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> Each year I spend close to zero hours > My personal laptop is ArchLinux and it definitely took longer to set up I think the honest way to calculate maintena
by sshine 2y ago
> Each year I spend close to zero hours
> My personal laptop is ArchLinux and it definitely took longer to set up
I think the honest way to calculate maintenance time is to amortise setup time over the years your laptop is in active duty.
That becomes like at least five hours per year for me. My Linux installations usually live for 2-3 years, and ArchLinux typically takes 1-2 evenings to set up:
Partly because I enjoy it and want to explore if I should switch file system, login manager, terminal emulator, window manager, etc.
Partly because I want to maintain my sysadmin katas.
Partly because this step isn’t automatic, so even if I want “same as before”, some hardware is different, and installing software is still manual (I’m choosing NixOS next time).
> those who want to tinker will generally gravitate towards a platform that lets them tinker
My Linux is always in some state of disassembly. My MacBook always has working audio and video.
- cue_the_strings 2y agoI set up my Arch install on my machine in 2015 and it took me a couple of days. That OS install has seen 5 SSDs so far, and 4 machines. My secret? I only buy hardware that's known to work well with Linux, mostly thinkpads, and I really don't do anything on the machine beyond coding and web browsing + some light CAD, so I never get anything with GPUs.
- sshine 2y agoI use the same strategy, but I only copy dotfiles. I think setup can be automated further. My latest thinkpad had a GPU.