I installed 2020.11.04 today and everything seems to be running just fine. I have tons more to learn about all the configuration possibilities but that will give me something useful to do during the Covid lockdown that seems imminent here.
Before retiring I didn’t have any involvement with computers and programming beyond using the basic gui office functions to get my job done. I suppose my journey here is quite typical: about 5 years ago Microsoft reached the point of ticking me off for good, for practical and philosophical reasons. Apple didn’t seem to be much better.
I had always thought (mistakenly as it turned out) that Linux was only for computer nerds but I was so ticked off at MS that I determined to become a computer nerd if that’s what it would take to get free. I soon discovered how wrong I had been about Linux - there were dozens of distros that I had never even imagined existed. I decided to ease into it gently and started with Mint.
That went well for a couple of years and I started up my learning curve about Linux in general and some basic functions with the terminal. However, I was growing impatient with the slowness of updates coming from Debian>Ubuntu>Mint and the final straw came when ubuntu pushed something through Mint that broke my system. I decided to venture into the world of rolling releases.
I saw immediately that I would be over my head and drowning in Arch but I did find Manjaro and have been there with different DEs for about 3 years. My Linux learning continued and I have become more comfortable “under the hood”. I am by no stretch of the imagination proficient but I have learned enough to know that I don’t know very much and I have learned how to use Arch Wiki (even though it seems a bit obscure to me sometimes). In my respectful opinion, something has changed at Manjaro in the past year and it doesn’t seem the same. I have had 3 system crashes from updates coming through pamac - 2 of them from ubuntu messing with the Budgie DE and one of unknown origin.
I decided it was time to get in a little deeper. After a ton of internet searching I settled on ArchLabs. It fits my personal style of simple and minimalist and it was highly recommended pretty much everywhere I looked, especially by Derek Taylor on Distrotube.
So here I am! I will remember to do my research before asking newbie questions and I hope that you will be patient with a new user. I doubt I will have much to contribute except thanks and gratitude, at least in the short term. Oh, and congrats to the ArchLabs team - you have created IMO a very smooth and elegant distro.
