Oddbean new post about login | logout I know how you feel. I get that itch often. Tell me what you are looking for in a window manager, or desktop environment. Ive tried 98% of them out there on multiple distros. Including NixOS.
I don't even know, I like the oob setup fine. Think it's just a general itch to try something new, a new puzzle, etc. Almost tried Arch today. 😅
I am a big fan of Arch Linux. I stopped using NixOS after being censored by their community for expressing traditional values over woke ones. Their trustworthiness and wildly poor documentation were the last straws too. I am looking forward to using determinant nix though. It was made by one of the cofounders of nix and actually is focused on business. Which IMHO makes it the best choice out there for exiled nix users from the purge. However they do not intend to make their own distro out of it, its just the package manager. So I might use it with Arch Linux or Alma Linux as a base. I went back to full Arch Linux. It is like owning a Ferrari. Its fast. Its fun. Its got the latest tech. However you always have to be careful and back your shit up always. For you never know if the next update will make you crash, or have to do an emergency rollback using timeshift. PopOS with window tiling enabled is rock solid for work. Alma Linux with the gnome extension Forge for window tiling too. Dont mind that it isnt maintained for now. It still is solid. They would give you similar visual and workflow experiences to Hyprland. Could be worth a go if you haven't tried them already.
I appreciate many things about this. Thank you. Still consider myself a linux noob. Have grown tired of Ubuntu's bloat and proprietary snap stuff. Have really enjoyed NixOS. But also heard about the wokification of NixOS and know there will be impacts at some point. Arch sounds like the next hobby project. Going to bookmark this note of yours and play around sometime soon. 🤙
If you want the arch experience on easy mode and the installation makes it seem intimidating. Don't worry. They included an automated installation script that not many people know about. When you have the installation media ready and you boot into it for the first time. Type in archinstall - this will start the script. It is all in the CLI, but it is guided now. You can use the presets for btrfs and lvm. Get it luks encrypted. Even choose from like 10+ desktop environments and window managers too. Completely unbloated and vanilla from the developers with super minimal apps. The installer is lightning fast. You can add all your packages to install before the installation. Plus the archinstall script allows you to save your configuration settings right into the installation. So you can use them to speed up the already fast installation process the next time for deployment on other computers. Just make sure it is connected to the internet first. If you need WiFi, ask me, I don't remember the code for it off the top of my head lol. Thanks for the follow. Always happy to help new Linux users. Been one for about 15 years now. Feel free to reach out to me if you have any more in the future.
oh, and followed! 🤙