The other replies to your comment cover my most immediate thought, so I won’t repeat any of that.
However, in addition, I think there’s probably a significant amount of highly transferable learnings you’ve gone through while spending all that time configuring your machine. Was any of that time wasted? Well, probably, at least by some measure… But it’s also very hard to gauge the value of all the incidental knowledge you gained about what computers are, how they work, etc.
My point is this: don’t over-penalize yourself for wasting time when you’re learning in the process, and try and remember how magical it is to learn things for the first time. And for other readers… It’s good to be pragmatic, but if you’re lucky enough to be in a position to spend a lot of time tinkering, playing, learning, then DO IT. Life is meant to enjoy!
I loved running Linux in college and tried every new (or old) distribution and compiled oh so much stuff and fiddled with every new (or old) thing I could find to fiddle with and thought it was super cool to write config files by hand and be able to read and modify all the source to everything I was running. As you point out, this was an excellent learning experience for me.
I kept doing that for awhile after I graduated, but eventually I realized it wasn't a good learning experience anymore, it was just a tedious waste of my time. I realized I should have been socializing or recreating outdoors or reading or picking up new hobbies if I wasn't working. Since then I've mostly used Macs or Linux machines maintained by the company I work for, and this is definitely a much better use of my time.
There are only so many fundamentals to learn here before it becomes just so much minutia and non-essential complexity.
> I think there’s probably a significant amount of highly transferable learnings you’ve gone through while spending all that time configuring your machine. Was any of that time wasted?
Oh my god no.
I ran gentoo ~amd64 on my desktop for YEARS. If you don't know gentoo you don't know what that means, but, I learned A LOT. I wouldn't trade it for anything, it's just not right for me anymore.
However, in addition, I think there’s probably a significant amount of highly transferable learnings you’ve gone through while spending all that time configuring your machine. Was any of that time wasted? Well, probably, at least by some measure… But it’s also very hard to gauge the value of all the incidental knowledge you gained about what computers are, how they work, etc.
My point is this: don’t over-penalize yourself for wasting time when you’re learning in the process, and try and remember how magical it is to learn things for the first time. And for other readers… It’s good to be pragmatic, but if you’re lucky enough to be in a position to spend a lot of time tinkering, playing, learning, then DO IT. Life is meant to enjoy!