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.
[the backup process was not supposed to take four hours. it was also entirely unnecessary]
installation guides are for poseurs. that being said this is still a windows dual-boot so i hereby declare this following-instructions-to-the-letter time
also, on a completely different note: it turns out i get immensely frustrated when my focus is broken. and my focus is broken incredibly often, by any number of things and occasionally nothing at all. i'm sure this isn't hinting at anything i should know about myself, and it should immediately be forgotten