I Am #AliveAndThriving Today! || #IAmAliveChallenge || Daily Off-Grid Jungle Journal Entry: Day #418 - 6 Years Today of Using Arch Linux - GaiaYoga Gardens, Lower Puna, Far East Big Island, Hawai'i - Monday, September 18, 2023

I live barefooted and naked, very close to Earth and Nature, in an 18-acre, off-grid, clothing-optional, food-forest intentional community (GaiaYoga Gardens), way out in the jungles of Lower Puna, far East Big Island, Hawai'i. I love my life, and I'm immensely grateful to live where and how I do, on my own terms! I would not want to live any other way! 😁🙏💚⚡💥🔥✴️✳️❇️👣🌱✨🤙

Warm greetings all! 😁🙏💚✨🤙

This post will be a bit more Linux-centric than most, because it's a very special day today. Six years ago today I installed Arch Linux for the first time. Not only that, because since Arch Linux is a rolling release, that installation that I did six years ago is still fully functional today, along with two others that I installed slightly later. Since I felt daunted at the time by the official command-line method of installing Arch, this first install was via the graphical installer of a now defunct Linux distribution called Antergos, which I later converted into full Arch.

My journey in Linux began in the fall of 2011, with Ubuntu 11.10, and I was so enthralled with Linux that even though I duel booted with Windows for a while, soon I decided to remove Windows entirely, and I went with Ubuntu full time, for my first six years in the wonderful world of Linux. Once I dipped my toes in the glorious waters that is Arch Linux, however, there was no going back. Like Windows before it, I duel booted with Ubuntu for a time, then I finally wiped it and just went with Arch full time.

Now I have three Arch Linux installations, on three separate hard drives, that I swap in and out of my laptop, after working with each one for a few weeks to a month or more. I like redundancy, and doing it this way makes it so that I learn what I'm doing very well indeed. Having three separate Arch installations also means that I can use one to repair the other if anything goes horribly wrong, and I can swap useful files between them as needed. Interestingly, all three of my Arch installations were installed during the five months that I lived in Eugene, Oregon, just before moving to the Big Island, Hawai'i.

Antergos=>Arch - Tuesday, September 19, 2017 PDT

First Official Command-Line Arch Install - Sunday, November 5, 2017 PDT

Second Official Command-Line Arch Install - Wednesday, January 17, 2018 PDT

I have a backup hard drive for each of my three Arch installations, that I use to clone each installation whenever I make notable changes on it, using my (usually) trusty hard drive cloner. Using this setup, each of these three Arch installations has migrated across multiple hard drives and computers, as hardware dies eventually, and I buy replacements.

Arch Linux to me is the ideal balance between do
-it-yourself and automation, and being so flexible and modular, I can mold it and make it into whatever I want. I've explored many other Linux distributions in my twelve years using Linux, and while I love aspects of all of them, nothing can compare to Arch Linux for me. I mention Arch quite a lot my posts, and that's because, like Hive, I am deeply passionate about it, and for innumerable reasons. Arch Linux is a great example of what I call sovereignty-aligned/driven technology, right at the top of my list with our beloved Hive, as well as projects like Qortal and IPFS. That is the kind of technology that truly interests and inspires me!

A quick note on the dates in this post. I write these Daily Off-Grid Jungle Journal Entries the next day, so the date on the post will always be for the previous day, as will be my log for that day. So the date on this post is September 18th, while it's September 19th today, which is my six-year anniversary day for using Arch. I hope that makes things a little clearer. Now on to my activity log for yesterday!

Even with the two Monday community meetings, I was still able to keep Hive reasonably caught up, and get all my daily tasks done. I was even able to fit in some time to go work in the fenced garden for a while, mostly weeding, as that was the most pressing need. Everything grows ridiculously fast out here, and if I don't weed the garden at lest once per week, it begins to disappear quite quickly. I was a bit dismayed by its state, as I had weeded it well not long ago, and yet it's pretty out of control at the moment, which means that I have to devote a fair amount of time to bringing it back to a good state. I finished working in the garden about 45 minutes before the evening Logistics meeting, to give myself sufficient time to clean up and make food.

After the meeting, I returned to the Flow House to jump into my evening round of Hive catch-up and tasks, and to continue bringing Arch1, my oldest Arch Linux installation, fully up to date. I got both done at a reasonable hour, and I went to sleep a little after 11PM. I woke up just before 5:30AM, and I did a short round of Hive tasks, before going back to sleep until about 8:30AM, which is when I got up to make my superfood fire coffee.

It's now getting close to 12PM, so a great time to wrap this post up so that I can get to my morning/afternoon round of Hive catch-up and tasks. I intend to go do more weeding in the fenced garden later in the afternoon, and hopefully do some plant propagation work for Ano. I deeply appreciate you all! Until tomorrow! Onward and upward, joyfully together! 😁 🙏 💚 ✨ 🤙

All photos were taken with my Motorola G Power Android Phone.

Thank you all so much who have helped me get to where I am today, and allowing me to share more of the beauty and magic from my life and my world with you, and for your continuous appreciation and support! I am truly deeply grateful! 😁🙏💚

If you'd like to find me on other alternative platforms where I have accounts (I spend most of my time here on Hive), click on this signature image below to go to my LinkTree page.

If you'd like to send me a BTC Lighting Tip (made possible by the fantastic work of brianoflondon on @v4vapp), just scan the QR image below. 👇

Signature image created by @doze, and the dividers made by @thepeakstudio, with all tweaked to their present form by me.