I’ve broken my bootloader many times. I remember frantically looking up how to fix that online for the first time. Now I know not to do stupid things that could bork my bootloader.
The only thing I fucked up was /etc/sudoers. Once it refused sudo to me, my colleague told me about visudo and having another terminal with root already open as backup. And handed me a bootable USB stick to fix my fuckup. Good times, lessons were learned.
I feel like it’s harder to break the bootloader these days. All my dual-booting escapades worked fine, I still have most of my hair, and there’s no way my Linux skills have improved that much.
I think that the major issue with the bootloader is when a user confuses the device file for the entire drive (/dev/sda) with the device file for the partition (/dev/sda1), whch is not entirely unreasonable for a new user who doesn’t understand the naming system to do. Like, mkfs.ext4 /dev/sda rather than mkfs.ext4 /dev/sda1. Then you overwrite the entire drive, starting with the MBR, rather than the contents of a partition with your new filesystem.
As a Linux noob, the only time I’ve broken my bootloader was updating my distro after ignoring it for a year. I ignored the update because it broke a badly made script badly solving the complex problem caused by a simple problem that I ignored the solution to.
I finally fixed the simple problem because I needed to upgrade a library to get a modded launcher working so I could play with my friends. And I was thinking of rewriting the firmware for my macro keyboard to be better structured anyways.
I went back to the old firmware with a simple fix as the new one has a weird bug that if I hold two “even” keys at once, I get spammed down signals for the higher order one.
Let’s be honest. If you haven’t broken your bootloader at some point in time, you haven’t experienced Linux.
I’ve broken my bootloader many times. I remember frantically looking up how to fix that online for the first time. Now I know not to do stupid things that could bork my bootloader.
The only thing I fucked up was /etc/sudoers. Once it refused sudo to me, my colleague told me about visudo and having another terminal with root already open as backup. And handed me a bootable USB stick to fix my fuckup. Good times, lessons were learned.
I feel like it’s harder to break the bootloader these days. All my dual-booting escapades worked fine, I still have most of my hair, and there’s no way my Linux skills have improved that much.
I think that the major issue with the bootloader is when a user confuses the device file for the entire drive (
/dev/sda) with the device file for the partition (/dev/sda1), whch is not entirely unreasonable for a new user who doesn’t understand the naming system to do. Like,mkfs.ext4 /dev/sdarather thanmkfs.ext4 /dev/sda1. Then you overwrite the entire drive, starting with the MBR, rather than the contents of a partition with your new filesystem.As a Linux noob, the only time I’ve broken my bootloader was updating my distro after ignoring it for a year. I ignored the update because it broke a badly made script badly solving the complex problem caused by a simple problem that I ignored the solution to.
I finally fixed the simple problem because I needed to upgrade a library to get a modded launcher working so I could play with my friends. And I was thinking of rewriting the firmware for my macro keyboard to be better structured anyways.
I went back to the old firmware with a simple fix as the new one has a weird bug that if I hold two “even” keys at once, I get spammed down signals for the higher order one.
Linux has been fun!
I mean if you know how to write firmware you don’t really count as a Linux noob, regardless of your lack of experience with linux