Running Arch Linux on the Framework Laptop 13
Prior to my Framework Laptop adventures, I’ve been planning to move to Arch Linux for a while. I’m a long-time Linux desktop user. I started out with those Red Hat CD-ROMs you’d buy at your local bookshop (this was around ‘96). I fooled around with SCO UnixWare, had a whole period of SGI IRIX after that and then some distro-hopping to Debian, Fedora, Arch Linux (in 2007), Gentoo and Void Linux, more-or-less in that order.
The last two-ish years I’ve been running on Void Linux, which I still strongly recommend and love - it’s a really good distribution with a nice balance between stability and simplicity.
I used the OS package manager for the essentials, like Gnome, Firefox, the terminal, Wayland and X11, and used /opt like a sort of Program Files or Applications directory where I had my own programs like IntelliJ, Postman, PostgreSQL, etc.
This works relatively well: you don’t have a lot of demands on package availability in the distro itself and you keep things stable - only update your own stuff when you feel like it and/or when you need to.