The good news is, now that you've broken it, you get to keep both pieces!

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Congratulations! You've reached that critical juncture where you can do one of two things:
1. Rage against a distribution that you clearly don't have the skill set to handle, or the wherewithal to know better
2. Take this as a learning experience, learn how dependencies work, and how to avoid these kinds of problems in the future

I hope you are aware that also Slackware locks you away from using it, particularly when your computer is Secure Boot only, right?

AND that happens specially when the user's knowledge level is like of this particular OP.

Huh, no kidding. How'd you manage to do that? I've only had one kernel panic with Slackware in the 10+ years I've been using it, and it was due to failing hardware. You can do some really, really stupid things, but if you don't log out or reboot, they're usually fixable.

Yep. Once when I was just starting out using linux, I deleted bash off my system because I wanted to upgrade it. I was in for a surprise when I went to compile the new one. Another time I wanted to delete csound, so I did a "rm libc*" in what I thought was the correct directory (/lib, not /usr/local/lib) and...that was not a pleasant moment, either. Was on Debian, though.

I don't have any such hardware and will never buy it.

If I eventually have no choice, then there are project like this: https://libreboot.org/.

"Libreboot is freedom-respecting boot firmware that initializes the hardware (e.g. memory controller, CPU, peripherals) in your computer so that software can run. Libreboot then starts a bootloader to load your operating system. It replaces the proprietary BIOS/UEFI firmware typically found on a computer."

Since you seem to have a bee in your bonnet, let me ask you this: Have you spoken to Patrick about whether or not he has plans to implement Secure Boot support? If not, then how do you know what his plans are? Ranting about it on a forum isn't going to get you anywhere.

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Hey, OP...It’s better to keep your mouth shut and appear stupid than open it and remove all doubt.

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Recipe is simple: get monkey from somewhere - sat at computer - it clicks, presses keys. And you will be surprised how fast "rock solid system" will go down. It is rule of thumb good to remember: more complicated system - in general sense not only computer system - more vulnerable to noise input. Precisely: system behaves still deterministically but we are loosing control over it. By the way: this why I don't fear any secret world government. Society is far too complicated to be predictable - or under full control.

I have, on occasion, broken Slackware. When I tried it — admittedly a long time ago — Ubuntu broke itself without any assistance from me.

I know which behaviour I prefer. YMMV.

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"Hold your hand, Slackware will not" -- Yoda

I broke my first Ubuntu install twice. It is still possible to break Ubuntu if you don't know what you're doing.

I have a friend who even broke her Mint install. I don't know how, but she managed it.

OP - you broke your Slackware install? Good, good. Many of us have done it, myself included. Now you can look into how you did it and start learning about the OS.

Why do people keep recommending ubuntu for beginners? Like if something breaks on it, it's one of the hardest distros to troubleshoot.

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What would you recommend then?

Hrm. I'm not sure. Not a rolling release. Fedora was nice, but not sure how newbie friendly it is. I started on Debian, but sometimes its conservative approach can be a real problem when stuff is out of date. Newbies might not know how to fix it. (Which is why I hesitate to recommend slackware-stable. Slackware-current is pretty usable, but things do break on occasion, and a newbie might not know how to fix it.)

If a rolling release isn't on for a newbie, then slackware-current isn't on! But I used Debian Testing quite successfully for a while in the pre-systemd days. It never broke on me.

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Do like I did when I first "discovered" Linux: try a few distros 'til you find The One for you.

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