It was a freaking journey this weekend!

I had all the unearned confidence of a person who has relatively few problems on Linux (aside from the weird ones like Foot Terminal of late). I thought to myself: Damn, I could install FreeBSD on my Laptop on the Side, which takes all the random installs that won’t go on my main desktop. It would totally be fine and not weird (for most, this would be a mere short side quest). Oh boy, I didn’t even get past bsdinstall because something was off with that despite checking the checksum, writing it to a USB using DD+Sync flag so I knew when it was finished. The keymap was fucked, duplicated a lot of my inputs by several keystrokes with a single press. Didn’t want to allow me to correctly select the required installation categories (with the keyboard shortcut), couldn’t access the network configuration tool either so nothing could be done at all. Misfortune looked over my shoulder that day and said, “Nope, isn’t happening buddy.” FreeBSD, for now is out of my reach, thankfully my Solus install wasn’t messed with due to FreeBSD respecting my settings until I commit to the changes.

Since I’ve been working on buffing myself with knowledge…I am in the early beginner phase of learning C programming. I decided that Code::Blocks wasn’t cutting it and I wanted to try Eclipse IDE. Now, I had successfully set it up on Garuda Linux, with a home folder with my tester C file that I practice lessons with (in this case, I am working on Arrays). To get build and run working, to tell me the code output, I needed to set-up that folder with a Debug launch config. That worked the second I read my options and fields, figuring out what was necessary. Garuda Linux is goated in that sense, it seems to just work and not pose me a lot of problems.

However, Solus, I tinkered well into the night with that distro and couldn’t get Eclipse IDE to work at all. Despite following the same actions that I did on Garuda:

1. Set the default Workspace for Eclipse IDE to use.

2. Install the Eclipse C/C++ Plugins necessary to make my testing project work.

3. Create a C/C++ Folder and put a C File in there.

4. Set up a Debug Launch Configuration that would print code outputs in the console, so I knew if it worked or not. Also, it would highlight any errors that were present.

Having enough of these problems, I thought to install Fedora Sway Spin (not Atomic). Got that thing up and running pretty quickly, however, the same issues were present. I was instructed to use dnf install commands to get a lot of the libraries that Eclipse IDE provided themselves installed before running it. I did, couldn’t reproduce the success that I had with my Garuda Linux install. “Unusual behavior”, I thought to myself as I looked at the clock and noticed it was nearly 5:00AM. I had done a lot of set-up, research, installing, troubleshooting on my laptop. It was late and yet, I didn’t have my fill of it yet! I still tinkered away trying other C IDE programs to figure out what would be best. In the end, I said fuck it, put Garuda Linux, Mocha Edition on a USB for first thing in the afternoon as I had ended up going to bed at 7:00AM this morning.

Still took me a few hours to get this install set-up as the Garuda Linux Toolbox missed some shit, I had to use Octopi to install all of my software like: Discover, Mullvad Browser+Mullvad VPN, Distrobox, Eclipse IDE. From there I used Distroshelf to create a Fedora container (delicious irony) to install the following within it: Proton Pass, Filen, and Bibisco. The two flatpaks I installed so far was Gear Lever and Distroshelf. I plan on keeping my laptop pretty minimal, since it won’t need too much stuff like my desktop. Everything else will come from the Extra, Core, or ChaoticAUR going forward only if there is a real need for it. The recent AUR Malware Attacks are a reminder to only install what you need! There are scripts that can help you detect if you might have compromised AUR packages on your machine, but the attackers are watching them and planning around them.

Naturally, Eclipse IDE worked flawlessly when I replicated the same steps that I followed on my desktop. What a surprise, looks like Garuda Linux has me less afraid of Arch now. Before, I’d have been quaking in my boots. Now, I just do shit and enjoy it for the most part (thinking first and researching before doing, in case said action isn’t necessary). Garuda Linux has become my ride or die, enough that I donate monthly to their OpenCollective.

Now, I am going to finish my laundry and enjoy a video game, because touching computers for configuration purposes is simply out of the question!