Once in a decade or so the time comes to install (or reinstall) my personal computer. This time the occasion is getting a new laptop, something more modern, something more capable. The time passed and the changes in technology since the last time I had to do this means that the installation is likely familiar, but still different – sometimes subtly, sometimes in unrecognisable ways.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Setting up my laptop is now in its 3rd day, and the experience made me think of incremental games. Incrementals1<\/a><\/sup> are where you make some progress in gathering some resource, then have to reset your progress that gives you some small buff or gain. You then start again – but better. The cycle repeats and you might have the same experiences countless times, but after a while the game can be much faster or even unrecognisable due to the accumulated effects.<\/p>\n\n\n\n While I was installing Arch Linux<\/a> this time I went through the following cycle:<\/p>\n\n\n\n … and so on. I know I have a few more rounds (few more “crunches”) to do get there, and the multilingual typing input setup will be a doozie with bopomofo<\/a>, but I’m getting better and feeling<\/em> better every round – that’s how a good incremental game goes. A power up there, a know-how of a semi-obscure, quality of life config here2<\/a><\/sup>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Of course I could have gotten an Ubuntu<\/a> or Fedora<\/a> image, installed everything in way less time<\/em> than writing about the experience, and could already be using it — but that’s a whole different<\/em> game3<\/a><\/sup>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The games we choose to play show our values. On an optimistic day I feel I value increased knowledge; on more realistic days it certainly seems like procrastination. Now let’s keep this in mind when I finally have high enough level of Linux buffs that they change the game mechanics and I get to do<\/em> something with my computer.<\/p>\n\n\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Once in a decade or so the time comes to install (or reinstall) my personal computer. This time the occasion is getting a new laptop, something more modern, something more capable. The time passed and the changes in technology since the last time I had to do this means that the installation is likely familiar, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2995,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"[{\"content\":\"Keep away from Universal Paperclips and give a very wide berth to Antimatter Dimensions\",\"id\":\"ac3a5a53-0f71-416a-bc5e-6af94cf6bb35\"},{\"content\":\"Such as enabling tapping on the touch pad for a click, without needing to actually press....\",\"id\":\"90f16848-f9b2-441b-99e2-13891011da2f\"},{\"content\":\"A game that might be won, while I'm not sure whether the one I've chosen has a win condition.\",\"id\":\"1c1f44b1-25dc-4971-905b-5dcbffbc516f\"}]"},"categories":[7,75],"tags":[17],"class_list":["post-2990","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-comp","category-thinking","tag-linux"],"yoast_head":"\n\n