For me it is not recording credentials with the assumption I would simply remember them later, while having every opportunity to archive them before eventually forgetting. Also, not keeping detailed enough notes & photos of exactly how my hardware is attached.
Encrypting a drive with Linux, then encrypting a VM within Linux with my Bitcoin wallet information in it, which I was gifted 5 bitcoin before it was popular and just forgot about it. I was 13 at the time and didn’t know what I was doing. Lost all my passwords, or I might have even just wiped my entire drive. Got a pile of hard drives to go through and see which one has Linux on it, but that’s only the first step.
I tried to enroll secure boot without understanding what I’m doing. I locked myself out of the motherboard.
Also when you accidentally create a directory called ‘~’ the command
rm -r ~is not the right one…Also when you accidentally create a directory called ‘~’ the command
rm -r ~is not the right one…Ughh ! That one is nasty !
I feel like you can be a long time linux user and muscle memory can get you with the
rm -rf ~…
I tried too many distros.
It always involves
sudo rm -rf *
In my case it didn’t even need sudo to ruin my day. I wanted to delete a temporary directory in home by typing
rm -r ~/ tmp. See how a space snuck in between the slash and tmp? Yeah, great day that was.
When installing arch, I wanted to kill my old drive. So 2 times in a row, I forgot to look up my drives Name, and proceeded to wipe my USB stick with /dev/random. 2 times.
dd if=fedora.iso of=my ssd instead of flash drive :’(
I installed Ubuntu back when that was popular, and insisted on having all the graphical bling, like 3d cube that would spin to change desktops. And windows that shook like jello when you moved them.
Of course all this messing around by an amateur did nothing for stability and after 3 or 4 frustrating issues I went back to Windows.
I can’t even function without the Compiz 3D cube anymore, it makes it super easy and visually intuitive to switch desktops. Very handy for someone running 4 virtual machines simultaneously…
Why even have any effects at all? They are distracting as shit.
Sure, some of the effects are basically useless eye candy, but the 3D Cube thing is a non-intrusive, yet very intuitive way of switching desktops. The 3D Cube doesn’t even activate until you use a hotkey combination plus the mouse. It’s almost like having a virtual KVM switch if you’re running virtual machines.
To each their own, but you might actually like the 3D Cube and possibly some other Compiz features once you see how they work and what they offer…
Bluetooth didn’t work on my laptop. Got new bluetooth card (exact same type). Bluetooth still didn’t work.
Turns out:
- The specific card doesn’t support Linux.
- My laptop has a hardware whitelist in the BIOS that prevents me from installing any other card.
- My headphones don’t support USB bluetooth.
Hardware whitelist is unholy
Me, finding out this exists after buying a used sff HP pc and wondering why it won’t display out to any new monitor unless I unplug and plug the power cord: 💀
Luckily (or not so luckily), I was able to turn off the HP “security feature” from the bios. The pc came from a former school fleet of sff pcs
I don’t think I’ve ever lost more time than I’ve gained in knowledge from the mistakes, if that makes any sense.
Never lost any money with linux.
I’ve been running Linux since 2011, starting with our data recovery and antivirus scanning system at the computer repair shop I was working for at the time.
Even my boss didn’t understand why I wanted to install Linux. Keep in mind, this is back when the TDSS/Alureon rootkit was going around on Windows systems.
I explained it like it was, that if our main backup/antivirus system was running the same OS as the infected computers coming in, then it was only a matter of time before our main system got infected.
So, he accepted my advice and let me set everything up. More or less just the bare basics really, smartmontools, gparted, firefox, google earth (just because), and a few other relevant programs to help with our daily tasks.
Then, one day when I was off work, a new employee decided to install some plugin into Firefox to share bookmarks and stuff across different devices…
Somehow, he borked the main tech user account, it wouldn’t even login to the user interface anymore :(
I had to spend a few hours, with the skeptical boss over my shoulder, waiting to see if I could get the system back running right again.
And so I did, while learning lots of new things at the same time. When I learned the hotkeys to switch to other terminal sessions, then I figured out how to create a new account, erase the old account, and get logged back in and running.
The customer data backup drive was separate and detached through all that, so customer data was safe the whole time.
The boss almost said fuckit, reinstall Windows, but I was persistent. And that system helped salvage over 200 systems with the TDSS rootkit, which would have almost certainly doomed our backup system if it was running Windows.
I told that new guy to never fuck with my operating system setup or configuration again, at least not before consulting me and getting approval or even assistance first.
When you got a bare minimum of the past 100 customers’ data backed up and virus checked, you don’t dick around with the main backup system.
So, honestly, I can’t think of a single truly costly mistake that Linux has cost me…
As far as that other employee that messed it up for a bit, well I dunno, it wasn’t too long after that the boss fired him…
None, using Linux never been a mistake, every mishaps is a learning process
Yep no mistake, I TOTALLY MEANT TO DO THAT !
Bought a Samsung mini laser printer and found that it is Windows only. I gave it to a neighbour.
I’m actually amazed I haven’t had any costly mistakes yet considering I’m the kind of person to say “it’s just dd, what’s the worst that can happen? it’ll be fine no worries”. Since I’ve installed Arch a year ago I’ve been constantly expecting to catastrophically break something… and my system is still running, somehow. It’s very perplexing.
You do backup important data, right?
Right… sure… erm… of course I do, obviously 😅
Actually I always mean to do it but I keep forgetting… Recently I’ve resigned myself to the fact that I’ll never remembering to do it so I’ve been trying to set up an auto-sync to my NAS with rsync and inotifywait so I won’t have to ever think about backups again… But I really suck at coding so it’s not going too well 😅
Let me count the ways:
- Edited /etc/sudoers with vi instead of visudo.
- The classic rm -fr /
- The typical chown myuser: / -R
- Removed the bootloader dunno why
- Some shenanigans involving dd and the wrong device
I could go on, but my memory tends to erase the painful memories.
That is a process fail, not a Linux fail. It wouldn’t matter if it was Linux or absolutely anything else.
Sure, but I wanted to ask fellow Linux users