Choice of distribution

  • rolling updates – after few years of using openSUSE Tumbleweed I learnt it’s possible to use rolling updates distro on daily machine without any major breakage and the possibility to use almost upstream versions is just so appealing.
  • customizations – my old Ubuntu system was already customized (root on RAID, i3) and I didn’t use any of the Ubuntu fads (UI, snaps (actually those scared me away)), I just needed a distro that supplies updates to the packages that I use.
  • I ruled out Gentoo because of its environmental impact and weirdo aura it has.
  • I considered exploring non-RPM non-DEB world after years on such systems (otherwise openSUSE Tumbleweed or Debian Testing would satisfy my needs).

Archwiki

  • It is well known even to non-Arch linux users thanks to its curated and applicable content.
  • When I installed Arch on my machine, I realized the reason – the wiki substitutes an installer and setup tool, those don’t exist in Arch (almost).
  • At some moments (e.g. mariadb) the wiki also substitutes post-install scripts.
  • This allows high customizations of every Arch install.

Moving without changing /home

  • unison worked (despite I upgraded from 2.48 to 2.51 the on-disk format still matched and sync worked)
  • fortunately, pulseaudio files are distinguished with a UUID prefix
  • FF profile got upgraded, i.e. works only one-way

Misc

  • I learnt about Xresources – yet another example of history cycles and evolution in SW ecology (cf. settings in each GNOME/KDE application).
  • It’s so systemd positive (networkd, timesyncd,…).
  • non-empty root password (and no sudo by default)
  • AUR packages – this is unlike Ubuntu’s PPAs or openSUSE’s home repos, it’s like nested Gentoo

Dislikes

  • very brief package changelogs (if any), OTOH, they are kept in git
  • unclear semantics of optdepends dependency
  • gnu-free-fonts can’t be watched (too thin, weirdly blurred antialiasing)

October 2021 update

  • no debuginfo, need to rebuild packages with debuginfo flag (I can’t just download debuginfo)
  • OTOH, fix (for a severe memory corruptino bug) was already commited when I started dealing with it

Feb 2023 update

  • /lib/modules/$(uname -r)/ may be empty after kernel update AND NO reboot
    • that sucks for lazily loaded modules