that if I needed to reinstall I’d essentially be fucked.

Like what tf is a fstab again?

So I took a few hours to learn Ansible and wrote a playbook that could configure my build nearly 100% in just one click. Changed the game.

If anyone knows of something similar with Unraid configs let me know bc I really did enjoy the ansible process

This is still the way! Gives me an excuse to change my distro.

I don't have many spare devices to do backups so I started using Fedora Kionite. I highly recommend installing ublue if anyone uses Silverblue/Kionite.

Since getting a NAS I now think of everything else as volatile storage

It didn't happen THAT often before, but as a previous Windows user and restore point fan, Timeshift was a game changer. Don't have to tread lightly anymore. :D

I feel this. I used to do it all the time when I first got into Linux. Immutable distros will make this a non-issue.

can't say I've ever done this. better to figure out why it's broken and fix it so that the next time I encounter that kinda problem, I can fix it quickly.

With the exception of my home data, this is why I switched to Fedora Silverblue. I got past the experimental phase and just wanted a linux that would work without thoughts

I use timeshift and it has saved my ass quite a few times!

That’s how the pros do it.

Oh, for the days of constant distro-hopping ...

Literally this morning I started getting boot errors. It is telling me WBM can't find the boot file. But I should be booting into grub, so idk what to do. My boot order is Ubuntu, then USB. And that's it. And now I'm out of the house all day and can't do anything but sweat about it.

Me rn frfr

Have a friend who still does this. Every so often he'll notice that something is missing from a previous reinstall and we have to take a second to bring his system back on track

Considering I'd rather not spend the weekend troubleshooting stuff when I have my house to clean before returning to work on Monday, and a simple backup > reinstall will take me less than 6h at most (counting all customization and etc), I'll take a full reinstall any time.

Edit: Oh, now I reread that's about the early days. Would do the same though.

This is precisely the hampster wheel that felt like it led me to osx.

Hey, at least we have the option to fix things. My poor Windows friends end up reinstalling multiple times a year due to unfixable issues and bugs.

Reminds me, that I want to "fix" my install.

This is still the way! Gives me an excuse to change my distro.

Broke my ZorinOS install by trying to upgrade parts of the OS by myself so I could run newer software and lived like that for months until I gave up and switched to Fedora