Stupid Linux Tricks
I use Linux for pretty much everything. I do have a Windows machine I use for gaming, but I barely touch it these days. Overall, I think Linux is a good operating system, in that it's far better for most of my needs than the alternatives.
That said, it frequently shafts me in new and unexpected ways. When that happens, I write about it here. Expect this page to be updated as time goes on.
Oh, did you still need that?
Encountered:
I've been trying to be better at using programming tools like debuggers and linters and whatnot, rather than just trying to hack things out through brutre force and printfs. To that end, I've begun using "cppcheck," which is tool that does static analysis on source files.
In brief, you run it thusly...
$ cppcheck file.cpp
Well, today my fingers went on autopilot and typed this instead...
$ cpp check file.cpp
Which responded with this completely reasonable error message...
cc1: fatal error: check: No such file or directory
Unfortunately, as an extra-fun bonus prize, "file.cpp" was deleted. Done. Gone. Joined the bleedin' choir invisible.
Amazing.
What has happened before will happen again
Encountered:
Trying to update Kali on my VM...
$ sudo apt update
$ sudo apt full-upgrade -y
$ reboot
Everything appears to go well until I try to launch a terminal. Then I get a "helpful" error dialog telling me: "Failed to execute default Terminal Emulator. Input/output error."
A few minutes of searching later, I discover that this is apparently a bug affecting xfce, and it's been around since at least 2011.
I tried a bunch of different solutions, but the error persisted. I blew away the image, re-installed, and it failed again in exaclty the same way after updating.
I finally just re-installed again, told xfce to fuck off, and installed Gnome instead.