People would read the second message, type the yes prompt, break their system. But still claim that it was linux's fault, and that the OS doesn't work.
By "people" you mean Linus Sex Tips
Linux tech slips
Linux Tech Tips channel when?
With Emily as the main Host (Comment section goes BRRRRRRR! Don't want to be a mod there xD)
For legal reasons I cannot confirm nor deny such allegations at this time.
They need to noobify that prompt further, something like "Yes, break my system!". Even Linus wouldn't fall for that (I hope)!
Or have them answer a few linux related questions
*They will claim it was Linus fault
Which one?
sex tips
Message two can also be caused by packages (or rather, package creators) with delusions of grandeur that only think that the system will stop working without them, so they rig things to threaten to uninstall the system.
Or else someone has created too heavy a dependency on something that ought to be removable, but isn't thanks to malice or incompetence (or both).
We still mock Microsoft for putting too heavy a dependency (or at least removal FUD) on whatever web browser they bundle with their OSes (first IE, now Edge), and here we might have a package creator trying the same damn thing.
Honestly I once did this to my desktop environment because I saw a huge list of packages and ignored it because I thought they were packages that could be upgraded, not that it was going to uninstall my fucking desktop lol
You should get a message "you don't exist, go away"
Not sure if that one is still around but I know one person who ran a script with "deluser $USER" and it ate root resulting in fun messages like that
My local deluser checks if the user has any active process. I tried deleting all of the data by hand, but the process is still assigned to a user name and id.
I'm not sure if this one can error still can be replicated.
Well you could manually edit /etc/password and shadow I suppose
I think I'll just take your word for it.
Easy to try in a virtual machine with snapshot. Or use a filesystem snapshot
While it was funny, it probably is for the best. Especially if a kid uses the system it might legitimately scare the shit out of them lol
I wouldn't be surprised if a kid thought the police was gonna break in now
I noticed this, got so sad. It was one of the funniest ones for me. First time I got it I kinda laughed.
IMHO, that doesn't sound any less ominous
At least it answers the question whom it will be reported to. In all likelihood the administrator is me anyway, at least on my personal devices. People won't worry anymore that it will be reported to the police or, heaven forbid, to Santa Claus.
I actually got that one around 2010 on Ubuntu. The printer wasn't actually on fire. If I recall it was caused by the network attached printer losing connection during a job
That was a fun read, thank you.
Good chance that could be fire
I love that the Wikipedia article has a section on Printer flammability :D
There's also the naughty programmer getting spanked by EFL
EFL is an absolute crime against programmer-kind, even if the errors are, admittedly, hilarious. can assert that they are not so funny when you find them deeeeep in some god-forsaken legacy codebase that's seen more null *s than git commits lol
The third one is new to me. "Congratulations" - that's fucking hilarious.
I got so hung up on the misspelling of "separate" that I didn't even see the "Congratulations" on first read-through. Which says more about me than about the error message, alas. 😅
Reminds me of the Chocolatey Uninstall script warning
What the heck tho, how could a simple script destroy a whole machine?
When a software package installer isn't designed to be reversible
I recall a bunch of antiviruses being similarly difficult to completely wipe
It isn't as hard apparently. The script follows the manual way, just delete the folder it's in. What is a problem seems to be changing the path - extracting, changing and reapplying the path variable seems to need 90 lines of Powershell alone. That's just crazy. I'm also wondering how other programs write themselves into path without needing warnings and backups of the path for the user to restore.
It doesn't say that.
If you setup your system with Chocolatey (is a package manager for Windows), removing Chocolatey will break your setup (removing all installed packages).
Seriously, this script may destroy your machine and require a rebuild. It may have varied results on different machines in the same environment. Think twice before running this.
I don't think "machine" is defined as "installed packages". And reading the code of the script, the breaking part is the whole script, as 90 lines are literally just for the purpose of getting, changing and reapplying the path variable. It (or rather the system and user one) are also backed up to C:\PATH_backups_ChocolateyUninstall.txt.
So it's still a wonder for me how removing something from path, or adding for that matter, is so complicated. Linux just has /usr/bin and /usr/local/bin for custom scripts/programs globally, and .local/bin for user specific executables. If you really want custom paths for your special application then add a script in /etc/profile.d/. No need to permanently change a global variable that could easily break your system at any time.
