I was a naive Windows + VSC*de user once. This is about how a simple change of habit helped me become a total linux wizard. Yes you heard it right vim motions forced me into linux (And i have never been happier)
How the f*ck did this start?
I watch youtube, Lots of youtube. Especially when getting into tech i watched a lot of THEPRIMEAGEN. It fascinated me that he could fly through a new code base like a wizard. And here i was using my windows pc which took 5 years to boot up and used the bloated vsc*de with a MOUSE for everything. I wanted to change but just the thought of investing more time into switching away from an editor, Especially in college where you are spending almost all your time learning the basics (Ofcouse the syllabus is trash but i geniuenly think you should learn your basics really well) it was a huge descision to take.
But the more I watched, the more I realized: If you don’t at least try vim motions, you’re falling behind.
If you don't atleast try vim motions you are geniuenly falling behind
Hot take? Maybe. But in a world where everyone’s tabbing through autocomplete and letting LLMs write their code, there’s something different about vim motions. Yeah, the learning curve is real. You’ll look dumb. You’ll be slow. You’ll wonder why you’re torturing yourself when you could just click around like everyone else.
But here’s the thing:
Once you get it—even a little bit—writing code becomes fun. Editing text feels like playing an instrument. You’re not fighting your editor; you’re dancing with it. And after a while, you’ll realize you don’t want to go back. I started with vim bindings in my editor. I was so slow that booting up windows felt faster. But now? I can edit code faster than your grandma can knit a scarf.
Linux said i can fix you.
Eventually, I got fed up with Windows. The bloat, the slowness,the lack of ability to brick your system anytime ,the ADS UGH
So, I googled the most popular non bloated distro for linux, It was Arch linux. I didn't use the archinstall script, I installed it from scratch.
Yeah, I was that guy. Started with KDE (because it looked shiny), then switched to GNOME (which, let’s be honest, is just Apple on Linux). I really wanted to try out a WM so i installed hyprland. Then I Bricked my system. Twice. Finally, I landed on Fedora and never looked back.
But the amounts of things i learn while fiddling with arch helped me understand how many of these things work under the hood, Especially to get the GPU working.
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Boot Process: You actually see what a bootloader is, And you learn how to chroot into a broken system and fix it.
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Partitioning and Filesystems: You stop being scared of lsblk, fdisk, and mkfs. You know the difference between ext4, btrfs, and xfs—not because you read it, but because you had to pick one.
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Networking: You realize Wi-Fi doesn’t “just work.” You learn about iwctl, wpa_supplicant, and why NetworkManager is a blessing.
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Graphics Drivers: Getting your GPU working especially NVIDIA, was such a pain
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Display Servers: You figure out what X11 and Wayland actually are, and why your fancy compositor sometimes just gives you a black screen.
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Troubleshooting: You stop panicking when you see a kernel panic or a black screen. You learn to Google like a pro, read logs, and actually understand what’s going on.