YANIP

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YANIP

Postby methermeneus » Wed Dec 06, 2017 5:45 am

Yet Another Newbie Intro Post

Heyo, I'm new to Arch, but not to Linux: I've been on a whole range of Debian-based systems for years, ever since I picked up a first-gen eeePC with Xandros and build a desktop with no money left over to buy Windows. I've always liked the ability to pick through an OS's internals more than convenience (especially since it becomes incredibly convenient for you that way, even if it's horribly obtuse to everyone else), which is why I preferred MS over Apple back before NT and OSX swung the see-saw the other way, why I love Linux now, and why I like the idea of Arch even more.

Unfortunately, this has been a long time coming. I first wanted to install Arch on a laptop, oh, years ago, but I didn't have access to ethernet, and the laptop was so old that the wireless driver was deprecated. I could, of course, download it if I had internet access, but... Yeah, that laptop wound up getting Ubuntu. Once that was up, I was still fascinated by the idea of a system where you put the DMS together yourself, so I went through some tutorials on making an Arch live USB, picked the best parts of all of them, threw in some other stuff, and a couple of sleepless nights later I had a persistent Arch install on a thumb drive. Which I was, unfortunately, so proud of that I left it on the thumb drive instead of using that to get Arch on my laptop.

Fast forward a few years, I'm building a new desktop, and this time I've been using Linux for so long that I know I don't want Windows. In fact, I want Arch. So, I manage to download an ISO on my creaky, dying old laptop, burn it to CD, get it set up, and... Wouldn't you know it, same durned problem, because the wireless was one of the things I skimped on so I could spend more money on RAM. This time, the instructions online are better, but they only say how to get the driver through pacman, and I still don't have a wired connection! Linux hasn't steered me wrong, and now, three years later, this box is running Mint and still going strong, but I still wanted something more.

So, this year, while I'm doing some Christmas shopping online, I decided to get myself a gift. A Raspbery Pi Zero W, a couple peripherals to make life easier, and, hey, since I plan to make a real working mini-computer out of it, let's put Arch on it!

Well, I've made it further than ever before. I've got the OS. I've downloaded packages. I even got my dotfiles and Vim extensions loaded. I've fooled around with ssh and scripting. But, of course, there's problems (that I'm pretty sure are more the Pi than Arch), so I've gotta Google. Google led me here, to a few threads that matched a keyword, but aren't really related to my problem, to a few threads that helped me get as far as I've gotten, and to a bunch of people I feel must have the same need to build their systems from the ground-up as I have. So, I signed up, I posted my biggest problem* (in the ARM6 forum, since it's a RasPi), and here I am.

Let's do this systemd thing.

*EDIT: I've now deleted that post about my biggest problem. Turns out, the problem had nothing to do with Arch or my RasPi at all. My wifi connection is just so flaky that I can get half-connected, which causes all sorts of weird problems. I actually fixed it by leaving my pi out in the apartment hallway, where the connection is a little better, plugged into a battery, and ssh-ing into it, which is both all kinds of messed up and not really much of a fix to tell other people about.

'Μεθερμήνευς || Methermeneus'
methermeneus
 
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