this post was submitted on 23 Dec 2023
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Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.

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submitted 11 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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So I finally decided to join my university Linux group, and as I been helping people with simple problems in discord for a while they put me in the helpdesk.

All fine and dandy, but other than dual boot and partitioning problems that I had to deal with myself (stupid laptop which does no follow efibootmgr order) I don't know much about other kinds of troubleshooting.

Is there some reads or free online courses that u guys would recommend.

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[–] [email protected] 24 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (3 children)

Install stuff, try and make it better but end up breaking it horribly, and then spend time fixing it. This is how I've learned everything over the years.

I distro hopped for a few years but eventually settled on Arch over a decade ago. It was a lot more difficult to install back then, but it will still get you comfortable with the CLI if you're not comfortable with it already. Also, if you don't know already, Arch pretty much has the best Wiki available and it works with almost all distros since most only differ in package management.

I actually got heavy into Linux during my freshman year of college (2004) back when Linux wasn't supported for most things, so I wiped Windows off of my PC, and forced myself to use Ubuntu for 2 months, which required me to figure out how to install WINE and Microsoft Office. It was a pain, and after two months I put Windows back on it for dual-boot and ease of use purposes but largely used Linux once I got over the learning hump.

I'd suggest setting up a Level 1 hypervisor like VMware or Proxmox so that you can have multiple things running at once independent of each other, but a Level 2 hypervisor like KVM works just as well, but you have to make sure that you don't break the host OS somehow hahaha

I'm a Linux System Engineer now 🤓

[–] [email protected] 6 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Yeah, I really only started to learn, when I started resisting the urge to reinstall everything if something goes wrong and instead start trying to properly fix it.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago

I would always crawl back to Windows, so that's why I forced myself to just use Linux and force myself to fix everything that popped up, that was the key moment.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Yeah actually somewhat of a related experience I been using Linux for 3 years, 2-3 months on Ubuntu then manjaro one week and skipped next to arch till now ( hopped into nix and artix for a while too ).

The experience I have i gained through installing arch from scratch fixing things playing with Wayland and pipewire from the early days.

I am bit scared is of the edge cases, I have a software engineering background, or actually I still into it and was looking for some sources fro the most common problems and how to diagnosi edge case ones.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago

Nice, so you already have the groundwork laid. It's a constant learning experience!

[–] [email protected] 0 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

idk how people do this.

  1. I try using linux.
  2. I try playing games.
  3. it says "bad platform" and closes.

like what do you do? force the emulation harder?

[–] [email protected] 7 points 11 months ago (2 children)

I've never seen an error that just says "bad platform".

Fixing computer problems is essentially just being good at searching for stuff related to your problem. For example in your problem it would just be googling "Linux bad platform ≤name of game>" and guaranteed someone else has had the same problem and either them or someone else has figured out a fix for it. You then apply that fix, if that doesn't work, try the next result. If it gives you a new problem, rinse and repeat.

Look up the XKCD comic about fixing a computer, that's literally how we do it. My dad asked me a similar question to yours, I literally printed out the comic and taped it next to the computer and said "this is what I do".

About 2 years ago (I've been working from home for the past 3 years, a week here or there was spent at my parents), years after I had printed out that comic, he said "I just realized that your job is essentially knowing how to look for the information you need and how to apply it when you find it". He's an electrician, so not really the same set of skills haha.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 11 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Thanks, I was too lazy to look it up.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago

No problem!

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

yeah, you're right. The magic for me is when you dealt so much with this that you just know common errors (like reading java errors). And the bad part is when the google it part doesn't work.

like recently I figured out that my mouse sends different packets wired and wireless. long story short wireless works bad. And I only found one source, that led to another([1], [2], [3]) but got to lazy caz I just plug my mouse in and the problem is gone, lol

[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Yeah, you run into common (or uncommon but repeatable) errors often that you're either like "I know exactly how to handle this" or "I remember running into this before but just need to jog my memory real quick..."

I had a similar odd issue with my HDDs. I had 20 HDDs in my system of various ages, and they would seemingly randomly throw shit tons of R/W checksum errors and drop out of its assigned zpool. It was almost never the same drive. SMART said the drive was perfectly fine. It would happen on brand new drives I got a week ago and drives that were years old. I swapped power cables, SATA/SAS controllers (three different HBAs and 3 onboard controllers) and cables, bought a UPS, etc... and nothing seemed to work. I didn't think it was a PSU issue since I had a 1.5 KW PSU and my Kill-A-Watt meter was only showing about 600w at full load. This took literal months of troubleshooting. Someone on Reddit finally suggested trying another PSU or limiting the amount of drives attached to the PSU. I bought a cheap 400w PSU and connected about 8 drives to that... and all the errors stopped.

