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
i don't know how to use fdisk. there. i said it. i need to resize partitions to make space and i don't know how to do that in fdisk so i'm rebooting in windows and using disk management. leave me alone >:*(
also arch's terminal opening in full brightness is awful. 80% of the screen is black and my eyes are still in pain
[i promise, through all the complaining, that i'm still enjoying myself. if nothing else because there are a lot of spaces for me to disengage and watch youtube or something. my writing just isn't inclined toward that sort of silver-lining positivity. never has been. i'm not working on it; it's a personality trait.]
or, rather, first reboot. basic configuration done. windows no longer appearing as a boot option but that's ok for the time being. next steps: desktop environment [yeah, i know, i'm a coward. you'll be even more upset when you find out i use kde], standard applications, a whole bunch of settings-tweaking, and importing my old data.
[i wish i had more to say. these updates tend to be kind of short.]
[i suppose i could complain about the amount of time all this is taking, but that's less linux and more Me—i'm too easily distracted for... most activities, especially activities that involve major changes to things i interact with daily. if i hadn't [technically] done all this before i wouldn't imagine that i could, even with all the allowances and shortcuts i'm making and taking for myself. it'd almost be pathetic to someone looking over my shoulder]
[in the time i've spent writing this update on my secondary laptop [yes, i'm the sort of privileged nerdkid to have a secondary laptop, and i wouldn't be doing all this if i weren't], i've forgotten exactly what i was doing on the primary. it's in the bios menu. probably something to do with boot order, then. i'll figure it out]
- integrated and dedicated gpu
- of different brands
- that require different proprietary drivers
- in a laptop, so they need power management configured
i remember this being utter hell to set up. nowhere to go but forward, i suppose
[aside: how do i make the spaces around lists smaller? i tried style="margin: 0.5em;" and other values but the only thing that seemed to have any effect was like -50px, which feels like i'm doing something wrong]
installed xorg/sddm/plasma and It Just Works. what the hell [did i do wrong last time|am i doing wrong now]?