

In the short term? Grey rock your “friend.” This person is an enabling shit who does not have your best interests at heart. You are being physically abused. What you describe isn’t corporal punishment (which I personally consider to still be physical abuse), it is abuse. Starving someone to punish them is abuse. Anyone who takes part in, or enables said abuse is not someone you want in your life.
Do you have anyone safe in your life that you could go to? Other friends that would not condone what you are experiencing? An estranged parent? Even a trustworthy teacher? I’d recommend trying to build up a support network of people who actually care for your well being before pushing this enabling piece of trash out of your life.
Arch Linux, on an old Compaq pizza box server when I was 16. It took me 3 months to install Arch because there was a DIP switch on the motherboard that somehow prevented you from updating the MBR or some shit.
I basically never used it and didn’t touch Linux again until 7 years later, when I used SLES 11 SP2 at a job.