Is he even very tech savvy? Like IIRC he tried to install a Linux Desktop once. And on installing steam he went ahead with the terminal prompts that were warning him whatever weird command he did was going to nuke his desktop environment.
The weird command was sudo apt install steam pretty much IIRC
He should’ve read the message, but it also shouldn’t have uninstalled his desktop environment, that should be a very damn safe command to run if we want Linux to be mainstream on the desktop. Sucks that a package dependency error like this managed to make it through QA.
The Pop_os team accepted that behaviour (installing steam uninstalls the DE) as a bug and it was fixed subsequently.
They also fixed the whole thing with the error message to make it more difficult to accidentally delete critical system components by installing software entirely unrelated to said system component.
If you don’t have Linux experience it would not have helped. That’s coupled with the way people help with Linux, which is often type this thing into the terminal that you don’t really understand.
He was just conditioned by windows and Macos asking for administration prompts for everything. Linux just lets you break a ton more crap way more quickly.
It definitely would have helped in this case, given the warnings he skipped were literally telling him that doing the thing will break his install. He literally had to type a full phrase in to get it to do it.
You don’t need Linux experience to understand that you should pause and reconsider when you get messages like that.
That’s not even tech literacy, that’s just literacy.
I don’t watch his other content but in that one video he was absolutely doing exactly what a typical user would do in his situation. He was trying to follow a tutorial, he ran into the sort of warning message Windows users are conditioned to breeze past, and followed the onscreen instructions without trying to understand the confusing stuff. They changed how it worked after that incident, as they should if mass adoption is at all desirable.
I think there were a few other changes indirectly inspired by what had transpired, but admittedly I can’t remember most of them. I think Debian also modified apt.
I also think I remember immutable distros taking off just after this.
Pop_OS put in a patch that required you to create a file /etc/apt/break-my-system and Debian added a flag instead.
My point was if someone is going to blindly follow an instruction to type that, they’re just as likely to blindly follow an instruction to touch /etc/apt/break-my-system or an instruction to add --allow-remove-essential
The Gnome software GUI, what the average user would use, didn’t allow it.
KDE realized Discover would have allowed it (after a warning), so that was fixed
I think the point of both is that even if he skipped all the text explaining he’s about to break the system, he would have still have had to type the words explaining them, and therefore hopefully think about the words he’s typing. It might not protect against copy-paste as effectively, but there’s a higher chance he’d read what he’d copied than a wall of text. Not 100% effective, but it’s probably going to catch more users than “do as I say”, where he still thought he was installing Steam, so it’s good those changes were made.
But yes, it won’t catch everyone like Linus because they either won’t think about it or they will copy-paste without reading. Ultimately an immutable distro might be best for him. Then again he might still find a way to break it somehow.
All I’m seeing there is he decided to deliberately did something wrong on behalf of an imaginary person and then complain that doing the deliberately wrong thing broke the computer.
wait what? which distro does that? I’ve installed steam probably 50+ times like that… (haven’t seen the video since youtube is impossible to watch with a VPN)
Is he even very tech savvy? Like IIRC he tried to install a Linux Desktop once. And on installing steam he went ahead with the terminal prompts that were warning him whatever weird command he did was going to nuke his desktop environment.
The weird command was sudo apt install steam pretty much IIRC
He should’ve read the message, but it also shouldn’t have uninstalled his desktop environment, that should be a very damn safe command to run if we want Linux to be mainstream on the desktop. Sucks that a package dependency error like this managed to make it through QA.
This.
The Pop_os team accepted that behaviour (installing steam uninstalls the DE) as a bug and it was fixed subsequently.
They also fixed the whole thing with the error message to make it more difficult to accidentally delete critical system components by installing software entirely unrelated to said system component.
@squaresinger @boonhet typical apt…
That case was a legitimate bug in the specific PopOS version he was using
It was bad luck on every side. Mostly because pop doesn’t update packages during install
Yeah, but he could have read the messages lol
If you don’t have Linux experience it would not have helped. That’s coupled with the way people help with Linux, which is often type this thing into the terminal that you don’t really understand.
He was just conditioned by windows and Macos asking for administration prompts for everything. Linux just lets you break a ton more crap way more quickly.
It definitely would have helped in this case, given the warnings he skipped were literally telling him that doing the thing will break his install. He literally had to type a full phrase in to get it to do it.
You don’t need Linux experience to understand that you should pause and reconsider when you get messages like that.
That’s not even tech literacy, that’s just literacy.
He had just installed the OS, I don’t think he was too concerned about the risk.
I think he’s not concerned about much besides himself.
I don’t watch his other content but in that one video he was absolutely doing exactly what a typical user would do in his situation. He was trying to follow a tutorial, he ran into the sort of warning message Windows users are conditioned to breeze past, and followed the onscreen instructions without trying to understand the confusing stuff. They changed how it worked after that incident, as they should if mass adoption is at all desirable.
The GUI wouldn’t let him break it, so he tried the command line.
The command line required him to type, with punctuation “Yes, do as I say!” after a big warning.
If an average user will do that, the “fix” of needing to create a file before being able to type “Yes, do as I say!” isn’t going to change anything
I think there were a few other changes indirectly inspired by what had transpired, but admittedly I can’t remember most of them. I think Debian also modified apt.
I also think I remember immutable distros taking off just after this.
Pop_OS put in a patch that required you to create a file /etc/apt/break-my-system and Debian added a flag instead.
My point was if someone is going to blindly follow an instruction to type that, they’re just as likely to blindly follow an instruction to
touch /etc/apt/break-my-systemor an instruction to add--allow-remove-essentialThe Gnome software GUI, what the average user would use, didn’t allow it.
KDE realized Discover would have allowed it (after a warning), so that was fixed
I think the point of both is that even if he skipped all the text explaining he’s about to break the system, he would have still have had to type the words explaining them, and therefore hopefully think about the words he’s typing. It might not protect against copy-paste as effectively, but there’s a higher chance he’d read what he’d copied than a wall of text. Not 100% effective, but it’s probably going to catch more users than “do as I say”, where he still thought he was installing Steam, so it’s good those changes were made.
But yes, it won’t catch everyone like Linus because they either won’t think about it or they will copy-paste without reading. Ultimately an immutable distro might be best for him. Then again he might still find a way to break it somehow.
All I’m seeing there is he decided to deliberately did something wrong on behalf of an imaginary person and then complain that doing the deliberately wrong thing broke the computer.
tbf if your desktop environment gets uninstalled after “sudo apt install steam” it’s not entirely the user’s fault
wait what? which distro does that? I’ve installed steam probably 50+ times like that… (haven’t seen the video since youtube is impossible to watch with a VPN)
PopOS had a bug in that specific version that was patched upstream
that’s a pretty extreme bug. what if you already had steam installed, did the DE shit itself during the bugged update?
Its not the users fault at all.
That is insane behaviour, and part of why every desktop app should be a flatpak
yeah, though he is used to windows warning with every program install that it might break the pc so ignoring a warning isn’t THAT unexpected