What I learned from installing Linux 1000 times.

[blackbelt_jones]

Yes, I have installed Linux approximately 1000 times. Yes, I am crazy.

I wouldn't recommend such an extreme and compulsive exercise for anyone who doesn't have to do it, but when I came here with a background in the humanities, and some diagnosed psychiatric problems, I couldn't understand the simplest advice I would get here, and the manuals might as well have been written in chinese. This was the deepest interaction I could manage with my Linux system. It was all I could do, so I did it. And I kept doing it.

What did I learn from installing Linux 1000 times? To be honest, after number 150 or so, not very much. I do believe that you gain a certain intuitive knowledge from watching the list as the packages copy from disk to disk. And experiencing different distros give you some sense of what they have in common, but none of that is any substitute for the experience of solving problems. The most important thing that I gained was the sense that I could fix almost anything... and therefore, I could try almost anything. You have to be unfamiliar with technology to understand how important to come by that was. I was fearless. I owned the box.

At this point, I have to unlearn at least some of that recklessness. You have to learn to respect and value and preserve your data, or you'll never have any data worth preserving.

Mostly, I was just keeping busy while waiting for the thunderbolt to hit. And it finally did. Suddenly, I was solving problems, using the man pages and reading the manuals that I had accumulated over the past three years.

Now I am consciously taking my Linux education into a more traditional direction. I am confining myself to one distro that is actually two distros (Red Hat/Fedora) and reading the books chapter by chapter.

What I did worked for me, but I sure wouldn't reccomend it for anyone else. What I would reccomend for any newbie, particularly those who think they may lack the necessary geek DNA is: If you really want this like I did, do what you have to do, struggle however you must. The harder it is to get Linux, the more you're going to love it when it belongs to you. This is just about the most fun I've ever had with learning something.

[ions]

To anyone new to Linux do not follow this man's path. Install a couple and get the feel for a few things but stick to something within a reasonable amount of time. Blackbelt and I have talked about his tendency to install over and over again on IRC and to be honest I do not see his logic. It confuses me. You don't get better at something by doing the same first few steps over and over and over and over and over again. You get better by moving forward. Use Linux. Don't just install it.

[Hayl]

LOL.

All I can think of is that all these /dev/random posts are some sort of attempt to bloat post-count or possibly just to be irritating/annoying for the heck of it :P

[dkeav]

installing linux is the easiest part of using it

dig in, find something wrong with it and figure out how to fix it, so that you learn something

[loopback48]

"...Mostly, I was just keeping busy while waiting for the thunderbolt to hit. And it finally did..."

Yep, that's me. I'm dyslectic. Or have a bit of it. Things come hard to me. After a bit of head pounding it finally sinks in. But it takes a long time for me.

I can't say I've install Linux a 1,000 times but I can say I've installed it a whole bunch of times.

Patience is what I've learned using and installing Linux. Thats for sure. It was so fustrating at the begining. I just started wanting to learn how Windows works. And then this Linux thing came up. Fumbling and stumbling, there I go. Jumping off the deep end. And landing hard.

Some things will never come to me. That's OK. To quote one of my favorite movie characters "A man has to know his limitations..." I'll take it as it come. And like BlackBelt, it'll hit me like a thunder bolt out of the blue.

If nothing else I've learned patience. Yes, I think I'll credit installing Linux over and over with giving me that.

[tecknophreak]

LOL.

All I can think of is that all these /dev/random posts are some sort of attempt to bloat post-count or possibly just to be irritating/annoying for the heck of it :P

what? :D



posts + 1

[blackbelt_jones]

Blackbelt and I have talked about his tendency to install over and over again on IRC and to be honest I do not see his logic. It confuses me.

Actually, he keeps messing with me over this. He brings it up whenever I enter the #justlinux chat. He keeps telling me that I confuse him, as if being confused makes him right... and when I don't denounce my own experience, he says something ironic like: "I can see you're not going to let go of this." :rolleyes: Although I have told him, as I'm telling you now, that I have moved past this phase. Ions was most definiteley the inspiration for this thread, and although he seems to lack the imagination to acknowledge different minds from his own, he happens to be right. DON'T do this, unless you absolutely have to... and RTFM, by the way, or if you can't actually READ the manual, at least carry it around, try to absorb a sentence or two during your lunch break, fall asleep with your face in the book and drool onto the page. Whatever you gotta do.

