Searching gives me the impression there’s a million ways to solve the same problem on Linux, and I find myself profiling answers into about four categories at a glance:
- Succinct: one or two-liner, a single config file, or just a few clicks
- Long-winded song-and-dance: Full train of thought interspersed between various commands and logs, several config files (some of which don’t already exist), or installing an obscure package that is no longer maintained
- Specific to a desktop environment or version I don’t have
- Just looks wrong
I’ll usually just take solutions from the first category, which almost always works, save for differences between updates and versions. Solutions in the second category also seem to end with a 50% chance of the OP unable to solve the problem. If I’m desperate, I’ll try the second one, but it often ends up not working, eventually leading me to come up with a much cleaner solution of my own.
Curious if anyone else does this too and if those one-liners are really better solutions or if it’s just confirmation bias.
You’re seeing occam’s razor at work