BIG takeaway:
Timeshift.
Treat your journey like a video game in ‘hard mode’. Save your progress often!
Before embarking on a new quest or mission, save your current state with Timeshift, so if you end up going down some rabbithole, trying a solution you found on some blog-post that doesn’t work, or is outdated, or was for a different distribution, or you mistyped one of the fifty commands or whatever, you can safely return to the state your system was in before you started.
Trust me on this.
BIG takeaway:
Timeshift.
Treat your journey like a video game in ‘hard mode’. Save your progress often!
Before embarking on a new quest or mission, save your current state with Timeshift, so if you end up going down some rabbithole, trying a solution you found on some blog-post that doesn’t work, or is outdated, or was for a different distribution, or you mistyped one of the fifty commands or whatever, you can safely return to the state your system was in before you started.
Trust me on this.
And Linux peeps—and I mean this with all possible love—if your response to someone struggling with a problem is ‘just read the manual/man page’, that’s not helpful and can come off as condecending & elitist.
Some people learn differently.
Myself I learn by trying things, and failing, and breaking shit, and fixing it (or starting over). I’m not one that can sit down and read a manual cover-to-cover and just get it the first time.
Take the time to understand what it is the person is trying to do (and keep in mind that they may lack the knowledge to explain themselves properly) or maybe just scroll on by.
Final thought:
The fact that Linux exists at all, and that there’s this free-to-use, whole-ass other ecosystem of software and utilities out there, built entirely by folks who just want to make cool shit that everyone in the world can use is a godamn miracle!
Yes, sometimes it’s a little janky. Yes, there are a plethora of options & choices that can make things confusing—that’s actually a feature, not a bug—yes, some of the software has weird, slightly kinky names. But it’s complete software FREEDOM from the yokes of the oiligarchs who want to turn this cool thing that we love into a means of exploiting us.
Embrace the jankiness, lean into the learning curve. Take back the means of digital production ✊
Thanks for coming to my Ted talk. 😆
