I can’t use something else than bspwm.

There is an option to display all widgets into a single window.

I encountered limitations on NixOS, as instance Ly display manager, or using an app compiled by myself. Maybe there are solution but it is not always simple. Archlinux is way more flexible. Updates can theorically breaks the system , but since one year I never broke Arch despite updates on 200+ packages.

Notice I favors minimalist graphic environments (WM that don’t need updates ) and minimalists apps as much as possible, such as MPV and nsxiv. I don’t fear of some keyboard shortcuts. This philosophy probably helps Arch updates. Sometimes I had problem on apps (Inkscape and Dolphin-emu), I use appimages for them. Nothing is perfect, but Arch put lighter roadblocks than NixOS.

My OS, shipped with the PC, became slow.

Arch because the packages are recent. Arch has no shiny innovation and even the performance is not that fast, but I always find a way to make everything working. It is the only distro like that for me.

Sorry I edited my post, I was wrong.

.config stores many apps settings. But unfortunately some apps stores that directly in ~ as hidden files and directories. Personnally I make a backup of my whole home.

There is a pacman command that prints the list of all packages installed by users. I don’t remenber the command sorry but you’ll find that here:

https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Pacman/Tips_and_tricks

Its probably “pacman -Qe”.

Then it should be easy to create a script that install all that automaticcally. If your are cautious you should have a backup of your home anyway on some storage device .

These tentacular megacorporations are a problem. Amazon is OK as a merchant, MS as an OS developer, Google as a search engine… If they do vertical integration the market is corrupted.

This is useful for proprietary software.

Its frustrating because Alpine gave me the fastest desktop. I dropped Alpine because some apps requires Glibc extensions !

Some differences can be explained. Pacman was created after the Debian package manager (I guess that because Debian is older than Arch) . It is justified because Pacman is faster than Apt. But its too much work to replace Apt by Pacman comparing to the benefits.

But in some cases I don’t know why. As instance I wonder why a distro, such as Void, created its own package manager instead of using the Alpine one. If Alpine is younger than Void, invert the sentence of course.

I like that for Windows phones. I still have one. Screen space is saved. You choose the app you want on the main screen from a clean list instead of an icon profusion. Nowadays all phones interfaces are the same and less good than the Windows Phone interface.

Its cool on phones, but I admit, I don’t need that on PC.

Bash.

I customize the shell prompt in the PS1 variable. Its unpleasant to work with that unreadable language, but I do that once for years and I reuse it across distros.

I know SpaceFM as a DE-independant GUI file manager.

The Xfce one. I don’t see the point of simple WM for floating windows. I use a WM because it is the only solution for a proper tiling window manager.

I frequently use Howl

Distraction free, command autocompletion, Vim-like control is optional. I learned most of the commands by just opening the mini buffer (alt-x) then tab to watch the autocompletion list.

It can cd at closing ! I waited so long for this.

I want to add an advice to the other answers. You can get a vertical menu with Rofi. Its easy to make it nice. You can config a button in the bar on any bar, I’m not sure about Gnome and KDE bars.

Ok, my sentence was unfair. What I meant is Wlroots is not standard as Xorg. Wayland has 3 “Xorgs” with eventually their own extensions that can hurt portablity between DEs/WM. Whats the point of a protocol if it doesn’t ensure your app will work on all Wayland ?