Ubuntu Breakup

Summer means I can experiment with my laptop again!

Something I've had on my to-do list for awhile is to try out another Linux distro. In the past I've tried a handful of different ones: starting back in the day with Red Hat, some live usb trials using DSL, Puppy, maintanence with SystemRescueCd and a couple of attempts at learning projects with Backtrack, LFS and DVL, a really serious trial with Gentoo but always giving up and settling with Ubuntu since it just worked.

However, my general usage has changed significantly from when I started using Ubuntu. Also, I noticed that I've just been resisting basically any upgrades to the OS to the point where I've only been running the LTS versions to guarantee that I wouldn't lose hardware and power saving support after an upgrade (probably a little irrational).

I've been migrating off of the default Ubuntu install for a while now, and I just want a little more control. Starting to sound a little bit like a breakup, but I just want more control while safely distancing myself from Linux beginners.

I picked Arch because of its similarities to BSD. I manage FreeBSD servers at work, and I think it is really great. Easy to set up, Ports package management system is amazing, knowledgable (yet kind of stiff) community. However, I don't want to run a FreeBSD desktop, no thanks, sorry.

The learning curve was not as steep as I anticipated. One of the goals I needed to achieve before allowing myself to have a GUI environment was to learn how to use my wifi card in command line. Done and done. To reward myself, I installed AwesomeWM. I picked this instead of the Xmonad from my previous posts because of the configuration language. I just don't see myself enjoying Haskell over Lua for simple tweaks. If I'm using this computer everyday, I don't want to make it a chore.

Anyway, I'll probably be checking in with some new stuff soon!