TL;DR Windows is dumb for having global PATH variables without a way to expand them modularly, which would be much safer.
score 10 or sacrifice child is actually just a MtG card, how did that get in there
I can't imagine Linux users and mtg players being mutually exclusive lol
We're not
Gah and I spent all that money on a garage foundation.
"It's possible I did something wrong." 🤣
Like not read the warning that said that he was about to uninstall the desktop? Or to continue only if he knew what he was doing? He also earlier liked to talk about "red flags", but somehow needing to type in "Yes, do as I say!" wasn't one to him. I'm supposed to be getting Linux tips from this guy?
I'm supposed to be getting Linux tips from this guy?
No, this is Linus Sex Tips not Linux Tech Tips!
I'm supposed to be getting Linux tips from this guy?
No. You're supposed to see what kind of experience someone who didn't use Linux before would have.
How could someone who has never used Linux know that he was about to nuke his system, after typing in the command that the internet told him to type in to install Steam?
By reading the message and using basic comprehension. If you don't know what something is in an error message then google it!
Far be it from me to defend "I did what the internet told me to do!" but nothing in sudo apt-get install steam would lead you to believe you were about to nuke core system packages. That was a big fuckup for PopOS.
There's also no reason to believe that apt update would be a preemptive solution to that problem, when it hadn't even been reported to PopOS yet. Let alone expect newcomers to Linux, who are just following widely available tutorials, to know that command and what it does.
What makes you think your average Windows user that is trying out Linux for the first time wouldn't have faced the same problem? I never understood why people criticized Linus for this video. After all, the video was supposed to see whether Linux is a viable alternative for Windows users (specifically gamers).
Yes. People have been trained to ignore warnings like this.
Android makes you jump through a hoop and tries to scare you when you want to install apps from outside the playstore.
Windows has some similarly serious-sounding warning messages.
People have got used to rolling their eyes at warnings when installing software. Like it or not, that's the way that it is. Users are used to seeing a scary warning when installing, and they're used to just powering through it without much thought.
Linus was following a tutorial on the PopOS website, followed the instructions, and borked his install.
I have problems with LTT in general, but the PopOS thing was entirely understandable, and people pretending that wasn't a usability problem in PopOS are delusional.
I agree with that other reply.
Linus knew just enough to be dangerous.
My experience with most Windows users and their first encounter with using a Linux terminal is every single warning/error they see no matter how mundane is a big deal.
Things like the boot text or a random apt install on Linux will often display various warnings or even "errors" that are really of no concern but ime tend to freak out new users.
Linus is in that narrow band where he doesn't really know shit but knows just enough to be falsely confident and ignore all the warnings/errors instead of just the irrelevant ones
yeah, quote a problematic video. surprised that he deleted everything, when is says it will break his system!
Surprised that it prompted him to delete his system, when he was trying to install Steam!
I didn't watch the full vid to see what he did to get there.
I was not happy with pop os when I gave it a 10 min trial. I am not surprised that it had some issues to getting steam to work.
I didn't watch the full vid to see what he did to get there.
Then you should.
Linus just wanted to install Steam and found a solution on the internet that told him to type the command "sudo apt-get install Steam".
I mean Linus did sth wrong when he wrote that yes do as I say without reading the error message.
On the other hand the Bug he was experiencing should not come to a stable Release build.
Anybody could have make that mistake. Or worse wonder for hours why it didn't work and suddenly it works. Especially if you are new to Linux and don't know what instead of the error message should pop up.
Does anybody know why it uninstalled his desktop? I have Steam on Linux, and it works fine and I didn't have to break my computer to get it.
It was a bug in that version of the distro IIRC, trying to install Steam would instead try to install the SteamOS desktop environment (or something along those lines). It has since been fixed to actually install the Steam client.
Obviously it was a bit silly he typed "Yes, do as I say" after seeing the message, but he was also literally following exactly what all the online guides said to do (other than the "Yes do as I say" part). Luckily it's fixed now but I do think it was a really good demonstration of what the video wanted to see: "What might the average non-techie gamer face using Linux?"
