The Linux Journey
2026-06-14
The Christernet is born out of a digital sovereignty journey I began in January 2026. Slightly embarrassing to admit, but it was a YouTube video by PewDiePie that planted the seed for Linux, and this entire project (or rather the āobsessionā that this has turned into).
My dad (Christer-related) passed down a desktop computer to me at the start of this year - might sound insignificant, but this is a computer he had used for video-rendering, and music and film-production. It came with a hefty Nvidia GeForce GPU and 62 GiBs of RAM. So in a time where data is inflated to the skies, I was passed down what felt like a supercomputer. With Felix from Swedenās words echoing in the back of my mind, I decided that this was a clean slate, perfect for tinkering with Linux, and learn a bunch of new, computer and software related skills.
I am now 6 months into this journey, Iāve replaced MacOS with CachyOS on my MacBook Air, I run CachyOS on my desktop, Iāve migrated all of my writing and productivity into an app called Obsidian (which Iām writing this blog post on), and Iāve built what is often referred to as a āsecond brainā by using Claude Code alongside Obsidian. Iām also running localised LLMs (AI that lives in my computer rather than a data center in Texas), on my desktop, which is integrated into my note-system in Obsidian through a community plugin.
This might be quite the jargon-dump for some of you, but in this space I want to share my Journey and my insights from this on-going project. It has been one of the more fun and intellectually stimulating journeys Iāve been on. It is also a journey made possible (or rather easier) with the advent of AI - Iām sorry to say.
Much of the open-source world, with Linux, Obsidian, Localised AI etc, is gatekept by the overwhelming task it is to use toxic internet forums to troubleshoot simple issues. Installing Linux was easy with the help of ChatGPT and Claude, and even then I could spend an hour just to get Wifi to work on my computer. (although there are distros (Iāll get into that later) that are easy to install - works out of the box as they say)
Iām rambling, and this endeavour is too large to cover in a single blog post, but I want to end on this note. This has given me a different perspective on what AI can be. Instead of a replacement it can be an enabler. For me it has removed the barrier to pursue ideas such as making a web-page, removing myself from Apple and Microsoftās ad engines (yes, Iām calling Windows and MacOS ad engines. Iām tired of having my workflow interrupted by them selling me cloud storage that they have locked me into using by making it as inconvenient as possible not to use it).
Rambling again. Point is - you can choose to use AI to make things for you, or you can use it to remove the barriers you have for making things. This web page might be vibe-coded. But Iām learning the logic of web-development without relying on othersā infrastructure. This webpage is simply documents on my computer, pushed to Cloudflare using Git. No SquareSpace, no nothing. If I want to change the colour of my background, I open a text file on my computer and change a digit.