arch because i want to be cool, dual-boot with windows 10 because i won't ever be [fucking zoomers and their AAA competitive multiplayer shooters and their proprietary graphics drivers]
also literally the only reason i thought to do this is i totally ironically, just to see if i could, wanted to rig a bash terminal with shell-mommy
i think it was a twitter post i saw an indeterminate amount of time ago saying "you don't realize how much stuff you have until you have to move house". the same is definitely true for digital relocations
i was under the impression that i could transfer everything i needed to using a single 32 GB flash drive—and then i remembered i was holding on to 36 GB of sql databases from a research project i abandoned. and that's just one folder i wanted to keep; not including 3.5 GB of random images and videos, not including 75 GB of emulators and roms i forgot i had [that's not coming with. i can't], not including a PDF copy of the DSM-5 i have for some reason???, not including all the files i forgot and all the files i'm still forgetting
maybe i'm too attached. a whole bunch of this stuff isn't strictly necessary—old notes and files i needed for classes, seas of config files and options [probably containing a bunch of legacy stuff i ought to remake from scratch], things that are definitely archived somewhere that i can redownload [or just not keep locally in the first place]—but, like moving house, it's as much sentimentality as practicality. maintaining comfort and familiarity despite change
then again, i do have some cleaning to do before i leave completely
most of the gap between the last post and this one was me idly scrolling cohost and listening to music, a little too apprehensive to actually start. worried i'm forgetting something. not like i could forget something—it's just a dual-boot, the original files will still be there if i need them—but it's more an ego thing. the entire time i spend cleaning up my mistakes i'll simmer in them, and that's worse than the work itself
ah, fuck it. cloning my drive, just in case, then running the installer.