Arch Linux

Many laptops come with an extra GPU. In the past it was difficult to setup your computer to use the dedicated (powerful) GPU (dGPU) for heavier workloads while it can use the integrated GPU (iGPU) for anything else. Once the switcheroo service was setup, I had nothing to do anymore but let it handle my GPUs. Prerequisites Switcheroo is a solution for GNOME only. Check which GPU is in use Use: glxinfo | grep "OpenGL renderer" to see what GPU is currently in use. The output on my machine was: OpenGL renderer string: AMD Radeon Graphics (...). Install (for example) Steam and navigate to “Help > System Information” to see which GPU is recognized. Without switcheroo, Steam recognized my Radeon iGPU. Start a graphics intensive game and see if it is lagging. It was in my case. ...

If you are passionate about open source software and looking for a project to contribute to, you might want to give the Arch Linux pkgstats project a try. What is pkgstats? Pkgstats aims at collecting valubale information about installed packages while respecting user privacy. Data is gathered anonymously, which provides insights that benefit the entire community. How does it work? If you are an Arch Linux user, you can install the pkgstats package via pacman -Syu pkgstats. Pkgstats then quietly collects relevant data, such as installed packages, used mirrors or the system architecture. No personal information is ever recorded. So, as a user you can contribute by simply having the package installed. ...

AUR is short for “Arch User Repository”. A repository is a storage location for software packages. You can retrieve the packages from it to install software. As you can derive from the name, this repository harbors package building instructions (PKGBUILDs) created by the community…

After a fresh installation of Arch Linux (using archinstall), my bluetooth was not working. The GUI toggle would toggle on and directly off again…

When I set up a new laptop recently I went for Arch Linux with Gnome as desktop. After finishing the setup, I noticed that the default Gnome installation brings along more than I need. On the other hand, I performed my “post setup” installations to get my system ready for the daily developer’s work. This post deals with the packages I removed and the basic set of packages I installed for my dev environment. ...

Why should I do this? The days of going to a store and buying a Windows installation CD are a thing of the past. If you search for it, you can find buyable USB sticks to install an OS but you can also simply create them and learn something along the way…

This article provides a step-by-step guide on installing Arch Linux using the “archinstall” command…

There exists a colorful bouquet of operating systems (OS) to chose from. Most people know Windows and MacOS. If you google for “the most popular Linux distribution” you will very likely find Ubuntu, Manjaro or Debian in the lists of other bloggers who often rely on distrowatch.com and there are enough articles out there about “what is the best Linux distro for xyz”. When I first started to use Linux, I did not start with Arch Linux. I switched to it in the beginning of this year (2023) and it gave me grey hair and painful learnings. Yet I would never want to change that. Starting to use Arch Linux meant starting to need to know what I am doing. If you are that kind of person, you might like Arch Linux as much as I do. ...