Well technically a power outage broke my system. My machine lost power in the middle of a pacman upgrade which left me able to boot, but with very limited functionality. Thankfully I keep an emergency live USB laying around for just such contingencies and was able to complete timely repairs. For the record, if anyone else runs into this problem the Arch Wiki has instructions on how to proceed.

I cannot express how much of a relief it is to have a system which is designed in such a way to enable this type of diagnostic and repair capability. It was also a great reminder to revisit my backup and recovery options which will be one of this weekend’s projects.

My wife had a problem with her Windows 11 PC the other day and I literally couldn’t even figure out how to begin to diagnose the issue, let alone fix it. I am so thankful for the Arch Wiki and the extensive documentation available to cover these types of situations. I know Arch will forever have the reputation for being a “hard” distribution, but not having to feel helpless when something goes wrong is so nice!