~/Documents/Tech Journey

"Arch linux? Seriously?"

(A backstory of How I ended up using Arch linux)

Long story, Not short. Take a seat and get yourself a coffee while reading this story of mine with linux.. I started using Fedora linux in November of 2024 and mainly used GNOME Desktop to replicate the MacOS look I wanted, but GNOME keeps crashing in my hand due to the amount of extension I had (Pretty sure I got like 10 extensions atleast) and then I switched to XFCE as I heard it's more 'lightweight', I realized Fedora using BTRFS partition by default that moment I started realizing it was really sucks for me. It keeps relying on my HDD way too much by doing metadata-intensive operations and single threaded BS that slowed down my program. Sure BTRFS is useful for backing up snapshots but I really do not care about most of the BTRFS feature it came with especially on this sluggish HDD.

Story hadn't ended yet, I switched debian and holy paw I managed to get the lowest memory usage as possible around 300mb~ that alone was already enough for me since I don't really plan on upgrading from 6gb to 8gb that time (Mostly cause I ran out of money, and had to focus to other stuff) I decided to use XFCE, again. Although my HDD was not helping my situation and I was getting atleast 40s~ of boot time but very laggy in firefox, I had to hibernate to fix that, this issue applies to every linux based kernel I use including Arch linux itself due to my horrendous HDD. Once again this time I customized XFCE to look like MacOS, it had become my most popular post in r/unixporn and, I then made my own rice in xfce but randomly I switched back to gnome for fun and made this, you could see where this is going and I started using SwayWM at this point.

Finish line? I switched to Arch linux as I realized debian no longer suited me today, compiling is painful for me. Due to the amount of outdated packages Debian had I can't take it anymore. So I decided to switch, since nowadays I really needed to compile program, most app I've found needed to be compiled like swayfx itself still can't be run in Debian due to incompatible wlroots version, maybe I'm doing it wrong but i've decided to let go of Debian. If the time comes and ill come back to Debian again but for now? I won't need it, and the reasoning is on top of the page.

When I entered Arch linux live USB (techically only CLI), I was a bit confused by the Arch wiki. So I told myself to get my head together and try to understand a bit, My first thought was trying ArchInstall So I did and it can't even format my partition, I decided "Hey what if I just make my own parittion and run ArchInstall?" I read the manual, used my secondary phone as Ethernet (broadcom driver doesn't work in Live USB), did cfdisk, and realized that the only part I needed to do is install linux and configure grub, IIRC I started at 12 PM Till 10 PM cause of course, I can't rush things while learning new stuff. Finished and Installed everything, configure stuff myself and done. Arch linux isn't hard as people made it seem, but maybe thats just me.

My Daily Driver

I got from 2021, it was originally released in 2010. Pre-installed with Windows 7 Home Premium

It had a decent specs, intel core i5 m430 and 6gb of RAM (I installed 4gb RAM) with 512gb HDD. I dualboot Windows and Arch linux just in case there are apps that I can't run in Arch, Wine sometimes doesn't do it's job properly and virtual machine on this thing? Runs like hell. Perhaps I misconfigured QEMU/libvirt but with these kind of specs, It was pretty much expected. HDD in 2025 is painful.

This laptop had already gone through so much stuff, my cat dropping it, my cat biting the side panel, and threw my laptop somehow. Motherboard sometimes doesn't work but it'll repair itself, perhaps CPU problem or thermal problem itself. Battery is already broken, can't be replaced cause the lock mechanism is broken. Display already suffered too, I accidentally overclocked it to 70hz before and I could only use half of the screen most of the time. Now it repaired itself, cause it felt like it. This laptop genuinely have it's own emotion lmao, I'm still surprised it survived all of these.

This seems crazy to some people but, my previous android (Realme C15) had dying EMMC. I can't continue using that thing before it kernel panics completely, I had a lot of issue with reflashing, even installing a normal apps it took forever. I used it just for a backup phone since I got no other use than making it as an Ethernet, the screen was broken cause I accidentally lefted it in my backpack (I really am forgot) and sometimes it had ghost touch so much. It's basically unusable now.

The Real Cause is probably I switched over Custom ROMs/GSI's a lot and that caused the EMMC to freak out everytime I flashed new ROM's every week. Kernel was not stable too even after I optimized it, quite buggy coming from this phone. There's a dedicated community to reviving this phone although they're still stuck with the Android 10 Kernel.

The main reason I use iPhone 8 is that my sister gave it to me and I was thinking of jailbreaking, mind you this is my first time jailbreaking. Everything went well (except for that one time when it stucks in recovery as I tried to rejailbreak for the first time) jailbreaking in these old iPhones really gave it some life. Installing IPA's freely feels I'm using my Android again, I sometimes customized springboard to how I want it to look like (iOS 18/iOS 26, etc) and if you're asking "How's the battery life?" the battery is pretty much ehh.. Questionable enough. Just idle the phone the rest of your day and it'll last longer than it needs to be.