Arch, or not to Arch
I wanted to say “By the way… I use Arch. But I can’t just yet.
I’ve go a couple of old laptops that I experimented with and I decided to install Arch Linux on the Dell Latitude D620. The main reason was just to do it so I could say the BTW line. I thought Arch, being a very minimal distro would be perfect for an old laptop with limited speed. The heavier distros worked good, unlike windows, but I wanted a more lightweight system installed.
I installed Linux Mint when I finally wiped MS Windows out of my life. It actually worked quite well, faster then the Windows 7 it replaced and gave it new life. But the old Dell was not used for anything in particular and I started loading different Linux distros just for the fun of it.
Then it was Arch’s turn. It wasn’t a bad install. Quite good actually. Everything work except one thing… the WiFi. I spent weeks trying to get it to work. By default, Arch doesn’t do WiFi in the install, which is sad because all devices now days uses WiFi. Now, I know the hardware works because all other distros make it work during installation. Even Arch made it work on the USB boot installer. In fact, I downloaded all the installation packages with the WiFi. But as soon as I had everything installed and configured I rebooted into my new Arch system and I couldn’t get the WiFi working for the life of me.
After a couple of weeks I gave up and installed Slackware. I really like it, and yes - the WiFi worked after a simple configuration. I ran it with a KDE Plasma desktop and it looked pretty sweet. But I finally realized that it was an old distro that rarely gets revisions and is run by a one-man operation with a few unpaid developers and I didn’t want to invest too much only to see it fade away.
So back to Arch I went, determined to get it working. I didn’t.
Then a Youtube video from Chris Titus Tech gave me an idea to go install a minimalist distro without a desktop environment and just use a windows-tiling manager. So I went that route.
I did some surfing and found a Manjaro distro that had a minimal build with just a windows manager installed, one called I3. I liked the idea that is was from Manjaro because it’s built on Arch Linux. I downloaded it and made a USB boot installer and loaded it up on my Dell laptop.
I’m in the process of working with it but so far I really like the way it works. A windows-tiling manager like I3 gets some getting used to. You have to use more keyboard and less mouse, real old school. But I’m beginning to think that it’s a better work flow in some respect.
I’ll report later on how it all worked out.