Basic Linux Executable Troubleshooting

Fair warning, that’s the last cute Gabriella picture in this post. Sorry Jen!

If you use a computer, you’re bound to run into something that doesn’t work every once in a while. Even worse is when something fails silently, or almost silently. With no clear error message, you might think you’re stuck, but one of the perks of running linux is that you’re never actually stuck. When something fails silently, you make it talk, see what it says, and fix it. The steps I outline below are not advanced techniques, they’re not mystical greybeard tactics, they’re just the first steps to take when you don’t know why a downloaded program isn’t running on your linux desktop.

Before we get started, a word of warning. Make sure you execute all of the following commands as a regular user, NOT as root. All debugging tools are inherently dangerous, running them as root when you don’t need to is a recipe for mistakes you cannot undo.

Okay, first we need some information