What is something in the past year that makes you happy or proud? Maybe you learned something new, finally got that thing you wanted for ages, managed to make a hard decision with a good outcome. etc etc.
No pressure to share if you don’t want to. Hope you all have a good new years eve :)
TLDR: Distro hopping
The thing I am proud I achieved last year (2025) is distro hopping from a Arco/ArchLinux bloated mess of an install to EndeavourOS.
Prior to it, I had files from all kinds of installs: Manjaro, ArcoLinux #1, Arco #2, then Arch after Arco went EOL. It was a mess, and a lot of bloat eating up disk space.
So, I took some time to backup everything, install EndeavourOS, then over the course of a few days, restore the essentials. I only copied over the data I knew I would use. Additionally, while I copied my documents, pictures, etc, I left my downloads folder empty so I can have a fresh start.
This method allowed me to cut a lot of fat from my system, and now my drive is only 2/3 as full now, and it boots way faster.
Setting up a fresh install is always the most fun and most painful part of Linux for me. It was fun as I had a clean slate to work with, and even changed up my desktop layout this time around. The pain arose from having to reinstall all the software I needed, setting them up (some configs I couldn’t copy over), setting up servers again, SSH, firewall, etc. The sheer amount of stuff to do was daunting to say the least.
Overall, though, I did enjoy this transition I made and it allowed me to tidy up my computer.
Edit: grammar