How I Compute — A Brief Overview of My Computing Setup

As of late 2024, my only computer is a Lenovo T480 laptop with an almost (5) year old installation of Arch Linux. This laptop has been solid with no HW failures or HW compatibility issues whatsoever. On the O/S side, I've been daily driving Arch since 2013 (over a decade now!) on various devices. With Arch, I am able to enjoy a light-weight, minimalistic, and customizable computing experience that is difficult to replicate with many other distributions or operating systems.

My Setup

laptop: T480 (i5-8250U) with 32GB RAM + dual heatsink mod
O/S: arch linux 
desktop environment: xfce
IDE: neovim / tmux
notes: obsidian / neovim
PDF: zathura
image viewer: qimgv 
browser: firefox

Repair, Don't Re-Install

Not all has gone smoothly, however. I've managed to blow up my Arch install several times throughout the years, all resulting from my own ignorance. Once, upon reverting back to X11 after trying out Wayland, another time when I switched from PulseAudio to Pipewire to get some wireless headphones to work, and most recently when I messed up my bootloader and EFI configuration during an attempt to repair an aborted system upgrade with pacman. Initially, my approach was to re-install Arch using a LiveUSB whenever I encountered a significant issue that I could not resolve expediently. My approach changed as I gained more experience and I started using tools like timeshift to quickly restore, avoiding lost time and effort. Over the last several years my philosophy has further evolved to prefer isolating the root cause and repairing my installation — I find this is the most effective way to learn.