All I got for my 1000 installs was the ability to settle down and do what I wish i could have done in the first place, choose a distro, set up a system and read the manual-- and anybody who can do that from the beginning really ought to. I couldn't, and whether or not you believe that, or find it confusing, really has no bearing on the fact. Believe it or not, the world is filled with people who simply can't read a computer manual. Someday, Linux will be accesible to them, too. (It's not just the dumbed-down technology that makes it possible to use Windows without reading the manual; it's the utter ubiquity.) For now, those people may need to start smaller, work harder, and be very very persistent.

[Seph64]

I settled down with Gentoo Linux after figuring out that I did not like any other Distro as much as Gentoo (like 10th or 11th distro hop).

ions is right though, you can only learn so much just by installing Linux soo many time. Actually you only learn how to install Linux by installing Linux.

You probably learn more by breaking something and fixing it. Hopefully I learned some new things today since I made a handful of mistakes while installing apps for my LFS install today (or yesterday).

[Parcival]

Let's see... I have three distros so far in my linux experience:


SuSE: Great newbie distro, easy to use, great manuals. Gets boring quite fast.
Gentoo: Linux for the 31337 masses. The temptation to be bleeding edge was too big, though, so I was troubleshooting my system half of the time rather than working with it.
Debian/Ubuntu: if Linux is a medication, Debian/Ubuntu is perfectly dosed for me.

I don't wanna miss any of these three distros as they all have been important for my learning curve. Funny thing is: when I'm trying to solve a problem in Debian, I still look it up in the Gentoo handbook first. :)

[tlyons]

I am confining myself to one distro that is actually two distros (Red Hat/Fedora) and reading the books chapter by chapter.
I don't believe you. After all the preaching you've done about Debian? :confused:

Now I'm confused, too.

How many computers do you have? If you have a spare, use it exclusively as a distro tester. I've got a 500mhz AMD-K6-II that exists for no reason other than to satisfy my morbid curiousity about how Distro 'Y' looks/works/feels. Sometimes I'll write a review about it, other times I don't think it would be worth the effort. Then I'll go back to my main computer (that still runs Debian, and may do so for forever, despite Debian's shortcomings).

I don't know how many times I've installed Linux but it's less than 100 (even counting the tests/reviews). I've learned very little by switching distros or testing different ones, except that Debian is the one that feels most inherently comfortable to me. Don't ask me why. It just works the way I want it to. I can understand completely why some people don't like Debian and feel like Slackware fits like an old, cotton shirt. It's just comfortable for them.

I've learned a lot about Linux by:
- Reading a ton of books from the Library (about distros, applications, commands, and even historical and biographical stuff about Linux and GNU).
- Reading message boards like this.
- Trying to help other people on boards like this (in trying to help, I'm forced to think, try new things, and learn from it).
- Asking for help (no person can ever be the expert at everything, unless they're the Nerd King)
- Becoming an ACTIVE member of a local Linux Users Group.
and, most importantly...
- Not switching from Debian.

How can be learning by not switching?
- I already use what feels best to me. I know that.
- There is no magic distro free of problems.
- I'll only learn by trying to solve the problems.
- I feel more confident and competent in solving the problem (even with help from others -- being able to ask for help is a strength).

If you want to use Fedora, I think that's OK, but stay there and tough it out. Then you'll really learn something.

- T.

[blackbelt_jones]

I don't believe you. After all the preaching you've done about Debian? :confused:

All the preaching that I've done about Debian was based on my belief that it's a good newbie distro, and I have somewhat moderated on that position.

Why did I switch? Because :

1) I 'm into reading the manuals now, and I like the slick, well-written manuals that are available for Red Hat/Fedora, especially through safari books, where I subscribe.

