DEV Community: Mark Eron Diaz

Linux Didn’t Just Change My Setup — It Changed My Mindset

Mark Eron Diaz — Sat, 25 Apr 2026 05:31:43 +0000

A year ago I came across PewDiePie’s Linux setup and something about it caught me off guard. Here’s a guy whose entire career is streaming and video editing — and he just switched his operating system. No hesitation. If someone without a technical background could do it, what was stopping me?

That curiosity hit me at possibly the worst time: finals week. I was at a café with my peers, everyone reviewing for exams, and there I was — completely focused on setting up Linux, reinstalling it multiple times because I kept running into errors. My peers were studying. I was debugging. Chaotic. But I couldn’t stop.

My first distro was Linux Mint Cinnamon. I chose it deliberately — something close to Windows, familiar enough that I wouldn’t completely break things. It worked. But I only lasted a week because I wanted more.

Then I jumped to Fedora, and that’s where everything changed.

No bloat. Nothing I didn’t ask for. I could customize the wallpaper, the sounds, the system behavior, the entire workflow — and nothing was fighting me on it. I started to see Linux not just as a different OS but as a different relationship with your computer.

Around this same period, my professor pushed our class to join a cybersecurity competition. No prior experience required — just show up and try. I asked a few peers, we assembled a team, and we went in completely blind.

We placed in the top 20 in the TrendMicro CTF.

I’m convinced that wouldn’t have happened if I hadn’t already been deep in Linux. The mindset was already there — exploring systems, reading documentation, debugging things I didn’t fully understand yet. The CTF just gave it a direction.

Eventually, Fedora wasn’t enough either. I had an old family laptop, about 10 years old, and I decided to install Arch on it.

It was the most exhausting setup I’ve ever done. Even with multiple documentation tabs open and AI assistance, I still hit error after error. But when I finally had Arch running with Hyprland — that satisfaction was unlike anything else. You can’t fully explain that feeling to someone who hasn’t done it. You built something. It works. And you know exactly why.

I’m still not at the point where I rice from scratch. I use end-4’s dots-hyprland as my base and customize from there. Someday I’ll do a full custom rice. That’s a future me problem.

The biggest shift wasn’t the tools or the aesthetics. It was how I think.

Before Linux, my computer felt like a black box. I used it but never really questioned how it worked. Installing software meant going to a browser, searching for a download, clicking through installers, and hoping nothing weird happened. Now it’s one command. That sounds small but it changes everything — you stop relying on random downloads and start trusting a system.

The terminal was intimidating at first. But after about a week, something clicked. Now I use it for almost everything: file navigation, Git, system updates, launching apps, coding through Neovim, running AI tools. It stopped feeling like a “developer tool” and started feeling like the default.

Tiling windows changed how I work too. I can code, read documentation, and run commands all side-by-side without constantly switching. When I go back to a non-tiling setup it actually feels slower. More friction.

One of the most frustrating things I broke was my Wi-Fi.

And the worst part? I couldn’t even go online to search for a fix. I was literally copying commands from my phone, guessing drivers, rebooting over and over just to get a connection back. I had to rely on documentation, trial and error, and whatever help I could scrape together offline.

That experience taught me something: you don’t really understand a system until it breaks.

Before, if something broke I’d avoid it or look for the fastest fix. Now my first instinct is different — read the docs, check logs, search the community, experiment. Hardware doesn’t just “work.” There’s always a software layer making it work. When something fails, you start asking why.

And that question changes everything.

I still use my computer like anyone else.

But there’s this moment that keeps coming back to me — sitting in that café during finals, reinstalling Linux for the third time while everyone else was studying. I wasn’t stressed about it. I was having fun. Not because it was easy, but because every error felt like a puzzle I actually wanted to solve.

That’s the thing Linux does that I didn’t expect. It doesn’t just give you a better workflow. It gives you a reason to be curious about the machine you use every day.

You stop treating your computer like a black box. You start asking what’s underneath.

