Breaking free from Windows

I know jack shit about any of that. I tried running Ubuntu and Lubuntu a few years back and that's about it so I will be hassling my partner for all the technical bits.

So I finally did a proper vanilla Arch on an old 2008 MacBook (not arch based) and it’s not bad at all considering the hardware it runs on. This will make for a fine secondary laptop I can lug to work and leave my Acer at home.

I went with Xfce4 for desktop, and GDM for graphical login. Of course I am limited by the integrated GPU but it can run what need well enough though playtesting with MZ is a no-no because only half the recommended RAM.

https://i.servimg.com/u/f72/20/15/58/03/7979b510.jpg

Another solid contender. I am really liking YaST tools for system configuration and package management. It runs on just about as much RAM as a base vanilla Arch install does. Lutris GOG integration works flawlessly unlike with Arch. Optimus Manager also working just fine. OpenSUSE is slowly earning a permanent slot on my HDD.

The package manager, zypper, is also really neat, just as efficient as Pacman.

Next up is going to be Slackware 15. It's been a while since I dabbled with Slack. FreeBSD 14 also on the cards for my old 2008 Macbook as I don't really need much from this work laptop.

Spoiler:

OpenSUSE stopped working on me. Likely an issue with the NVIDIA drivers. I don’t have enough middle fingers for you nvidia

Seeing as I don’t have the patience to troubleshoot this I went back to Arch. I always come back to Arch.

Have you been playing Wasteland lately? Your signature sounds like something a character from this game would say.

It’s a meme base on the old senile bastard that is in charge of the USA. Sounds like the kind of shit he would say. 


But Wasteland is great yeah.

My bad, I don't remember shooting ducks but there was that goat and definitely plenty of toasters in Wasteland 2.

I found my new favourite outside the beaten path -- Void Linux.

Void is a small independent distro, rolling release (install once and just update), uses runit instead of systemd (too long to explain, but NOT running systemd is REALLY good), and the built from scratch package manager is just so good, and stupidly fast also. It beats the piss out of APT, DNF, pacman, zypper, portage and PKG.

Void doesn't hold your hand and while the install process is not as fiddly as a BSD, or as ridiculous hoop jumping as Arch, or time consuming and complicated as Gentoo, you still have to know what you are doing so Void is more of an intermediate-advanced distro.

Void by default ships with XFCE, which is the best in terms of lightweight and usability. I am not aware if there's ways to install other desktops like KDE Plasma, GNOME, LXQT, but likely so.

Void is very light on system resources. I am idling at ~400MB of RAM, which is just stupidly good, a barebones Arch was running at ~550MB.

The real star here is XBPS. This package manager is just fantastic and faster than any other package manager of any distro out there. Of course, flatpak also works as intended so really anything that's not in the surprisingly large Void repo can be downloaded from flatpak. The beauty of Flatpak is that it's distro-neutral, it will work on Debian, Arch, Fedora, openSUSE, Gentoo, Slackware, Void, whatever. Flatpak handles dependencies really well so installing and running applications through it is a breeze.

Using runit instead of systemD means Void is free of the many problems plaguing systemD distros, and runit is also significantly faster. Void is nimble, light, responsive and efficient. Plus, you can even install Void using FreeBSD's ZFS filesystem and disk manager, which is just so so so so good!

All and all, Void Linux is a seriously hidden and underrated gem. I am REALLY liking this one, and while I really love Arch, I am glad to be out of it's claws. Steam works flawlessly, as does Lutris, office suite works fine, NVIDIA drivers and the hybrid Optimus system also... everything I need, really.

Spoiler:

Sounds like your search is finally over!

Nope. Fucking NVIDIA drivers keep breaking Linux installs. Void has suffered the same fate as OpenSUSE, install the bloody drivers, reboot and... unrecoverable freeze. Only Arch based (Xero, Artix but Artix has it's own share of problems) and Arch itself seems immune to the problem. I am tempted to go back to Fedora... I reinstalled Slackware also.

Damn that sounded too good to be true.

Well, Arch and the Arch based ones aren't bad so it's not that big of a deal. I found Artix, which is Arch without SystemD which works for me, it runs openRC instead just like Gentoo.

It's bloody Arch. Everything brings me back to bloody Arch.

So yeah NVIDIA did not break Arch and installing the multilibs allows Steam to run properly.

This has been a fun journey but there is only one clear winner here - Arch. Since I doubt you are interested in Arch's command line install process I would say go for one of the Arch-based like Xero, Manjaro perhaps.