2) It's a popular business distro.

3) Once I learned how to use apt4rpm, Red Hat started to make a lot more sense.

It's really Centos (an RHEL clone) that I like, but the manual (http://safari.oreilly.com/?x=1&mode=toc&sortKey=title&sortOrder=asc&view=&xmlid=0131470248&k=null&g=&catid=itbooks.opsys.linux&s=1&b=1&f=1&t=1&c=1&u=0&r=&o=1&n=1&d=1&p=1&a=0) that I'm reading now, also covers Fedora, as do nearly all of them, so I decided to install Fedora on my secondary hard drive, instead of Debian. I may never use my Fedora system, but since I'm going to be reading about Fedora, it's nice to have it handy.

Debian is definitley cooler than Red Hat, but I want some RPM chops. I used Debian for a year, loved it, and love it still. If I go back to it in a year or two, will that make me such a horrible distro-hopper?

When people criticize me, I get annoyed because instead of criticizing me for being crazy or stupid (which is an indelicate way of putting it, but fairly valid) they criticize me for being lazy, for lacking persistence-- and I reject that out of hand. Nobody does anything 1000 times because they lack perisistence.

Ions is right. Do not follow my path, unless you absolutely have to-- but if you need to take a crazy, stupid, obsessive path, you might as well create your own. I didn't succeed at becoming reasonably Linux literate because I installed it 1000 times. I succeeded because I stuck around. That's the secret... stick around! :) If it worked for me, it will work for just about anyone.

[XiaoKJ]

All I got for my 1000 installs was the ability to settle down and do what I wish i could have done in the first place, choose a distro, set up a system and read the manual

This is probably where you got it wrong. Its obviously choose the distro, read the manual _BEFORE_ installing it.

ya.... I agree with Ions that you really need more patience to get over your problem instead of reinstalling and hoping it goes away.

Well, still I have to say that your endurance is remarkably solid. 1000 times is a no-no for me... not even gentoo warrants that. Yes.... you stick too well around...

[blackbelt_jones]

This is probably where you got it wrong. Its obviously choose the distro, read the manual _BEFORE_ installing it.

ya.... I agree with Ions that you really need more patience to get over your problem instead of reinstalling and hoping it goes away.


Yes, but WHAT problem are you referring to, per se?

And did I get it wrong? That's an interesting-- and pretty futile-- question. The path I took eventually got me somewhere, but could I have done that in less time? I just don't know, and if you think you know without having met me... I just don't know about that, either. I definitely don't think I could have possibly read the manual before installing the distro. That just wasn't going to happen. I suppose that's because I lack patience... so what am I supposed to do about that? Will myself to be patient? Download patience off the internet?

Whatever my limitations are, I overcame them by working assiduously within them. Now I've got a triple boot, I've got all my drivers installed, I'm compiling programs from source, and learning RPM file management. When I have a problem, I know how to find the answer, and I can generally solve my problems without any help. And now, I CAN read the manual, I AM reading the manual, and I HAVE chosen a distro to work within. I'm doing what I'm supposed to do, and I'm enjoying my success. When people criticize the road I took to get here, it sort of pisses me off. I did the best I could, worked hard to get here, and, more to the point, I FINALLY DID GET HERE. I have a right to feel good about what I've accomplished, and I do.

[q6z4k]

ya.... I agree with Ions that you really need more patience to get over your problem instead of reinstalling and hoping it goes away.
When I started using Linux, I used root account, and that cost me alot of trouble. So for my own stupidity I was forsed to reinstall Linux many times, until I found JL and started to read books. Now I'm still a newbie, but atleast I can solve most of my problems.

