# I Use Arch BTW

Yeah, I know I just said I'm returning to Windows, but I bought a refurbished Lenovo L15 for a good price. I initially intended to install Windows on it.

As if the punchline for a joke, Windows 11 did not work with the Wi-Fi chip out of the box.

I remember using shitty Broadcom wireless chips that didn't like any FOSS operating system when I was newer to Linux. Honestly, that was probably about 100% of the difficulty.

Anyways, I decided to go for a "hard" linux distro. I first tried Gentoo but I messed up with kernel compiling and I didn't want to deal with it. I considered Slackware, but I figured I'd need -current for how recent this laptop is. If I'm just going to use Slackware-current, I thought, I might as well just use Arch.

I installed Arch manually out of personal preference. When I install Arch *or* Void, I prefer to install manually. I personally do not find their installers reliable. I don't find either process difficult and when I finished Arch booted up nicely.

## Wayland

I decided to set up Sway and forgot to set up Xwayland. By the time I realized this, I decided "fuck it I'm going to run all apps on Wayland".

I tried to install the latest git commit of GNU IMP[0] and fell into trouble. It needs a newer GEGL than what Arch currently provides, and the GEGL in the AUR was out of date.

Still, when I can get GNU IMP working under Wayland, I plan on going fully Wayland only.

I also decided to use Emacs. In fact, I'm writing this post with Emacs, although on SDF's server. My initial plan was EXWM but sway happened, which is fine. Sway is a great Wayland compositor, and it and i3 are my favorite tiling window managers. 

## systemd

I don't particularly trust or like systemd, don't get me wrong. I do, however, like a feature systemd has that other init systems don't seem to have. User units.

If runit has something similar (and it looks like they may), I may switch to Void. I'm not a particularly huge fan of how runit works, but I trust its developers more.

I'm also not against using Gentoo (with a default configuration of a kernel) or Alpine if OpenRC has something similar as well (and it may, although it is quite different from how systemd and runit seem to approach this feature).

I'm not considering Artix as I am not a fan of distros that just remove systemd and replace it with another init system. It feels quite hacky and Artix seems to have less packages by default than Arch.

## Thoughts

Arch and its AUR are quite nice. I don't have issues with the AUR. In fact, some programs I like, such as 86Box, are in the AUR. The only distro I know that packages it is Gentoo, for a lose definition of package.

I do plan on continuing to use Sway. I have it configured (if minimally) the way I like it for this laptop.

I also really like my new laptop. It's a smaller version of my Pavillion, and is largely an upgrade over it. It does have a smaller drive size, but that's not too bad, and I get an NVMe drive versus the HDD the Pavillion had.

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[0]: GNU Imps are far far cuter than slurs. No contest.