Original of this post on my blog.
I wrote a comment on dev.to recently that gathered quite some attention; It was about my custom Arch system. I f...
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This an excellent article. I'm a very novice linux user, and always considered ArchLinux way too time consuming and sort of like "whats the point?"... But you make it look fun and appealing! I think your synth-wave looking UI is beautiful!
Real men use Gentoo and build it from stage 1.
Real man use three pedals and Slackware :D
You mean Linux from scratch?
My social life took a big enough toll from Arch :D
Shameless plug: I wrote a similar series about Arch. Part 1 is an intro, part 2 is a very opinionated walk through the installation process and part 3 is common post-install stuff, check it out if you want to try Arch but are intimidated by the wiki!
I can't even think about go back to Ubuntu, I love the flexibility of Arch and the decision that what I want to install and what not.
I use KDE Plasma, is light and I enjoy my UX. I don't like Gnome.
It's so easy to create, and install your own packages using pacman (or aurman, yay, etc.) like your own widgets/plasmoids.
Or even, I fixed an annoying bug in the built-in Konsole package, including a fix in my package build process using the patch command, building it from source, and is so easy. Because I based all of this in the PKGBUILD of the offical repositories and AUR.
Also I can switch between the latest commit in Konsole and the latest stable version with a low effort.
AUR, EOT
I've been using Arch for years and am not familiar with EOT. The only thing I could find when searching for this was
aur.archlinux.org/packages/eot-uti...
and as something you use in a heredoc instead of EOF ( end of file ) which I also don't understand. End of ___ ?
What is EOT?
End of thread
Ah gotcha. Thanks!
Ah, so long on my list to do this. But time is a luxury, and I'm also scared to fall into that rabbithole of endless tweaking (mental issue as someone said, not Arch problem). Mint serves me so well for years, it's hard to leave.
Update... Thank you for "wasting" last two days for me :) Accidentally I deleted my Mint root partition so it seemed a perfect timing to install Arch. Actually installation was a breeze. Configuring it (still) as much fun as I thought it will be. Installed both Cinnamon and i3, side by side, to test tiling WMs (really like i3 so far).
Only problem I see right now are AURs. Some stuff I'm used to is not available for pacman. And manual AUR installs for many is a nightmare with huge dependency trees. So far I'm avoiding those, but am afraid if I will be forced to do it in the future. AUR helpers seem great but not sure that's the point of Arch. I need to carefully check what I'm installing anyway, then upgrade process is different. Not sure. Still keeping Mint partition for emmergencies :)
"Yay" is a great package manager !
Yay is overrated. Use paru, which is much faster and better as it uses rust instead of Go.
You indirectly make a good point: this article is out of date. It was published in July 2020, the Github repository for Paru was created in August 2020.
I love Arch, I went the full custom DE route some years ago, I loved i3 to death. But in the end, it just took too much time to maintain and switched to KDE, and now everything works out of the box.
I don't understand what there is to maintain, actually ? Once my configuration was done I never needed to touch it again ?
I think I can answer from my experience. It isn't that there is something to maintain, it is a mindset (mental illness) that you are never done, you always have to tinker, etc.
I had this problem with my Linux installations. Always thinking about ways to upgrade /update something that has no need for them.
Software is never still. Things change. One day, PulseAudio stops working. Another, the automount/udev script doesn't pick up a flashdrive any longer. There's always some little thing that needs attention, and attention is a scarse resource this these days.
This is true, but I noticed those issues :
1/ can happen on just any system;
2/ have been dramatically decreasing the longer I use Arch
I remember a lot of issues like this happening in my first 6 months of Arch, but today I'm unable to remember when or what was my last problem !
I'm a total newbie Linux user, started with Zorin and soon I realized I'd like to dive into it. Thanks for the recommendations, I'm starting my studies.
Also, for people that feel interested in the book (like me)"How Linux Works", there is this repo on GitHub.
Hi, actually I'm a newbie. Well I've been a project in school to build a custom arch linux based system but I don't know how to start with it. So could you please recommend me something maybe like a video or text to get on with it
This article is supposed to be exactly what you want.
For an easy installer try Anarchy
How was your experience with this project?
Great article, I love so much Arch !
Do you have any example of configuration for Ansible ? I'm very curious of this tech !
Sure ! Here's an example from my actual config. What it does is simply :
Note this is all done with the same ansible module, "file". Here's another task somewhere else that uses the module "package", which is used to install my list of packages :
Actually, if someone wants to try arch so bad but feared about commands line, he can zen installer. It's a graphical installer for arch Linux
A lot of text, but not actually how to build your own.
I recommend this -> linuxfromscratch.org
will learn on the way as well how internals work. Or if it's too much reading and want to take the easy route...
On an existing arch system
Prepare ->
Customize the ISO & Packages ->
Build the iso ->
Now, you will be out of your chroot... with the built ISO at the file path ->
/tmp/chroot/tmp/baseline/out/
gz , you now have your custom arch iso
A good post, might I suggest a small modification? It should be desktop environment and tiling window manager.
Indeed ! Ill correct ASAP
Hi, I did enjoy the post. I've run arch for about 20 years and have customized it for many embedded projects.
I'm not sure what was in the post prior to "desktop environment" and "tiling window manager", but I would suggest that "desktop environment" and "window manager" are not exactly comparable things.
The desktop environment is much more than a window manager, providing automount and other user services.
The window managers may also be "floating" as well as "tiling". The "floating window manager" is much like what most desktop environments provide, but it's only the window manager, none of that automount, or other stuff.
Personally I've been using fluxbox for many years, and love it.
In keeping with the "build your own" nature of this post, all of the config files are in the home directory in .fluxbox/. So everytime I upgrade, or move to a new machine, by copying my home directory I'm presented with the exact same desktop. No modifications to my workflow!
Thanks for this interesting addition
Thanks, I chose to dual boot with a KDE neon as a working fallback, I'm trying to setup my workflow with openbox, I'm not in a hurry and I'm learning stuff, hopefully my distrohopping will end
You're not using Arch Linux. You're using Arco Linux, a fork distro that uses a GUI installer and a pre-built desktop environment, rendering many of your points useless. Also, it's called a Tiling window manager, not a Tile window manager.
I never used Arco Linux in my life, but you are probably correct on the Tiling vs Tile terminology.
Edit: Wondering why you thought I was using Arco, I think you might have be confused by the neofetch logo? I configured Neofetch to use the alternative, smaller Arch logo as to fit in the smaller terminal.