Apparently the issue was already fixed and he wouldn't have had the issue if he had done an apt update
It was extremely unfortunate timing. Pop_OS! had a bug for that week (or a few days?) where installing Steam would IIRC try to install the wrong version with the wrong dependencies. To support these alternate dependencies, it had to uninstall a bunch of the defaults, thus breaking the system. You can probably find a much better explanation by searching it up, Steam Pop_OS! i386 or whatever, but that's the jist. It was a crazy blip that Linus managed to be in the way of.
Not Linux's fault, not normal, but in my opinion not entirely Linus' fault either as who expects their desktop to be bricked by installing an everyday program?
Top one has to be my favorite. I've gotten it once. I did manage to get it to boot and fixed it but at the time I was just like: "oh....well shit"
do you remember what causes it? and what was the fix?
When a (typical) Linux system boots up, it first goes through an "early boot" environment that just has some basic drivers and things. The entire purpose of this environment is to find where your actual root file system is (which could theoretically be on something quite complicated, like RAID or a network file system), mount that, and then transition to the "real" system.
That error appears when something goes wrong with mounting the real file system.
I had this happen to me recently too, with an EndeavourOS live USB. In my case, it turned out to be due to a faulty flash, reflashing with Rufus fixed it.
Your system ate a SPARC! Gah
What does this mean? Does it has something to do with... I don't know, the Sun SPARC CPUs?
I've been messing around with Linux VMs and have gotten kernel panic a lot lately. Always gives me a chuckle
What am I missing in the "end Kernel panic" one?
failed to mount root filesystem on unknown-block(0,0) means the kernel started, loaded builtin drivers and drivers from the initrd, looked for the system partition to continue starting up and couldn't find it.
Maybe you removed a disk and /dev/sdb became /dev/sda or maybe you forgot to add nvme SSD support and the kernel can't read /dev/nvme0n1p1.
Or your disk let out the magic smoke and isn't detected any more.
lp0: on fire
linux susadmin can't even find the print screen button smdh head /s
You don’t see most of these errors in situations where screenshots are possible
php has a log message about killing children, i think i saw once
The first one sent shivers fown my spine.
Second one just reminded me of Linus' challenge.
The third one gave me quite a laugh.
I let out a chuckle on the last one
LI
I love Linux but this is a huge pain point for me with Linux. Just tell me actual errors like a professional OS would.
Just tell me actual errors like a professional OS would.
Professional OS:
Ah, my Windows (dual booted and hardly ever used) desktop wallpaper. 😅
It does tell you the actual error, though. Following it up with "Good luck" isn't particularly professional but removing it would just make the message more boring, not any clearer.
IIRC the person who added that didn't add it as a joke but as a genuine thing.
One smart thing I think Microsoft did was try to give every error message a code.
Googling for "gpoopapp E0013" is often easier and gets more precise results than having to type in "gpoopapp The file /home/bitchslayer69420/.config/share/whatever.yaml could not be opened: File not found"
Unfortunately, the SEO hellscape means every single windows error just yield a "Try to install our patcher tool" article.
How about both?
But in the latter case you don't have to google. You already know what the problem is. The file it's looking for is missing. So I'd rather have that kind of message than just an error code.
You definitely have to go to the Arch wikiGoogle in some cases.
Knowing what the problem is and knowing how to fix it are sometimes seemingly unrelated.
E.g., "Could not open foo.yaml: File not found" could actually mean "Some non-obvious file in the tarball was not set executable, which screwed up this one script that ran another script but couldn't run some other script which didn't give an error message, which made another script think the file had already been copied".
If you can find someone out there who ran into exactly the same problem, you can find a solution to it, but if none of the words in your error message are completely unique, it can be very hard to find someone with the same problem.
Personally, I do find these add additional information:
That this really is a rather serious problem.
Entropy, to make it easier to find others with the same problem.
IT IS POSSIBLE THAT SOMEONE IS DOING SOMETHING NASTY!
People would read the second message, type the yes prompt, break their system. But still claim that it was linux's fault, and that the OS doesn't work.
