I'm back, y'all!

So I've been away for a while, doing things in Outside, aka Not The Internet. Scary.
Also, I haven't really had a lot of internet access when I haven't been outside, so I haven't been able to blog or do anything interesting.
But I got back a week ago... and then dived straight into robotics. We've been doing a lot of cool stuff (among other things, I2C bus programming and my favorite revision control system, Git), preparing for the season. I left yesterday for a robotics retreat and got back today, which was awesome.
However, I've had some free time and I've been doing some stuff.
First, I'm ditching Debian (in the words of my mom, "well, that was a short romance"). And here's why. Debian installs a lot of things by default for you. It is graphics-oriented: the default network connection daemon is NetworkManager running in GNOME. It installs a desktop environment at installation. And not only that, but it's way, way, way too liberal with dependencies. When I booted my Debian system, I found the xul-ext-adblock-plus package installed. And when I tried to uninstall it, it also removed the GNOME metapackage due to the AdBlock package being a dependency of GNOME. Not a suggests. Not a recommends. A required dependency. In other words: I couldn't remove the AdBlock Plus extension without removing all of GNOME. The way I eventually solved it? I created an empty package. Someone please explain to me why the hell I had to create a useless, empty package to keep my desktop environment but get rid of a XUL extension. And someone please explain to me what idiot decided that AdBlock Plus should be a part of GNOME and why.
That's ridiculous. Not only that, but I don't understand the composition of my system. Sometimes, my WiFi will disconnect and when I go to reconnect, it doesn't show anything until I turn the network card off and on again in the GNOME Control Center. But I can't figure out where to start diagnosing this issue, because I have no idea what's installed on my system and affecting the wireless. Not only that, but Debian patches things so. Freakin. Much. I hate that.
My GDM has a Debian background. I don't want a Debian background, but that's too bad because some Debian developer has helpfully added branding. I have a Debian menu in my Awesome menu (with a couple of screensaver options that don't work anymore, no less, due to GNOME Screensaver getting merged into gnome-shell or some shtick like that). I don't want a Debian menu in my Awesome menu, I just want Awesome. But ooooh noo, the Debian menu is "helpful", so someone added it. Even if I figured out the things that were affecting my wireless, I still wouldn't understand the whole picture, because the upstream documentation doesn't cut it. I'd also have to go look at Debian's documentation to see what ridiculous things they've added or changed.
Plus, despite the fact that I'm on Debian Sid - the unstable branch that's supposed to be more like a rolling distro because it's the development branch, where updated packages land first - I still get moldy packages. Even though Sid is where new things land, they're still developing for a non-rolling distro. So even though Emacs 2.4 is in the package pool, and has been for at least just about a year (since I remember seeing it back when I used Ubuntu), I still get Emacs 2.3 when I install the Emacs package, because Debian isn't ready to move to 2.4 on stable, and unstable is ultimately going to become stable. Not just Emacs. The other program I use every day - my web browser - is also moldy. Because it turns out that Debian uses the Firefox/Iceweasel ESR releases instead of regular releases. So I had the dubious pleasure of pulling a newer package from Debian Experimental. I mean, seriously. The mold is clear. In the words of the Linux Action Show, when I'm using Arch, I feel closer to upstream.
In the end, Debian is not KISS. So I'm leaving it for Arch.
Edit: Debian also uses SysV init, which is old and bugs me, especially since I've grown up on the relative speed and feeling of cleanness of Upstart (from back when I used Ubuntu), and now the awesomeness that is systemd on Arch. It's possible to install systemd (or Upstart) in Debian but it's impossible to effectively replace the init system, because the SysV init package is marked as essential, which means it gets automagically reinstalled when you do a system upgrade. Or you could patch the GRUB files, which I don't want to do. (In short, SysV init bugs me and it bugs me that I can half-switch to systemd, but not really).
Update about steevie: X11 forwarding has been theoretically turned on, but my cursory attempt to launch gedit failed. I think I had some client-side things configured wrong, so I'm not sure if it actually works.
Also, files will be served from ~/public_html automagically by Apache. They'll show up under people.strugee.net/~[your username]/ - just make sure that the folder is readable by the httpd user. Details in the README (although I think there are currently some half-written parts).

Traveling

I've been traveling all day today and yesterday, so I haven't been able to blog.
Also, I'm going somewhere (rural Michigan) with little to no internet, so blogging will remain sporadic. Blech!

Update on the new server

tl;dr, here is what's done:

• SSH (kind of)
• LVM

I haven't had a lot of time to do server stuff for today and yesterday, because I've been hanging out with people IRL *gasp*
However, the new server lives, albeit weirdly. Yesterday I spent a lot of time trying to fix the filesystem on the server before finally giving up and just making a tarball. So that took up like 6 hours of just waiting. Ugh! However then, as I said, I made a tarball and backed it up, and then proceeded to install Arch Linux. Funny story: I had to bring the server into my bathroom because it is the only room in the house that a. provides grounded sockets and b. is reachable with an Ethernet cable from the router (since the new server doesn't have a WiFi card), which I needed because Arch is a netinst distro these days. Then I had to go to bed. However, since LVM is part of the install process, I got that done.
Today I had very little time as I've been packing for a trip tomorrow. Therefore, I wasn't able to get a perfect setup, but it is workable for remote administration (so I can get most stuff done while traveling). The major flaw that you will notice in the current configuration is that if you have an existing account, you will end up back in alex-ubuntu-server. This is because something is wrong with my router and it is still forwarding connections to alex-ubuntu-server (which is still plugged in via Ethernet to allow for remote file migration). Therefore, if you previously had an account on alex-ubuntu-server, you will need to ssh to 192.168.0.19 from the Ubuntu console. Then you'll end up at steevie (which is the new server's hostname, btw).
Note: if you have a new account, you don't have to worry about this. I've put together some hackery on alex-ubuntu-server to allow you to login to steevie automagically. The only difference is you will have to type a very bad, very weak password that doesn't matter before you type your real password.
Other things will be done or turned on in the coming days, e.g. X11 forwarding, mail, etc.
9P will not be turned on, because I will need physical access to install Plan 9 and to reconfigure the router again. Anything external won't be turned on properly because, again, I'll need to reconfigure the router. For example, internal mail will be turned on but SMTP won't.
Anyway, I have to go pack.