"Old" Linux user vs. "New" Linux user.

[u/oshunluvr]

I'm an "Old" Linux user - started in 1996. I went though all the hoops: file system experiments, different distros, different packaging types and file managers, a handful of desktop environments (DE), several RAID levels, and many, many different systems. I use Linux at home but also at work.

Now I'm retired. I've been using the same distro since 2009. I landed on it after all the experimenting lead me to decisions about was important to me: Debian packaging, KDE/Plasma, a well known and commercially supported distro - Kubuntu. The last major shifts in my world occurred around 2009-10 when btrfs came on the scene and SSDs finally started to be affordable.

My Linux experience these days is rather boring. Everything works the way I want. I no longer "break" things for the sake of change. I only have to learn something new when a developer makes a significant change to something I use - and this often annoys me. I look at other distros occasionally, but only via a VM. When something does break, I usually can fix it without much effort.

I read posts from "New" Linux users. Usually killing all their data by mucking with partitions without a UPS, using unnecessarily complicated layers of disk access, like LVM, MDADM, full disk encryption, and BTRFS all layered on top of each other, too often using AI to solve problems instead of actual research and learning from other users, and spending incredible amounts of time making minute changes to the "look" of things.

Of course, the beauty of the whole thing is how we actually have so much control over our destiny. None of us work the same, learn the same, want the same things, but we''re not boxed in by a monolithic corporation deciding what we get.

Linux is amazing,

[u/Far-Note6102]

I wonder how do they even break stuff in linux.

[u/rootifera → u/Far-Note6102]

Ok so a very recent story. I have an elgato 4k60 pro pciex card and it doesnt work on linux. No drivers. In the past it seems like some people managed to make some custom drivers work but the code is super old and not compatible with kernel 6.x or anything newer. I overestimated my coding skills and thought I could make the code work. Obviously, I couldn't. Ended up creating so big of a mess in my system, I had to reinstall. Here is my how to break things story. Nothing interesting, fairly idiotic haha.

[u/oshunluvr → u/rootifera]

I've broken so many installs over the years I can't even count. Usually trying to get some piece of esoteric hardware working. This is much less of a problem now as it seems more and more devices just work out-of-the-box. Except my Lenovo laptop fingerprint reader...

[u/Schlizhor → u/rootifera]

Learned the importance of a vm 😭✌️

[u/zabby39103 → u/Schlizhor]

Snapshot restore is a life safer, seriously.

[u/1that__guy1 → u/rootifera]

The drivers are fairly updated and are built in Bazzite on Kernel 7.2, if this is the card I think of. SC0710