By "people" you mean Linus Sex Tips
Linux tech slips
Linux Tech Tips channel when?
With Emily as the main Host (Comment section goes BRRRRRRR! Don't want to be a mod there xD)
For anyone confused with this comment thread https://youtu.be/0506yDSgU7M?t=597
For legal reasons I cannot confirm nor deny such allegations at this time.
They need to noobify that prompt further, something like "Yes, break my system!". Even Linus wouldn't fall for that (I hope)!
Or have them answer a few linux related questions
*They will claim it was Linus fault
Which one?
sex tips
Message two can also be caused by packages (or rather, package creators) with delusions of grandeur that only think that the system will stop working without them, so they rig things to threaten to uninstall the system.
Or else someone has created too heavy a dependency on something that ought to be removable, but isn't thanks to malice or incompetence (or both).
We still mock Microsoft for putting too heavy a dependency (or at least removal FUD) on whatever web browser they bundle with their OSes (first IE, now Edge), and here we might have a package creator trying the same damn thing.
Honestly I once did this to my desktop environment because I saw a huge list of packages and ignored it because I thought they were packages that could be upgraded, not that it was going to uninstall my fucking desktop lol
You should get a message "you don't exist, go away"
Not sure if that one is still around but I know one person who ran a script with "deluser $USER" and it ate root resulting in fun messages like that
My local
deluserchecks if the user has any active process. I tried deleting all of the data by hand, but the process is still assigned to a user name and id.I'm not sure if this one can error still can be replicated.
Well you could manually edit /etc/password and shadow I suppose
I think I'll just take your word for it.
Easy to try in a virtual machine with snapshot. Or use a filesystem snapshot
the famous "This incident will be reported" error was briefly removed last year before being replaced with a less ominous version.
While it was funny, it probably is for the best. Especially if a kid uses the system it might legitimately scare the shit out of them lol
I wouldn't be surprised if a kid thought the police was gonna break in now
I noticed this, got so sad. It was one of the funniest ones for me. First time I got it I kinda laughed.
IMHO, that doesn't sound any less ominous
At least it answers the question whom it will be reported to. In all likelihood the administrator is me anyway, at least on my personal devices. People won't worry anymore that it will be reported to the police or, heaven forbid, to Santa Claus.
I'll never forget this one lmao
How could you not include the classic printer lp0 on fire!
I actually got that one around 2010 on Ubuntu. The printer wasn't actually on fire. If I recall it was caused by the network attached printer losing connection during a job
That was a fun read, thank you.
Good chance that could be fire
I love that the Wikipedia article has a section on Printer flammability :D
There's also the naughty programmer getting spanked by EFL
EFL is an absolute crime against programmer-kind, even if the errors are, admittedly, hilarious. can assert that they are not so funny when you find them deeeeep in some god-forsaken legacy codebase that's seen more
null *s than git commits lolThe third one is new to me. "Congratulations" - that's fucking hilarious.
I got so hung up on the misspelling of "separate" that I didn't even see the "Congratulations" on first read-through. Which says more about me than about the error message, alas. 😅
Reminds me of the Chocolatey Uninstall script warning
What the heck tho, how could a simple script destroy a whole machine?
When a software package installer isn't designed to be reversible
I recall a bunch of antiviruses being similarly difficult to completely wipe
It isn't as hard apparently. The script follows the manual way, just delete the folder it's in. What is a problem seems to be changing the path - extracting, changing and reapplying the path variable seems to need 90 lines of Powershell alone. That's just crazy. I'm also wondering how other programs write themselves into path without needing warnings and backups of the path for the user to restore.
It doesn't say that.
If you setup your system with Chocolatey (is a package manager for Windows), removing Chocolatey will break your setup (removing all installed packages).
I don't think "machine" is defined as "installed packages". And reading the code of the script, the breaking part is the whole script, as 90 lines are literally just for the purpose of getting, changing and reapplying the path variable. It (or rather the system and user one) are also backed up to
C:\PATH_backups_ChocolateyUninstall.txt.So it's still a wonder for me how removing something from path, or adding for that matter, is so complicated. Linux just has /usr/bin and /usr/local/bin for custom scripts/programs globally, and .local/bin for user specific executables. If you really want custom paths for your special application then add a script in
/etc/profile.d/. No need to permanently change a global variable that could easily break your system at any time.TL;DR Windows is dumb for having global PATH variables without a way to expand them modularly, which would be much safer.
score 10 or sacrifice childis actually just a MtG card, how did that get in thereI can't imagine Linux users and mtg players being mutually exclusive lol
We're not
Gah and I spent all that money on a garage foundation.
