While ArcoLinux is awesome, I've installed the Awesome WM (window manager) using ArcoLinuxD. ArcoLinux is based on Arch Linux, the AUR (Arch Users Repository) and ArcoLinux customizations of the Arch Linux. Since I'm not a programmer, I followed the YouTube Channel of Erik Dubois and his instructions for installing Awesome.
ArcoLinux has everything for almost everybody if you are looking for an easy alternative to Arch Linux without the command line installation. If you do the ArcoLinux "D" installer you just go to Erik's YouTube page and search for Awesome, or whatever flavor you want and follow the video instructions. For me, since I've been watching a lot of Erik.s videos I knew the first Awesome video is # 295, but you need to start at # 294 to get the instructions to install ArchLinuxD using Calamari, which installs the base, or basics of what you need to install any of the flavors that I listed below. Just looking at the numbers, most people do not install the "D" but install the vanilla ArcoLinux. I chose the "D" after watching DistoTube's YouTube video of his install of ArcoLinuxD Awesome it look plain and easy enough for me. DT's distro-hopping this summer and his videos are every educating if you want to learn about Linux, or Gnu-Linux as the purist will call it. After watching these videos this is what I came up with.
It's getting BAMA football season and I just had to theme it to BAMA colors.
Just so you get an idea of what you can install in ArcoLinux here's a list from the ArcoLinuxD GitHub page.
- Arco-Plasma (a desktop environment using KDE)
- Arco-LXQT (a desktop environment of the new LXDE done in QT, pronounce cutie)
- Arco-Xmonad (a tiling window manager)
- Arco-XFCE (a desktop environment XFCE is one of the most bullet-proof desktops out there)
- Arco-Qtile (a tiling window manager)
- Arco-Openbox (a tiling window manager based on LXDE (maybe now LXQT?))
- Arco-Mate (a desktop environment based on the old Gnome 2)
- Arco-i3 (a tiling window manager)
- Arco-Gnome (a desktop environment based on the newer Gnome 3)
- Arco-Deepin (a desktop environment done in QT)
- Arco-Cinnamon (a desktop environment created after Gnome left Gnome 2 to go to Gnome 3)
- Arco-Budgie (a desktop environment based on Gnome)
- Arco BSPWM (a tiling window manager)
- Arco-Awesome (a tiling manager with some use of LUA programming language)
- Arco-JWM (a tiling manager (Joe's) that is very minimalistic and lightweight with floating windows)
- Arco-Herbstluftwm (a tiling window manager designed for multiple windows)
- Arco-Enlightenment (a desktop-environment that is very minimalistic and changes from whichever Linux you download, ie Debian, Arch, RHL, Solaris, etc)
You see two different types of operating systems and they are all based on Arch. A desktop environment is what most people use. It has the GUI that anybody using Windows or Apple could switch over and use and feel sort of comfortable with. The tiling window managers are for using keyboards and not a mouse. If you have used a laptop as long as I have you might like the idea of a windows manager. The tiling part and tags, or switching between desktops takes a little getting used to. You just can't cover-up a window and alt-tab back and forth. Every time you open a window it will tile side by side. Awesome is a dynamic tiling manager and handles tiling differently than i3.
Most of these are on here because ArcoLinux is based on Arch Linux and Arch has all these desktop environments and window managers available. When I look at the ArcoLinux website they do not list many developers, so keeping up with 17 different flavors has got to be hard work, but I'm sure they have a strong community behind them. Their website is very user-friendly and like I said earlier, Erik has put out lots of videos on most if not all the different environments and lots of reported issues even have videos to help you solve most problems you might encounter. ArcoLinux will fix issues and some of these videos won't have to be viewed, but if you do have a problem, check out their website and their forum.
My experience is mostly positive, I do have a problem with Variety, a program that manages your wallpaper and I can't get it to stop changing my wallpaper, after telling it in the autostart.sh and also in the GUI. Any other problems that I had were self-inflicted so I cannot blame the ArcoLinux team for these. I will still keep my Mangaro i3 on one of my discs (I don't use Virtual Machine boxes, I change out discs in my laptop and the if I want to use a different distro that I have not erased I just plug my SATA adapter into the disc and then my USB and boot from USB). Right now I have Awesome in my old Aspire 5750 laptop and I want it to use it day-to-day. I love Manjaro and I will keep it as a fallback, but with the video support that ArcoLinux has, I want to support them and their time they put into their work. I can easily update both, Manjaro has Pamac and ArcoLinux has an alias to use in terminal to update Pacman, the AUR, and the ArcoLinux GitHub.
I do want to add that I did get a straight vanilla installation of Arch XFCE and Arch i3 working and enjoying both of them. The i3 I didn't quite finish because I'm not up to the knowledge I need to configure I3 to my liking, and the XFCE wouldn't allow a couple of key programs that I use to work. That's when I saw Distrotube's video on Awesome and never turned back.
As for Awesome and ArcoLinux, I love the status bar they use, using the LUA language. The biggest difference between Awesome and i3 is that I don't feel guilty when I use my mouse trackpad. I've used desktop environments since Windows 95 and just switched to a window manager last month and it's just habit. I think I've spent more time configuring Awesome than i3 but I blame that on the all the Awesome related videos. With the exception of the right-clickable desktop and the LUA configuration files, everything else has been close to the same, having to add widevine to Chromium to watch Netflix. My next little learning project is learning mpd & ncmpcpp music players and visualizations and assigning applications to tags.
If you want to learn more about window managers then check out Distrotube's series on Obscure Window Managers Projects. This probably has been my longest post I've ever made but the review is well worth it.
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