this post was submitted on 09 Jul 2025
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Anyone else able to "sense" whether a solution on a forum will work before fully reading it through? Especially the long-winded ones. (lemmy.ml)
submitted 1 week ago by monovergent@lemmy.ml to c/linux@lemmy.ml
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Searching gives me the impression there's a million ways to solve the same problem on Linux, and I find myself profiling answers into about four categories at a glance:

  • Succinct: one or two-liner, a single config file, or just a few clicks
  • Long-winded song-and-dance: Full train of thought interspersed between various commands and logs, several config files (some of which don't already exist), or installing an obscure package that is no longer maintained
  • Specific to a desktop environment or version I don't have
  • Just looks wrong

I'll usually just take solutions from the first category, which almost always works, save for differences between updates and versions. Solutions in the second category also seem to end with a 50% chance of the OP unable to solve the problem. If I'm desperate, I'll try the second one, but it often ends up not working, eventually leading me to come up with a much cleaner solution of my own.

Curious if anyone else does this too and if those one-liners are really better solutions or if it's just confirmation bias.

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[–] CrabAndBroom@lemmy.ml 40 points 1 week ago (1 children)

The usual tech support search:

  • First hit is a thread describing your exact problem, marked as [SOLVED]. Clicking it goes to a 404.

  • Second hit is a thread describing your exact problem that goes to an actual thread, but the message has been edited to just say "Solved" with no record of what was done.

  • Third hit is a thread describing almost your exact problem, with the first response calling the poster a noob for asking and then 15 pages of arguments.

  • Fourth hit is a thread describing something in the same general area as your problem, which you try anyway and makes the thing you're trying to fix break in a different way, but it's progress at least.

  • Actual solution is somewhere between the 5th and 8th hit, or you give up and come back to it in about a week and solve it instantly without trying for some fucking reason.

So to answer the question, I can usually tell I'm getting close to the solution when I say "Oh for fuck's sake" as I'm closing tabs lol.

[–] seralth@lemmy.world 4 points 6 days ago

I love to go with just rip out what ever is broken never look at it again and till eventually forgetting something was broken reinstalling what ever I ripped out only for everything to work again

Despite trying to reinstall things like 3 times before.

The key is you HAVE to forget about the problem or it knows your trying to trick it and it breaks it self again!