Proving to the newbs that you can use linux for almost 20 years and still not really understand the command line. Because you know what I would really do? Open the gui and click on the 'delete' button.
But you *could* delete a user called "Byron" and a user called "C" in a single command... (This, incidentally, is how Bumblebee once hosed everybody's systems: the upgrade script tried to clear out older versions by "rm -rf /etc/whatever/bumblebee" but actually "rm -rf /etc /whatever/bumblebee" which is not the same thing at all.)
Had a customer the other day that overwrote the whole /etc of a server with one from another server. Fortunately both servers were mostly the same, just UIDs, GIDs, ssh server keys and some symlinks for a secondary init system were bad. I recovered the server without reinstalling, mostly by removing unnecessary ini files from the init system and checking home folders for all users and groups in /etc/passwd and /etc/group, fixing the files manually.
It just occurred to me that gaming on Linux is a bit like gaming on early to mid 90s PCs was. Back then, you had to understand your drivers and IRQs to get things to work etc. it wasn’t a lot of work, but it wasn’t just click and run, either. Linux could be click and run, in the next few years. Things like the Steam machine I am certain is going to lead to more Linux native builds over time, as it will just make sense. Part of it is engine licensing, but when Proton just makes it work, the engines aren’t getting the revenue anyway, so I reckon there will be a slow move towards engines allowing both Windows and maybe like a Flatpak / Vulkan Linux build at no extra cost for those that currently charge it separately. But for now I think I’m fine to be “setting my IRQs” again to get it running. I just haven’t actually wiped Windows yet. Maybe some time for that next week!
