Arch Linux 2024

[Zema Bus]

I've had CatchyOS installed on my main machine for two months now, and I've found that I'm spending more time in it than in vanilla Arch. I only have MATE and Cosmic DE's installed (mostly using MATE at this time). I like Plasma, which is what I have in vanilla Arch, but I also like the simplicity of these smaller DE's while still looking good, and while still having full functionality. And not a single crash in MATE, which is a lot more than I can say about Plasma.

[Grogan]

You know I agree. Simplicity is what I like. I even use XFCE more like a window manager than a DE, I don't build the shit I don't like (e.g. Thunar... that bites the weenie) or its atrocious power manager.

Plasma is more of a "demo" to me than something I'd use for doing work or playing games. "Oooh, look how nice".

Have you been playing games in CachyOS?

[Zema Bus]

Not yet but I plan to install it on my game machine soon. I could also get Steam etc going here on my main machine though my game machine has a stronger video card.

[Zema Bus]

I booted into MATE in Arch (vanilla Arch originally with just Plasma) and configured MATE

archMate.jpg (83.26 KiB) Viewed 898 times

[Grogan]

That's a super nice wallpaper.

Does that clock overlay on your desktop like that all the time? It also looks good (nice font).

[Zema Bus]

It does, as long as Variety is running, I have it set to start with my session.

Here's what the clock settings look like:

Variety_clock_settings.jpg (42.34 KiB) Viewed 880 times

And here's that wallpaper (it came from unsplash.com

RedSky.jpg (171.69 KiB) Viewed 880 times

[Grogan]

Thanks, I saved the wallpaper. So that Variety thing is a wallpaper switcher/configuration overlay.

It was hard to find with a name like that

https://github.com/varietywalls/variety

I could have this, but it does look a bit needy for my tastes

Code: Select all

Runtime Requirements

    GTK+ 3
    gexiv2
    libnotify
    Python 3 libraries:
        BeautifulSoup4
        lxml
        Pycairo
        PyGObject, built with Cairo integration
        ConfigObj
        Pillow
        packaging
        Requests
        Optional: httplib2 (for more quotes sources)
    Optional: imagemagick (for wallpaper filters)
    Optional: feh or nitrogen: used by default to set wallpapers on i3, openbox, and other WMs
    Optional: libayatana-appindicator (for AppIndicator support)
    Optional: for tray icon support on GNOME, the GNOME AppIndicator extension
    Optional: libavif-gdk-pixbuf (for avif format support)

[Zema Bus]

I bet you got a variety of results lol! Yeah it can pull from different remote sources, local sources, and/or both.

[Zema Bus]

I booted into Arch tonight and this was my wallpaper. When there's one you want to see again you can save it to the favorites folder in the Variety menu.

archMate1.jpg (109.8 KiB) Viewed 616 times

[Grogan]

That's a nice one too, a lot of contrast between pink and black.

[Zema Bus]

In Vanilla Arch my initramfs fallback images for two kernels had bloated up for some reason, around 200 MB each and running me short on space in my 512 MB boot partition. So I disabled and removed the fallback images. Not sure why that was happening.

[Grogan]

That's some silly shit. Those are large because they have all drivers in them, but there has to be something wrong for them to get that big. You won't need those anyway.

Myself, I utterly refuse to have that bollocks. I'll always tailor a (mostly) static kernel to my machine.

[Zema Bus]

I noticed the Arch website has been very slow to respond the last several days.

ArchServersDDoS.jpg (116.41 KiB) Viewed 294 times

Maybe it was launched by a disgruntled Manjaro user who asked for help on the Arch forums

[Grogan]

I heard about that, what a petty thing to do, to DOS a community Linux distro's site. It probably is some butthurt pimple wizard.

It hasn't affected me, since I use mirrors for pacman, and git for my PKGBUILDs

[Zema Bus]

After updating vanilla Arch today the zen kernel wouldn't boot, it can't find the modules or the root drive. From someone else's post about the same problem:

Warning: /lib/modules/6.16.3-zen1-1-zen/modules.devname not found - ignoring (I added my kernel version since it was an old post)

And then it timed out trying to mount it's root partition. But it boots just fine with the CatchyOS kernel I dropped in earlier, and with the regular Arch 6.16.3 kernel.
I checked and the modules are there for the zen kernel. Not a big deal since I have working kernels but I'm curious what went wrong, it was working with the previous zen kernel.

[Grogan]

I swear I replied to this somewhere (not in the networking thread?). What I said was it probably was something wrong with the initramfs image, either that or UUID values somehow changed.