Anything can potentially make any OS unbootable, so good backup discipline is useful. Reinstalls give an opportunity to do something different than the last install, and the more of em you do, you learn a flow and ways to optimize it. I also like it for troubleshooting: If the a minor issue happens two different installs, you can start narrowing down things on the 3rd+ installs and/or later distro versions.
I can go from wiped disks to production-ready Windows and most Linux in about an hour, and my files restore from convenient drag-and-drop folders on a NAS. I did about 4 clean installs just this week and practiced a bit of high-availability with my server
Iāve been there; back in Win98 days I had a local computer repair shop that fixed my broken installs at a price, and I eventually got annoyed with the downtime and figured out how to do it myself
Iād have booted another Linux LiveUSB, backed-up files from the broken install, and reinstalled. At some point doing that becomes a little easier than troubleshooting (if I saw it was Mesa directly in a log from TTY though Iād try a downgrade if I knowingly updated packages).
Iām not sure what caused the failure specifically, but I update only with dnf and havenāt seen any updates (prior to F42) cause an unbootable system since F22/yum; but with 3rd-party I did have issue with Mesa packages from RPM Fusion (freeworld video stuff) and NVIDIA kernel module rebuilds a few times.
You know Fedora Workstation default update method is not DNF, it is Gnome Software.
Since disabling Gnome Sofware is difficult, you never know what updates what and when.
Agreed. But I would say āget used to backing up your files and be ready to reinstall at any given momentā. You donāt cry until you lose something in the process.
I think Fedora default installation misses both a tool for rolling back updates and a tool for backing up personal files.
You are asking about a feature in a Gnome software product on a Fedora discussion group. Iām not saying thatās a complete waste of time as there are Red Hat and other Fedora developers who also develop for the Gnome Project, but I think you should know that it wouldnāt hurt for you to ask for Gnome Software features at gnome.org maybe?
Also, disabling Gnome Software is almost trivial. sudo dnf remove gnome-software* I know because I did it. You donāt need it. You do need to do manual updates afterwards. So, every few days, I do:
sudo flatpak update
sudo dnf upgrade --refresh
in a terminal window. If thereās something Iām missing besides Gnome Software induced headaches, I havenāt learned it.
Btw, in vanilla Fedora Workstation, you can do the same thing with all PackageKit* packages.
The problem with reinstalling is that information needed to understand the issue is usually lost. Once the cause if the issue is understood and can be avoided, a fresh install may be the most efficient way to recover the system, but reinstalling without understanding may just recreate the issue.
It seems I must explain that āremoving-uninstallingā Gnome Software is not the same as ādisablingā. In fact, adding the proper text file in some directory instructs Gnome Software to not load at boot. This way it is still available in the āapp gridā for its only useful task that is to search and display info (across RPM, Flatpaks and so on).
I have learned long ago that is pointless to tell people to do something they donāt want to do, even more so when I am nobody. It is not by accident that Gnome Software does not have any option for disabling it and it is not by accident that Gnome Software is Fedoraās default update tool.
I must also add that to give users a way to roll back updates is not needed with Debian, because there arenāt updates. In Fedora, it is an obvious problem.
Nope, if some update kills my system I am not going to reinstall the same distro, that would be pointless unless there is a way to schedule the updates so I can wait until some other poor soul updates, gets the system killed and reports it. If updates come every day I am going to install some other distro that works, wait months, be sure the problem is fixed then maybe I come back to the original distro. Or maybe not if there isnāt any real reason.
Iām not aware of any Linux distribution that does notāthatās just not how software development and distribution packaging works.
What one can do (not recommended at all), is disable updatesāon Fedora, simply disable the āupdatesā repository. You will not get any updates, and gnome-software wonāt notify you because it wonāt know that there are updates.
Debian provides only security updates. No software or system component gets a version bump. Unless you backport. And when Debian releases a new āstableā, everything is already outdated. Again the most obvious example is Firefox, in Debian there is only the ESR version, if you want the current release you need to get it from Mozilla repo.
Yes, you can avoid updates on Fedora. That pretty much eliminates the main selling point of Fedora that is being up-to-date.
I donāt understand what we are speaking of. Like there isnāt any chance an update brings bugs or regressions and like it is easy for the average user to work around that. Sounds a bit masochist.
If the issue is, primarily, that you want to be able to easily roll back to a working version in case of breaking updates, you might consider using Snapper and Btrfs assistant.
I have considered.
For my personal needs I prefer to backup my files and when/if Fedora breaks, I will install something else waiting for better times.
The issue is not that I donāt know about all the things around BTRFS, the issue it is that BTRFS is default in Fedora and thatās all, there isnāt any related tool or configuration by default to make use of itās features (besides partitioning and such).
I would also add that most users who are still taken by surprise by bugs and regressions discover that some tools exist to get out of those situations only after lots of anger and frustration. That is why I say this discussion is a bit sado-maso, depending on the fact that somebody inflicts pain or suffers it.
Iād reinstall just to make sure it was an update and that itās reproducible
Iām not sure how new user handle Linux today, but Iām for manually taking files and backing them up somewhere (works any OS) vs Btrfs or OS-specific/specialized tools. If the thing doing the backup/restore does something wrong or unexpected, trying to extract plaintext backups from tools that packed it specialized sounds like more effort.
Starting out on Linux with snapshots/specific tools seems like lock-in and additional complexity; new users are going to learn that distroās recovery process, that likely isnāt applicable for other distros/OSs. Iām thinking most long-term Linux users used more than one distro
No one is telling anyone to do anything. I gave an easy option for users interested in going that way. What you do is your own business, of course.
Also, and this is just one personās opinion, the best thing you can do once you commit and install a LInux distribution, no matter what flavor, is to learn its main software installation tools. In the case of Fedora, this would be to learn how to use dnf and flatpak. Both of these commands have search subcommands. Every Linux distribution has its own.
This translates in āevery new user should be directed to Debianā because distros that update frequently are likely to break and ārollingā distributions are suicidal.
I think long term ālinuxā people used all the existing distros. Personally I avoided Arch and Gentoo because I am lazy but I tried at least all the distros in Distrowatch list.
Yes and no.
I am told what to do every time somebody makes a decision.
I am forced to disable Gnome Software with a trick because developers did not provide the option for that and because Gnome Software is default in Fedora.
I am given BTRFS as default in Fedora installer (yes I can change that and probably I should) and I am given a guide to make use of its features that is probably aimed to system admins.
The good thing is I am old and I smashed my own face on enough walls so now I donāt care, I donāt get mad, I donāt get frustrated, I donāt even try, I follow the path of less resistance possible, which is distro hopping.
This topic has been solved and further general, off topic discussion about distro hopping etc. is not useful. Please start a new topic in The Water Cooler about it. I will now close this topic.
