linuxmemes

Isn't that what the second kernel is for?

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.

If I had a nickel for every time my phone saved me from massive failures in Linux, I'd have 4 nickels. "<.<

Tf are you people doing to your computers to break the OS?

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.

All you need is a bootable usb stick

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.

Or just a USB-Stick with ventoy

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.

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

Put a distro on a flash drive. Throw the flash drive in a drawer. If computer break, retrieve flash drive. There’s your spare computer. Now try doing that with windows.

I've been using linux since last December and I haven't majorly broken anything. Am I doing Linux wrong?

I’ve had this very experience with every OS I have ever touched. It’s 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.

openSUSE Tumbleweed (and any other distros that take advantage of BTRFS and snapshots) is what made me love Linux.

I've always used Windows, but wanted to move to Linux as it is more in line with what I feel about computers, and openSUSE made that a reality for me. Fuck something up by doing what you thought was going to be a normal operational moment? No biggie! For example, sudo snapper rollback 333, and I'm back up and running after reboot. Has literally saved me and the distro a few times now.

Needless to say, I love Windows (for what it is, hate M$ though) but I am a full Linux convert now. When I log into Linux, it feels like home. When I log into Windows, it feels like someone else's home. :P

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.

Ive never had that happen on linux.

On windows though, it was once a year. And it wasn't even anything I did half the time. When are we going to stop pretending windows doesn't ask more if you to have it working properly?

Tbf this would be the same on windows (well, if there was a fix other than reinstall...), unless you just already know the fix, which then would be the same on linux, you just don't know it yet.

Besides, since windows only fix would be to reinstall, no second pc needed, just keep the installation drive and treat it like a windows reinstall, bam same same.

To a slightly lesser extent, that's also true of Windows - severe malfunctions are less likely to happen, but when they do happen, fixing them is almost always an absolute clusterfuck, and when it isn't, it's downright impossible.

A usb stick with a live linux iso is generally enough

learning that most people didn't have a "back up computer" was when i began to re-think my career decisions in IT

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.

Just use Tumbleweed or Fedora...or any other distro with amazing brtfs support.

That alone has saved me from myself more times than I want to mention.

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.

Do you guys not have phones?

This doesn’t happen on Nixos thanks to rollbacks ! (I guess unless your computer has never been in a working state at all, or if you erase the disk)

As someone that has run Linux as my primary desktop OS since 1998, I can confirm this as 100% accurate.

Question: do the backup computer(s) have to be in a functional state themselves?

I always have at least one partially built computer xD

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.

Lmao. I thought I was the only one. I have like 5 USB sticks with 5 different distros on them all tested and working. I also have a laptop with bazziteOS so the chance of it breaking to no return is very slim. That way, I can fix my desktop if it breaks.

The existing computer can serve as the "second" if you have a distro image on bootable media (and you haven't borked the hardware).

Yes, it's a PITA to have to go back and forth between bootable media and trying to reboot into the corrupted OS, but if it's all you have, it can work. And the distro on the bootable media might be all you need to make those repairs.

In related news: When did you last make a backup?

This was true for Windows as well.