Welcome to arch, I started my linux journey with linux mint , ubuntu and alot, finally ended up with arch Linux,
I've fallen in love with vanilla arch
The only thing is, it's hard to install, but basically you are creating your own system, you can easily understand if anything goes wrong, it's an really light weight distro than others and ofcourse it's an rolling release, no matter what just sudo pacman -Syu will find you the latest kernels and applications, And for applications there are ton of support from pacman repository, and we can have this stuff AUR, once we have that installed, we can almost get any software that we needed, finally the famous arch wiki,
I tried xmonad, dwm, awesome, and qtile, but these are a bit complicated when it comes to customisation, so I sticked with i3,
I am using i3 from past 2 years, it's really lot easier to customize, and it's pretty lightweight and simple to use.
I took that path too, it was a lot of fun, but I finally settled on Manjaro Gnome with Material Shell. Simply the best desktop a developer could have, IMO.
Exactly, one of the best things about Arch is the package repositories (Pacman and AUR). Mauro suggested using snap, this is completely unnecessary on Arch, and you should be able to have everything you need on the main repository (Pacman) or users repository (AUR).
And, as Chittoji said, the famous arch wiki 💕
Also, want to say that I use DWM, ST and dmenu (suckless ftw) 🤖
For most packages, AUR is all you need. But I found a few packages (like Figma-Linux) that are not available in the AUR. That's why snap is not entirely unnecessary.
I heard a lot of good things about dwm! I definitely want to try it later on my journey. And I love dmenu! I'm currently using it.
DMW looks to be one of the more complicated Window Manager to configure, and it's possible to get to a point where patches conflict with others 😅 . Still, if you have experience with C, it's possible to overcome the conflicts. Also, polybar is easier to customize compared with the DWM builtin status bar, but once you have it all set, it's all happiness 🙂.
Check my dwm build, and feel free to reach out if you have any question or need any help.
Not sure why, but today I searched the same package in AUR, and I get 0 results. I just performed the exact search, and now I see two results.
About DWM, what you mentioned about the patches was the reason why I'm skeptical about using it, but I'm sure once you get to the point you want, you probably don't need to touch it frequently.
It's been like eight years since the last time I worked with C, so I'm rusty. 😄
I'm going to check your dwm build later :) Thanks for your help, Conrado!
Wow! thanks for such complete feedback, Chittoji! You mentioned a couple of things like pacman and AUR that I'm really enjoying! I've been using snap, too, for a few packages.
About window managers, I was learning about Awesome because I saw that it comes with great defaults and has good documentation. I hear that dwm and xmonad requires a lot of additional work, so I think I will try them later on my journey :D
I would like to hear your thoughts and experiences with Awesome.
Thanks again for taking the time to share your experience with Arch!
Awesome is a good window manager, but it uses rc.lua file for config, Awesome wm comes out of the box with
a good desktop, panels and widgets, unlike other window managers Awesome wm have a proper menu system, but if you want to config the wm, you have to import the libraries first, then have to settle things around, people like it because it comes close to desktop like feel.
unlike i3, you can use right click on empty window for options like opening menu, or other stuff just like desktop managers, it probably a good window manager, but its config is not as easy and simple as i3
The thing about awesome that didn't like me was the amount of stuff that it has. As you said, it comes with a full menu system, status bar, etc. I think that I'll stick with i3 at the for the moment. Thanks for your feedback 😄
He/Him; Senior Software Developer, IT Swiss-army-knife, 3 programming blades, 1 hardware, 1 networking and infrastructure and a corkscrew. The tweezers have long since been lost. (Recent ADHD diag.)
A while back I was trying various distros and couldn't settle. When I sat down and analyzed what I wanted out of Linux, Arch came out on top. I truly value the knowing exactly what is going into everything I'm doing. Arch runs most of my VMs and some of my desktops (that aren't windows)
Arch rules :)
He/Him; Senior Software Developer, IT Swiss-army-knife, 3 programming blades, 1 hardware, 1 networking and infrastructure and a corkscrew. The tweezers have long since been lost. (Recent ADHD diag.)
Agreed, the effort to understand really helped me later in solving issues that came up even when dealing with other operating systems and programming situations.
