I am no Linux guru, but usually if I went to get something done I am able to. In this post, I will document how I solved a particular problem in a fast and easy way.

Problem: I really broke my system

I had a pretty old computer running Arch Linux. I was using Gnome as a Desktop Environment and stuff was getting pretty slow. I tried to have a boring, stable setup, but I ended up having a system that got hung up a lot. So I wanted to remove Gnome and use a lighter-weight desktop environment thing like LXDE or XFCE. Unfortunately, when uninstalling Gnome, I did some reckless commands that also uninstalled a bunch of important packages. So I ended up with a system that couldn't even connect to the Internet to re-install those packages.

Solution

My solution to this issue was to reinstall my base operating system but leave my home directory intact. This way I could fix all the things I wanted to fix and not have to go through some complicated restoration procedure. While nothing super-important (or not already backed up online) was on this computer, having to manually re-do a bunch of configurations and stuff would be no fun, so it was preferable to repair my existing system rather than starting anew.

Partitions helped

Fortunately, I had my system set up such that I had a separate root (/) and home (/home) partition. So, it would not be too difficult to isolate those things that needed fixing and those things that did not.

Installation

I opted for installing Manjaro Linux, an Arch-based distribution. I downloaded the ISO, used Rufus on a Windows machine to set up a bootable USB drive, and then entered the graphical installer. I chose manual partitioning. Doing this, I had to set some "flags" (not sure on the exact terminology here). Basically I had to tell the installer where /, /boot and /home were. I reformatted my boot and root partitions, but left the home partition as it was because I didn't want to delete my files there.

User Stuff

That went smoothly. I just used the installer to make a new user. With that new user, I created a user account for the main user I was using on my old system using useradd. As I didn't want Manjaro to add all sorts of configuration stuff automatically, I chose to setup this new user (I'll call it alan) from the command line.

I tried logging with alan after doing this—uh-oh! didn't work. I was returned to Manjaro's login screen thing.

I guessed the problem had to do with permissions. So, I searched up how to change the permissions of my existing /home/alan directory which was left over from my broken install.

Then, to make sure I could run any command from alan via sudo, I needed to edit /etc/sudoers. I did this with sudo visudo /etc/sudoers from the account I made with Manjaro. I uncommented the line giving sudo permissions to the wheel group and then I used usermod to add alan to the wheel group.

Success

I successfully logged on with alan, installed some software, and wrote this blog post. All my files and stuff are there.

Lessons

The specifics of how to do something in Linux can be mind-numbing. For this reason, I don't even try to do lots of things—like dealing with audio and video issues. However, if you have a basic idea of what you want to accomplish, doling common tasks like dealing with partitions and users can be surprisingly easy.

Search engines are good for solving technical problems. If you know exactly what you want to search for, search engines are very good at returning you relevant results. Fortunately, Linux problems often involve weird strings (e.g. program names) that aren't confused with non-computer things. Usually adding the word "linux" or "arch" or something easily narrows a search to relevant stuff too.

Through solving real world problems that come up, you can learn more about how computers work, software is organized, and so on and so forth. If you choose a lazy option like using an automatic installer like I did here, you can avoid looking at many things you don't care to struggle with too.