alt Hacker News> Constant tinkering around with config files and googling how to fix problems.
i realised long ago this is usually a self-inflicted problem. Some of us (myself included) cannot resist tinkering with something that works reasonably well. When we use Windows its hard to tinker so we leave well along. Linux lets you tinker so we keep trying to reach perfection, and that breaks stuff.
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Disagree. Whether it’s Raspbian on a Pi, or Fedora or Mint on a modern laptop, issues still occur, and any minor issue immediately launches you into the world of the terminal, Google, StackOverflow, and Ubuntu forums.
Claude has definitely helped to reduce this negative!
> Some of us (myself included) cannot resist tinkering with something that works reasonably well. When we use Windows its hard to tinker so we leave well along. Linux lets you tinker so we keep trying to reach perfection, and that breaks stuff.
I think that tinkering serves a purpose. If you don't fully understand your tooling, you won't be able to fix it when something breaks. Tinkering teaches you that.
Also, you might miss out on improved workflow by leaving things alone.
The whole reason I use FOSS is that I don't some big tech architect to decide for me how my computer should work.
On windows I assume I cannot bend the OS to my will. On Linux I know I should be able to. The biggest issue is I am often so busy asking if I can do it that I don't stop to ask if I should do it. So I end up with weird configurations and random packages installed to tweak stupid stuff.
Some of it is real pain points, and those are annoying that they aren't baked into the distro from the beginning.
I only do tinkering once. After that, it usually stays that way for as long as the option/setting exists and doesn't break.
For example, in 1996 I tweaked the buttons on Total Commander's main button bar (was called Windows Commander back then). I still use that same button bar today, 30 years later. Only some icons had to be replaced. I try to do the same in Linux, but...
There are some programs where this just doesn't work. Firefox for example has a bad habit of deprecating settings and adding new ones (with wrong defaults, because... money probably). It needs tinkering all the time.
curiosity is good
IMO most of linux issues come from "my distro ancient package registry does not have package X, let me google magic commands I need to run to installed version I need"
If I have issue with nixos, its 99 out of 100 times going to be package I pulled either from nixpkgs-unstable or 3d party flake.
NixOS make it less of a problem because I can alwasy switch to previous generation and build all of my hosts before switching any of them.
Some distros are worse then others though. Ubuntu (used to?) for some reasons loved switching nvidia drivers OSS version that does not work every update or break keyboard layout switcher. I never had such issues with NixOS, but with NixOS I have "kernel updated, reboot required" issue that I had setup alert for[1].
[1]: Only issue on a host that has nvidia card because nvidia being nvidia.