It turns out that there wasn't enough power supplied on the 5v rails to write the data without errors 100% of the time, but it had enough power supplied on the 12v rail to spin all the motors. First time in 25 years I'd ever seen that, but that was also the first time I've ever had like 20 drives connected to one PSU. I was literally about to throw in the towel because drives dropped out on a daily basis, but after like 2 or 3 total dropped no more usually failed.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Oh wow, I feel for you. I bet when u did solve it it felt wonderful. That's the high I'm chasing with software at least.

also side note, as I feel like this thread is over: DANG I love this platform. I'm not even alive for 20 years and your not the first guy on here who gives me free advice from 20+ years of experience. This shit is pure gold for someone who wants to learn. And it's not even like I'm here to use people, I stayed because how kind and helpful everyone is.

Anyone who reads this in the future, you're the good side of the internet. I'm showing some threads to my friends from time to time and if it's more then 3 sentences they're like "ah, wall of text, I ain readin allat".

[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago

Yeah it was a massive relief! I'm always willing to help and share all of the knowledge I've gained over the years, gotta make use of it somehow! Back when I was your age I felt the same way, I was part of a private hacking/security community and dudes would spout out stuff about Linux, Windows, and network tech that I had no idea about and I was always thinking "I aim to be like you some day" 😊

[–] [email protected] 12 points 11 months ago (1 children)

I used to Google for help, but the thing about Google is you have to know the correct technical terms, but when learning Linux, there are many unknown unknowns. And then you have to trawl through am the answers.

Now, any time I enter a command and get errors, or if I don't understand something in the logs, I'll copy paste it into perplexity.ai - if necessary, it'll ask for clarification. But mostly, it'll suggest various causes and solutions, with explanation.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 11 months ago (1 children)

You also could use duckduckgo or some other search engine as google doesn't produce the best results.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago (2 children)

Duck Duck Go's answers have been getting worse along with Google's.
I don't want to go back to Google but I don't think I can stay with DDG.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago

Although it's not free, Kagi has been a dream

[–] Hammerheart 2 points 11 months ago

Ive been using startpage lately

[–] [email protected] 9 points 11 months ago

There's a channel "learnlinuxtv" on YouTube that is pretty good. I haven't looked in a while but I watched their entire course on proxmox. They also create books.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Does the group have any archive, mailing lists, ticket system, etc, where they work on and document the work that they have been doing?

Past questions and answers will tell you common issues, solutions, should point you towards the areas where you need to focus.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

The group till recently was pretty much a cult thing, even tough they hosted large foss events associated with others groups.

I entered into a kinda of redesigning fase since now they have a budget they have to document everything.

Short awser kinda off, but not really.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 11 months ago (2 children)

"The Linux Command Line" by William Shotts is a fairly comprehensive guide to basic use, you can find a link to the .pdf here: https://linuxcommand.org/tlcl.php

[–] [email protected] 5 points 11 months ago

This is my go-to recommendation for anyone wanting to learn the Linux CLI

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago

I am familiar with command line, but will check it out, still ought explore the full potential of journalctl.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

Ask your Linux group. Seriously. They should know best what kinds of issues their 'users' frequently face and what kind of information there is.

I learned Linux by doing. Set up a webserver, set up a network share, assemble a RAID with 2 old HDDs. Install Steam and play around a bit. Try LaTex and write your next homework assignment with it. Set up a Python / R / C++ development environment. All of that is good practice and you'll understand the concepts and specific issues once you do it yourself. Imho that's better than a theoretical course. You can do this in VMs or find old hardware. Some people in such groups have good connections.

Also a university library should have some free (for you) material (books) on Linux.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago (1 children)

LaTeX was my entry point into plain text (and honestly computing in general), really good recommendation.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

Thanks. Yeah I spent some time with it and drew some finite-state machines with TikZ(?), other diagrams, we assembled a few physics homework assignment scripts to tidy the data from experiments, do linear regression and generate beautiful diagrams. It also taught me a bit about typesetting and proper formatting. I 'wasted' quite some time with it but a homework assignment in TeX looks almost like a scientific paper. Depending on the later career it's a good skill to have. And I still prefer writing stuff with that instead of fighting LibreOffice. YMMV, since I also like programming and prefer text and the command line over GUIs.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago

Just installing, gentoo or arch and using them teaches you alot about how your system works