Reinstalling sometimes can be a pain. I bought an old Compaq laptop. I had so much trouble with it. It can't boot from a CD, doesn't have a USB. I used boot floppies to start the installation, but the problem was Slackware for some reason didn't find the pcmcia Sony CD Drive (I know that I could recompile the kernel and added PCMCIA support etc..), so I used mandrake boot floppies, mandrake found the CD drive, but the CD drive didn't want to read the mandrake CD, so I burned about 4 mandrake CD-1's until it started to read a cheap CD-R "ACME". Then after Installing mandrake I got kernel panic, but I didn't care to search and fix this, because I wanted slackware. Then I downloaded Win98 boot floppie, Sony CD drive drivers, put them on the floppie, booted it and copied Slackware CD to fat partition. Then I got another problem, setup didn't find any packages because dos only copied 8 character long file names. So I had to do manual installation:
installpkg -root /mnt/hda1 *.tgz
First I installed almost everything, but since I only have 4GB hard drive, I reinstalled only required packages. Then I had Slackware, without any extra packages. Then I downloaded FluxBox, installed artwiz fonts (http://artwizaleczapka.sourceforge.net/) and Compilers and finaly this was over! It was a headache, but it was definetly worth it. :cool:

[GmarAppledude]

I think I have the opposite problem, Sure I did a bit of distro hopping and a few installs for the few couple couple of months but for the last four months or so I have been using Linux for nearly everything (at home). In other words I think I completely stopped fiddling with and hence stopped learning Linux. I had set everything up nicely and just used it. I recently even changed to a new motherboard and completely ruined my XP install, Mepis however continued and continues to work absolutely fine.

I havn't used this forum much over the last four months, and have probably been missing out a lot on news and new information. I probably wouldn't even remember all the information I made an effort in learning. Worse still I was just getting to know you all here and on IRC and now regret not keeping it up, sorry guys more effort in the future. I'm off to the states tomorrow so see you next week on IRC.

[bsm2001]

To: BBJ

Linux is about comfort. I'm quite comfortable with Mandriva. Been using it since Version 8.2. Still use it today. I have tried many different distros and they are nice and have there good and bad just like Mandriva. I settled on one distro and am still learning everything I can about it and that is the only way to get things done. I hope you have gotten all you need now from Fedora. For the benefit of all here.

[janet loves bill]

I wouldn't recommend such an extreme and compulsive exercise for anyone who doesn't have to do it

everyone here suffers some sort of obsessive/compulsive disorder..........heh, some people here insist on upgrading their kernels.......Linus T. says people who do this have the "shakes"....

.....and Some people here constantly have to be running "current"........and still some people here just have to have the newest and recent "eye candy apps"........LOL....

....Me I suffer as well......I have the obsession to build and re-build LFS systems................We are all crazy to some degree---:)

[blackbelt_jones]

You know, reinstalling just isn't fun anymore. :(

I wanted to learn about RHEL, so I simply took CentOS and set up it as my main home desktop. I added video players, a Gnutella client, the works. I installed Fedora as an afterthought. I wanted to take advantage of the fact that my Red Hat manuals all dealt with Fedora as well as RHEL. Why spend all this time reading about it if I wasn't going to use it?

Well, I think I may have stumbled into something good. There's a lot of great online resources available for Fedora, and no doubt a lot of the information applies to RHEL. So running both makes a lot of sense from an educational standpoint-- but unfortunately, I have it backwards. I'm running CentOS (RHEL) as my home desktop system, and Fedora as a purely academic exercise. What I need to do is reverse that, Set up Fedora as my home desktop, and use CentOS to experiment with more enterprise-type applications, like maybe an apache webserver.

Sadly, this means that I now want to take CentOS off the 200 GB harddrive (where it occupies all but the 20 GB I gave to Windows and the 2 GB I reserved for swap) and put it on the 70 GB harddrive where I now have Fedora installed. And vice versa. The horror! The horror! :eek:

Very soon now, this madness will end.

To: BBJ

Linux is about comfort. I'm quite comfortable with Mandriva. Been using it since Version 8.2. Still use it today. I have tried many different distros and they are nice and have there good and bad just like Mandriva. I settled on one distro and am still learning everything I can about it and that is the only way to get things done. I hope you have gotten all you need now from Fedora. For the benefit of all here.

You know, I'm not sure that you all understand my position. I was a serial reinstaller, but not really much of a distro-hopper. (Not counting the last few weeks, when I spent days doing nothing but testing out a whole bunch of distros, trying to figure out where I wanted to go next.)