Yes, do as I say!
"It's possible I did something wrong." 🤣
Like not read the warning that said that he was about to uninstall the desktop? Or to continue only if he knew what he was doing? He also earlier liked to talk about "red flags", but somehow needing to type in "Yes, do as I say!" wasn't one to him. I'm supposed to be getting Linux tips from this guy?
No, this is Linus Sex Tips not Linux Tech Tips!
No. You're supposed to see what kind of experience someone who didn't use Linux before would have.
How could someone who has never used Linux know that he was about to nuke his system, after typing in the command that the internet told him to type in to install Steam?
By reading the message and using basic comprehension. If you don't know what something is in an error message then google it!
Far be it from me to defend "I did what the internet told me to do!" but nothing in
sudo apt-get install steamwould lead you to believe you were about to nuke core system packages. That was a big fuckup for PopOS.There's also no reason to believe that
apt updatewould be a preemptive solution to that problem, when it hadn't even been reported to PopOS yet. Let alone expect newcomers to Linux, who are just following widely available tutorials, to know that command and what it does.What makes you think your average Windows user that is trying out Linux for the first time wouldn't have faced the same problem? I never understood why people criticized Linus for this video. After all, the video was supposed to see whether Linux is a viable alternative for Windows users (specifically gamers).
Yes. People have been trained to ignore warnings like this.
Android makes you jump through a hoop and tries to scare you when you want to install apps from outside the playstore.
Windows has some similarly serious-sounding warning messages.
People have got used to rolling their eyes at warnings when installing software. Like it or not, that's the way that it is. Users are used to seeing a scary warning when installing, and they're used to just powering through it without much thought.
Linus was following a tutorial on the PopOS website, followed the instructions, and borked his install.
I have problems with LTT in general, but the PopOS thing was entirely understandable, and people pretending that wasn't a usability problem in PopOS are delusional.
I agree with that other reply.
Linus knew just enough to be dangerous.
My experience with most Windows users and their first encounter with using a Linux terminal is every single warning/error they see no matter how mundane is a big deal.
Things like the boot text or a random
aptinstall on Linux will often display various warnings or even "errors" that are really of no concern but ime tend to freak out new users.Linus is in that narrow band where he doesn't really know shit but knows just enough to be falsely confident and ignore all the warnings/errors instead of just the irrelevant ones
yeah, quote a problematic video. surprised that he deleted everything, when is says it will break his system!
Surprised that it prompted him to delete his system, when he was trying to install Steam!
I didn't watch the full vid to see what he did to get there.
I was not happy with pop os when I gave it a 10 min trial. I am not surprised that it had some issues to getting steam to work.
Then you should.
Linus just wanted to install Steam and found a solution on the internet that told him to type the command "sudo apt-get install Steam".
I mean Linus did sth wrong when he wrote that yes do as I say without reading the error message.
On the other hand the Bug he was experiencing should not come to a stable Release build.
Anybody could have make that mistake. Or worse wonder for hours why it didn't work and suddenly it works. Especially if you are new to Linux and don't know what instead of the error message should pop up.
Does anybody know why it uninstalled his desktop? I have Steam on Linux, and it works fine and I didn't have to break my computer to get it.
It was a bug in that version of the distro IIRC, trying to install Steam would instead try to install the SteamOS desktop environment (or something along those lines). It has since been fixed to actually install the Steam client.
Obviously it was a bit silly he typed "Yes, do as I say" after seeing the message, but he was also literally following exactly what all the online guides said to do (other than the "Yes do as I say" part). Luckily it's fixed now but I do think it was a really good demonstration of what the video wanted to see: "What might the average non-techie gamer face using Linux?"
