this post was submitted on 01 Jan 2026
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Linux
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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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I just deleted ~1TB of cached intermediate container images today
It prompted me to just fresh install my os, which I'm doing right now.
Wait...wha?
What prompted you to reinstall your ENTIRE OS? That should almost never be necessary under any circumstances.
I’m still on-boarding to Linux, and I was on bazzite but a bunch of settings were messed up.
I migrated from docker to podman and for some reason half my flatpaks broke. Then my podman caches were insane, so my disk was filling up. And I had so e messed up settings, like sleep wasn’t working properly and would just show a black screen on resume.
OHHH...you didn't get an actual on screen prompt, you just decided to reinstall. My bad.
Yes, I just wasn't happy with the state of my machine. It felt like there were too many parts I didn't understand, so I wanted to clear it all out and simplify systems.
New to Linux, what's the fresh install process like? I understand the actual installation, but curious about the workflow of backing up, reconfiguring, etc.
Almost everything you care about should be in /home so back that up. Many people keep it on a separate partition or drive to make changing distros (or reinstalling the existing one) easier.
Most of your system config is in /etc so you may want to make a copy of that too.
But the proper process on Linux is not to re-install. It should not be necessary.
On top of this, part of the reasons to use containers is that you can create and destroy them at will while leaving your host tidy and stable. I use Distrobox quite a bit for this reason.
How do you use distrobox? I don’t get it yet.
I just try not to leave the shell lol.
Distrobox allows you to run an 'os' container essentially to install things in, then blow away when you're done or no longer have a need. Its mostly used for mara messy programs or projects that you don't want littering your main OS.
The process of backing up is a matter of preference. Several solutions exist from vendors to freeware.
Lots of people use 'cp' or 'rsync'. I use those prior to borg backups of major repos or archive folders.
Install process is easy. Aside from hypervisors and stuff like that, I just install my OS on bare metal partition, and create a sidecar OS to do maintainance from chroot
Not too bad.
I kind of dislike the installer though (after you complete each step you have to go back to the main page to do the next one, it’s more a nitpick on the UI flow).
Getting everything working is easy though, basically just click which disk to install and add a user profile. Click install and then click restart when done.
Overall it feels modern and normal.
If you have secure boot you might have to go do something in the bios, but there are usually guides, and windows would be the same.