Introduction
I’ve been using Arch for about a month now. It has been the best experience that I’ve had while using a computer.
And its not even close.
The beginnings
Growing up I played a lot of video games, so naturally I gravitated towards windows. I also didn’t have a lot of money. This combination meant I was using windows and always attempting to squeeze the most performance possible out of it. I learnt the ins and outs of windows. Everything from the basics of removing animations, all the way to advanced overclocking and registry tweaking.
The issue
One issue I was constantly running into on windows was how slow and sluggish it was. This was mainly due to all the bad decisions that microsoft was making, and so my linux journey began.
First install
The very first time I installed Linux, I installed Manjaro. Yes, I know what you are thinking, what a horrible idea that was. You would be correct in thinking like that. Coming from windows, I had no idea how to even use the command line. I did everything wrong, and so as expected, nothing worked.
The loop
So of course, I uninstalled Manjaro and went back to windows. This same process repeated itself with a number of distros over the past 4 years. Every distro from, Ubuntu, to Mint, and even NixOS. None of them worked, time after time I reverted back to windows.
Arch
Installation
Finally I decided to bite the bullet I had been trying to avoid for so long, I installed Arch. I knew if I installed Arch, the only way it would work is if I did everything correctly. Which meant using a tiling window manager, using VIM, and managing dotfiles correctly. This was a daunting task, as I didn’t want to invest the time in to learn everything. But about a month ago, I decided to do it. The arch install process went very smoohtly. I used the Arch install script, I know what you are thinking,
“He should have used the wiki”.
I now realise that I should have used the wiki.
I understand a large amount about linux now, as I have been using it on and off for nearly 4 years. So I am not too concerned about the issue that arise from using the install script, I have adopted the “fix it yourself” mentality that Arch so heavily insists upon. In addition I am a programmer so I know how to read error messages etc. So fixing my way through issues is something that is so easy with the use of the wiki.
What should I use?
The next question was what window manager to use. I decided to use Wayland rather than X, because I have been frustrated with X in the past and wanted to try something new. A lot of waylands features look really useful. So I installed wayland, and as my compositor I went with Hyprland.
This was a super easy install process as I used the dot files from HyprDots to allow me to get some dotfiles that look half decent. This gave me time to learn a window manager, as well as using VIM etc.
My experience
My experience has been nothing short of amazing. A window manager is the way Linux is made to work. It allows me to work way faster than I ever was ever working on windows, after only a month of learning a WM (Compositor in my case due to using Wayland).
My recommendation
If you are planning a switch to linux, first learn to use BASH or ZSH on your current operation system. You can use WSL on windows if you are coming from a windows background. Then once you know your way around the shell. Give the full window manager Arch experience a shot. It might seem too confusing at first, but very quickly you will get the hang of doing stuff and can get back up to speed working.