Tech Articles and Tutorials.
evannsmc@arch:~/tech-zone$ cat README.md
The Tech Zone_
Tech tutorials, dotfiles, and lessons from building my personal computing stack piece by piece.
Currently: my first Arch Linux install on an old laptop —
on the way to a dual-boot Ubuntu/Arch workstation with BTRFS, LUKS,
and zram, and eventually a triple-boot with a minimal Windows partition for
collaborators who live in Office-suite land.
Next on this thread: Neovim from scratch, tiling and scrolling
window managers, and whatever else I break and fix.
Eventually: a privacy-first home setup with custom DNS routing, a personal VPN I can connect to from anywhere, and self-hosted services on a NAS.
My First Arch Linux Install: A Basic Setup on an Old Laptop
A copy-pasteable walkthrough of installing Arch Linux 2026.05.01 on an old test laptop — verifying the ISO, partitioning, pacstrapping, configuring locale and users, and getting GRUB to actually boot the thing. No Btrfs, no LUKS, no zram — just the boring, dependable first install.
read the install log →An Ambitious Arch Install That Didn't Boot — LUKS, Btrfs & Lessons
The opposite of the boring install: full-disk LUKS, Btrfs subvolumes for / and
/home, zram swap, a shared data partition, and dual-boot with Ubuntu. GRUB loaded,
the LUKS prompt accepted my passphrase, and then the kernel dropped me into emergency mode.
The plan, the failure, and everything I've tried so far.