Lately I’ve been jumping back into the world of Linux as an exercise in “rearranging my room”. Just like I did when I was a kid I like to rearrange my environment to see if it makes it easier to get things done. It’s been years since I’ve had a working Linux setup but getting back to my normal productivity rate has been made much faster thanks to AI. The experiment has taught me more about Arch Linux and i3 than I would’ve had the energy for if I was going at it solo.
I’m far from an AI enthusiast, but I must say that it does help with abstracting away from CRUD work. I used it to:
- Create an icon in my i3 taskbar that brings up a shortcuts menu filled with my shortcuts
- Convert my i3 config to use more VIM style keybindings
- Modify my desktop launcher to properly include environment variables for a specific app
- Setup a rotation of desktop backgrounds from my image folder
- Fix my zsh configuration after downloading my Mac’s dotfiles
It has come with its annoyances too. There were certainly things that it was unable to get done correctly. Nevertheless I think it’s worth touting these not so much as a praise for AI but as content for those who have considered jumping back into the Linux world or maybe can see this post as a springboard for a different type of project that’s easier to tackle due to AI’s improvements.
But don’t you want to learn those details about your system?
Yes, but no, and also maybe.
It’s a cliche response but it holds true. All of this is just an experiment. I have a very busy life as of late and a big part of that takes place on my computer. I have time to slow down but not enough to both learn a new system and deal with the typical slowness that comes from changing the way you work on things. In fact another compromise I’ve made is continuing to use VSCode instead of something like neovim. This is my way of picking my battles. I think I actually am more productive because of the change but part of the reason for that is being able to offload these tasks.
The tasks I delegated are not particularly difficult. It takes maybe 15 minutes to go read a Wiki about i3 configs and edit your config file to your liking. But that’s 15 minutes of switched context versus one minute of telling AI what you want and having it fix it. Some of these are even harder to make an argument for doing yourself. Like creating the keymap application. It’s 50 lines of command info and their keybindings. Trying to write that up myself would have taken much longer but AI again turned it into an hour long task.
I’ve enjoyed the experience. Now that I am growing comfortable with the system I may take the time to learn what I previously delegated. At the very least it freed up and inspired me to write this post which is my first one after going on my vacation. So that’s something! :)
Note: I used the word “AI” because I don’t think the model matters. If you’re truly curious I have a contact form but I think any of the current terminal integrated models would work.