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Comment by squarefoot | Hacker News Reader

FTA: "Showing an unhelpful error message and then requiring a user to delve into the world of the command line to fix things. What is this? Linux?"

What did the author want, a button to push for each solution to every possible exotic error, even critical ones that would require to resize a system partition from a running OS? Seriously!? Of course one solve this through the command line.

Or, if that wasn't what the author meant, then he may have to upgrade his Slackware 4.0 install, because a thing or two have changed in the Linux world.

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The beauty of Windows is that you have one-button-push-solutions that just work. If Linux would have that too, maybe even tech-unsavvy-users could handle it, but since Linux is made from freaks for freaks that won't happen. I mean, Linux people can't even see the problems of a not-one-click-solution, but for every normal user it's crystal clear. Command line is for tech users and really for nobody else. Nobody who isn't into tech want's to write in command shells, really, nobody!

Sure, and I wouldn't want it any other way, or I'd just use Windows in the first place. That said, on Linux I still get error messages, not a big number – an actual message that tells me what didn't work so if googling that error message doesn't yield a solution, I can go ahead and try do fix the issue myself.

I still remember from the Windows days when you were unlucky enough to hit a more unusual error code, where googling it didn't immediately result in a dozen forum threads with people posting the same issue and then some dude replying with a fix where you don't even know how they possibly figured that out. If you didn't find a solution googling the error code it basically meant you can try random shit until you accidentally fix it, or reinstall. On Linux I could just ultimately look at the source code of whatever component is broken and track back from where the error is printed.

> even critical ones that would require to resize a system partition from a running OS?

Windows updates can usually do this actually. But only if the recovery partition is after the system partition. On my systems that have been around for a while and had a recovery partition in the front of the drive (as used to be common), there's often a handful of recovery partitions, because the original one was too small, so some update made a new one at the end, and then that one was too small and another update made another one at the end. Kind of messy... and hard to cleanup, I don't think many filesystems are easy to extend or reduce from the front of the partition.

Its typical flamebait The Register is very fond of. I have seen entirely unnecessary references to everything from Brexit to religion on The Register.

it works too. Lots of comments both on their own site and here purely in response to mentioning Linux in the subheading.

Lots of small software companies existed from the 95-XP era to do exactly this, to fix errors such as missing paths or dll issues for major updates and upgrades. Seems like Windows Update is ripe for supervision again.

Well yes. That is Windows (Or Macintosh) 's whole shtick.

People get Windows/Mac for the convenience of 1 click solutions and the understanding that most things will work with one click, or at most a few clicks and a login.

It also comes with the expectations that such massive companies won't completely annihilate their computer with a buggy update.

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