• pascal@lemm.ee
    18·
    11 months ago

    LoL my current Gentoo system was installed like 12 years ago and moved on 5 different hardware platforms without a proper reinstall.

    I have said myself to never peek in the /etc directory for any reason! 😅

    • Case@lemmynsfw.com
      2·
      11 months ago

      I know a little linux, but obviously I’m still learning. I’ve picked up everything I know on my own, for the most part - internet guides from the linux community tend to be pretty solid, and I know enough to not totally FUBAR my system.

      Is there a listing of standard linux directories and what they’re for? Lite /etc, things like that. Because I seem to find bits of different stuff in a variety of directories.

      I’ve recently moved to linux on my gaming rig, which is my daily driver - that being said, it is mainly for gaming. Anything can surf the web or play videos and shit, for the most part.

      • brakenium@lemm.ee
        0·
        11 months ago

        Who cares with storage nowadays? I just use filelight or command line based tools to determine big storage hogs when I need to

        • TheOPtimal@lemmy.blahaj.zoneქართული
          1·
          11 months ago

          I just mean, do you ever get scared of showing hidden files in your hone directory? My install isn’t even a year old, and I do.

  • dan@upvote.au
    7·
    11 months ago

    stares at Debian Bookworm VPS that’s been upgraded in-place and hasn’t been reformatted since Debian Etch (2007)

      • dan@upvote.au
        2·
        11 months ago

        For this particular VPS, I’ve moved provider several times, but every time I just use Clonezilla to clone the disk over the internet. Maybe I should do a fresh reinstall one day. There’s just so much random stuff running on it though.

  • Shatur@lemmy.ml
    4·
    11 months ago

    I never reinstall and always recover. Even when migrating from notebook to PC I just dd-ed it and fixed fstab. My current system is 5 years old :)

  • Hellfire103@sopuli.xyzEnglish
    3·
    11 months ago

    Then there’s me, reinstalling the OS because it’s quicker than installing the three months’ worth of updates I forgot about.

    • laurelraven@lemmy.blahaj.zone
      1·
      11 months ago

      The main downside to a rolling release distro, with that much drift there’s a good chance something will install that conflicts with something else, and nobody can really help because the only real way to replicate your install is to go back in time and do the same thing

    • fl42v@lemmy.ml
      1·
      11 months ago

      Agreed in general, but I personally don’t reinstall it. My reason to do so was that I would randomly install some crap I needed for a few tasks and then forget about it, and with nixos it’s just nix shell or nix run nixpkgs#whatever, and then stuff’s gone with the next garbage collection.

  • nexussapphire@lemm.eeEnglish
    2·
    11 months ago

    I did this with windows. Not so much macos until later versions started ballooning in size and being optimized for SSDs.

    • Ibaudia@lemmy.worldEnglish
      2·
      11 months ago

      Realistically you don’t have to if you’re not constantly tinkering, but if you’re changing a lot of low-level stuff without knowing what you’re doing, you have the ability to break things. If you don’t know how to fix them, then it’s easier to just reformat. Basically it’s a skill issue lol.

  • plague-sapiens@lemmy.worldEnglish
    31·
    11 months ago

    Fedora Silverblue enters the chat :) Haven’t had a single hiccup so far. Only ublue spins are a pain in the butt imo. That’s why I configure everything by myself.

    But I need to try NixOs soon