From LEDs to Linux: Nerd Awakening

When I was around 8 years of age, I got addicted to LED lights, those small things with 2 legs and their fascinating colour. Whenever I see those puny LEDs, I get attracted to them like a moth. This made me love electronics. Whenever I get some money, I buy those LEDs.This addiction came with a cost. My Eyesight got weaker, and I had glasses at 8. But this didn't stop me from doing these things, and I started making mini circuits in a matchbox (LED bulb and those puny 1.5V coin cells).

Fast-forward a few years, I got access to my family laptop, like my father gave it to us, and we started using it. Then one day, I was able to guess the WiFi password of my neighbour. I downloaded and played the Prince of Persia whole franchise, downloaded so many movies and series. One Day, I decided to install Windows 10 on this thicc-top. It was that time when Windows 7 EOL was announced, and the laptop was rocking a Core 2 Duo with 2 GB of RAM (later 3 GB). And it didn't go well. My sister cried that I fucked up the laptop, then I took it to my nearest computer repair shop to get it fixed.

Fast forward to 2019, my brother bought a gaming laptop. And this thicc-top naturally becomes mine. I have full control over it, and now I can do anything. I now have enough knowledge and confidence that I can install Windows 10 on it, as I have access to my brother's laptop to make things fixable. And I installed Windows 10 32-bit. I gather knowledge to make it de-bloat and faster.

Now you wondering that you are here to read how I became a nerd, not my childhood, believe me this much plot is necessary for next phase that we will be moving to..

This phase brings the turning point in many people's lives, and the same happened with me. During the Second year of my bachelor degree, we were having online classes, and there was this subject called Data Structure and Algorithms. I am at the Windows power user level at this point in my life. We have practicals on that subject where we have to solve some problems with an algorithm using C and then have to send them back to the professor so they can mark our attendance.

There was this guy whose screenshot I started noticing, and it was different from a usual Windows screenshot. And I asked him which theme he is using? - from a typical Windows normie that doesn't know deep about Linux. He said it is DWM and he is using Artix Linux, a fork of Arch Linux but without systemd. That piqued my interest, I started searching what Linux is, I learned Linux history, why systemd is bad, what other distros are, etc.

Then I went with Linux Mint while reading about Ubuntu hate. During this phase, I was absorbing knowledge like Lucy from the Lucy 2014 movie. I used Linux Mint for about 1 week, and then I went with installing Arch Linux (this sounds like a typical distro hopper guy, but I just hopped once). Then, during installation, I learned so much that my mind was boiling. In Arch Linux, I tried GNOME (did like it), tried KDE plasma (liked it too much, but it was slow graphically, remember a Core 2 Duo processor). Then I tried XFCE, It was very lightweight, and I used it for some months.

I learnt about ani-cli from Bugswriter YouTuber, and quickly jumped to it, installed it and started using it. And it was during these days that Port19x (previously called ura, Very Nice Guy) joined the ani-cli project. I was learning how the script works, and started contributing to it. Like first giving suggestions and implementation in my fork, for example. Port19x noticed my contribution in discussions and offered for a maintainer position, ani-cli was around 1.5k stars at that time.

We made the Discord server to give support to new users trying ani-cli. But the irony is, we were giving more Linux-related advice than the actual ani-cli problem. The majority of people were from Windows, so you can deduce it. We were sharing knowledge, and this also increased my vocabulary and my grammar. English is not my first language. I learned about servers, home labs, etc. And fast forward to here, I am writing this blog for my website, which is hosted on a server I bought (how I set up my server ).

But Coolans, what about the LED addiction? For that, stay tuned...