For the past year, since they came out with the new installer, I was all about Debian. I'd check out other distros, I thought it was kind of fun, but I'd reinstall debian almost immediately. Now, I want to go back to Red Hat (my first love) for a while largely because I like the Red Hat manuals-- nice, slick, professional up-to-date publications that are specific to my chosen distro. I subscribe to Safari Books, an online e-books sevrvice, and they've got four or five big, nicely illustrated Red Hat/Fedora manuals that have published or revised since 2004. They've got one Debian manual that was dated 1999. Up to now, it's been all about being persistent, intuitive, and hands-on, but I'm hoping that the next phase of my linux self-training is going to be much more consciously planned and all about RTFM. (http://safari.oreilly.com/?x=1&mode=toc&sortKey=title&sortOrder=asc&view=&xmlid=0131470248&k=null&g=&catid=itbooks.opsys.linux&s=1&b=1&f=1&t=1&c=1&u=0&r=&o=1&n=1&d=1&p=1&a=0)

Plus there's the fact that RPM seems to be what people are using out there. I recently read that a significant majority of Linux users in the U.S. use Red Hat, which is interesting, because I don't recall seeing a lot of Red Hat users in here. While I have always considered "Just Linux" to be a great site, a vital and fun community, it never occurred to me that we may not be representative of the Linux mainstream (of course, you also have to consider that we're not all Americans.) Is there a huge contingent of Fedora users out there who are neither confined to windows like most people nor obsessed with Linux like we are? If so, I would surely like to meet some of these people. They are obviously much cooler than me... or probably anyone else in here, for that matter.

But I'm way off my point, which is that I'm going back to Red Hat for a while not because I'm trying to solve a technical problem by finding an "easier" distro, but because after some consideration and a bit of test-driving, this is the direction where I want to take my Linux education now. So there.

My god, I sound defensive! I was plain crazy to start this thread.

[Parcival]

Very soon now, this madness will end.

That's wishful thinking. When I was leaving Windows I figured I'll leave my system untouched from now on since Linux is so much more stable and not go through the craze of reinstalling twice a year anymore. By now I have grown to accept that as long as there are computers out there, I will always be tempted to try something new.

I recently read that a significant majority of Linux users in the U.S. use Red Hat, which is interesting, because I don't recall seeing a lot of Red Hat users in here.

Me neither. I wonder if they threw the corporate desktops into this statistic.

I was plain crazy to start this thread.

Everyone can make his own challenges. :p

[blackbelt_jones]

That's wishful thinking. When I was leaving Windows I figured I'll leave my system untouched from now on since Linux is so much more stable and not go through the craze of reinstalling twice a year anymore. By now I have grown to accept that as long as there are computers out there, I will always be tempted to try something new.


Well, like I said before, it's just not fun anymore. I've reached the point where the surest and best way to try something new is to not try something new.

Last night I set up Fedora on the larger partition, so that's done, done, and done. I think my reasons for doing that were pretty sound-- so I won't have to do it later. I'll install Centos on the smaller partition today. I'm not going to be ready to do any real setting up of the CentOS system until I've done considerably more reading. Now that I've finally mastered the multiboot, I might reserve 10 GB of the 70 GB hard drive to indulge my vice of playing with different distros-- but I doubt that I'll be using it any time soon.

I'm not going to say that I'm done with reinstalling... but now that my course is set, I can't see how that wouldn't be some kind of copout, to be avoided at all cost-- and I probably will be able to avoid it. If I have a problem that I really can't fix, better to to take my computer to a LUG meeting.

All the preaching that I've done about Debian was based on my belief that it's a good newbie distro, and I have somewhat moderated on that position.

Let me elaborate.

