My 6 WORST LINUX MISTAKES

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#linux #mistake

00:00 Intro
00:42 Sponsor: Get a free study on the best open source practices
01:47 Using Linux without the internet
04:19 Not using a separate /home partition
05:57 Not distro hopping soon enough
07:49 Not getting out of my comfort zone
09:20 Dual booting for too long
11:18 Fearing the terminal
13:06 And a lot more!
14:07 Sponsor: Get a laptop or desktop running Linux from Tuxedo
15:13 Support the channel

So, when I started using Linux, it was on an old refurbished laptop that didn't have wifi or an ethernet port. I had to download packages from the repos. Manually. And copy them to a USB key, transfer them to the laptop, copy them there, install them, only for DPKG to tell me that dependencies were missing.

So, yeah, using Linux without access to the internet. Completely unusable unless you're already perfectly setup and you don't need anything else.

Second mistake I took way too long to correct was NOT setting up a separate /home partition. See, you can reinstall a whole other Linux distro and reuse that exact same /home partition to keep all your settings, files, configurations and more, and avoid losing hours setting everything up again.

Nowadays, distros generally also don't default to a separate /home partition, which is a mistake in my opinion.

Another mistake I made: I didn't distro hop enough when I started using Linux

This might seem weird, but the diversity of Linux distros and what they offer is undeniably the greatest strength of our ecosystem.

Distro hopping is how you learn about all the various things you can do on Linux. It's how you try other desktop environments, and it's how you learn what the differences are, what the advantages of each distro, each system are. Not distro hopping sooner meant that I just didn't learn anything new while using Linux, for a long time.

In the same vein, I also put off trying out new projects for a long time! Flatpak, Wayland, image based Operating systems like SIlverblue, GNOME extensions, I used to stay safe in my little comfort zone, and I judged everything else by the standards of what someone else had written online.

Not trying out these projects for myself also stunted my learning experience, and while I can absolutely agree that none of them are perfect, even today, they taught me so much about how things work, whether it's the older way, or the new ways these projects bring, I now know a lot more about the inner workings of my system and how to fix problems when I encounter them.

Another mistake, that will be more personal, is dual booting for too long. I kept a Windows system on my devices for a long, long while, up until I started this channel, actually, in 2018. I used Windows as a crutch: when something didn't work immediately on Linux, I just rebooted on Windows, did the thing, and then stuck to Windows for the day, because rebooting was annoying. And then the next day, I still used Windows, because I knew I had something to do that I already knew how to do on Windows.

And so, I didn't learn how to do a lot of things on Linux, even though it would have saved me time in the end.

Another big mistake I made back in the day, was avoiding the command line. It's a wonderfully powerful tool to get tings done. Updating your software repos and installing multiple apps at once is just more convenient from the command line. Fixing an error is also way faster this way, or transcoding a video using ffmpeg

[Zetaphor]

It's insane how much easier the out of box experience is these days. My first exposure was a Mandrake Linux CD-ROM I got from a friend in the early 2000's. I had no internet and no idea what I was doing. Fast forward a few years later and I too was struggling with ndiswrapper and getting my sound card working. Now I just install Fedora on my modern laptop and everything "just works", there's a modern(ish) app store with Flatpaks, and gaming has even viable.

[negirno]

I partially disagree with the "keep $HOME on a separate partition". Using the same home directory with different distros could cause configuration conflicts since different distros could contain different versions of the same program or subsystem, just like installing KDE on a Gnome system causing problems.
That said, I always keep my personal files on partitions other than the system partition, but I did that on Windows, too.

[mirage]

Seeing the hoops you had to jump through back in the day to use Linux gave me a new appreciation for the internet and for how far Linux has come over the years. I can totally see where Linux's reputation of being too hard for most people comes from. The fresh install experience is a lot nicer now compared to only a few years ago.

[MasterGeekMX]

One thing I did was trying to replicate windows as much: avoiding GNOME and other DE's that could not set me up with start menu on the left and clock on the right, ricing the desktop to imitate windows 10, even messing with /etc/fstab so I could "simulate" having C: and D: drives.

the only thing I carry on from windows is coloring my system monitors in the same color as task manager graphs (blue CPU, purple RAM, green Disk, etc). It is just so I can know at a glance what that means without labels.

