The Cost of Decentralization
I have been a happy Artix Linux user for several months. I had got the setup to be exactly as I liked. The choice of the distribution was prompted by a desire to contribute to the cause of keeping Linux decentralized. (See videos form Youtux.) Artix helped me retain the use of the package ecosystem of Arch while using an init system that isn’t systemd (something monolythic and centralizing) (I was using OpenRC), and without being tied to the wayland display server (which, again, seems to be pushed upon us by corporate forces in Linux (I was using XLibre, although, sadly, Artix just reverted to X.org). It needed more configuration than some of the other distros I have used. But for a one-time setup, I did not mind that.
The problem, however, is that upholding principles require time and skills, both of which I find myself lacking. For the developers, the costs are higher. (See post from former Artix + Xlibre developer). In my case, I realized that getting my custom Emacs system on other distros, or even a different installation of Artix on a different machine would be highly time consuming, and ultimately unsustainable.
The Distrohops
Omarchy
Omarchy 4 came out recently. I wanted to test it out. The 6GB download took a while, but the installation was under 7 minutes. Just as the last time I tested it many months ago, it looked beautiful. The tiling window system might not be too suitable for my RAM and laptop screen. A lot of default programs have to be deleted or reset. The AI focus is also too much for me. For Emacs, I would have to use “omarchy-emacs”. I did not want to do that.
OpenMandriva
While I was moving around, I decided to test out OpenMandriva as well. I had heard great things about it. The installation was under 5 minutes (excluding the iso download). The system with its KDE Plasma desktop was quite polished. But I am not used to the Fedora package manger. Also, I just could not get Emacs to work the way I wanted. I was willing to switch to using Spacemacs, but that too would not work. It felt good to use a distro completely different from Arch and Debian. But I cannot work without Emacs.
Artix
Artix with Spacemacs should have been the way, but I was ready for something else.
Others I did not try
Did not test Void this time, but I know from testing it several months ago, this was going to be immensely time consuming.
Started downloading EndeavourOS too, but at that point, I decided to go for a heavy prebuilt system, since EndeavourOS would not give me a different init anyway.
CachyOS
The download took and hour, the installation took another 30 minutes (I did not need to update the system after this installation was done). And then the other software installations took another while. Spacemacs installed without any issues. All my other setup were relatively straightforward. The default KDE desktop looks very polished, and I am not planning to tweak it much.
For now, I’m Just embracing the guilty comfort of having my decisions made for me. I need to get to work.
Also, regarding all my past resolutions of sticking to a distro… my new resolution is to never make a resolution of that kind.