With arch based flavored desktop installers (arco endeavour manjaro ..) you get some GBs of stuff that is probably going to ask 1-2GB of upgrades, and then you end up dumping half the crap they came with.
On one you start from bottom up, the rest you start from top towards the ?bottom?.
You only learn when you start with the least needed to boot a system, have net access, and a pkg.mngr.
There is an advantage in arch (and all pacman based distros) that the pkg mgr is friendly and vocal.
Say you want your system to run with vtwm you try and you get many dependencies installed, then try starting it. If it doesn't start it will tell you what is missing still.
Usually with X is either xorg-xinit or a display manager (avoid) and adding exec vtwm into your /.xinitrc gets you going.
I know, with so many wonderful window managers who needs a stinking desktop.
I run with no logind no dbus no polkit ,, occasionally I may manually start a seatd to test wayland labwc upgrades .. and I'd rather go deaf than have to use pulseaudio or pipewire.
Not MS but IBM, created a front 13y ago called RedHat, financed it with consulting subcontracts installing RHEL,Fedora,Debian everywhere, to steer all Desktop/GUI development to depend on it, and when it all met its goals bought it to create its mass consumed system to compete with MS.
Very few attempt to maintain desktop functionality without systemd today, and upstreamers just quitely conformed to the "market'.
Convenience and pop-whores .. it is what capitalism prescribes. Add games, bookmarks on Edge, saved passwords, that people don't want to change ... and this is the disability they develop. Then win gets all borked BSOD and all, and they start the only way they know how, disk, format, new install.
They buy their own prison cells and the camera that monitors them like they live in a reality show.
BSA ITA French/Swiss PF30 octa/isis I do them all.
I switched gearbox and driveshaft on a heavy van stuck on 20' incline 5m away from a wall. Early 70s Dodge. Scary getting under there.
I use runit and/or s6 as init and service supevisor, no logind, no dbus, just a window manager. I have one disguised as MSwin, my friend hasn't noticed in 7y it is not MSw. She says it is as good now as it was the day I installed it.
If you don't mind sharing all your private data with multinational corporations and state agencies then you have no better choice than paying MS to provide you with a dummy terminal to their affiliated data-miners.
I have used labwc (a really close equivalent to openbox) with great excitement with the exception of one thing.
Running a graphic application as a different user within a user's session is impossible. Even if a different seatd session is active for the 2nd user, wlroots refuses to draw anything as a different user than the one initiating the session.
It is a form of containerization for me that just requires x11
DE require tremendous overhead of serv/daemons just to be able to make shortcuts/menu items clickable, I would never use such contraptions on my system.
I use a wm and have no use for polkit, dbus, logind, automount, obfuscated rights elevations and demotions, .... all this crap that unnecessarily must run for the sake of aesthetics and MS-win utility.
If I needed icons on my background I would use just a light filemanager, like pcmanfm, but I don't.
I know some who do it as a spare time relaxation exercise, install something new (to them) configure, boot, reconfigure, explore. But they have a steady system they use daily.
@ashley ubuntu is, yes, a pseudo distribution with funky installer, fonts, themes, mix of non-free software, appealing to those who just want a cheap system without the will to learn much.
yianiris @ yianiris @kafeneio.social Posts 0Comments 146Joined 2 yr. ago
With arch based flavored desktop installers (arco endeavour manjaro ..) you get some GBs of stuff that is probably going to ask 1-2GB of upgrades, and then you end up dumping half the crap they came with.
On one you start from bottom up, the rest you start from top towards the ?bottom?.
You only learn when you start with the least needed to boot a system, have net access, and a pkg.mngr.
@Squiddles @hactar42 @JeanLurkPicard @Zak