Installing pure Arch isn't difficult it's just a bit fiddly. Here is a textbook example of a base install. Of course you need Xorg, your chosen graphical environment (personally I like Xfce or LXQt)), graphics drivers and enable multilibs to run Steam.

Fun fact: The Steam Deck used to run Debian, but Valve has since switched to Arch for all the bleeding edge stuff.

Plus Arch has the AUR a large repository of software. If something isn't available on Pacman odds are good AUR will have it.

You've certainly explored a range of options. It sounds as if it is best to settle with Arch until something which really fits the bill comes along.

The goal of this experiment was my personal nerd satisfaction and also find something solid for Carabas to use as a non-Windows OS.

Arch is not my favourite but it is stupidly solid. It's not surprising that it's the basis for so many other distros.

Now I do not mind the fiddly install process because the end result is a basic solid system but I understand that's not for everyone.

So if you feel for a challenge Carabas, Arch. More casual, Fedora, Xero or Manjaro.

Solid is good. Thanks for being so thorough. I may go for an easier to use distro.

In the end if you install on more modern hardware go for Xero, otherwise Fedora has flavours with all desktop environements, I personally prefer Xfce or LXQt.

The big difference boils down to Pacman vs DNF. DNF is more streamlined in it's approached and it's comprised of only a few commands --dnf install, dnf remove, dnf query and that's about it.

Pacman has much more switches - -S, -Sy, -Syy, -Syyu.

DNF is capable of incremental updates aka it updates just part of an updated package instead of removing the old one and installing the new one.

Fedora does not ship with any proprietary drivers so you need to enable nonfree repos to get access to them unlike Pacman. Plus as mentioned before, Pacman + AUR has one of the if the largest software repos available.

That said if you can go for AMD/ATI. It will save you headaches of fighting with the NVIDIA drivers. Xero offers them as a software selection you can checkmark. Manjaro's hardware detection is on point also.

Here is the final result of Arch, idle on my main Acer Nitro laptop. NVIDIA installed, AUR enabled, running XFCE desktop environment.  614MB of RAM is not bad at all.

I guess when it comes down to it the reason I love Arch and Gentoo this much is that you really get a field day of learning what happens under the hood, if you will. Arch/Gentoo give you a barebone system that's yours to do with as you wish, unlike the prebuilt distros.

The difficulty of installing Arch is greatly exaggerated. Gentoo IS hard AND time consuming. But it's a very rewarding experience.

My cores are not 4.1GHz, they are 2.8, but most Linux activate a "boost" option bringing them to 4.1. So an octocore 4.1GHz, not bad.

Spoiler:

I'm going to go over this when I upgrade. I don't mind Windblows that much myself but my partner wants a Linux OS if we end up sharing a machine. We may go for a dual boot system.

I will probably give my current machine to my mom so I'll end up with her old laptop as a backup machine so chances are I will need a light option since it's almost nine years old and it's starting to show its age.

The best option is of course install an Arch base system and what you need on top including a lightweight DE. Otherwise Fedora las a LXQt spin which is fairly light.

I may go with Fedora Lxqt then and get my toes wet. My mom's old laptop still runs but the AV and Windows are killing it's performance.

https://spins.fedoraproject.org/lxqt/download/index.html

If UEFI, you will need a 512MB FAT32 boot partition to be mounted at /boot/EFI.
Swap is equal to your RAM
File system is up to you. I use XFS though btrfs is becoming standard and I think Fedora by default uses BTRFS. Of course the best file system there is is hands down ZFS but for Linux this is not an option.

The Anaconda installer will guide you anyway. Disabling the root account is optional as you can do most root level tasks with sudo but I don't recommend it. Just write down a password for it if ever needed.

Thanks. I'll probably have some questions about the finer details once I get around to it. I've been thinking about getting a proper desktop for a bit so I will probably give my trusty laptop to my mother and take her old device off her hands.

Most of my experience is with Arch, Gentoo and FreeBSD but I'll try my best to help you out. Eventually when you are comfortable I would absolutely go for an Arch install. Requires a bit of tinkering, but usually running a lot of stuff I top about three ish gigs of RAM and idling I get less than 700MB. Plus the updates are regular so it's easy to stap up to date with Arch. Redcore runs kernel 5.14, Arch is on 5.18.

Fedora is like a prefabricated house, Arch is like building a log cabin house, Gentoo is plans, a mule and raw materials. Which is a shockingly accurate description.