Debian was a great newbie distro for me. I loved being able to use such an advanced and powerful system-- but there were two problems I never did solve. I couldn't get my nvidia drivers installed, and I couldn't get the mplayer browserplug-in running. I'm not much of a gamer-- so until very recently, it didn't occur to me that I wanted to install a new driver. I would warn a newbie about these problems before I reccomended Debian, and I might mention that Mepis solves these problems pretty handily. It uses the unstable repositories, so I might suggest the apt-get dist-upgrade command over the apt-get upgrade command.

Both of these problems are pretty easy to get past with Red Hat-- and yeah, getting that last 2 per cent of the desktop in place is nice, but I believe that at this point I could almost certainly solve them for debian if I was so inclined, without too much effort. Like I said, that's not why I swtiched.

A big reason why i "preached" about Debian as a newbie distro was that I found it so easy to get apt-get running-- but now I've learned about how to get apt-get for different distros, and I have taken to preaching about apt-get. Indeed, there are two messages that I would give to every newbie:

1) Get to know apt-get (or urpmi, or yum), the sooner the better.

2) Learn how to do simple file management grunt work at the command line (cp, mv, rm, mkdir, etc), the sooner the better.

As a bonus, I would teach newbies how to use wget. I was present in IRC when a newbie used wget for the first time, and I could sense his surprise and delight. I had responded the same way. Wget is one of those command line applications that puts you on notice that you're not running dos anymore. I am UNIX, says wget. Hear me roar. :cool:

[IsaacKuo]

You'll be back. ;)

[tlyons]

You'll be back. ;)
<nods in agreement>

- T.

[blackbelt_jones]

Oh yes. I'll be back all right. Give it a year. Debian is King, and always will be.

As matter of fact, maybe I'll put Debian on that spare 10 GB partition, and try to solve those problems with my spare time. It seems a shame to leave Debian with unfinished business hanging in the air.

[tlyons]

Oh yes. I'll be back all right. Give it a year. Debian is King, and always will be.

Yep. Never say never. :D If you loved her once, I doubt any split will be permanent.

- T.

I'm dating Sid now. I never met a Deb I didn't like. ;)

[blackbelt_jones]

Yeah, I went ahead and put in a Sarge partition... just for luck, or for old time's sake, or whatever. You never know when easy access to all those those thousands of software packages will be useful.

[beetlespace]

I used to be one of those guys that installed one disro one week (or sometimes even day!), then the next install a completely different one. This was largely due to the fact that I was new to Linux and there is so much out there to experience.

I started off experimenting with SuSE. This was the first time I actually gave Linux an honest shot. I then got frustrated then went back to Windoze. A few months later, I gave it another try, this time even more determined to make it work. XP had just come out and... IT STUNK! I had XP on my PC less than 24 hours before wiping the hard drive and going back to 98!

Then SuSE came out with a new version. I bought it and tried it out. I loved it. As a poster mentioned earlier, I got bored with it. So for about a year I was trying every possible distro I could get my hands on again. I eventually settled with SuSE 9.2 when it was released and have been with it ever since. That's the longest I have ever stuck with single Linux flavor. It is currently the OS on my file and dialup server.

Within the past two weeks I have gotten the bug again to try something different. I will be the first to admit I am a Distrowatch.com addict! Then something happened. Kind of like the "thunderbolt" blackbelt_jones mentioned. I was experimenting with Slackware and successfully installed it. This was a huge step for me! Anything beyond the normal point and click install was beyond me. But this one made me do a little more than select my language and keyboard layout. I actually had to delete and make partitions. Wow!

After logging in to a shiny new KDE desktop for the first time using Slack, I was excited again. Then I researched and figured out how to fix something ON MY OWN! Wow, what a feeling! I want more of this. I want to stick with one Distro and know it inside out. This is the one for me!

My point of this whole long winded post is this, the difference in distros is what makes Linux so FLIPPIN' AWSOME!!! But, kind of like blackbelt_jones said, by switching distros more than switching underwear, you only learn how to install. You don't learn about the real content of the operating system.

