I’m still pretty new to Linux so I break stuff pretty often, like recently I was trying to get opencl working with my amd gpu and I ended up causing every video I played to stutter constantly.
And I’ve been trying out new software to control fans or rgb and following guides making me enter commands until I figure out something that works I note it down so when I do a fresh install again I can easily configure it without all the trial and error etc and install only the software I found that I liked
That kinda makes sense at this stage. If you spend time understanding what those commands do, you’d understand how the system works, and most importantly how to not fuck it up. Keep in mind there’s a lot of misinformation and bad practices in guides out there. People who bare know more than you feel confident to share snippets without warning. Ten or twenty years ago much fewer people had experience with Linux and most people confident enough to write were technical people that knew what they were talking about. Destructive misinformation was less.
But yeah when you learn, the need or urge to reinstall disappears. I stopped reinstalling in 2014. Took me 9 years to unfuck my Windows brain and understand enough to not shoot myself in the feet. Main machine hasn’t been reinstalled since then. That’s with replacing multiple main boards, switching AMD > Intel > AMD, changing SSDs, going from single SSD to mdraid, increasing in size over time, etc.
I usually keep important stuff on my server but things like games and stuff I purge with the fresh install and just download the games I’m actively playing, also helps clear up any issues from installing random junk during the months between as I settle on what programs I like
That’s when you know it’s time for a fresh install
Sir, this is not Windows.
I’m still pretty new to Linux so I break stuff pretty often, like recently I was trying to get opencl working with my amd gpu and I ended up causing every video I played to stutter constantly.
And I’ve been trying out new software to control fans or rgb and following guides making me enter commands until I figure out something that works I note it down so when I do a fresh install again I can easily configure it without all the trial and error etc and install only the software I found that I liked
That plus distro hopping
That kinda makes sense at this stage. If you spend time understanding what those commands do, you’d understand how the system works, and most importantly how to not fuck it up. Keep in mind there’s a lot of misinformation and bad practices in guides out there. People who bare know more than you feel confident to share snippets without warning. Ten or twenty years ago much fewer people had experience with Linux and most people confident enough to write were technical people that knew what they were talking about. Destructive misinformation was less.
But yeah when you learn, the need or urge to reinstall disappears. I stopped reinstalling in 2014. Took me 9 years to unfuck my Windows brain and understand enough to not shoot myself in the feet. Main machine hasn’t been reinstalled since then. That’s with replacing multiple main boards, switching AMD > Intel > AMD, changing SSDs, going from single SSD to mdraid, increasing in size over time, etc.
Do you delete all your files on a reinstall? Documents, photos, videos, games?
I usually keep important stuff on my server but things like games and stuff I purge with the fresh install and just download the games I’m actively playing, also helps clear up any issues from installing random junk during the months between as I settle on what programs I like
Separate partitions for / and /home, save all your data, configs, etc. but you can still distrohop!
Nah, in a rolling distro it’s normal, they were mostly unused stuff hide in /home, and useless yay pkg.