[brianjuergensmeyer]

I first started with Linux back in 1995 or so. At the time, I was running OS/2 Warp as a primary desktop OS, but needed to work with an odd programming language for a compiler class (SML/NJ). The current version of that compiler was very old for OS/2, so my choice was to either install Linux and the current version at home, or drive back to campus every night to do my homework.

So, my first install was Slackware 3.0 (something like 15-20 floppy disk images). This was before the era of kernel modules. So, if you wanted your sound card or video card to work, you had to redo your config and recompile your kernel. And then there was diddling with my XF86 config files to make sure the monitor frequencies were all set correctly.

You kids get off my lawn.

[kelvinhbo]

I think your biggest mistake was not using Linux From Scratch as your first distro instead of Ubuntu.

[Thebitbeard]

I don't use a separate /Home partition, but I also enjoy the process of going through all my stuff and setting up a fresh system install. I see it a bit like spring cleaning. A fresh install. A fresh start. The important stuff is backed up of course.

[Aktnik]

Seriously, distrohopping is a necessary "evil". Evil because you feel like you waste your time into moving through other systems and reconfiguring the whole thing. But with that, I learned how to create my dotfiles and simplify most of the configuration. Bonus points with using Nix+home-manager, that helped even more. And as Nick said, you learn about other systems. Or you could try using a VM, but the experience of configuring physical hardware was more enriching for me, because that's how I learned to be way more cautious when using CLI disk managing tools.n

[kote]

There were times in my life when I literally brought the Internet on a flash drive. In my parents' house, the natural disaster damaged the communication lines for several weeks. Mobile Internet in that area works very poorly. So I downloaded videos and brought them on a flash drive.
This practice is still common in some remote cities, where the Internet works only via satellite, which is why it is too expensive. So people bring content on physical media and share it through the city's local area network. The situation is similar in some countries where ordinary citizens do not have access to the Internet for various reasons. But they can still watch videos brought by someone on physical media.
There are also distributions where installation of software from the Internet is not provided. For example, Elbrus OS (for Russian processors of the same name). It uses apt, but no remote repositories (adding third-party repositories will most likely break the system). But this is normal, given that this is a specialized system not for a wide range of users (which does not prevent you from downloading the x86-64 version for testing).
But in general, you are right - it is difficult to use Linux without the Internet in most cases.

[tordjarv]

Probably my biggest mistake when I started using Linux was to remove Python from my Ubuntu 9.10 system. Since I hade recently learned C and developed a superiority complex against Python and thought that my system should be clean of such a horrible language, so I removed it without realizing that Gnome 2 partially depended on it so I nuked the desktop without realizing it. At the time I was not very proficient in the terminal so I ended up reinstalling the system (and I did not at the time have a separate partition for my home directory so I lost all my data).
Other than that I think rising the shit out of a Linux system was a pretty big noob mistake that I did. Don't get me wrong, one of the biggest benefits of Linux is that you can make your system look and behave exactly as you want it, but if you just are starting out with Linux you might be tempted to follow some random guide on the internet to make your system look in certain way and destroying it in the process, and that might discourage you from keep using Linux. Instead I think one should take it slow maybe do one small thing at a time and learn how different programs works. Also I have found over the years that for the most parts the default settings often works best; after all they where chosen by someone that understands the program way better than you could without spending a lot of time studding the source code.
In short, Linux gives you freedom under responsibility.

[JoshuaG]

I dont use a separate partition for home but instead use a separate subvolume in BTRFS as it means i dont have to worry about filling either partition. Sure a separate partition could prevent data loss (if i didnt have a backup) if the filesystem went corrupt but the odds of that are low and if the parition went corrupt odds are it took my other partitions with it too.
When reinstalling i can just delete the other subvolumes and recreate them.

[IgnoreMyChan]

2:05 Dude 🤣 That delivery is perfect! I freaking love your humor!! How do you come up with this stuff!

[alessiobahr]

I am new to linux, and just today I created my separate home partition (after this video). Using Fedora 36 from less than a month and I am enjoying every bit of it.

