- EARWORM -
- MOOD -
- ORIGINAL -
The Art of Linux
Or How I Landed on Artix.
As I’m physically unable to resist the impulse any longer, I must tell you… I’m a Linux user. I’ve been thinkering with linux for over 5 years now. A little more if you count that time I installed Xubuntu on an old netbook back in 2015, used it for a couple of hours, and then forgot about it.
My first true exposure to Linux happened when I started messing with Arch Linux in a VM on a Win10 host thanks to that SomeOrdinaryGamers guy. At the time it just seemed like a nice challenge. Just how hard is it to run “The Hardest OS to install”. Turns out, is not that hard. As long as you know how to follow instructions.
Jumping into Arch as my first Linux distro kinda force me into learning how to handle the command line. Today, I am the command line. I ran Arch for about a year and a half. However as you may imagine, being an Arch user means you’ll inevitably fall for the “muh minimalism” meme. For me, it meant I always had this itch I couldn’t scratch. Systemd. You can’t be minimal if you run Systemd, or so they tell you. So after experiencing some kernel panics with Linux 6.8 (that I couldn’t debug) and having my system borked by a partial gcc+glibc+kernel update (caused by a kernel crash), I decided to distro-hop to Artix Linux. It just felt like a good excuse.
Did a classic Arch-style installation. Chose Dinit as init just cuz it looked cool init?. Installed muh applications and we’re good to go. Kind of… I had a couple of hiccups. Since one of the 6.something kernels, Linux would try to use the Nouveau driver for my Nvidia card which would cause the system to power down. Yes full on (off?), not a hard reboot. I just had to blacklist the driver and install the proprietary driver. Then, you have all the elogind and dbus configuration bullshit. Luckily i had experience setting up Void Linux machines so this wasn’t that much of a problem.
Yes. Not only did i fell for the init system meme. I decided to go all the way and throw out elogind, replacing it with seatd + acpid + turnstile. Is it that much minimal? Replacing 1 tool with 3 others. “But muh lines of code”. Whatever IDGAF.
My Artix system is pretty solid. No kernel panics, no page faults, no DE (I use Sway, Hyprland doesn’t like REAPER), no X11 (haha sure buddy, tell that to Xwayland). Pretty solid. Next time i have to reinstall for whatever reason, I may do the Gentoo meme.
Btw, those kernel panics, I have a high suspicion it was actually Systemd and the default cgroups configuration on Arch. ¯\(ツ)/¯