Just published my first blog post. Three hackathons. Three hard lessons.

Mark Eron Diaz — Sat, 11 Apr 2026 17:40:08 +0000

Mark Eron Diaz

Apr 11

What Hackathons Actually Taught Me

#hackathon #webdev #beginners #career

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3 min read

What Hackathons Actually Taught Me

Mark Eron Diaz — Sat, 11 Apr 2026 17:38:53 +0000

There’s a specific kind of panic that hits when your app is broken, your teammate is silent, and the deadline is near. Nobody warns you about that part.

At my first hackathon, I joined with zero experience, zero certainty, and one thought: Bro, I’m just going to rawdog this rather than do nothing and regret not joining.

That was it. No strategy. No confidence. Just the quiet fear of regret being louder than the fear of embarrassment.

And somehow, that was enough to get me in the door.

What happened after changed how I build things.

Three Hackathons. Three Hard Lessons.

NASA Space Apps Challenge — Learning to Communicate

Our team built SierraVision — a web app that visualizes environmental changes in the Sierra Madre mountain range over time, helping people understand what’s at risk if we lose one of the Philippines’ most critical natural barriers.

The idea was good. The execution was a mess.

We were all beginners. Nobody took the lead. Nobody communicated clearly. We each had ideas in our heads that never made it into the project. By the time the deadline hit, we were rushing and submitting whatever we had.

The project wasn’t polished. But we learned that…

An idea poorly communicated is an idea poorly executed.

Build and Ship 24-Hour Hackathon — Learning to Work with Strangers

This time, I showed up alone. On purpose.

I knew my weakness was working with people I didn’t know. So I walked into a 24-hour hackathon without a team, found a stranger, and built Sola-AI — an AI-driven health assistant that gives personalized wellness recommendations and helps clinicians with structured treatment plans.

We finished. We presented. The judges complimented our design but we didn’t place and it stung.

But I walked away having built something real in 24 hours with someone I met that same day.

We didn’t have the best workflow. We struggled to pitch clearly. But we shipped.

Shipping something imperfect beats protecting a perfect idea in your head.

Agora Voice AI Hackathon Manila 2026 — Learning to Perform Under Pressure

This time, I brought my thesis groupmates. We wanted to figure out how we’d work as a team under pressure.

What we built was ALON — a child-centered speech practice app where kids aged 5–13 train their pronunciation with an AI speech coach in real time, powered by Agora’s Conversational AI, Groq LLM, and Microsoft Azure TTS.

We had around 9–10 hours total—including brainstorming and it never felt like enough.

Every decision was rushed. Every feature was a trade-off. We weren’t building freely—we were constantly choosing what to leave behind. But we kept moving.

We finished. We submitted on time.

Then they called our name for the Top 10.

We weren’t ready for the stage. We were nervous. The presentation wasn’t as clean as we wanted it to be. But we showed up anyway. And somehow, we held our ground.

Then came the announcements.

Third place. Not us.
Second place. Not us.
First place. Still not us.

And that’s when it hit.

Not disappointment—something sharper than that.

Frustration.

Because for the first time, it felt close. Close enough to see the gap. Close enough to know it wasn’t impossible. Standing there, watching someone else take the spot we almost reached—it flipped a switch in me.

The competitiveness didn’t fade after that day. It got louder.

What I Keep Relearning

Every hackathon has handed me the same truth in a different form:

There will always be room to improve. And honestly that’s the part I’ve learned to love.

The gap between where you are and where you could be isn’t something to fear. It’s the reason this is worth doing.

The imperfections aren’t the problem.

They’re the invitation to come back better.

You don’t realize how badly you want to win… until you walk away without it.

What I’d Tell My Past Self

If I could go back to before my first hackathon, I'd say three things:

Just show up. Fear fades, but the question “what if?” doesn't.
Talk more. Communication isn’t a soft skill—it’s the highest-priority feature.
Finish the job. Shipping something imperfect beats protecting a perfect idea in your head.