Discovering GNU lands

Pack for the journey

At the end of “Welcome to the journey” you are standing in front of your broken system. Chances are low that someone will be able to recover it. Your data is backed up. You decide to roll a new operating system. However, you are leaving for your journey, anyway. So you need to choose everything you will take with you.

Do not bring your Windows, MacOS or any other closed or proprietary system. I do not know if you can complete your journey with them. In fact, I am confident that you can complete your journey without them. Leave them. You can come back later. It is unlikely that you will or want to, but you can come back.

Photo by Oliver Cole on Unsplash

Choosing a backpack

A nice beginner backpack is Ubuntu. It has everything you will need, but it is bit bulky and feels sometimes a bit cumbersome. On the other hand it will fit most on the first or second try. You can customize a lot and you will find great resources to do so. If you do not know what to use. Use this.

If you are a bit more adventurous, you can go for an other derivative. Either Debian itself or a more tailored distribution like Kali. For these there are also great resources available. Look at the Debian documentation or the Kali documentation. Kali is specifically tailored for people with security in mind. This is not an everyday “just be happy” distro. The curve between these three debianesque distros is steep. So watch your step.

There are a lot of other possibilities out there. You can do as you like. Maybe you are experienced and you know exactly what you want. Then go with Arch. It has a vast freedom of choice, but you will have to live with your decisions. It has a great community and also great resources.

Photo by Priscilla Du Preez on Unsplash

Low base weight

One thing you will run across is the base weight. Classically this is the weight of your filled pack excluding food and water. You want to have your base weight as small as possible. So you can carry less and enjoy more. Think about doing the same with less. (No pun intended.) Learn the tools and use them for different use cases. Don’t carry a tool with only one purpose. Remove clutter. This is in general a good practice.

Build your own backpack

At one point you may want to go to the extreme and build your backpack from scratch. It wont look like a normal backpack anymore. You maybe build a messenger bag or survival vest or whatever suits you. At that point you will not need much any more. You are good to go. Don’t try to reinvent all materials needed to do so. This stack tends to cover to many layers.

I do not know how you work. But I know that you can run these either physically or virtually. In the end it will depend on your preference, how you go. But this wont stop you.

So try your new backpack. Go on some short hikes. Go on a long hike. Experiment. Break things and start over. Iterate and rethink. Improve. 改善.