What Can I Do If Something Goes Wrong?

Let’s say that one day your amazing distro fails to… well… do something. That failure is not too uncommon, but thankfully there are a few easy things to try out first.

If A Program Is Not Working:

1. Open up your system monitor and look for the name of your offending program in the list of running ones. Once you have found it, simply right click on it and select Kill. By doing this, you will have stopped it in it’s tracks and closed it down. Now, just restart it and you should be good to go.
2. If the last step was unsuccessful, you could try the easiest one of all. Rebooting. That’s right, often problems or glitches seem to go away by simply rebooting your computer!
3. If the last steps failed to work for you, then you could ask about it on your distro’s Forum. Just head to the website where you found your distro and look for a Forum or Community Discussion somewhere on it. Once found, open a new topic there and let other users help you. This is basically Linux’s version of tech support, so the help you receive is generally pretty good.

If Everything Is Just Too Slow And Laggy

1. This can happen sometimes if you have not shut down your computer for awhile. To fix this, simply reboot it! After that, everything should be back up to speed.
2. If this did not work, then I would recommend running Bleachbit and letting it clean up any loose ends for you.
3. If the last steps failed to work for you, then you could ask about it on your distro’s Forum. Just head to the website where you found your distro and look for a Forum or Community Discussion somewhere on it. Once found, open a new topic there and let other users help you. This is basically Linux’s version of tech support, so the help you receive is generally pretty good.

If You Can’t Even Boot Into Your Distro

1. This is when a program like Timeshift can come in handy. If you had it installed before this problem occurred, then you could boot into something else (a live ISO perhaps) and install it there. It will recognize that your other installation of Timeshift has already stored some backups of your system, and it will allow you to recover them. This will bring your system back to the state it was in before the problems started occurring.
2. If the last step failed to work for you, then you could ask about it on your distro’s Forum. Just head to the website where you found your distro and look for a Forum or Community Discussion somewhere on it. Once found, open a new topic there and let other users help you. This is basically Linux’s version of tech support, so the help you receive is generally pretty good.

Maintenance

Want a fresh system for years to come? Want to get as much life out of your computer as you can before spending money on another? Then this is just for you.

Bleachbit

Bleachbit is a very effective method of keeping your computer fast and uncluttered for years to come. Just check whatever options you would like to clean, and it will do the rest. However, it is important to open this as Root. Otherwise, t will not have the necessary privileges to carry out it’s purpose. To do this, simply go into your menu and instead of just opening up Bleachbit, open up Bleachbit As Administrator.  After this, just get a cup of coffee and you should be good to go!

Timeshift

Timeshift is an essential application for anyone. With this, you can back up your entire Operating System with just a few clicks! Simply install it, open it up, and go through the steps:

1. For most users, when choosing Type, RSYNC is the one for you.
2. In the next step, Location, simply pick whatever choice has the largest size. This will most likely be the one you are looking for.
3. The Schedule is completely up to you, as the user. However, I would recommend you just keep it at their automatic settings for this one. The same goes for the step after this one, Filters. Just leave it the way it already is.
4. And now you are ready to begin! Simply click Create and let it do the rest for you.And that’s it! You’re done! Now you have an entire snapshot of your Operating System to fall back on if something goes wrong with it in the future. So if anything does go wrong, you can just use Timeshift to recover your entire system as it was before you made the fatal mistake. Enjoy! (And I hope you never need it).