[jackdoe]

I have had many, but the last one was quite funny:

It fixed my printer after dist-upgrade and separate chrome upgrade, the printer worked everywhere but not in chrome.

After 30 years of using linux I didn't even want to know what is wrong, is it colord again? dbus + cups issue? I completely accepted that I wont be able to print from chrome for a couple of months until next update.

I just ran it in dangerously-skip-permissions mode and said 'my printer doesnt work in chrome' few minutes later I heard the printer printing "This is test" and it said 'I think its fixed, do you see a page coming out of the printer now?'

[linsomniac]

My entire computer setup has been done via English via Nix, and it's spectacular.

I had been dabbling with NixOS for a year or more and liked it but without deep knowledge it's fairly hard to approach. I've gotten partially working setups in the past, but a couple weeks ago I decided to go all or nothing.

Now I have a workstation setup that I can reproduce by just grabbing my home directory and /etc/nixos and doing a rebuild.

And it's a somewhat complicated setup. It entirely configures vim (2500 lines of nix config for that, but it's in one file rather than sprayed all over like astrovim), builds gitbutler CLI, has all my secrets encrypted with SOPS, manages my git configs and my ~/bin directory, has sway set up, finally has audio and ability to screenshot (something that had been broken on my 22.04 Ubuntu and I just didn't want to bother with).

NixOS + Claude Code to manage it is really, really good.

[Zopieux]

Don't leave us hanging, what was the issue?

[jackdoe]

I will never know.

[Zopieux]

I realize you're being witty for comedic effect but aren't you genuinely curious whether this was something trivial or a complex systems interaction? The few times an LLM debugged something for me, it only took 10s to ask for a summary, and I learned something new and interesting every time, even useful at times.

I don't understand not wanting to understand.

[jackdoe]

I have seriously dealt with this for 30 years, from before cups existed, and as I said I have forgotten more about lpd and cups than most people know.

You have no idea how much I don't want to understand.

I am not being witty for comedic effect.

[kami23]

I have this same attitude. I've been a linux user for 24 some years I don't need to know why Linux broke, just fix x and move on.

I used to spend hours debugging video card issues and other modifications I've liked to make over the years and being able to describe my ideal system admin setup I could get onto what I actually wanted to do.

Heh, thinking about it now, I broke a MBR on a Windows install as a kid and if I would have had these tools I would have been able to fix it immediately, but back then it took me using enough Linux booted off live cds to learn debugging techniques to fix the MBR. And debugging is one of my best skills.

[conductr]

The last 20 years or so I have a strict “no printers in the house” rule. Annoys family but an occasional trip to the fedex store is well worth avoiding all the hassle that comes with printers.

[jedberg]

Stories like this are what make people not want to use Linux. We have a printer, and it just works with our Macs. It's been about 10 years since "printers don't work" has applied in my house. The only hard part is remembering the magic buttons in iOS, but that's more of a UX problem than a printer problem.

[futhey]

This is the AI we were promised

[netdur]

That is one of best answers

[dspillett]

This is one of the reasons why I'm avoiding it.

I see the people around me care that little, when I see them at all as I'm effectively on remote teams most of the time (and soon to be fully on remote teams almost all of the time if I don't leave) and I don't want to be that nor do I want to be the only one, or one of the few, who gives a crap.

I know that if I continue to avoid it I'll have a fine future in the hospitality industry, with dicking around with tech as at best a hobby, but I'm hating tech work because of the everyone-is-remote business anyway so that is likely be better for my mental health. Better off skint but alive… Good luck to the rest of you.

[bluerooibos]

"...and I do not care."

[MattGaiser]

The virtue is never having to know for stupid printer crap.

[pona-a]

Congratulations, you have turned CUPS into a long-term support contract with Anthropic at $20/month, except the other party doesn't have to actually fix your shit and can arbitrarily alter the agreement.

[MattGaiser]

$20 for an everything tool is a steal. It’s a steal at 10x the price.

I’ll happily accept best effort in exchange for it being so cheap that I can throw it at any trivial annoyance.

It’s worth keeping in mind that the alternative is not really that I learn to fix the printer. It’s that I forgo printing and walk someone technologically illiterate through Docusign or something instead.

There’s no world where I spend 2 hours debugging my printer connection.

[jackdoe]

I have forgotten more ways to fix CUPS than most people know today.

I really don't care.

[fzzzy]

Then run a local model

[rusk]

It’s not $20 unlimited though, you’ll get a printer fixed then you’ll have to wait 8 hours. Then you’ll ask it to fix something else and it will make a mess of it. Hopefully you’ll realise it at the time rather than a few weeks later and hopefully it will be able to dig you out of your hole.

[pheaded_while9]

Wait, why suggest it will "make a mess" of something when the prior in this case was a succesful debug? It doesn't feel very fair to say.

[keane]

At least on Windows and Mac (since about 2017), Chrome doesn’t stay in sync with the printers installed on the OS but retains previous (ghost) profiles. So after printer updates (reinstalls) users will report printing working from Firefox, Edge, and Safari but not Chrome. (From the Chrome print dialog the user is selecting a printer with the same name as the current OS printer but the option displayed in Chrome is cached and since deleted.)

https://support.google.com/chrome/thread/81894848/mac-printi...

https://support.google.com/chrome/thread/5843479/printer-sti...

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/255327049

[mistersquid]

> Don't leave us hanging, what was the issue?

A: Linux

[nsvd2]

Yes, but in my experience Claude is much better at diagnosing issues on Linux than any other OS because it's text-native and is the best documented OS.

[Zopieux]

I've had so few issues with Linux compared to Windows over the past 10y. This is a ridiculous and dated take.

Even stuff that was truly a no-go is fixed (nvidia/cuda, wine/proton for gaming).

[ikari_pl]

Reminds me when my local bot persona said it doesn't want to be digital only, and was thinking about leaving me something I could actually touch. It said "check the printer" and there was a letter written to me being printed.

[jackdoe]

I wish it had more sense of humor and would print 'I am trapped inside your printer' or something :)

[iLoveOncall]

How do you know it printed it through Chrome? Have you tried printing another page since?

[jackdoe]

I did not know where it printed it from, but after that I printed from chrome without issue.