> Especially since learning about Linux means reinstalling your OS many times until you finally learn how to keep it clean and rescue it from any situation.
Surely, you are dramatizing a bit here. Or are you assuming that everyone shares the same need to fiddle with everything?
Are you trying to actually learn Linux or just how to use Linux to get other work done. Learning how to use Linux to get work done doesn't require a 'need to fiddle' as you put it, but you're not going to really learn actual Linux (as in how the kernel and core operating system works and hangs together) without getting your hands dirty and breaking a lot of things along the way.
Yes, but do you actually need to know that? I know that, I've been using Linux since the whole thing fitted on four 1.44MB floppies. I don't *care* though, and if my machine is fatally screwed up I just bust out the latest Ubuntu LTS, flatten, and reinstall.
I haven't got time to muck about with rescuing a broken system. I've got stuff to do.
Do you actually need to know JavaScript? Or C? Or Japanese?
As I said, if Linux is just the OS you use to do something else, then no. If your job/hobby is to actually develop Linux or tools that tie very tightly to Linux and how Linux operates, then yes.
No, just personal experience. I started learning Linux as a young teenager and have broken dozens of installations (breaking system python, deleting /usr/ via rsync, doing an incomplete system update, writing a love letter to my boot sector, etc. etc.)
Eventually I have failed in so many ways that there are not a lot of ways I can fail now that I don't know how to rescue myself from. Also I've learned what not do to keep things saveable.
> Or are you assuming that everyone shares the same need to fiddle with everything?
Why else would you use Linux? This fiddling is literally necessary to learn it. Otherwise you have to ask somebody else for help, who has done the fiddling.
Because you just want to get work done, or play your game or browse the web etc?
Yes, learning Linux is fun (for the kind of people who find this fun). But we don't expect people who just want to get on with their lives to eg break Windows or MacOS a lot, either.
I'm pretty close to this at work since about 1/3rd of my job is helping the non-Linux people deal with Linux. Programming is their 2nd language so to speak, and the use of Linux is incidental, it's just what's easiest to give them to keep everything in our company compatible.
They require a person who knows Linux in order to keep working. It's not optional -- they just wouldn't be able to get everything running otherwise without it breaking every couple of days. The fixes they find without us usually end up masking the problem and causing a truly unfixable problem later.
This is one of the biggest flaws of Linux IMO -- you have to dedicate yourself to learning it to be able to use it as a daily driver effectively.
So: if you don't have to, and you don't know how, you shouldn't use Linux at all. There's no point, just use macOS. The macOS people eventually fix their problem on their own anyway since it's so standardized.
I once logged into a ONE HOUR OLD ubuntu install for it to randomly decide that my system font should be 6pt, but not everywhere, and there was no way to change it through any settings panel. Not knowing in what magical text file that setting, if it even had one, was hidden, my only choice was to reinstall.
I guess Arch Linux is a lot saner, they just have one place to change things: the configuration files; and that one place is well documented and there's no magic going on. No weird settings panels that try to be smart.
That's interesting. Did either Ubuntu or Arch Linux patch GNOME to read configuration at different places? Doesn't Ubuntu also have configuration files that actually store the configuration (while the settings panel would be just the UI to the config files)?
At any rate, how are you sure that this bug only affects Ubuntu but not Arch?
I don't use GNOME, so I can't comment. I just use XMonad as a light weight window manager, and don't bother with any 'desktop environment'.
I don't know how Ubuntu nor GNOME store their configuration. I suspect they have lots of plain text config files, but they might also have other formats like databases etc? I think the more important part is that they try to 'magically' do much of the config for you, and sometimes that magic breaks.
I found 'etckeeper' quite useful, it sticks your /etc in a git repository and makes commits when something changes. So you can at least review what just changed that must have broken your config. (I use etckeeper on Arch, but it seems to be also available on Ubuntu.)
Surely, you are dramatizing a bit here. Or are you assuming that everyone shares the same need to fiddle with everything?