Forum rules
Do not post support questions here. Before you post read the forum rules. Topics in this forum are automatically closed 6 months after creation.
I am a new linux user, and am having the time of my life learning new things and tinkering under the hood of my shiny new LM 8 Fluxbox CE. However, I have now lost count how many times I've broken my system and had to do a fresh install! I haven't figured out whether to be ashamed or proud, which leads to my question:
How many times did you break your first linux install due to tinkering?
("I break it daily on purpose" is a valid and acceptable answer!)
Edited to change word in title to something less offensive.
Last edited by LockBot on Wed Dec 28, 2022 7:16 am, edited 2 times in total.
Reason:Topic automatically closed 6 months after creation. New replies are no longer allowed.
I broke Mint 7 twice.
Once I was trying to improve my wireless reception and got into a horrible mess with wireless drivers that I was unable to dig my way out of.
My mind has blanked out details of the second incident-it must have been a real horror.
Since then I've had a few hairy moments but I have been able to rescue the situation without having to do a fresh install - I must be learning
I like to fiddle with and tweak my systems so I suffer frequent operater caused breakage. I'm glad Mint is so easy to reinstall and now that I have all of my data and config files in a separate partition with symlinks to /home, reinstalling is even easier.
Aging Technogeek wrote:I'm glad Mint is so easy to reinstall...
My Vista partition ate itself via chkdsk and I had to reinstall from DVD...it took 4 hours just to install and get all of the updates from WindowsUpdate (Every time I updated and rebooted, more updates appeared! ) I was doing a fresh install of Linux Mint on another computer at the same time, and it took ~45 mins to install and update all lvl 1's and 2's.
Of course to be completely fair, I have spend much more time tweaking LM than I ever did Windows, but that's because 1. I can, and 2. it's fun! My husband is threatening to sneak Windows back on my computer so I'll stop playing with it...
I've never broken my Mint install completely beyond retrieval -- although I've come close. Reinstalling GRUB from a live CD fixed the worst of my blunders.
There's an old saying, if it ain't broke, you're not trying hard enough.
I can very conservatively guess that when I first started I averaged somewhere in the neighborhood of 3 to 4 borked systems a week. I'm never happy with anything until I know how to take it apart and put it back together again.
oscar799 wrote:I broke Mint 7 twice.
Once I was trying to improve my wireless reception and got into a horrible mess with wireless drivers that I was unable to dig my way out of.
My mind has blanked out details of the second incident-it must have been a real horror.
Since then I've had a few hairy moments but I have been able to rescue the situation without having to do a fresh install - I must be learning
My mind as well has blanked out a few, but I'm probably up to around a dozen (not counting the ones that were so traumatic from personal ID10_T errors, as I have mentioned are blanked out), but remembering to use sudo cp /some/wonderful/settings/file /some/wonderful/settings/file_back has also saved me from a few as well. Wish I used it more, earlier.
But as Landmouse, re-installing it is a blast! Especially if you make yourself an apt-on-cd to help out, i can pretty much do a full recovery in about an hour (depending on the net connection at the time). With the way I like to muck about I have NO doubt I'll break a couple more.
I couldn't remember, so I had to go and look over some notes from back then.
My first Linux experiences were with the Knoppix live CD and with a notebook that I bought that came pre-installed with Linspire. I played with those for several months before I ever tried installing Linux.
My first Linux installation was with Mepis 3.4-2 RC1. At the time, I didn't even know that "RC1" meant that it wasn't a final version!
I see from my notes that I did to a few reinstallations during the first few months, but most of my problems stemmed from the fact that I was dual-booting Mepis with XP at the time.
Fortunately, Mepis, even then (like Mint today), was very quick and easy to install, so reinstalling was never a big deal.
I had also installed Mepis by itself on an old, spare computer, and things went fine there, which is one of the reasons why these days I prefer to keep Linux on a different computer, away from Windows. Dual- or multi-booting all Linux is much easier, IMHO, than when Windows is involved.
I can also see from my notes that I was doing a lot of floundering around, trying to figure out how things worked. 4 or 5 years have gone by, and I've come a long way, indeed!
Break my first linux install? My first linux was SuSE 6.1 or 6.2 - can't remember. Not only did I break that install but I managed to destroy the partition table that it and Windows was installed on. You think installing linux is hard? Try installing Windows Windows NT 4.0 from scratch.
Please add a [SOLVED] at the end of your original subject header if your question has been answered and solved.
My first distro was back in 2002 and it was Xandros. You just had to look at it the wrong way and it broke. Mepis 3.0 was the first distro I used that gave me the confidence that I could rely on linux for my main computing and ditch XP. Mepis was great and it was only when a later version of Mepis wouldn't give me any sound when using Youtube that made me switch to Mint and here I have been ever since.
I don't play around with other distros anymore or try to run things to the edge ... I just use my computer like most people in the windose world do except that I have all the benefits of using linux.
I broke my first Linux install. But, I do not think it was my fault. I wanted to dual boot Ubuntu and OpenSUSE to see how it would work. I resized my partitions using gparted, and put SUSE on the new 30 GB partition I made on my 250 GB laptop. I rebooted, and the computer wouldn't go past the HP Splash screen. Gparted showed an entire unallocated hard drive; 250 GB blank.
My first install was Pygmy (based off Slackware) and I don't think I broke it at all. My second install was a Mandrake-based distro called Phat. And I broke it a LOT. I remember one day the glibc library failed to update. The smart thing would have been to leave it. Instead, I decided to manually move the old library to another location and copy the new one in. Oops. I didn't realize at the time that by moving the C library I was breaking every program on the box. Happily I had another install on the drive and copied its C library into place, saving my tuckas.
I haven't figured out whether to be ashamed or proud, which leads to my question:
) I was doing a fresh install of Linux Mint on another computer at the same time, and it took ~45 mins to install and update all lvl 1's and 2's.
That's where I started with Linux and repeatedly shot myself in the foot.
Oh well, just dig out my 'buntu A2 LiveCD and re-install.
