edit: for anyone curious, the problem was Xorg wasnt loading or something (stuck on systemd 'graphical interface target reached' with no graphical interface). because of a typo in a config file.
this post was submitted on 24 Sep 2023
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I use Arch btw
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I did that as a beginner a few times but now I'm able to resolve everything I need to with the good old terminal.
sometimes i just cant be bothered figuring out why systemd isnt starting a graphical interface, or whatever, and reinstalling doesnt take very long if you have a home partition
Figuring out? It's right there in the logs.
Fast disks are spoiling the next generation. Back in the day, 2 minutes reading could save you half an hour of reinstalling. But if reinstalling takes about the same amount of time, I guess there's no more incentive to actually learn something.
You done use anything but the base system install? No extra software? Are you okay?
I am new to desktop linux. It is a pain to not know certain troubleshooting steps as I do mostly for server linux.
For example, not knowing what the gui consists of, which applications are essential and which are not.
In that case I would like to recommend you install Arch at least once. Not to actually use in production, but it made a lot of things click for me that help me with server stuff too. Just follow along with the install guide on the wiki inside of a VM.
If you really want to know what applications are essential I'd install a window manager and not just install the gnome package. Though even just installing your favourite DE will work fine.
I've heard other people recommend Gentoo and Linux from scratch as well for this purpose since they go even deeper, but that may be too much to start off with and I haven't done that myself
Thank you very much for this suggestion. i will spin up a vm on virtualbox asap to check this out. :)
I feel this, especially the GUI/Desktop essential stuff, and I have been daily driving Linux on desktop for about 8 years now.
Going from Debian with Mate to Arch with AwesomeWM (minimal tiled window manager), there is a lot you actually need to know and it's convoluted how it interacts with each other, a lot of it is thru dbus but some things go thru env variables - .xprofile, .profile, bashrc/zshrc, pam_env.
Yesterday I found out I am actually not running any gui polkit agents - I had it installed (possibly for years) but the .deskop file had OnlyShowIn=Xfce so Dex didn't autostart it.
Sometimes I do feel like I am just making my life harder for no reason but I love the minimal UI and kb navigation.
Thank you very much for this explanation. i will try to check out some books on the matter. I feel like we (as in the community around linux) need to have a chat about helping others and not judging. :) we have a great opportunity here to gather a lot more users from windows but we wont until we manage to actually welcome and not insult them all the time.
The real terminal fun comes from accidentally entering grub's rescue mode when you fuck the config up, and then having to frantically remember how to boot linux manually
I'm just glad I have more than one device with internet access in my home. The one time a vm update was pushed to desktop users on Linux Mint, killing the desktop for anyone who got the update. I had to use my phone to find out what how to restore my pc.
Uh oh... hd0.. insmod something ??? Chainload..er...?