Welcome to arch, I started my linux journey with linux mint , ubuntu and alot, finally ended up with arch Linux,
I've fallen in love with vanilla arch
The only thing is, it's hard to install, but basically you are creating your own system, you can easily understand if anything goes wrong, it's an really light weight distro than others and ofcourse it's an rolling release, no matter what just sudo pacman -Syu will find you the latest kernels and applications, And for applications there are ton of support from pacman repository, and we can have this stuff AUR, once we have that installed, we can almost get any software that we needed, finally the famous arch wiki,
I tried xmonad, dwm, awesome, and qtile, but these are a bit complicated when it comes to customisation, so I sticked with i3,
I am using i3 from past 2 years, it's really lot easier to customize, and it's pretty lightweight and simple to use.
I took that path too, it was a lot of fun, but I finally settled on Manjaro Gnome with Material Shell. Simply the best desktop a developer could have, IMO.
Great choice! I'll be playing for a while until I learn a little bit more, and then I'll probably stick to one configuration too.
Exactly, one of the best things about Arch is the package repositories (Pacman and AUR). Mauro suggested using snap, this is completely unnecessary on Arch, and you should be able to have everything you need on the main repository (Pacman) or users repository (AUR).
And, as Chittoji said, the famous arch wiki 💕
Also, want to say that I use DWM, ST and dmenu (suckless ftw) 🤖
For most packages, AUR is all you need. But I found a few packages (like Figma-Linux) that are not available in the AUR. That's why snap is not entirely unnecessary.
I heard a lot of good things about dwm! I definitely want to try it later on my journey. And I love dmenu! I'm currently using it.
Nice one, Mauro. I was able to find the Figma-Linux on AUR repository. Have you tried it?
DMW looks to be one of the more complicated Window Manager to configure, and it's possible to get to a point where patches conflict with others 😅 . Still, if you have experience with C, it's possible to overcome the conflicts. Also, polybar is easier to customize compared with the DWM builtin status bar, but once you have it all set, it's all happiness 🙂.
Check my dwm build, and feel free to reach out if you have any question or need any help.
Not sure why, but today I searched the same package in AUR, and I get 0 results. I just performed the exact search, and now I see two results.
About DWM, what you mentioned about the patches was the reason why I'm skeptical about using it, but I'm sure once you get to the point you want, you probably don't need to touch it frequently.
It's been like eight years since the last time I worked with C, so I'm rusty. 😄
I'm going to check your dwm build later :) Thanks for your help, Conrado!
Wow! thanks for such complete feedback, Chittoji! You mentioned a couple of things like pacman and AUR that I'm really enjoying! I've been using snap, too, for a few packages.
About window managers, I was learning about Awesome because I saw that it comes with great defaults and has good documentation. I hear that dwm and xmonad requires a lot of additional work, so I think I will try them later on my journey :D
I would like to hear your thoughts and experiences with Awesome.
Thanks again for taking the time to share your experience with Arch!
Awesome is a good window manager, but it uses rc.lua file for config, Awesome wm comes out of the box with
a good desktop, panels and widgets, unlike other window managers Awesome wm have a proper menu system, but if you want to config the wm, you have to import the libraries first, then have to settle things around, people like it because it comes close to desktop like feel.
unlike i3, you can use right click on empty window for options like opening menu, or other stuff just like desktop managers, it probably a good window manager, but its config is not as easy and simple as i3
The thing about awesome that didn't like me was the amount of stuff that it has. As you said, it comes with a full menu system, status bar, etc. I think that I'll stick with i3 at the for the moment. Thanks for your feedback 😄
A while back I was trying various distros and couldn't settle. When I sat down and analyzed what I wanted out of Linux, Arch came out on top. I truly value the knowing exactly what is going into everything I'm doing. Arch runs most of my VMs and some of my desktops (that aren't windows)
Arch rules :)
You mentioned many of the reasons why I decided to use Arch too. It takes a little bit of effort initially, but it's totally worth it in the long run.
Agreed, the effort to understand really helped me later in solving issues that came up even when dealing with other operating systems and programming situations.
I really like Arch. I completely GNOMEd it, and I like that pacman handles dependencies better than apt.