this post was submitted on 05 Oct 2023
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Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).
Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.
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While that may be true, I've found Microsoft's Troubleshooter almost seem like magic in finding and fixing some issues, where as with arch (or any other distro) I would have to hunt everywhere to fix some issue that happened randomly or because some dependency of some dependency of some new package I installed broke something.
I've had exactly the opposite experience. I don't use Windows often, but the times that I have, Microsoft's troubleshooter has always been zero help. It's always the most basic shit that a Tier 1 tech support guy will run you through on every phone call. It's like "Have you tried turning it off and then turning it on again?" Yes, yes, and I tried that, too! Oh, what a surprise, it's ran out of ideas, and I have to go on the Web and search for help, just like I would with an issue on Linux.
And the reason why this is a universal T1 tech support tactic (to the point of being a meme) is because there are plenty of times that this does do the trick. Definitely not all the time, but as someone who worked in internet tech support at a call center the solution often was "Unplug the modem, unplug the router, give me a moment to do something on my side (which sometimes was nothing - but it made sure that they actually unplugged it), now plug both back in".
And before someone jumps me for lying about the "do something on my side" part, when you can clearly see someone's port uptime is 200 days despite them claiming they reset their router minutes before calling in, you tend to learn very quickly that people lie (or are wrong/misinformed) whether that's intentional, or because they thought they unplugged their router but instead unplugged their PC/monitor/etc - the end result was the same. We had customers on all sorts of different infrastructure, some of them I could do a port bounce from our end (and I did for those cases), but others the customer had to unplug it from their end.
So even if the troubleshooter only fixes say, 25% of people's problems - that's still 25% of problems resolved right away, and without needing to go search online. I do not think I've run into a Linux distro that has any sort of built in troubleshooter that could at the very least help those 25% (or whatever the actual percentage is) cases.
I find Linux, especially Arch or Arch-based distros, easier to troubleshoot than Windows. The documentation is decent a majority of the time and the community seems more willing to tailor advice to your specific situation.
By that I mean you can post a log and if someone recognizes it they seem more willing to help you out or at least send you in the right direction.
When I have issues on Windows on the other hand a lot of the time I see the same generic advice over and over again and it usually ends with user being told to download software from their obscure site. Maybe that's just my poor utilization of search engines though.
Isn't that making the problem worse though? If you have a tool that resolves your problem for you, wouldn't that make you dependent on it, and thus, be even more helpless when moving to another ecosystem (like, yeah, Arch)?
Arch is built for a particular kind of Linux user though, btw. It's probably the worst choice for a "not a computer person" move into, issues of dependency hell aside.