Nearly always it's been during the live USB install of a dual-boot that a distro messes with the grub or installed grub to the USB disk itself. The fault lies with me because I'm almost blindly trusting the distro, but also with the distro for lacking proper yet succinct documentation during the install or configuration of partitions.
this post was submitted on 20 Mar 2025
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Linux
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No no no! When you break something in Linux systems you fix it. Starting over and reinstalling everything is what you do when you mess up on Windows.
Funny I did not expect so many people that resist starting over. Next time I'll give fixing stuff a shot :)
It is more about being lazy.
In most cases, where you havn't destroyed your filesystem, you can just boot another Linux from a USB stick, mount your filesystems to /mnt, chroot into it, and then investigate and fix there.
See the Archlinux wiki, even if you do not use Archlinux, it is great: https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Chroot
Generally yes. My exception was the time i accidentally nuked python in it's entirety...
Well, that could have been fixed by booting from an usb stick, chrooting into you real system and either downloading and (re)installing the python package this way, or, if your package manager depends on python, download the package in the Live Linux and extracting the python package into your system, and then reinstalling it, so the package management overwrites your "manual installation".
Could be tedious, but less so that having to reinstall everything IMO.
Fair, unfortunately it was a work machine that i needed operational again asap.
Luckily i image my machine monthly, so it was fairly straightforward to roll back.
I just spent 11 days on a dual boot repair in fstab, passwd, loads of ecryptfs, amongst other boot and login issues. Before restoring from the full system backup after getting mad to finally want to use my PC. 11 fucking days almost all day in terminal. TOO many partitions and too many folders inside of folders to get to my ecryptfs files. I got so lost LSing around.
After it all though, and it was an aneurism and a half. I still want to finish my goal and reinstall my dual boot this time correctly aiming the folders correctly.
Might help to draw it out on paper
But, when you're done, you'll be the Encrypted Dual-Boot God !
Pretty much everytime I try to do fancy stuff with the bootloader I get pretty close to nuking systems. Worst was my 1st UEFI system where I was trying to get rEFInd to show multiple OS to boot from... eventually gave up and went back to the warm embrace of GRUB
I just had 8 titles in boot menu all for the same OS. 🤌😅 I know exactly what I'm doing. It's a dual boot system.
If you take the plunge and switch to systemd-boot it's worth it. It's the only boot manager I've tried in the last decade that feels like an upgrade from GRUB.
🤔 Maybe I'll try that next time... I kinda feel loyal to Grub, it's been my friend for sooo looong.
I would actually be amazed if I ever bricked a PC fucking around with installing software to it. At the very worst, I might have to move a jumper pin to flash the CMOS and start fresh like I never even touched the thing. If somehow even that fails, it would be a unique experience.
Not sure you can fully brick a PC. Simple BIOS update and your back to scratch load an OS and go again. Hardware failure. That's where the bricking happens.
It's even better if your only internet connection is that computer you broke.
This is the nightmare of my last 2 weeks. Well 11 days.
Ah yes, reminds me of messing with my 1st pfSense firewall... I learned how good their recovery process was that evening
Just bricked my Proxmox install an hour ago and I had the pleasure to learn their recovery process sucks. (At least for my case)
Ah, yeah, you've just reminded me, I must move my stuff off proxmox when I get a chance.
I tried that proxmox backup thing when I first set it up, good god what a complex mess... backup & recovery needs to be as simple and as smooth as possible.
Great incentive to learn even faster
And enforces the value of installing documentation and source packages 😅
Never the kernel but just about every time I touch /etc/fstab I fuck something up. I've done that a lot....
I've messed fstab, passwd, and others up so many times. It's a stroke to fix it and not being able to use your system for days. Zaps the drive to even mess with the computer.
Oh, I typed that line wrong to mount the drive and because the non-os drive isn't detected you're only going to boot to emergency mode?
Cool cool cool.
Maybe 1 or 2 back when things were less stable, but any time I have used Linux in the past 7 years or so, and particularly since I started using Debian as my primary OS, I haven't had any problems outside of trying to get some windows applications to emulate correctly, and one time when I echo'd into sources.list with > instead of >>. Anything else is just stuff I had to learn, like my boot folder filling up with old images that have to be cleaned out occasionally.
If you want shit to just work when you want and stay out the way when you aren't using it. Debian of whatever source is what they call stability. I've done rolling, and bleeding edge. It's all a constant pain. Becomes a job to maintain or bug track or check logs. I'll never go back.
That was my thought as well.
Back when I was new to Linux, I tried a lot of different distros in virtualization for shorter periods of time, and of course ran into the issues that come with the cutting edge stuff.
Last year I wanted to install a distribution to my laptop properly as a test before putting it onto my desktop, and I came to that same conclusion because at the end of the day I couldn't justify using bleeding edge, because I couldn't really even name anything I NEEDED from it. Yes, it is fun to have cool, new things, and it can be a lot of fun to play around with in a VM or something, but I don't actually need any of that stuff for what I do on a computer day to day right this second.
After that, the answer was pretty clear for me as to what distribution to use.
May I introduce you to my lord and saviour NixOS?
Knock Knock Knock.
We (Jehovah's Witness) would like to know if you had a minute, so we could come inside, and talk to you about OUR Lord and Savior... Linux Mint.
Sure, ok, that's still my daily driver, it's incredibly stable (and no, it's not fucking outdated), but other than that it doesn't help so much against accidentally borking your system.
So in this context, I'm recommending @sockpuppetsociety@lemm.ee NixOS.
I tried to use dd with too much hubris once. I had to restore from backups (which ironically, I had made with dd). I'm usually overly cautious, but I was in a hurry.
I did this one a few weeks ago lmao. You think once would be enough. But I am a truly special being.
.... So what should I try Linux again?
You mean why? Because you're using your bare machine, you can use it as you wish. No nanny software limiting the fun or productivity
Yeah but breaking like six computers to do it, or one computer six times, seems like a pretty steep price for that when I basically just use my computer for gaming browsing and the occasional audio/video edit.
OP said breaking the kernel, not the machine. The computers would be fine, its pretty damn difficult to brick a computer using software, at least by accident.
Normal users will not break their kernel, op is likely doing some advanced tinkering. I have been using Linux for years and am definitely an advanced user and Ive broken my kernel zero times.
Gotcha, that's reassuring
Nah, if you're installing something user friendly (ie Linux Mint just for an example) it'll work 1st time, guaranteed - or your money back.
But... you'll only really learn once you've fubar'd something... just like ~~falling off~~ riding a bike
I want double my money back if the free program doesn't work!
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