this post was submitted on 20 Sep 2023
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Linux
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Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).
Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.
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I love Linux but this is a huge pain point for me with Linux. Just tell me actual errors like a professional OS would.
Professional OS:
Ah, my Windows (dual booted and hardly ever used) desktop wallpaper. 😅
It does tell you the actual error, though. Following it up with "Good luck" isn't particularly professional but removing it would just make the message more boring, not any clearer.
IIRC the person who added that didn't add it as a joke but as a genuine thing.
One smart thing I think Microsoft did was try to give every error message a code. Googling for "gpoopapp E0013" is often easier and gets more precise results than having to type in "gpoopapp The file /home/bitchslayer69420/.config/share/whatever.yaml could not be opened: File not found"
Unfortunately, the SEO hellscape means every single windows error just yield a "Try to install our patcher tool" article.
How about both?
But in the latter case you don't have to google. You already know what the problem is. The file it's looking for is missing. So I'd rather have that kind of message than just an error code.
You definitely have to ~~go to the Arch wiki~~Google in some cases. Knowing what the problem is and knowing how to fix it are sometimes seemingly unrelated. E.g., "Could not open foo.yaml: File not found" could actually mean "Some non-obvious file in the tarball was not set executable, which screwed up this one script that ran another script but couldn't run some other script which didn't give an error message, which made another script think the file had already been copied". If you can find someone out there who ran into exactly the same problem, you can find a solution to it, but if none of the words in your error message are completely unique, it can be very hard to find someone with the same problem.
Personally, I do find these add additional information:
IT IS POSSIBLE THAT SOMEONE IS DOING SOMETHING NASTY!
ssh!