Linux Users Enjoy Making Computers Worse

Key Takeaways

I have one very simple question why does it seem like a lot of Linux users just like to make their life worse and I don't mean Computing on E-Waste when you have the means to get something better I don't mean refusing to use a GUI in places where it is simply more efficient and a better user experience and I don't mean running CPUs without CPU microcut updates leaving your system with these giant gaping vulnerabilities all of these are valid concerns as well and absolutely worth talking about what I want to talk about instead though is why are there people who just want to make it easier to break their system I first noticed this all the way back during the LTT Linux challenge where Linus tried to install a package on pop OS and due to some funky dependency issues they had at the time this led to some package downgrades being done and this led to some more packet downgrades being done and this cascaded out to basically deleting his entire desktop now it did ask to confirm the package removal before it actually removed everything the problem is it was in this giant wall of white text and as someone who was just getting used to desktop Linux he didn't read everything and accepted it and then ended up leaving Papa West and I'm happy that happened to Linus because it got the problem actually fixed he is not the only person who suffered from it but until it got all of that attention it was basically just being ignored but there were people in the comments section of that video basically saying skill issues killer shoe Linus should have just read the text no Linux shoes would ever have this problem happen this is a Linus problem but it's not it was an actual problem with pop West that sure you could work around but you shouldn't have to it should just work and a lot more recently in my pep 668 video a very simple and very sane default change that distros are choosing to adopt where it locks are pip by default from doing Global package installations instead requiring the user to make use of a python virtual environment a tool that's typically used for python development that splits out the dependencies for a project from the dependencies of the rest your system this ensures that pip doesn't try to compete with your system package manager like apt Pac-Man dnf and things like that for ownership of global packages as someone who has had to deal with manual intervention because of something I instilled with Pip to me and a lot of people in the comments section it seems this is just a universally good change it makes it completely impossible for when you install a package with Pip for it to break any of your system packages remember this is just the default if you don't like it you can go and disable it but I saw a few people arguing against it not because of the increased storage space used which is fair because you are going to be repeating dependencies not because of the possibility of more vulnerabilities because you're going to have different versions of different python libraries also totally fair but but instead because they never broke their system just pay attention to what you're doing and nothing will ever go wrong okay that makes sense the whole rtfm skill issue whatever term you want to use I get it but let's apply that logic to three other basic safety precautions we have on Linux let's start with sudo rm-rf your route we've all seen the memes maybe you've even tried to run the command yourself we all know exactly what this command is going to do this command is going to Nuke your entire system or at least that's what you think it does because that's not been the case for a really really long time years ago RM had its default Behavior changed to deal with specifically this problem it said so in the main page by default it has dash dash preserve Dash root do do not remove slash this is the default Behavior because you don't want to delete your route in 99.9999 so on and so forth percenter cases you if you run that command we're not intending to do so there are almost zero circumstances where that is the command you actually want to run so having that be possible with the default Behavior should not be the case because of just simply how destructive it is instead on that very rare occasion where you actually mean to run that command like you're trying to make my outro for example or maybe you legitimately want to do some destructive behavior on your route in that case dash dash no dash preserve Dash root do not treat root specially this is a very sane Behavior this is the way RM should work and I don't think anybody would really argue against this but clearly this is an attack on your freedom and you should be able to just destroy your system with a slightly wrong command or how about the hold package functionality of Pac-Man I'm sure other package managers have a similar system but I know Pac-Man on Arch Linux we have Pac-Man and glib C listed on Manjaro I believe this also lists out ninjiaro Dash system but what does it do it doesn't hold an update instead it holds the package upon trying to remove it if a user tries to dash dash remove a package that's listed in hold package Pacman will ask for a confirmation before proceeding basically it's an extra level of protection if you try to remove Pac-Man or glibsy or in the case of Manjaro Manjaro system because these are absolutely core fundamental pieces of your system if you try to remove them it is almost certainly a mistake but there are certainly cases where you may want to do so say you want to install a custom version of glibcy or you're testing out a Git Version of Pac-Man or writing patches for Pac-Man I'm going to use the arch build system in these cases yeah totally makes sense why you might want to remove them but for me as a regular user who is not doing that if I try to uninstall something and it has Pac-Man as a dependency for some reason I don't want that to try to remove Pac-Man like that's not something I want to do that is not something I want to try to recover my system from clearly this is Art trying to take away my freedom why should I need to confirm wanting to Brick my system let me just brick my system or how about the whole concept of a separate root user and user account and then modern destroys like Fedora and Ubuntu which simply don't let you log into the root user why should you even bother with doing this just don't get your account compromised and don't let anybody else use the computer and if it is intended for other people to use just always trust that everybody being on the same root account is just a good faith actor and is never going to try to do anything malicious don't stop me from running commands in the easiest way possible I want to always be able to break my system and in the case of python and pep 668 you are free to keep doing things in the old terrible way you can pass in dash dash break Dash system Dash packages and it runs like the old Behavior here you can just install anything anywhere you want or you can even go and delete the warning file from slash user slash lib slash python.3.11 externally managed and now the behavior is simply disabled but much like for the earlier cases in almost every situation you don't want to install a package globally you just want to install the package and ensure that it works any python virtual environment is the better way to do that and for whatever reason if you need to do things globally you can disable it in that case but it should not be the default Behavior right now people are still getting used to the change but give it a year two years and it's gonna lead to a massive reduction of people reporting that pip broke their system there's always an interesting Balancing Act between safety and convenience you can make something extremely safe but it's going to take 20 minutes to get anything done or you can make everything really convenient and then pressing the wrong key causes your entire system to explode there is a balancing act that needs to be managed there and I think hiding the damaging edge cases behind an option is totally fine but what do you guys think do you think she better break your system by just breathing on it wrong or do you think I have a point here let me know uh if you like the video go like the video If you really liked the video and you want to become one over these amazing people over here to get the patreon scrub Silly Bear pay Linked In the description down below that's gonna be it for me and [Music] foreign [Music]