Linux is an open source operating system developed by Linus Torvalds as a “small project”. Winodws dominates the worldwide market share of operating systems, but not many people know that even Microsoft uses Linux in their cloud platforms to handle their massive workloads from users. Why do they do this? The answer is quite simple. More support and flexibility. Linux achieves these two attributes by being an open source platform, with millions of developers. When a user reaches out for help online with a Linux bug, they’re inadvertently contributing to the development and improvement of Linux. It’s used in a personal computing space and work computing spaces for good reason, but how does it do both of these, and fit every other use case for users?

There are an insane amount of distributions (distros) that Linux is available in. All of them are designed and supported with the user and their use case in mind. Some of the more popular ones (and derivatives) are Red Hat with Fedora & CentOS, Ubuntu & Ubuntu Server, Debian with Linux Mint & Kali Linux, and Arch with Manjaro and NixOS. These are all very well known in the Linux community, and I am not listing roughly 95% of all other linux distributions. Click here for a full distro family tree if you’re interested. So with all of this in mind – there is certainly a Linux distro for everyone. Determining which one is the hardest part. Want to transition smoothly from Windows? Use Mint or Ubuntu. Want a system that is easily redistrubitable? Use NixOS. Need to maintain server side operations? Use Debian. Want a system with no bloat out of the box? Use an Arch based distro.

The last sentence of the previous section. No bloat. As someone who has spent the majority of my life using Windows systems I am saddened to see the amount of bloatware and feature heavy slop that Microsoft has pushed onto their paying customers. I could care less about having a news widget on my desktop or an AI assistant in my taskbar. The amount of garbage that comes with a vanilla Windows system is also extremely resource consuming. There is zero reason why a fresh install of Windows with no third party applications installed should take upwards of 40% of my computers memory at idle. Another major reason is the customization that is available with Linux. You can make your operating system, yours. If I want a wallpaper switcher that cycles through 150 images I have saved with the click of two buttons, I can do that on Linux. If I want to customize my taskbar with various theming based on these images, I can also do that. You can essentially build Linux from the ground up as much as you want based on the distribution that you chose. And the best part, it’s all free and open-sourced software. Sure a lot of Windows applications do not have direct Linux support (Office apps, Photoshop, Spotify, etc.) But there are alternatives and workarounds for all of these thanks to the OS being open-source. I personally wanted a system that aligned with all of these reasons that was also minimal to keep me from distraction, therefore I landed on an Arch based system.

Arch Linux was created in 2002 and has followed a rolling release update model ever since. What is a rolling release? Almost every single day there are new updates being made to Arch in small increments at time. Instead of complete system overhauls and redesigns Arch updates bit by bit very frequently. This is great from a software perspective because this means there is constant support for the system and fixes are addressed very quickly. Arch is known as the most minimal and least invasive Linux distro around. It’s not recommended for beginner users looking to transition smoothly from Windows into Linux because of the manual intervention that is needed for installation and system maintanence, however if you’re someone who wants complete customization and control over how your system functions – then Arch is the way to go. As I mentioned before, I want a minimal system that will keep distractions away from me at all cost. The UI for iPhones is designed to keep your attention on the screen for as long as possible, doom scrolling app to app to keep you engaged for as long as possible. My iPhone is also designed minimally to limit distraction. I want my computer to be the same way. Computers are literally a cheat code in terms of knowledge and power that they supply to the human brain. No other time in history has information been so easily available to us with a few clicks and key presses. My own self interests include learning as much as possible before I exit this world (hopefully later than sooner). I want to read as much as I can, watch as many movies as I can, research as many topics as I can. I have a few applications on my home computer such as Obsidian that allow for this, but the overall platform needs to fit this requirement also to be a complete and well rounded system for self productivity.

TLDR: Arch aligns with my philosophy on life and it’s awesome.

Tiling window managers. They’re not very well known to the average computer user. Many of us understand that computers can be interacted with mainly by using the mouse to point and click, drag and drop, etc. If you’re like me, you like to have multiple tabs and windows open at one time on one monitor. Typically the side by side view of windows is my go to for work and productivity. If this is also your preferred window layout, you understand that it can sometimes be annoying to organize them with the overlap, sizing, and selection by having to click the window you want to work within. A tiling window manager automates every bit of this for you. The best part? No mouse is even needed. All of the switiching and sizing can be done with keybinds you set within your systems config files. There are a few tiling window managers that are used by Linux users such as the old i3, the not as old bspwm (I used to use this), and the new kid on the block; Hyprland. Hyprland is built using the newer display server protocol Wayland. The older but still reliable option is Xorg, which is largely used in normal DEs (Desktop Environments) such as KDE Plasma. Arch allows you to use both of these and choose which display server you want to use at start up, but I mainly use Wayland with Hyprland so that’s what we’ll focus on for now. Hyprland is a dynamic tiling window manager for Linux that is absolutely gorgeous. The configuration uses a .config file format that is stupidly easy to follow and customize. The integration of other modules that don’t come stock with Hyprland are typically composed of .config files, JSON, some CSS for colors, and shell scripting to have them all interact smoothly with one another. If you watch the demonstration below, the taskbar is a great example of all of this. The bar itself is created using a JSON file, declaring the various modules (L to R: Workspaces, Now Playing, Current Window, VPN, Internet, Volume, Time). A CSS file is used to declare all of the colors for the background of the bar and text color. Some scripting is needed to pull in the info for certain modules such as the Now Playing and VPN ones. Using scripting you can display the current song/video that’s playing and the current VPN location. Finally, the bar is set to execute at startup within the main Hyprland .config file. Simple enough, right? I’m barely scratching the surface in terms of the customization that Hyprland allows for. To see a sickening amount of aesthetically pleasing Hyprland configurations, check out r/unixporn. Many of the posts will have a linked github page with the users dot files, showing how they created their setup and even allowing you to take pieces of their build to use in your own configuration.

Here is a link to my dot files on github

I love my computer. I feel more productive than ever with this operating system and I feel free knowing that I can fix it to my liking however and whenever I want. With that being said, it is a very sharp double edged sword. Any change or new update could brick your system and require you to deep dive in reddit and arch forums for hours in an attempt to find out why your NVIDIA drivers will no longer update. But at the end of the day you will be far more in tune and familiar with your system than any windows plebeian could ever dream of.