With the way most distros are structured, you should never need a reinstall, since reinstalling the packages will fix any issues with broken system files. Broken configuration wouldn’t be as easy to fix, but still something you should be able to fix.
The only reason to be reinstalling, in my eyes, is if you have a mess of packages and configuration you don’t remember, and want to get a clean slate to reconfigure instead of trying to figure out why everything was set up in a certain way.
Fair, but machines at work as sysadmin are a different thing - hopefully there you’re also dealing with fast deployment, prepared ahead of time. But if the issue is that you messed something up on your own computer, ignoring the issue in favor of reinstalling sounds likely to leave you oblivious to what the issue was, and likely to repeat your mistake.
That is fair, but ignores compounding issues like installing several software packages over years and forgetting about them, and something like that causes an issue years after installing and forgetting about the software, then it is far easier to just reinstall.
With the way most distros are structured, you should never need a reinstall, since reinstalling the packages will fix any issues with broken system files. Broken configuration wouldn’t be as easy to fix, but still something you should be able to fix.
The only reason to be reinstalling, in my eyes, is if you have a mess of packages and configuration you don’t remember, and want to get a clean slate to reconfigure instead of trying to figure out why everything was set up in a certain way.
As an IT guy who has worked professionally as a Linux sysadmin.
While you are correct, the factor you are missing is time.
There have been countless times I have reinstalled Linux machines because it is faster than troubleshooting the issue
Professionally on a non-recurring issue - absolutely.
With my stuff at home? Only if the wife suffers from the downtime.
If you do it right you should be able to trigger rebuild within about 20 min by kicking off the right automation.
Virtualization and containerization are your friends. Combine that with Ansible and you are rock solid.
Fair, but machines at work as sysadmin are a different thing - hopefully there you’re also dealing with fast deployment, prepared ahead of time. But if the issue is that you messed something up on your own computer, ignoring the issue in favor of reinstalling sounds likely to leave you oblivious to what the issue was, and likely to repeat your mistake.
That is fair, but ignores compounding issues like installing several software packages over years and forgetting about them, and something like that causes an issue years after installing and forgetting about the software, then it is far easier to just reinstall.