Breaking things is a valid way to start learning. Reading man pages is very often difficult and confusing for new users. And much of the documentation is crap anyway-- it’s why distro forums exist. And I’m from a time when distro upgrades/updates were sometimes dicey, (they still can break things on occasions), and you complied your kernel and drivers from scratch.

I haven’t used an abacus in a very long time, but I haven’t forgotten how to use one. I still have a slide rule that I can still use if I have to, (I come from a time before pocket calculators). I used to race the the younger kids in my classroom to see who could do simple math problems faster-- me and the slide rule or them and a calculator. And my rule in class was that there were no calculators. Well, using fingers was acceptable. Because I wanted you to get your hands dirty playing with the numbers. If you wanted a calculator for a test, I would offer you a slide rule.

As a working adult, you must be proficient will the tools your occupation has. And not just the tools you wish you have. If you are running servers in a Windows based environment, it doesn’t do you any good to wish for Linux based servers. And you better be good with both Windows and Linux if the environment is mixed. And a professional doesn’t complain about their tools, they just use the ones they have to accomplish the job at hand. Of course, if you have the money and power to do the choosing and purchasing of the tools you prefer and want, then by all means buy them. But I doubt that’s the case for you.

Perhaps. But despite using Windows, you got the job done, right? Life is all about using the tools do have, rather than the ones you wished you had.

“an enthusiastic emacs user” Well, there’s your problem! (Sorry, I couldn’t resist the poke)

To be serious, Windows and that mouse are just tools-- same as any Linux distro is. A means to an end. Nothing more. There is nothing to be miffed about when you need to use that tool. Be proficient with all your tools. And when you need to use a tool, don’t be concerned about comparing it to the other tools. It diminishes you skills with that tool and and offers no gain to the solution.

I used to teach math in the local school. The kids had a great interest in 3D printing because I had a few fun items in my classroom that I had 3D printed. I decided to spend a couple of weeks teaching a bit of CAD through having the kids spend it designing a personalized key chain to print.

It took me 3 days of class time to teach them how to use a mouse…They couldn’t grasp the idea that a touch screen and CAD don’t go together, you need that mouse to make it work. It quickly became apparent that things quickly became difficult for them if it doesn’t have a touch screen.

And while some classes are always a bit better than others, there was always a noticeable number of them that struggled with using a mouse.

Oh no, I haven’t forgotten SuSe. But it’s not an OG distro. It’s based off of Red Hat. Though I thought it was always a better version of Mandrake than Mandrake ever was. (I wonder what TexStar is doing these days…)

I’ve installed and used it several times over the years and thought it was a fine distro. I have never understood why it’s not more to the forefront with it’s rolling release. If you like RPM based distros, SuSe is one to check out for sure.

It’s not even that. It’s a path to madness.

If you want to name them all, Red Hat, Debian, and Slackware where the OG popular distros that became the foundations of all the distros we have today. I ran them all back then.

Unless you’ve worn the sackcloth and ashes of Slack, don’t even at me and my son…

The flash backs to config files. Sooo many config files everywhere. But tarball are Yum!

Ahhh, I knew it. A Man of Culture! Or something else, I’m not sure what though. I have threatened to get an old laptop and install slack on it for fun, but I seem to be too lazy to get it done…

You mirror my travels through the Linux distros. Red Hat and Mandrake, Slack, Debian, Ubuntu, Gentoo, Suse, even Mint and now Fedora yet again. I’ve never bothered with setting up a server though, I just don’t have the need or desire.

And as repeatedly told and retold every year…

And I’m using, let’s see, (Goes into Settings to check): Fedora KDE Plasma 41. Meh, it works OK I guess. It’s getting hard to tell the difference between distros anymore. And I’ve been doing this long enough that I just something that doesn’t bother me for attention anymore.

You started in the 90’s and you didn’t don the sackcloth and ashes of Slack? At least for a little bit? Ah, the joys of writing config files!

Yep. The few I see are easily ignored. Or poked if you want to set them off.

And it’s still confining unless you add buggy addons that often crash after an update.

Check out Cinnamon for that GNOME 2 feeling.

Until you remap it in Plasma. You can actually do things with it then.

I use Cinnamon on my desktop to avoid the whole “modern” Gnome problem. It’s far better. But it’s Plasma all the way on my laptop baby!

After many years of tiptoeing through the distros, from RedHat 5 and Mandrake6 to Slack to Gentoo and now Fedora 41. The last thing I want anymore is to need to go RTFM.

I don’t want to open a terminal to compile anything, (I got stacks of tee shirts), or goggle, (yes goggle), to make things work. I’m too old for this crap and I don’t have that much longer to live wasting my short time remaining staring at a terminal and reading man pages. Distros and Linux by extension should “just work” in 2025. And thankfully they do-- most of the time.

You want to be a Sysadmin and a cmd line commando, have at it. I’m peacing out.

Now if only GUIs could be called and worked telepathically. Or better yet, fix any problems before they happen without me even knowing about it.

Being a revolutionary means you are willing to die for your cause. Ain’t none of those wannabes willing to die for anything. As long as they have their steam deck.

They just to cry to their mommies and expect the world to cater to their every want and whim. Life doesn’t work like that and never has.