My Linux Journey - 3

2022 update

Yes, I finally did it. I installed Arch… btw! Here’s what led me to that: After about a year of using Manjaro-Gnome on my desktop PC, I decided it was time to try something different. So I went with EndeavourOS (EOS) with the i3 window manager (i3wm). The distro, like many of the big ones, came with a graphical installer, so the installation went flawlessly and there were no problems with the reboot.

While the default look of the operating system was OK, if a bit purple-y, I started to “rice” i3wm almost immediately. (For the people that don’t know, “to rice” in this context means to modify and “spice up” the look.) One difference between Manjaro and EOS that I noticed right away was that EOS was more Arch-based than Manjaro in that it requires updates almost every day! The nice thing is that you decide when you want to do that; the bad thing is that you can’t delay the updates for too long.

Apart from the near daily updates, some newbie-friendly tools (like the Welcome menu), and the purple color scheme, I don’t have a lot to say about EOS. It’s a fine Linux distro. No complaints. It’s just that… well, it wasn’t really that much of a novel experience for me. After ricing the window manager to my liking, the distro sort of faded into the background. Maybe if I had been exposed to it earlier in my journey I would have appreciated its user-friendliness a bit more. As it is, I was already past the stage where I needed GUI applications to get comfortable with an Arch-based distro.

5 months into EOS, I started to think about distro hopping again; I needed a new challenge.¹ The next distro was going to be Arco Linux, as it is Arch based, can be heavily customized during the installation, and comes with a lot of pre-built tools. However, the installation would also be through a GUI, and this would not be pushing the boundaries for me.

“So,” I thought, “why not just go for Arch, the core behind all these distros, and install it the Arch way?” So, I did! Today I am proudly running “vanilla” Arch on my desktop PC. I still have Manjaro on the laptop, though hopefully that will change soon. I just need to research a bit more, as the laptop has certain extra requirements that make the switch a little more involved.

Computing minimalism

For me, a big part of the reason to move to Arch, besides the challenge of installing it manually, was a sense that, since the summer of 2021, I had failed to reach one of my goals, which was to move towards computing minimalism. Yes, I have left the Gnome desktop for good on both of my machines and now use a light-weight window manager. But until recently, I was still too dependent on a lot of GUI applications in my workflow. What is perhaps worse, I noticed that I was beginning to rice a little too much. It’s not something I did often, maybe once every couple of months. But every time I started to rice, I would end up spending days fine-tuning the look of the desktop. I realized that this was leading me away from focusing on doing work, from doing actual computing. Therefore, to help me care less about design, I resolved to remove as much of the graphical from the interface as I could.

Even as a Windows user I knew that a lot of modern software design is made with the intention of sapping your attention span and, in some cases, making you addicted. At one point, concerned about this, I downloaded a Windows app that would change the colors on the display to monochrome. The idea was that a dull grayscale desktop environment would minimize distractions. It was a nice idea, but unfortunately sometimes color is important to one’s workflow. Soon after, I uninstalled the app.

Now that I was a Linux user, and having much more control over my graphical environment, I knew I could do better. So I’ve started implementing a “ricing” of sorts, but one where I pare down everything to its most basic. Take the taskbar, for example: It’s probably one of the most riced components in a window manager. Usually you will see it filled with modules showing everything from the time & date to stock prices, current music playlist, weather forecasts, rss feeds, etc. I myself did not have that many modules to begin with, but I’ve managed to reduce them to just the very essential: workspace numbers (to know on which virtual desktop I am on)… and nothing else! Well, actually, I do allow tray icons to temporarily appear for applications which are cumbersome to use without a tray icon. I also allow an e-mail notification to appear when I have new mail in my inbox. However, after the app or notification has served its purpose, the icon is removed.

So the status bar is nearly empty. There are now no gaps between and around my windows, so the wallpaper is not visible… In fact, there is no wallpaper either, as there’s no point to it without vanity gaps. And most programs and apps are either TUI or CLI based, which makes the terminal the most prevalent type of window in this environment.

I’m constantly looking for ways to do more things with the terminal, so the minimalist journey is not over. The next phase, for me, is to start seriously learning some scripting so I can take the minimalism to another level. Today I know how to read/write simple scripts, mostly in bash, but it’s almost always with the help of a script written by someone else. I want to be able to write a script from scratch that will be able to automate complicated tasks in my workflow that are tedious to do manually.

So that is where I am today with Linux: a bit on the super nerdy end of the spectrum. When I had first made the switch, the look and feel of the distro was all important. I needed my system to look nice! More than 2 years later, after my experience with EOS, and especially after ditching a lot of the fancy graphical elements of both a desktop environment and a window manager, I understand that neither the distro nor the look are really that important. To me what matters the most now is that I get work done in the most efficient and minimalist way possible.

Here’s to two more years with Linux!