I wanted to nerd out and learn the Linux ecosystem
My engineer friends were Arch evangelists
I do catch myself saying “just read the manual”, but not in a hostile way I think. When you’re already in a terminal, once you get used to manuals, it’s very accessible and it’s quick to get what you need.
However, that usually requires you to know what you’re looking for quite specifically, and that is something you can only learn through experience and study.
I’m very happy with my choice and the whole “you can easily fuck up your system” thing also works in reverse - you can just as easily fix your system. I’ve made a few mistakes over the years but nothing that I couldn’t reverse. Just make sure you’re not fiddling with partitions and boot loaders during work hours…
Preach. I don’t regret the whole “diving into Arch” part, but I feel like I spent a lot of hours doing things that were pointless, nonsensical even. But then again I’ve spent most of these years since I started this journey struggling with and rehabilitating from various mental health problems (correlation=causation???) so I haven’t had much anything better to do than pointless and nonsensical things, on and off the computer.
Just make sure you’re not fiddling with partitions and boot loaders during work hours…
Ain’t that the truth. Just recently I had invited my friend over for a coffee and such, and when he came I noticed my computer wouldn’t want to boot because I had fiddled with something too critical. Sorted it out eventually, but I feel like it kinda crumbled the foundation of my whole “Linux is superior to Windows in every way” line of thinking I have been trying to bring to life among my friends…
I was around 18 when I started, so doing nonsensical things was my area of expertise at the time. That helps a bit with the feeling of time waste.
Still, it was not a complete waste, because now I can fix any such problems in minutes, and I always carry an archiso drive on me (which I used maybe once in the past 5 years to fix somebody else’s PC which wasn’t even running Arch).
I will say, without exaggerating, recovering from Windows boot issues has caused me WAY more issues over the years. It doesn’t tell you what’s actually wrong, you don’t get much in terms of tools, and so it’s much harder to fix unless you want to completely reinstall Windows (which apparently is a good idea to do regularly too…).
My ego isn’t that big…
I chose Arch (in 2011) because
I do catch myself saying “just read the manual”, but not in a hostile way I think. When you’re already in a terminal, once you get used to manuals, it’s very accessible and it’s quick to get what you need.
However, that usually requires you to know what you’re looking for quite specifically, and that is something you can only learn through experience and study.
I’m very happy with my choice and the whole “you can easily fuck up your system” thing also works in reverse - you can just as easily fix your system. I’ve made a few mistakes over the years but nothing that I couldn’t reverse. Just make sure you’re not fiddling with partitions and boot loaders during work hours…
Preach. I don’t regret the whole “diving into Arch” part, but I feel like I spent a lot of hours doing things that were pointless, nonsensical even. But then again I’ve spent most of these years since I started this journey struggling with and rehabilitating from various mental health problems (correlation=causation???) so I haven’t had much anything better to do than pointless and nonsensical things, on and off the computer.
Ain’t that the truth. Just recently I had invited my friend over for a coffee and such, and when he came I noticed my computer wouldn’t want to boot because I had fiddled with something too critical. Sorted it out eventually, but I feel like it kinda crumbled the foundation of my whole “Linux is superior to Windows in every way” line of thinking I have been trying to bring to life among my friends…
I was around 18 when I started, so doing nonsensical things was my area of expertise at the time. That helps a bit with the feeling of time waste.
Still, it was not a complete waste, because now I can fix any such problems in minutes, and I always carry an archiso drive on me (which I used maybe once in the past 5 years to fix somebody else’s PC which wasn’t even running Arch).
I will say, without exaggerating, recovering from Windows boot issues has caused me WAY more issues over the years. It doesn’t tell you what’s actually wrong, you don’t get much in terms of tools, and so it’s much harder to fix unless you want to completely reinstall Windows (which apparently is a good idea to do regularly too…).