Getting back into Linux
So I was thinking I'll try out this blogging thing again to get some writing done, and I hope I will be able to keep it up, I'm not really thinking anyone's going to be reading it, but it might be nice to have for myself
I got myself a new cheapo laptop in the beginning of this year and since it came with win10 and had WSL on it I kept it on windows, mostly to be able to play games.
But then a couple of weeks ago my urges to tinker started resurfacing, and I missed working in a tiling wm so well, in an inspired moment I decided to just nuke everything on that PC and install Linux. Now since it's over a year ago since I last was doing anything other than server work on it, I was thinking to just go with one of the larger distros, but the problem was, because of the corona thing, no stores was open, I was too lazy to go to work and pick up a USB stick and I was impatient so then the saga began.
I researched a bit and found out about unetbootin, which has the functionality of booting into an unpacked iso on the machine itself which would make it possible for me to install a distro without much problems. But no, my machine only booted with EFI, and that does not really play nice with unetbootin at all.
After a lot of research again I found a solution for the problem, the rEFInd bootloader is installable in windows and would allow me to boot from another partition on my system, which made the thing I was about to do possible, but first of all a warning don't do what I did if you have no way of rescuing your system, with that out of the way.
So I installed the rEFInd bootloader, and found that my PC had a windows rescue partition that was 1 GB at the end of the disk, so I went ahead and deleted it since I wasn't going to need it, also since it was only 1 GB it reduced the amount of distros I could install, but I found that Arch has one that is small enough to fit in, so I decided to just jump in again legs first.
So I crossed my fingers and rebooted my machine, and it all worked, I chose my arch partition, and from there it was smooth sailing, the Arch install process doesn't hold your hand, but also it's not that difficult to do, just keep your tongue straight in your mouth and you'll get there.
And from there I've been slowly starting to tinker and customize my system and it's so much fun, I now have a qtile-window manager setup that I'm really happy with, and it just feels like being home again.
So now I've reopened pandora's tinker-box, and I'm having so much fun with it!