The Satisfaction of Burning Bridges

This entry is about switching to Linux. It's also about the catharsis of letting go, and about my predilection for reinvention.

Microsoft has been in my life since the DOS era. Running games like Need For Speed on an IBM laptop (that would not fit on anyone's lap) via inserting a floppy disk and using terminal commands to launch—these are worn and familiar memories. The 3.1 cycle, and then 95, 98: figuring out how to circumvent the admin controls imposed on the NT environments at school to change the background wallpapers and mess with Photoshop for the first time. A brief flirtation with MacOS and an immediate retreat, slamming that door and breaking the key off in the lock. Sorry Mac users, it's just not for me. Windows 2000 and its weird attempt to represent the future while offering little new, the friction of Vista and the relief of 7. I recall installing early versions of Windows 8 and not hating it like so many other users, but only because I'd configured it to boot directly to desktop and use the new Start tiles menu as a full-screen app launcher, deleting all the MS Store trash. Windows 10 was okay, but still more of the same.

And then Microslop dropped Windows 11 like a toilet mortar with upbeat fanfare.

WinBlows Recall, Invasive Copilot (Sorry Mr. Nadella, Dog is my copilot). "AI" which is indeed artificial but anything but intelligent. I could see where things would be going. States and Nations passing "Age Protection" laws that neither serve to safeguard children online (the job of their neglectful parents) nor offer any quality of experience to adults. These power-grabs to score as much private-identity-fingerprinting data as possible should be a hundred different colors of illegal, but governments are comprised of elderly statesmen who don't know what DHCP is, who can't conceive of why it would be such a bad idea to collect age bracket information in one place online. Predators couldn't ask for a better gift: now all their victims would easily be identified in one database bound to be hacked and compromised. It's only a matter of time. Such data, of both children and adults alike, could also prove fruitful for the oppressive governments across the world who want to jail or execute anyone saying mean things about their leaders online. Such data would doubtless be invaluable to corporations who'd love to social engineer what you buy, what you think, or sell your life to someone else willing to pay for it. Your permission isn't required. Social media, AI slop, and now the mortal blow to online privacy—these things have got me looking at what's left of my digital life in the hands of mega-Evil-corps (shout out, Mr. Robot) and how I can extricate myself and my creative output from their exploitative touch.

This was about switching to Linux, but I'll get to that in a sec. First, I need to introduce my inner arsonist. Hi, it's me, the inner arsonist. The part of me that I'm sure we all have, those intrusive thoughts that imagine what it would be like to drive off the cliff instead of turning the wheel, what it would be like to say that thing you shouldn't say at a work party, because you can't stand being in your skin. Often, this inner self is full of shit, and you should definitely turn that wheel and stay on the road. The scenic view is just ahead. But once in a while, gotta admit that the inner arsonist has a great point and when you cross a bridge, all creaking with worn and water-damaged beams, there's that flicker of intent inside that imagines lighting a match. Fanning the flames as you turn back to watch (whoever said don't look back wasn't as cool as they thought, you know you'd want the satisfaction, the schadenfreude). I'd want to see all the evil, the burdens and the damage and the baggage that lurks and follows; I'd want to watch as it all fails to defy gravity and the chasm of ashes below. But I digress, because the joy of destruction is only half of the joy of creation. Of beginning anew, without that mess chasing you. Burnt that bridge to a crisp, but that's not a job finished. Now, I'd turn and go, and never look back. Now, it's done. Striding off into the sunrise. A new me. Lessons learned, anxiety severed and abandoned. Begin again.

For the past couple months, I've been attempting to vacate the Microslop apartment as Satya Nadella and his vision continue to raise the rent on my continued freedoms. Considering the options, I rejected Tim Cook's Apple and their walled garden—fleeing a prison for a rosier one was no progress to me. I had chosen a new path. I decided on CachyOS, a distribution based on Arch Linux. This would offer me a rolling-release schedule of updates: every day, a new problem, but every day, more fixes and features. I like being on the leading edge. Other Linux distributions like Mint or Ubuntu, Fedora, are slower to release updates and, critically negative for me, are backed by the same giant corporations I sought to free myself from. I wouldn't be using any of those. By happy coincidence, Cachy is also highly performant, leading in many benchmarks due to its clever use of cached memory (hence its namesake) and download-only-what-you-want model of configuration.

After installing via their website and excellent wiki, I had a machine that booted directly to desktop (I chose KDE Plasma, because GNOME reminds me all too much of the hated Apple) and one button in their App Launcher got me Steam and all the required dependencies for use with Linux. My monitor was detected right away, as were my GPU, CPU, and other peripherals. I'm not here to glaze in this post, though. My audio interface was not one that was included in supported devices, so I had to spend some time on the ALSA and Arch wikis to learn how device config files are built, and write my own. Done. Fan control was my next issue, since nobody wants to cook their precious hardware in 2026's RAMmageddon and the ongoing GPU drought thanks to AI slop consuming the world's supply of resources. I was able to get this essential tool working with the help of CoolerControl. In fact, it worked better and with more features than Lian Li's L-Connect 3 on Windows.

As a writer, I had to have Scrivener. This was easily done via the Package Manager by grabbing Lutris (pre-installed) and searching it for Scrivener 3, which it then installed for me as a Windows-compatible app in Linux.

For file management, I put together a folder system for my Synology NAS. Anything stored here would automatically sync across my various computers. For larger backups and snapshots, I built myself rsync scripts to push drive backups to the NAS.

I won't go into detail of how I solved every single requirement for a fully-functional replacement of all my tools I had in Winblows, unless there's interest in another post to detail that stuff. I've been keeping a scratch document with all the command lines, all the workarounds, and the gotchas along my journey.

I'd recommend anyone interested in ditching Microslop to research the various Linux distros and their differences, what they offer as pros and cons, and then burn their installer's live environment to a USB stick to test drive. If you decide you like it, install to a blank drive or a new partition so you won't lose your current OS should you need to go back or dual-boot. Then, keep using your chosen Linux OS as a daily driver as much as possible. There will be issues. There will be stumbling blocks. Keep with it, learn and take notes. Discover where it beats Windows, where it falls short for you, and reach out to the community for help. It's okay and even recommended not to do a cold-turkey switch. You might find a deal-breaking issue through your normal use that you then have to go research or address with community help, or consult the wiki. Once you've gotten to a point where you feel, you haven't been to Windows in months and you don't see yourself ever booting back into it—that's when you can blow away that partition and bask in the warm glow of a bad thing burning.

When you do, watch it burn. Don't deny yourself the satisfaction of a burning bridge, an anchor-line severed. The things that hold us back deserve ritualistic scorn in their defeat. Don those shades and dance away smug as you please.