Re: Permacomputing: Manjaro/i3 on an Asus Vivobook 2020
It really looks like you jumped into the deep end on this one.
Xiu - Permacomputing on Vivobook
Choosing a Linux distro
Arch turned out not to be the right choice. I found out what "rolling release" actually means
Arch while a wonderful operating system, is just one step above Gentoo in complexity (haven't tried Gentoo for years, but it used to be a lot of compiling). It is bleeding edge and very cool, but that means lots of fixes and breakages on larger upgrades.
Manjaro suffers from similar issues, in fact a lot of the derrivative Linux variants suffers from upgrade issues in my experience. This includes Linux distro's built on Ubuntu/Debian.
What are your needs?
i3 window manager instead of a full DE
i3 is an extreme lightweight window manager, but it also comes at a cost of ease of use, like editing config files. Unless we are talking extremely anemic hardware, KDE and Gnome are performant enough for most use and they come with a lot more "windowsey" feel, with buttons and sliders for everything.
I wanted something Arch-based because I really like their wiki.
So you need to ask yourself what your needs are vs hardware specs. If you want a simpler and more out of the box experience and you have decent hardware, Ubuntu, Fedora or openSUSE are much more plug and play, have huge established communities and usually really good wiki's and/or BBS.
My personal recommendation
I have been burnt in the past by Ubuntu, a lot, been using it for close to a decade professionally. Not just with the whole Unity debacle, but upgrades always breaks stuff. Mind you I always run on LTS, which may be part of the problem, but really shouldn't be... That is the point of LTS.
At home I have been running Fedora Silverblue for close to 4 years no, 2 major upgrades and not a single issue. It's easy to use and I run it on a 15 year old desktop and a 4 year old laptop with 20h+ battery life.
Fedora isn't the main reason it is rock solid though, the Silverblue part is. Silverblue means it runs OSTree, an immutable system architecture with atomic updates.
About Silverblue
What does all the fancy words mean? Immutable, you can't touch the OS partition while running. Atomic updates, means only the parts that have changed gets updated, so very small updates.
The tradeoff is that you can't touch most OS services, you are mostly limited to flatpak for programs and updates run on A and B schedules, which means a reboot is require to switch to a new upgrade.
It passed the parent/grandparent test though, as their lack of OS access means the worst they can do is fuck up their home, which you can fix quickly from the commandline.
Fixing the other problems
I have to `eval "$(ssh-agent)"`
This is because your key is an a key agent, so you have to pull it in to access it, you can choose not to use a key agent. I think Manjaro uses Wayland (display server), it " jails" services and is a lot more secure, but it means key agents are almost necessary to use a key in multiple windows easily.
Copying from OSX to Manjaro is a poo.
Try syncthing, no accounts and a lot easier to use.
Vivobook 2020
If I remember correctly, it has pretty decent specs and was actually a want laptop for me back when I got my current laptop. 😂
Created 2024-10-20 - Updated 2024-10-20