Your statement should be listed in the introduction of every linux
related how-to book!

As a Ubuntu newbie, it took me weeks to understand what people were
talking about when I broke my download manager by attempting to get a
printer driver installed. It took more time finding files that "weren't
there." Then, even though I knew what they were, and where they were, I
could not delete them. Finally, I found a way to rename the errant
files, and my system happily ignored them and let my package manager go
back to work!