Reinstalling An Operating System Kinda Sucks

so I'm back from a a little bit of a break I took a about three or four weeks off from working on any videos on the channel and I I needed a little bit of a break not just a break as far as me just not doing anything I actually needed to take some time off from making videos for like a lot of cleanup work administrative work I had I needed to reinstall Linux on my main production workstation here at the office where I record all my videos because that installation of Arco Linux that I had on this machine was really causing me some issues because there were programs on it that were no longer working correctly it had been I would say the entire month of December I was really fighting things it really made it no longer fun to make you know video content when you're constantly working with technology that's fighting you you know programs that are Crashtastic right they're always crashing or sometimes just not opening correctly sometimes not opening at all I had issues with OBS I had issues with Kaden live I had issues with my file manager at one point I had issues with all email clients every single one that I could install like I had a lot of problems and I spent like three or four weeks trying to fix the problems on that broken installation so it wasn't like I immediately J to reinstalling I actually tried to fix some of the problems and some of the problems I did fix but I I didn't get all of the problems fixed and it had got to the point that installation again had been up and running for about 4 years it was time for a complete wipe out and a fresh install so I reinstalled Arco Linux so I had mentioned on my last video that you know I was thinking about maybe doing a nine Arch based distribution maybe going back to Debian you know doing something like Debian stable or maybe a boont LTS server or something like that doing like a minimal Window Manager installed on a boont server you know something again more stable something that's not bleeding edge rolling release like Arch or Arco Linux are and you know what I I did a fresh install of Arco Linux D which is kind of a minimal version of Arco Linux so it doesn't install a lot of packages I I stripped out even some of the stuff that rod D typically ships with and basically I installed one window manager it's only got qtile it right now because that's what I've been living in so I'm running rode Linux D with qal and this fresh installation has been okay and there's some bugs with it but what really kind of shocked me a little bit and I I don't know why it should shock me because this happens every time I do a fresh in installation on any of my computers whether it be this workstation here at my office or my home computer is it always takes some time to get things back up and running after you do a fresh install it took me a good week like a solid 7 days to finally get all of the necessary pieces back on this computer so I could you know get back to work for one thing I you don't realize the things that you're missing on the computer until you actually do the fresh install and then decide to try to use that computer for real world work and then you realize you're missing a lot of programs uh you forgot to back up a lot of things let's talk about this because I've run into this problem so many times now yet I still sometimes forget this and I forgot these two things on this fresh install I forgot to back up my gpg keys that's a problem if you have a password store right that uses gpg encryption right so make sure you take your keys with you make sure you take your SSH keys with you and make sure that you back up user share fonts if you actually want to keep all the fonts that you have stored over the last several years you know between installations because you'll be amazed at how many weird little fonts that you've installed and you're using in various configs for window managers terminal emulators maybe word processing anything that has formatted text and you use any kind of strange fonts that are not real common I me you know not Ariel or verdana or auntu font or whatever you know you've got all these weird fonts that you've saved over the years that some of your configs expect to be there but you forgot to back up you are share FS so remember that one important tip there but overall things are are are back up and running and it is noticeably faster and all the programs that were giving me issues on the previous installation like OBS was was starting to give me some serious problems OBS is running beautifully on this machine I've done some tests with it and it seems to be working just fine I really haven't tried out Kaden live yet because I haven't made a proper video but I'm about to because I'm going to I'm going to render this not going to really do any editing but but I'm going to render this in uh Kaden live here in a minute I may you know add some annotations or things something just to see if Kaden live is working as expected works just fine on the new installation so all of the programs that I really need to do my day-to-day work as far as you know video content creation on YouTube now all of those programs seem to be working just fine the only issue I've had uh with the fresh installation by default Arco Linux uses sddm for a login man and I left that but sddm when I log in it sometimes wants to hang it's it's kind of weird I'm assuming it's hanging because it's waiting for some kind of startup service maybe a system D service that's hanging I don't know I've got to investigate the situation it could also be as trying to execute some kind of startup process that I've specified in various config files because I took all my like Window Manager configs like my Q config has a auto start script but I I've stripped out everything from that auto start script other than things that I know actually work so I I don't know it's just kind of weird the log in takes a little longer than it should you know I might have to wait you know 30 seconds or 60 seconds or whatever you know it it's not too bad but it's because how often are you logging in logging back out in your machine not very often but it's a that's a situation I need to investigate but that's not a show stoer that's not a deal breaker so anyway back at the office uh you know setting some things up cleaned up the office a little bit too I got rid of a lot of junk because I had you know piles and piles of of stuff around here you know if you guys remember you know some of my recent videos like my office tours you know I had a lot more like junk on these shelves and on the the desks behind me and you know on this uh little desk behind me you everything that really served no purpose everything that was either an empty box or a piece of broken equipment you know something old something that really had no value anymore I just got rid of it right I've always been like that in life I I've never been one of those people that was a like a hoarder like some people just have to save everything you know if it's something that I don't think I could sell for more than a few bucks right now it it's trash right if if literally no one wants that thing you have it's trash but some people will hold on to just ridiculous items you I've got family members like that they they just save everything thinking that the stuff they save is valuable and you know having seen people like that is one of those things I never want to be one of those people so uh I hope everybody is having a a great start to 2024 I hope everybody uh is is you know enjoying the new year as much as I have I feel recharged I feel refreshed and I'm ready to get back into the swing of things and hopefully uh I'm got a few more days of stuff I've got to take care of so I may take a just a few more days off after this video but hopefully by next week we'll be back into the swing of things peace guys