To each his own when it comes to what you choose. If you choose Fedora, GREAT! Learn all you can about Fedora and become the person we come to for the occasional HELP! I DON"T KNOW WHAT TO DO! I want to be able to dig deep into Slackware and know everything about it I can. But when a new distro comes to the surface, I might still want to give it a quick run around the block. That's why I have a PC just for this. I even have one that runs just XP. (That's another post) It's not only about learning the OS, but also giving back. That's what Linux is all about, community and trying to better things though helping others. Even trying new things. Oh, and HAVE FUN!
:)
:)

[lnx_nu_b]

I definitely haven't done it 1000 times, but back in the day when I was playing with Mandrake on a test box, I would install, edit a config, mess it up and reinstall. I think in a period of time from 10PM to 5AM I probably installed/reinstalled Mandrake about 12 times. But by 5:30AM I had learned what I had set out to learn and it was on to something else. I've got GREAT notes from that venture!

There was also a time after I got DSL, that I was downloading a different Live CD every other hour and by the end of the day I had about 6 different Live CD's downloaded. I would boot up into them, make sure the usual stuff worked (printer, digi cam, gaim, open office, firefox, various other user tools) and then move on.

I had written up little reviews on a local message board, but that had since been shut down. Wished I had them.

With Ubuntu I installed 5.04 which ran great, ran through the unofficial guide getting everything set up there, and figured, hey it works, now what. I went to Breezy, which was in Beta still and had NO success with it getting it to install. Now I'm looking more for a stable OS vs. the latest and greatest (on my notebook anyways) and went back to 5.04. I also had to try Kubuntu, but was too used to Gnome, so went back. So that would be Ubuntu 5 or 6 times.

Wonder how many more installs I'll do in my life time.

[beetlespace]

Wonder how many more installs I'll do in my life time.

Now that is a great question!!
:D

[dbfruth]

1000 times! man that seems a little excessive to me.

I have learned a ton from screwing up my box to the point that most would just say fsck it and reinstall but resisting the urge and fixing whatever it was that I messed up. If I had reinstalled I would not have known what went wrong. I would not be able to fix it the next time it happened and I would have wasted a ton of time getting everything perfect again.

When I first started using linux. if something didn't work I would just live without it. (who needed sound anyway) but as I experimented more (and screwed things up more) I started to challenge myself to get everything working from the easy stuff like soundcards to the more obscure like our network copy machine.

Just yesterday I compiled the newest 2.6 kernel and when I went to reboot it locked up with a kernel panic on bootup. No big I thought, I will just boot from one of my other installed kernels. Nope kernel panic. It took a few hours to figure out what went wrong but when I got it working I was able to add another checkmark to the list of things I know about Linux.

If you install 1000 time you become an expert at installing linux. If you install once and fix stuff and tweek you eventually become an expert with the whole operating system. The install is only 1% of Linux. There is a vast wonderful world to those that resist the reinstall temptation.

[blackbelt_jones]

1000 times! man that seems a little excessive to me.

I have learned a ton from screwing up my box to the point that most would just say fsck it and reinstall but resisting the urge and fixing whatever it was that I messed up. If I had reinstalled I would not have known what went wrong. I would not be able to fix it the next time it happened and I would have wasted a ton of time getting everything perfect again.

When I first started using linux. if something didn't work I would just live without it. (who needed sound anyway) but as I experimented more (and screwed things up more) I started to challenge myself to get everything working from the easy stuff like soundcards to the more obscure like our network copy machine.

Just yesterday I compiled the newest 2.6 kernel and when I went to reboot it locked up with a kernel panic on bootup. No big I thought, I will just boot from one of my other installed kernels. Nope kernel panic. It took a few hours to figure out what went wrong but when I got it working I was able to add another checkmark to the list of things I know about Linux.

If you install 1000 time you become an expert at installing linux. If you install once and fix stuff and tweek you eventually become an expert with the whole operating system. The install is only 1% of Linux. There is a vast wonderful world to those that resist the reinstall temptation.

Of course it's excessive! And I don't do it any more.

I think that if I had access to documentation that was more oriented toward the desktop, the beginner, and to a user rather than a reader (or maybe if I had a helpful non-virtual friend, or one of these computer shops ijn the are knew the first thing about Linux) I might have cut that down to two or three hundred... but I had what I had, and I did what I had to do.

