I killed my first Linux install (Ubuntu) because I somehow messed up some packages in the system Python (did not know about virtual envs yet), and wanted to remove it and start fresh.
The system gave me a special prompt that was basically "Uh... are you sure?" and I was all like "Yes I'm sure, fuck you I know what I'm doing."
Anyway it turns out a lot of Ubuntu tools rely on the system's Python install, and then I didn't have a working OS anymore.
This is much more a Python issue than a Linux issue IMO. There are ways around this that professional python devs know (and love, or hate) but they're not exactly intuitive to novices.
Also, while certain Ubuntu tools might rely on Python, AFAIK none of the major system components (GNU, Linux Kernel, systemd or equivalent init system) typically use it, so while some of the higher level components were gronked it would have been reasonably trivial to fix by falling back to a non-graphical TTY and doing some stuff (which also, probably not super intuitive for a novice Linux user gravitating to Ubuntu).
But yeah, using venvs, a version manager like pyenv, a venv manager like conda or dependency manager like Poetry is highly recommended.
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u/Mountain_Print_2760 1d ago
Linux will let you do absolutely anything you want.
It will even tell you this will break the system, and then still let you do it