It’s not really a big deal, but I am currently writing this using a linux kernel I compiled from source, which certainly feels like an accomplishment. The Arch Wiki has made the process fairly easy to follow. I just took the stock Arch Linux configuration without changes for now.
The most important part of this is of course that I have the option to do that, to take the source code of this incredible project and build my own kernel binary.
A friend of mine is a musician. About a decade or two ago I went over to his house and he said that he had to get a new fan to fix his computer. I asked him what was going on, so he turned it on and I heard that tick-tick-tick of the read head. I had to let him know it was his hard drive. He had a lot backed up, but not everything, and not the stuff he’d been working on the past couple weeks. Just a bummer. But he did set up a backup program after that.