After i read about Arch Linux for the first time here about a few weeks ago, i thought i'd give Antergos a try on my Laptop which i use solely for working. Found out that Matlab is supported, so i don't even need a VM.

First time having a Linux distro. Still feels a bit odd for being a Win only user for a long time, but i love the look and with every hour it gets easier. :)

Welcome to the Arch family even if you did it the easy way.😋

I started with Antergos myself and eventually moved to vanilla Arch when I wanted to install i3. Once you go Arch you can't stop jumping wm's. 🙃

Isn't it possible to install something like i3 / i3-gaps on Antergos? Haven't looked that up but saw some videos on that. Was happy that i was able to get the terminal to my taste and all needed programs like TeX and VS Code (Don't know why theres only the AUR support) running.

As a mechanical engineer now studying mechatronics (master) Linux might not be the primary OS in those fields, but i think i can get all the needed work done. Just need to find a new IDE for C/C++ (embedded systems) or keep using mbed.org :)

But i guess i need a VM for CAD..

@RantSomeWhere I'll give Spacemacs a try tomorrow, thanks for the suggestion!
Gonna read the i3 documentation for those crazy keybindings! Saw that there are some i3 packages for Gnome 3 in the AUR, do I need them or are they just some bonuses? 😶

@Crowns You can install i3 with the Gnome DE. My setup just has i3 without any DE but that's more of a preference. The new shortcuts do take getting used too, especially not having alt+tab anymore.

For my IDE/texteditor I use the Jet brains suite and sublime text. I'm okay with paying for my tools.

@RantSomeWhere from the arch wiki: "i3-gnome AUR i3-gnome-gitAUR integrates i3 into GNOME." So I thought I'd need those aswell. I think I have much to do tomorrow with setting things up, thanks for the additional ressource on i3, looks like a good package to get started with. 🙂

@starrynights89 alt+tab is probably my most used shortcut. 😶

As a student I get the jetbrain suite for free, but I never started using them, (maybe a mistake I don't know). I was completely satisfied with Visual Studio, CoIDE and now visual studio code and mbed.org, maybe I should check the jetbrain suite out as long as I can. 🤔

@RantSomeWhere So i3 would replace my Gnome DE? I must learn a lot more I guess.. 😅

@Crowns I still get them free on my student license. I would love it if Microsoft would port visual studio to Linux but that seems to be a pie in the sky hope for now.

Jet brains makes some of the best IDE's IMO. Unlike visual studio's one size fits all philosophy Jet brains makes specialized IDE's that are generally easier to be productive in.

@RantSomeWhere Makes sense. But for me it sounds a bit off to first install antergos with gnome and then replacing it. Do I need to uninstall things or is it like the login screen with the different DEs you can switch between?

Was a mess to get SDDM to work so I could use my Nvidia gpu instead of the Intel. Did some strange things I haven't figured out yet. 😶

@starrynights89 that port would be great. They should know how many devs are waiting for it!

@Crowns have you ever driven a car with no wheels, no windows, no chassis? that's i3 for you

btw is that elementaryOS desktop on top of antergos? if not whats your theme

@JoshBent It's just the default Gnome 3 coming with Antergos.

So it's like having an engine that works but you can change the software and do some internal changes like a different camshaft so it runs like I want it to? 😄

@RantSomeWhere what's the best way for the backup? Heard of lvm snapshots or dd, but haven't used anything like that before..

@RantSomeWhere and to revert it I can just copy that folder back to ~ and replace the files I guess.

@Crowns oh I guess I didn't see the default theme for a while

I am btw absolutely biased, just like the others, that suggest i3, you need to try it yourself in a safe environment, before actually thinking about moving, as it's definitely not for everybody

it's mainly created for ricers, people that don't like their mouse, have very low resources or like very tiny windows tiled

@RantSomeWhere I feel if you do this, it'll create lethal mustard gas or delete system32

@JoshBent I'm in love with my mouse but not my TouchPad. Gotta love Zowie mice. 😄
But I'm a mechanical keyboard enthusiast so I have to check it out and am able to learn some new shortcuts. Need to get those Terminal shortcuts like ctrl u/k/y down first but I'm always interested in learning something new to get a better workflow!

@Crowns sounds like you'll have lots of fun with vim too then

@JoshBent Considering I bought a ThinkPad T480 that's coming tomorrow, and I put Chinese Cartoon girls on my wallpaper and use i3 gaps...I'm a pretty damn guilty ricer.

However, i3's main appeal to me is being able to tile manage multiple terminal windows. When you're trying to manage your server + program + manage your SQL database + read help files online, managing everything in tile system starts to make a lot more sense over stacking.

@RantSomeWhere most important files are backed up on my extHD, another bucket full of files are on bitbucket. But I need to keep in mind saving those files, I was never good in backing up files except for my bachelorthesis.. 😄

@JoshBent we don't need to open the doors to hell in my first day of the journey called Linux!

