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PaperclipPerfector  2mo ago (text post)   2897 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for March 2, 2025

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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I use Linux and fucking hate it. There's no clear instructions on how to do anything. I have hardware encoding and decoding working perfectly... Except in any chromium-based browser, and no amount of troubleshooting has gotten me any closer to figuring it out. Or anyone else on the Internet judging by Google results.

It's not even clear to me how to go about finding out how to find things out with Linux. Programs end up in random folders that can only be accessed through the terminal, unless it manages to make it into the macOS ripoff start menu which there's no button to add stuff to manually.
I was using dosbox to play moo2 the other day and CD-ing into the correct directory like it's 1989 was easier than figuring out how Linux wants you to load programs from a tar.gzb.wtf file

And oh god the audio drivers. Most of my restarts are to fix audio glitches or (yesterday) videos just refusing to play after any Bluetooth device had been connected.

Yeah, it's still not perfect unfortunately. One upside of the impending paperclippening is that the chatbots have ingested everything ever written about how to solve Linux problems. If you haven't tried it yet, I'd recommend prompting an LLM to act like a condescending neckbeard expert Linux user and friendly troubleshooter, with permission to ask you for further info or to ask you to run commands, and see if you can get it to narrow down your problem.

I actually tried that with chatgpt last night, and it did a decent job of working me through all the stuff I'd already wasted hours figuring out. Didn't solve the chromium issue, but at least went faster than using Google.

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