Discourage endless tinkering with your OS
 

Hi
One of the strengths of Linux is also its weakness. The ease and simplicity to install apps and modify your OS.
Also AFAIK Linux has no 'restore point' capability like Windows so often figuring out what is causing crashes, and other issues becomes problematic.
It's too tempting to be constantly adding tweaks. Are there any ways to make it much more difficult to do a 'sudo apt-get or sudo yum install?

Are you referring to a multi-user environment? If so, simply remove unnecessary users from the sudoers list. If single user, surely it is up to you to control yourself??

You are also incorrect about linux being able to perform backups and restore, as if it were unable to do this I feel a large number of companies would not use linux in the first place.
I do find it interesting that you single out linux compared to Windows about crashing and particularly the ease of solution as I have faced numerous Windows crashes in my time and often the only solution was a complete reinstall. I can say with complete confidence this has not been my experience in linux, ie. I have never had to reinstall (except when desired or trying some other distro) and with the help of the community, finding reasons for an unusual situation with my computer has generally been without too much issue.

Maybe after you have used linux for a while you will be in a better place to comment.

You could log in as a unprivileged, non-administrator user for everyday tasks.

(In Ubuntu/Mint, this would be defined as a user who is not in the 'sudo' group.)

This is why someone else in here may have asked the question, what are good maintenance practices for Linux?

If you actually have a system that you are the admin of, and give and take away users on it. then do not give everyone sudo privileges to install and modify everything within that system. Then all they can screw up is their home, and not the entire city (system).

If it is just your system. Then teach yourself what is more important to back up, rather then backing up your entire system. So all you have to do is replace it to bring your system back to where it was, before you tinkered with it in the first place.


Keep track of what is in it, and what does what to the best of your ability. This can get a little cumbersome. But as long as you have the important (config) files backed up then if you or someone gets it into a spot that a re-install HAS to be done to fix it. then even that is made a lesser of a head ache.

because now all you have to do is a (hopefully) quick re-install (depending on the distro) then just copy over the installed config files with the ones you have already tailored to your system. reboot and you're back in business. then all you have to do is a little sweeping up to finish the job.

Coming at linux in server usage rather than desktop I'd have to admit that these days (with a couple of exceptions) I'd generally only run linux as a VM.

With a VM you can follow the good practice that BW-userx mentions (backing up essential files, things that are dynamic or specific to the server rather than EVERYTHING) but you also have the onion layer approach of being able to do VM "Snapshots" for quick roll-back.

I will do the VM Snapshot before any kernel upgrades etc. as I like the fairly instant roll-back.

As for backups and being able to restore systems, I manage my VMs through Salt so building/re-building a server is pretty much a matter of doing the bare-bones OS installation, setting the hostname and letting salt deal with everything else, then I can restore my content files from a 3 hourly "dirvish" versioning backup that resides in a different location (Raspberry Pi at home!)

How are you going to learn anything? If you don't tinker and make mistakes.

I learn from some of the best wrecks I have caused on my operating systems.

As long as one of those things was "In future I will not tinker with my production or pre-production infrastructure, only my test systems!" :) :) :)

Oh. My windows restore point is

dd if=/dev/sda | gzip -c >/media/disk/system-image.gz

when I want to unpack my restore point.

gunzip -c /media/disk/system-image.gz | dd of=/dev/sda

AFAIK covers a lot of turf. No?


Command line has been around for ages. So yeah. We have had a backup system for a very long time now.

There are more steps to the command I use. Thanks to rubberman who taught me this with his posts.

I am just a ignorant biker and I figured it out. I've given enough hints for one to find out with searching what I am talking about.

OK. Fair enough. I walk my own path through life. You walk yours. :shake:

Biker huh? what are you really thinking about?
beer and girls,and where are you going to ride your bike today. (you've been profiled!) :D J/K

but I agree about the learn from your mistakes. I've said that in here before. The old, I won't do that again. Learning method.

:) :) When tinkering takes out a production server and means thousands of people can't get their VISA card balance it tends to focus thoughts on where future tinkering should take place. :) :)

He knows how to install nVidia Drivers "now" in Ubuntu :)

eco_bach:
http://rlworkman.net/howtos/rute/
https://help.ubuntu.com/
End the cycle of externalizing "help". It's every-freaking-where

Go to Barnes and Noble, buy some of the Linux magazines there, they have an excellent selection.
Public Library. Online man pages? The gazillions of hits from
You are not the first. ;)

I have always said it:
Where you read is as important as what you read.
http://linux.oneandoneis2.org/LNW.htm
"Restore points"? Don't get me started.
Got USB?

I've done this for 22 years and there is no "undo" button in Linux, no do-over, no restore points,
such as the one Windows provides.

There is no package for learning and the only way to do that is make mistakes,
document it.
document every thing.

Everything you are experiencing, we've all had to "endeavor to persevere".

If it was easy, what would you learn?
Windows assumes you're an idiot and Linux demands proof using sudo.

Stay encouraged!

Habitual
Thanks for the links and advice
Will stay encouraged!

You are very welcome.

You really should consider the future of your data using a separate /home directory.
Makes things really easy. :)