Linux on ZachIR's Human Den

Why Artix?

Wed, 18 Aug 2021 00:00:00 -0500

Why Artix?

I may have mentioned this before, but I am an Artix Linux user by default (except when I am an OpenBSD user). I have tried many other Linux distributions (Fedora, Linux Mint, Ubuntu, Arch, Antergos (RIP), Endeavour, Manjaro, MX, OpenSUSE, Debian, Devuan, a couple of LFS based distros, NuTyX and Venom). I think it's fair to call me a Linux power-user. No, I haven't ever gone down the CentOS (RIP), or Mandriva (RIP) based distros, but I am pretty comfortable with Linux systems. And yet, no matter how far I may roam, no matter what I try, I always come back to Artix. What can I say? The repos are excellent, I can go the minimal install route and not have to remove a bunch of crap, and leave unnecessary libraries littering my SSD, I have the entire AUR at my disposal (even though I typically have to write init scripts for the daemons I get from the AUR, like auto-cpufreq), I have the one ok part of systemd (logind) without the rest (I can choose either RUnit, OpenRC, or S6 as init systems).

Initial Thoughts - Gentoo

Sat, 14 Aug 2021 00:00:00 -0500

Some Initial Thoughts While Installing Gentoo

For those of you who don't know, I have been using either Artix Linux, OpenBSD, or a combination of the two, for most (if not nearly all) of the past year. Why? Because I love them, and they work. Well. But sometimes, you get bored with the status quo.

Sometimes, you want to try things the hard way. And if you're me, sometimes you take small benefits in smaller size and resource usage as an excuse to compile your operating system from source.

Vim In SPACE

Sat, 07 Aug 2021 00:00:00 -0500

Vim In SPACE! - Trying a Vim Distribution

I have been a *vim-exclusive user since the late 2010's, which (un-)coincidentally was around the time I switched full-time to Linux. Specifically, neovim is my weapon of choice (based purely on a cursory examination of the mission statement and repo).

After finding out about Free software from a Richard Stallman talk (how exactly I got to said talk was a journey inandof itself), which led me to learning about GNU, and specifically GNU Emacs. At that point, I considered myself something of a software minimalist, so I decided Emacs was too bloated for my to try. Then I heard about it again a couple years later, from Distrotube, and I thought about giving it a try. It seemed to run just as quickly as vim on his videos.

Full Metal ALSA

Fri, 06 Aug 2021 00:00:00 -0500

Full Metal ALSA - The Most Minimal Linux Sound Setup

In this post, I am going to tell you how I got "pure ALSA"* working on Artix Linux (I know this will also work on Arch Linux, and assumedly other Arch based distros, for as long as "apulse" and "lib32-apulse" are in the AUR).

*: ALSA is the only operational sound server on the system; however, as some applications require Pulseaudio, the command 'apulse' is used as a translation layer, so the applications think they are using pulseaudio, and ALSA behaves in a more friendly way, but it is still just ALSA.