It's the little things

09-14-2025

So a couple weeks ago I decided to make one more serious attempt to use vanilla Arch (btw). First I tried to use the Archinstall script because I was more interested in what comes after the bare-bones installation. But it wasn't working for some reason; so ok, I'll do it "the right way", it took me a couple of tries, but I managed to do it. I've been using Claude.Ai to coach me throughout the process and it just makes it a lot smoother.

Then I moved on to the GUI, I went with Sway, and started doing all the necessary installations and configurations. It's fun, for the most part; I didn't do a lot of "ricing", but just enough to make it comfortable and functional, and nice to look at without being extravagant. I was almost getting to a place where I could call this Arch machine "home".

But it's the little things that get you. Like not being able to set up bluetooth to connect automatically to my headphones, or not being able to get some applications like the file manager to go with the dark theme, even when some others like Nitrogen did, or getting the screen backlight keys to work. I know all of this is not impossible but the frustration/reward ratio is just not worth it.

I've since replaced the small partition where I had installed Arch with Endeavour OS (Sway community edition), and I gotta say, I've just been using it for a few days now but I have a very good feeling about it. As a kind of intermediary distro, nicely themed, everything functional from the start but with just the essential software pre-intalled, ready to build up as you like it, it does a very good job. I'm thinking of using this for a few days and if everything goes well, wipe out the entire disk (pre-installed Windows 11 included) and just have Endeavor on the whole thing.

Except for a couple of weird decisions, I am generally very happy with it, but I don't get why, for being a "no bloat" distro they included three different terminals, and why does sway-bar require a gps daemon as a dependency? I don't get it. Other than that, I like it.

I don't wanna distro-hop forever, but I also haven't quite found a home yet.