[gert]

My biggest mistake was buying a book about Ubuntu after I had downloaded Ubuntu !
Nothing worked as written in the book and I could not understand it and left Ubuntu and Linux :(
A few years later I tried installing Linux Mint ( without any books) and everything worked great and I got hooked on Linux :)
I then found out that the book I had bought described the PREVIOUS version of Ubuntu and the new version was had a completely different GUI ...
A typical beginners mistake although the author of the book SHOULD have written the version, he was describing and should have shown how to check the version. That would have save me a lot of time ...
Regards from Denmark

[KuruGDI]

The problem with distro hopping is the same with switching to Linux in general: You have to re-setup your workspace and learn the things you already knew all over again. And that for no other reason than _oh look, this looks even more shiny_ . Switching to Linux is sooo much work if you are used to a different OS. The act of changing your entire OS is not a _20 Minutes Adventure_ .
"You don't learn anything new" is also not really a good argument for somebody who needs their PC to be reliable because it's their _bread and butter_ machine that is used for work. If the system fails they could no longer work and have an income. And us tech nerds have to accept that most computer end users are just that: end users. As long as it works it's perfectly fine. (Yes, we have to educate ourselves and check out what's new so we can tell the non-tech nerds - I for my part outsource that part to you, Nick)
As Anthony from Linus tech Tips put it: You end up picking the distro with the default settings that seem most sane to you and tweak it to your liking.

[HopliteSecurity]

This was a great video that highlights issues we have all faced. I appreciate the vulnerability and openness to admit to these 6 mistakes :)

[mobeen]

The only mistake that I made was fearing the terminal which lasted about first 4 or 5 months

[AstraPlanetshine]

honestly, not distro hopping in the beginning is a good thing. as a new user its already an overwhelming experience as it is.
by staying on one distro for a few years, you can get used to the fundamentals in the world of linux. without having to relearn new things each time you try a new distro.

yes its good to explore new distros, when you are ready for it that is.

[IGqy]

Thanks for another great video. It made me think of a lot of forgotten stuff 😄

I actually had issues with modern laptops, without Ethernet, when WiFi drivers didn't come with the install. I had to manually download, move and install those via USB as recent as 2-3 years ago.

I learned the thing with partitioning from freedompenguin (not the name anymore), but that was awesome! Made distrohopping much easier! I learned quite early, so I had fun reinstalling systems, because I liked doing it - I felt pretty cool installing the system from scratch.
And in that regard, I think I kind of fell into the same trap. I did distros hop a lot, but always within Debian based distros, and a lot of ubuntu derivatives. Once I got an extra computer, I tried my hands on fedora and Manjaro (and puppy), but other than that, I have mostly stayed in the Debian branch. I think because I feel comfortable with a lot of the tools, and I have less time for learning now, than I did then. Guess I stayed and stay within my comfort zone on that one. Especially because I don't have a spare computer to test it on and learn it on for now.

Initially I only ran Linux since I had gotten my hands on a wiped PC with no system, so I only ran ubuntu until I figured out to get windows on it. Then I dual booted with mint for a while until I got an old spare that in used to test a lot of stuff on.
The last 4 years or so, I have used Linux exclusively on my private machine and windows on my work laptop.
One thing I am very happy I did, was that in used Foss long before I made the switch, as I did not have money for software, so the jump was easy. And since then, I always look to see if there is a Foss alternative to the piece of software I am presented with when I have a need, as I love the concept.

In terms of the terminal, I am quite limited, but with the stuff i do know how to do in there, I prefer to so in there. It is just easier in a way, because you can use the same interface for a lot of stuff, and that is very easy to navigate. I always wanted to code, so the terminal was quite intriguing to me. Found out the annoying way that I could ruin my system with that - I think I uninstalled python while running regolith. That just removed everything and I had to reinstall 😄

[cronos]

I made a mistake of installing multiple desktop environments in Ubuntu. The OS was mostly functional, but it ran in limp mode. Some programs were also broken. Nowadays you can work around broken programs by installing them as flatpaks, etc. I wouldn't recommend installing multiple DE.

Another "mistake" I made involved encrypting my home directory. Encryption works well. But, it gave me a headache when I tried to copy home directory files from one distro to another. I no longer encrypt my home directory.