I have been diagnosed with psychiatric problems, and I take medication, and this has contributed to my difficulties with reading documentation. However, the world is full of people who find or would find most Linux documentation as difficulat and frustrating as I did. Most of them would never think of trying Linux, or would throw up their hands and go back to Windows. Instead, I installed Linux 1000 times. I'm glad I did, because I finally did get somewhere. I can read the docs much more easily, can do everytrhing I used to do with Windows with a lot more power and control, and I'm getting ready to take it further by setting up a webserver and learning shell scripting.

You have to think of training wheels. When I was eight years old and I got my first bike, it had training wheels. Without them, I might not be able to ride a bicycle today... but I stopped using them a long long time ago. The things I did in the beginning, not only installing all the time but manging permissions by logging on graphically as root, etc, which allowed me to get my hands on Linux right away and learn by doing were useful and valid only as the equivalent of training wheels. If I hadn't moved on to better techniques, it would be just like keeping the training wheels on the bike for forty years. However, if I hadn't done it in the first place, I don't think I'd be here today.

[pickarooney]

Have you tried OCDLinux? ;)

[chzlchp]

I would love to learn Linux, but my energies (and available time resources) go somewhere else. I am trying to learn programming (and, in particular, Python) so I can write the next earth-shaking land surveying application. Linux is only a medium that hosts my Python works. I have learned [only] enough to create, edit (Vim), print and move files, as I wish. What particular distro I'm doing this on doesn't mean squat. Linux is transparent. I look thru it toward the improvement/success I'm pursuing on a different level. What is the point...of dabbling in this and that distro, and then that one over there? What happens when (and after) the latest variant is installed, tweaked, and put to bed? Is that the whole point? To what end?

[Syngin]

Hehe

Welcome to the first session of DIA. (Distro Installers Anonymous)

Honestly though, I do think that it takes at least a small touch of obsessive / compulsive behavior to spend the time necessary to get into the heart and soul of Linux.

[blackbelt_jones]

What is the point...of dabbling in this and that distro, and then that one over there? What happens when (and after) the latest variant is installed, tweaked, and put to bed? Is that the whole point? To what end?

For me, that was an apprenticeship. If you consider Linux "transparent", that means you have a better understanding than I did at the time. I came to Linux from a very non-geek background, and I needed a period to get comfortable with operating systems.

Now I'm using SUSE as a desktop, and a Debian system for backup and storage, and that'll do for now, thank you very much.

Recently, I installed SUSE 10.0 on my friend's brand new 64-bit custom-built computer. It was the most complicated installl I've ever done, and the fact that it was 64-bit took me totally by surprise. I had no experience with 64-bit. It turned out that I could use the 32 bit software I had brought with me, but I didn't know that right away. Also, my friend forgot to write down his Windows key number.

Long story short, getting a half-way decent SUSE system on his computer took an all-nighter, and in the early morning hours, my friend started to freak. I have to say that it was my extensive experience with installing and reinstalling that allowed me to stay cool and confident throughout. It was a great experience for me. I got to exhibit a little grace under pressure, and that was great for my self-esteem.

[asiB4]

When if first started playing with linux, I had the same issue. If something wasn't working just right, or I was unsure about a particular setup...I figured what the hay, I will reinstall and be good to go. Or I would get frustrated and give up, reinstall windows....then linux, and repeat this obsessive compulsive behavior for several weeks. :o This lasted through a few distributions, up until gentoo; anyrate. I wanted to learn more about linux, and thought gentoo would be an excellent candidate. It does take some time to get it up and running, everything configured by hand, etc, etc; so I learned rather quickly just because something isn't working just right....gonna have to fix it, go out in the internet and read...read...read, besides relying on another install process to take care of it for me. So with the help of multiple re-installations and moving to gentoo, I have learned 10x what I would have if I had just stayed with a borked setup. On the otherhand, I may have learned the same, had I just fixed it from the get go...but, I am just a touch of a slow learner on somethings. :D

Chad