September 2021 newsletter

Published: 2021-09-30
Word count: ~600

timtimestim

Story time with Tim, the lord of computers and operating systems

Yes that's an official title.

For some sick nasty context that you need to contextualize this context, I've been using a laptop for about 2 years. No desktop computer or anything like that. It's been fine for the most part, and I've gotten a lot of use out of it, but I've neglected my old desktop computer to the point where I started to miss it. Like a child crying for its blanket I crawled back to my desktop (literally) collecting dust in the corner.

But I was worried. The reason I'd selected a random laptop as my main machine for so long was that I tried installing linux on ye-olde PC and was rebuked by so many problems that I just gave up. Open source software wins again.

Now, this time, I was determined. Wiser. Or less wise depending on how you look at it. I, quote, "made a project out of it", and I was, "going to sit down and install linux on this damn computer no matter how long it took."

Yeah it was less wisdom, now that I think about it.

First on the agenda was to get the dust out of my tower. What. You thought I was joking about the literally gathering dust thing? I know modern society has destroyed the word "literally", but I literally am literally literal about literally when I literally say it. Anyways, I'm pretty sure I've got black lung from breathing in that damn dust. And that's with wearing a mask.

After I was finished (literally) combing layers of dust out of my computer tower I proceeded to make sure it booted. It did. So I moved on to the stage of the game I was scared of: actually trying to do anything useful.

First attempt at installing linux: There's a firmware issue with my cpu. Gotta use the non-free repo.

Second attempt at installing linux: Oh wait my USB tethering is so slow that it would take 7 hours to install all the things. Gotta use the live image.

Third attempt at installing linux: The live image doesn't work. It won't even boot.

(several hours later)

Something-teen'th attempt at installing linux: If I plug in my live-boot USB at the right time during the boot sequence it will register it as something that can actually be booted from. Because apparently Gigabyte motherboards are universally horrible for this very common thing that everyone would want to do. And by everyone I mean me.

And it continued like that for about 11 hours until I found the exact order of events, the right incantations, and the proper salt patterns to summon linux out of the USB. But now I'm typing on a super large screen and I only have mild trauma!

I hate software. And hardware, in this case. Which is usually something I don't say, but it applies here. Maybe it'd be shorter to just say that I hate computers. Yeah. Fuck computers. Except not in the sexy way. Unless you're into that more power to you but man maybe get some therapy or something.

This space intentionally left blank

Except this space.

Yeah I got nothing else to say. I could dump a lot more links here, but I don't want to so lolololo

-Tim