@starrynights89
I like your honesty 😄, virtual desktop switching, like in gnome imho solves that for me atleast and if you're on a desktop (what many i3 users have), then that makes even less sense, since I e.g. use 3 monitors and have plenty of space for docs, atleast 8 ssh connections, vscode and more

@Crowns hah, I subbed to you, you sound like you're going to tell lot of things you learned along the way, that I might find useful too

@JoshBent for example don't try to install antergos at 2am with a stick that easyly disconnects (like give it a good blow and whups its gone) during the installation process and having lectures at 8am? 🤐

@Crowns We've all been there 😉

@JoshBent Wait for me installing vanilla arch. If it's as hard as everyones saying I won't be finished at 8 am and will be crying in a corner asking what I got myself into and how to exit vim.

@Crowns if you closely follow the arch wiki, it "should" go well, but with vanilla arch there's always those surprises with your mouse not working etc., so you'll be up till you're old enough to do the lectures yourself, after that you'll try to setup gentoo and retire

@JoshBent and if that won't fulfill all my needs I'll make my own OS from scratch. 🙂

@Crowns gentoo is basically that already 🤣

@JoshBent I think I should call you the Linux-Devil showing noobs the elevator to hell:

3 - Vanilla Arch
|
2 - i3
|
1 - vim
|
G - gentoo
|
-1 - JoshBent

😄

@Crowns hah, I'm far from that, I have personally almost always abandoned all these journeys and sticked to e.g. my debian/ubuntu for years, up until recently when I installed antergos on my cherrytrail soc laptop, which ran much smoother than default windows and I wanted to try something else, than debian based distros, also antergos/arch are the only ones that actually merged a patch that fixes the usb ports etc.

@JoshBent running i3 on that SoC system as well?

Until yesterday I just have used Ubuntu as VM a few times to get a look at a different OS than windows and for fun purposes Kali, but never took a deeper look into that but I find ITsec still interesting.

@Crowns nope, I'm using gnome3, i3 for me is a car without wheels 😉

though I do like to experiment with things like tmux from time to time

@JoshBent and you couldn't recognize me using the default Gnome 3? 🤔

I'll see if I can make that car some wheels tomorrow or if I'll shred that frame to the ground. 😄

@Crowns yeah, I was surprised too, somehow the terminal header looked too much like elementaryOS or deepin

tbf I didn't see the default theme for a long time now either, because I replaced the menubar with a dock plugin that looks similar to chromeOS' bottom bar, almost immediately after install and have a theme on top of it

@RantSomeWhere I am using Luke Smith's. Quite useful.

Soon the terminal will be your best friend and your mouse will feel so left out.

@RantSomeWhere @JoshBent It's happening.. :D

And I ran into a problem. After choosing i3 to login and run startx the laptop rebooted but I'm no longer able to login. It freezes after typing the password. Think it has something to do with the desktop manager, hopefully I can figure that out. Maybe you got any helpful advice @RantSomeWhere 😄

OK so I guess I made the mistake to run startx with sudo. Got back the rights for xauthority and iceauthority like suggested online, but it hasn't solved the problem yet, but instead of a freezing during the login I now get a blackscreen. 🤔

@RantSomeWhere Yes I'm currently in the terminal and try to find a solution with my phone. 😄

I'm now at that point that I just use my stick to get in to live antergos, safe important files to my extHD and try myself on a vanilla arch install ant not fckn anything up again. 😄

@Crowns oh you didn't do a backup before experimenting? you always should 😅

@JoshBent I made a backup in the @RantSomeWhere way. 😁
And I finally got it to work. Needed to remove the xauthority file and log in choosing gnome (xorg) creating a new file, logging out and switching to i3. And now I think I am totally lost because I love my mouse too much.. 😄

How the hell are you guys working with that. Man that takes a lot getting used to not minimizing currently unused windows. As someone who needs a lot terminal windows to do stuff it is fine, i guess, but I came here from windows. :D

Furthermore I'm a total noob with the ANSI Layout being active right now coming from ISO-DE.

@Crowns glsd you figured it out, now you just need to figure out everything from the start, because i3 makes nothing easy, also look inti i3-gaps for that more beautiful tiling 😉

@Crowns oh looks like you have i3-gaps already?

@JoshBent Yes it's i3-gaps because i loved that look! But getting used to it will take some time. For now I'll stay with Gnome 3 because i got some work to do, but i will definitely take a deeper look into i3 soon. :)

@Crowns
remember to keep us updated and rant about the journey 😉

@JoshBent I don't know if each failure is worth a new rant, but I'll do my best to make some updates on the way. :)

@Crowns it would be interesting to me anyway, don't think somebody would have something against it either, as it's linux related, but do whatever fits you best