Apparently the issue was already fixed and he wouldn't have had the issue if he had done an
apt updateIt was extremely unfortunate timing. Pop_OS! had a bug for that week (or a few days?) where installing Steam would IIRC try to install the wrong version with the wrong dependencies. To support these alternate dependencies, it had to uninstall a bunch of the defaults, thus breaking the system. You can probably find a much better explanation by searching it up, Steam Pop_OS! i386 or whatever, but that's the jist. It was a crazy blip that Linus managed to be in the way of.
Not Linux's fault, not normal, but in my opinion not entirely Linus' fault either as who expects their desktop to be bricked by installing an everyday program?
Dazed and confused, but trying to continue
Top one has to be my favorite. I've gotten it once. I did manage to get it to boot and fixed it but at the time I was just like: "oh....well shit"
do you remember what causes it? and what was the fix?
When a (typical) Linux system boots up, it first goes through an "early boot" environment that just has some basic drivers and things. The entire purpose of this environment is to find where your actual root file system is (which could theoretically be on something quite complicated, like RAID or a network file system), mount that, and then transition to the "real" system.
That error appears when something goes wrong with mounting the real file system.
I had this happen to me recently too, with an EndeavourOS live USB. In my case, it turned out to be due to a faulty flash, reflashing with Rufus fixed it.
What does this mean? Does it has something to do with... I don't know, the Sun SPARC CPUs?
It's for SPARC and PA-RISC when the kernel dies
Okay, but what is sparc and pa-risc?
OMG I feel old.
Also regret the money I spent buying Sun stock in the late 90s.
As someone who was Sun Certified 5.7.1 to version 10, I feel this way too hard as well.
nice
BEST os ever, proof is right here.
That's some bare metal system breakage I can get behind
Where lp0 on fire?
I've been messing around with Linux VMs and have gotten kernel panic a lot lately. Always gives me a chuckle
What am I missing in the "end Kernel panic" one?
failed to mount root filesystem on unknown-block(0,0)means the kernel started, loaded builtin drivers and drivers from the initrd, looked for the system partition to continue starting up and couldn't find it.Maybe you removed a disk and
/dev/sdbbecame/dev/sdaor maybe you forgot to add nvme SSD support and the kernel can't read/dev/nvme0n1p1.Or your disk let out the magic smoke and isn't detected any more.
lp0: on fire
linux susadmin can't even find the print screen button smdh head /s
You don’t see most of these errors in situations where screenshots are possible
php has a log message about killing children, i think i saw once
The first one sent shivers fown my spine.
Second one just reminded me of Linus' challenge.
The third one gave me quite a laugh.
I let out a chuckle on the last one
LI
I love Linux but this is a huge pain point for me with Linux. Just tell me actual errors like a professional OS would.
Professional OS:
Ah, my Windows (dual booted and hardly ever used) desktop wallpaper. 😅
It does tell you the actual error, though. Following it up with "Good luck" isn't particularly professional but removing it would just make the message more boring, not any clearer.
IIRC the person who added that didn't add it as a joke but as a genuine thing.
One smart thing I think Microsoft did was try to give every error message a code. Googling for "gpoopapp E0013" is often easier and gets more precise results than having to type in "gpoopapp The file /home/bitchslayer69420/.config/share/whatever.yaml could not be opened: File not found"
Unfortunately, the SEO hellscape means every single windows error just yield a "Try to install our patcher tool" article.
How about both?
But in the latter case you don't have to google. You already know what the problem is. The file it's looking for is missing. So I'd rather have that kind of message than just an error code.
You definitely have to
go to the Arch wikiGoogle in some cases. Knowing what the problem is and knowing how to fix it are sometimes seemingly unrelated. E.g., "Could not open foo.yaml: File not found" could actually mean "Some non-obvious file in the tarball was not set executable, which screwed up this one script that ran another script but couldn't run some other script which didn't give an error message, which made another script think the file had already been copied". If you can find someone out there who ran into exactly the same problem, you can find a solution to it, but if none of the words in your error message are completely unique, it can be very hard to find someone with the same problem.Personally, I do find these add additional information:
IT IS POSSIBLE THAT SOMEONE IS DOING SOMETHING NASTY!
ssh!