On Wed, 29 Jul 2020 09:05:34 -0000 (UTC), Jethro_uk
wrote:

On Wed, 29 Jul 2020 00:16:17 +0100, T i m wrote:

On Tue, 28 Jul 2020 14:35:28 -0000 (UTC), Jethro_uk
wrote:

snip

Like, Windows is fairly likely to run in a GUI Safe mode and from that I
can get them to launch Teamviewer and then see what I can do.

I can sometimes get them to boot a live Linux DVD, get online, download
TV and launch it and me get access,

I created a SystemRescueCD with SSH enabled by default. (Possibly the
only one in existence).

Cool. ;-)

Boot from that, and as long as the machine has a
wired network connection you can SSH in to start digging and fixing.

I can / so use SSD now, especially for stuff that is supposed to run
headless and do so mainly though MobaXterm as it allows GUI
manipulation of lots of things that I couldn't do easily from the CLI.
I think I also had a GUI SSH terminal (XWindow?) once but haven't
since and do know what you would need to do so? ;-(

That, chroot, and apt(-get) or dpkg and you can fix most things.

Hmmm ... ;-)

it's just I don't generally have any
idea what to do next, outside trying some randomly Googled 'Fix your
Linux' type commands and seeing if I can stumble on something. ;-(

Linux (or more accurately, the GNU bit) is slowly getting better that
way though, more of a 'Control Panel' type thing so less need for the
CLI (driver Manager FWIW etc).

The biggest problem with Linux - and it's infected Android - is the
bewildering variety of layouts and locations for they myriad versions of
software for system settings.

Agreed.

Invariably when someone tries to post an
illustration to help it will be in a layout you don't have.

Yup, been there many times. ;-(

I am getting better at Googling / selecting that information that is
most likely to be directly relevant to my installed distro / DE.

I copy and paste something from a walkthrough (that was supposed to be
absolute / complete) and get an error message that takes me ever
further down the rabbit hole.

As I mentioned, it is getting better with the off 'This is broken, run
this command to fix it ...' will often do the trick (whatever it did
etc).

All that said, I do find myself using the CLI more these days, dmesg
(firmware issues on the TV tuners), lshw/usb, sudo apt-get install
whatever and a few others. I even used the CLI to copy a file
(because I couldn't seem to get the right permissions with the GUI,
even though I was the admin ... ?).

sudo service tvheadend stop / start / restart ... and the latest,
'top' (is it, looking at usage when streaming TV / video etc).

Learning how to re-instate features I found handy and they removed
like being able to open a folder via the GUI as Admin (or you can't
then create / edit a file in there).

It's funny, I was fairly competent in MSDOS but as you said, at least
the file structure was pretty consistent. ;-)

Cheers, T i m