{"posts":[{"id":"arch-troubles","title":"Arch Troubles","description":"Taking on arch was not the easiest thing to do, but it taught me a lot of things","date":"2026-03-17T00:00:00.000Z","tags":[],"authors":["madhav"],"url":"/blog/arch-troubles","content":"Arch is a Linux distribution that is usually portrayed as a difficult operating system to download and use but provides a lot of freedom in styling or maintaining your OS. So like any sane person would do, I downloaded Arch and tried the installation by myself (which went horribly), and here's the story of how I started and how it's going. My first experience with a PC was an old desktop running Wind\\*ws 95, which ran as fast as you would expect. It was later replaced by another PC running Wind\\*ws 10, which I had later dual-booted with Ubuntu. Ubuntu was the first piece of FOSS software I had ever used, and it was ugly. Felt good back then since it behaved almost the same as Wind\\*ws, and I could run Visual Studio Code on it pretty smoothly, so I was happy. Mind you, I still didn\\'t know what a Linux distribution was; I just thought Linux ended at Ubuntu. Arch was a whole new experience. Raw, unfiltered power of the hardware, but still difficult to use. I used my friend's USB drive to create the bootable device with an Arch ISO file which took 15 mins to download v/s Wind\\*ws which takes 3 hours. (Yes, my internet is that bad. And no, I will not be using an ethernet cable.) I was scared that I would need to create partitions by myself and started promptmaxxing Perplexity, which in hindsight was a bad idea, since it doesn\\'t know anything about setting up Arch. Then I discovered that after 2021, there was a built-in \"archinstall\" command, which gave you a sort of GUI for installing Arch. I wanted to use archinstall by myself and go in blind, which resulted in me messing up the install 11 times, forgetting to set up network manager in 5 of them. I also wanted to dual boot, but in the first try I had already wiped the Wind\\*ws OS partition, so that\\'s that. :P After finally setting up Arch Linux (without existential crisis-level partition problems), I wanted to SSH into it from my laptop, which needed Wi-Fi. This was a huge problem, since I had an outdated device-driver combo, or so I thought. I had a Tenda USB, which I thought was the Wi-Fi device, so I installed a whole lot of drivers from different parts of the internet, of which none worked. I used aic8800, aic8800d80, and so many more word soup variants, all of which didn\\'t recognize the device. Actually, the device was just a Realtek Wi-Fi adapter, which just needed it\\'s USB settings changed. I wasted 3 days on the Tenda USB problem, eventually realizing that the problem was just a simple settings change. This taught me a lot of things, but patience is the most important to me, since I almost yanked my hair out from the frustration. I also installed the xfce-desktop package for no reason, and I\\'m writing this blog on the new Arch system. If you relate, or just want to gnu-shame me, you can find me on campus—or in Zulip. I will be updating any other problems I have as well."}],"events":[{"id":"event-zero","title":"event_zero","description":"The very zeroth event of FOSSCET!","date":"2026-03-04T00:00:00.000Z","type":"community","url":"/events/event-zero","content":"The very zeroth event of FOSSCET! Held in CS313 with a handful of really passionate folks. Ideas were pitched. Discussions were had. A few hilarious pictures were taken."}]}