My Choice of Linux Distro
I was crazy enough to choose Arch Linux as my first Linux distro to start with - when a lot of people recommend choosing user-friendly distros to begin with. From creating a bootable USB to deciding what kind of programs to install so I can have my laptop work, it took a very long time.
Then, somehow, I got into this thinking that I didn’t want to have a desktop environment (DE) installed but wanted to install a window manager only! This, of course, was me refusing all the comfortable features that DEs provide to users. I messed up a few times and ended up reinstalling Arch over and over. Later, I found out about Manjaro Linux which is an Arch-based distro that carries the benefits of Arch with more user-friendly features! Manjaro definitely takes care of some of the chores that I have to go through when installing Arch (of course, I am a noob Linux user).
Some of the lessons I learned from installing Arch-based distros:
- Hibernation does not work out of the box (at least for my Thinkpad).
- You don’t have to have a desktop environment!
- Window managers are cool except I ended up spending too much time trying them and configuring them…
- There are many configurations that you have to take care of in order for you to have your machine work as your flavor!
Next time, I will talk about my struggle with I3 window manager and my migration to Sway window manager.