what 'customization'? Arch comes with the most prepackaged anime waifu backgrounds, if that's what you're after.
'sl' is quite aggravating enough thank you.
I feel like my needs are too autistic and specific I risk outing myself here, but to start I want to reclaim some monitor space with a tiled window manager and then see what productivity improvements I can make from there.
This is unironically a perfect description of artix. Max customization without re-compiling the kernel (and everything else) constantly -> Arch. Less gay and retarded arch -> Artix.
On the off chance that isn't just a throwaway VM I think you should be installing xlibre-drivers too.
In that case I think it would be difficult to find any mainstream Linux desktop distribution that won't work for you. You could just install Debian (or better yet Devuan), choosing the XFCE 'task', to conveniently get the X11 packages you need, then install awesomewm or i3.
I am biased as someone who's been daily driving Debian since the early 2000s, but I actually would say Debian can probably do the sort of things you want to do while being a stable environment to adjust to linux in. You might give it a go.
there might be hints in the details, like wanting to have a yellow smirking animal thing with rosy cheeks front and centre in the screen with the windows wrapping around it.
Just be careful with that shit. LLMs are sometimes useful, but always remember that whenever they get something right is is ALWAYS by accident. People might be alright with an 85% getting it right by accident rate, until it writes a script that deletes a year's worth of music projects like this moron:
Just to throw another suggestion out there, Void Linux. Overall pretty similar to Artix, as you have manual installation and no systemd. I think the package manager in Void is about on par with pacman, what Arch and Artix use.
One of the more retarded things about XBPS is the need to clone the repo if you want to add your own package, even locally. Imagine downloading the entire AUR to apply some patch.
You have to clone the repo because that's the whole build setup, not just the templates. With
--depth 1, it's a 10MB download and 150MB on disk.Just use Gentoo, it's fun.
What is your use case here?
Technical writing. Right now I'm testing word processors, note taking apps, and ereaders. I basically ported over my Calibre instance for library management, but their ereader isn't great. Otherwise I use some utilities like copyq and crow translate, and obviously browser for research.
I don't use virtual desktops but my understanding is you can use keybindings to switch between them. That might help if not already using them. If I'm reading your posts right, you want their size and position to persist between sessions?
Sounds like you want the i3 tiling window manager. A number of major linux distros have ISO's for i3, or you can install it and then select it from your greeter (logon screen) probably.
There should be a section the KDE control panel to set how it manages windows. If nothing works to your liking, you can try different DEs. I know System76's Cosmic desktop had a lot of WM stuff. i3 is the other big one but is tedious to setup.
Yes I'd like them to persist or at least open in a convenient way... I just switched to Linux this week and didn't know what "tiling manager" even meant when I came across the term. On a surface level Sway looks like the most fitting option for me, I'll try it out. Thanks guys
KDE allows you to get very detailed with window management but by default doesn't copy Windows behavior. Go to "Window Rules" and click "Add New" at the top to add a new rule.