 There are a lot of arch based distributions out there It used to be all the rage to try to make arch Linux just a little bit easier to install And even now that arch install exists on the arch isos There are still distributions out there that attempt to make arch Linux Either easier to install or just to install arch Linux in a different way And they've all developed and evolved in interesting fashions Like they've all Offer something just a little bit different than arch does either they make it easier to set up or they Put provide some post install scripts or something like that in order to make arch Linux just a little bit better Or just a little bit different so today what we're going to be doing is talking about a distribution called arch labs now arch labs is a distribution that is meant to emulate the Look and feel of Bunsen labs from back in the day now if you've weren't around back in the day and I honestly wasn't around when Bunsen labs was still a thing So I'm not quite sure what Bunsen labs looked and felt like but apparently there's a following of people who are Interested in that look and feel who decided to move all of that look and feel to arch Linux So that's basically what arch labs is now as I usually do in these distro first looks is I try to answer three questions What is it? Who's it for and is it good? And honestly, I never get those in the right you know order because I answer them all over the place But those are the three questions that I try to answer. So that's what we'll try to do today So first what is arch labs? Well, I've already kind of talked about it It is arch Linux, but with a look and feel inspired by Bunsen labs now according to their about page, which I'll show you here They say that they have moved away a little bit from The Bunsen labs look and feel so they say now that arch labs has become established We have developed our own look and feel we have kept true door legacy by keeping the ISO images as minimal as possible And adding only core applications and utilities. So as we'll see here in a minute that last part is very important This is a very very minimal Distribution you are very much in control of what is installed on your system right from the get-go And I honestly kind of like that It's very much a Empowering kind of thing when you are in charge of Installing the stuff that you want to do, but it doesn't take so far as to be Something that you have to know how to do because there are Systems in place during the installation that allow you to install packages that you want to install And you don't have to worry about any actual knowledge of how to do that at least quite yet now I will say because they don't Proclaim this as a new user distro. So they are Actually saying right in their first paragraph on their website that this is for intermediate or advanced users So despite the fact that the way I see this is an easier way to install arch That's not the way the developers see it. So I don't know which way I would go in terms of How I would define this distribution in terms of who it's for and maybe we'll talk about that a little bit later But overall It does seem to be more catered towards people who have used window managers before And the reason why I say that is because all of the Quote-unquote desktop environments that they offer They're all window managers now You guys know me. I'm a window manager guy and that makes me very happy. There are not a lot of distributions out there that are just window managers Usually they all offer some kind of desktop environment, whether you know gnome or plasma or whatever Arch labs only offers window managers. So let's go ahead and jump into the Installation the installation is probably the most interesting part of this entire distribution because they do things in a little bit different ways Now, obviously There are other distributions to install like this. They use an end curses like installer I'm not sure if it's actually using end curses because it's not blue but the Look and feel of the installer looks like end curses And basically you just go through the installation step by step by step as you'll see in the b-roll And what I like about this installer is one. It's very nerdy. So you kind of get some nerd credit for using it but also Unlike other distributions that rely on an end curses like installer. So like void It doesn't require you to have a ton of extra knowledge So if you've ever installed void this way before There's a certain Period in the void installer where you have to choose between what groups your user is of you as a part of right And if you don't have any clue what a group is in linux That section of the void installer is really hard for you because you don't know which ones you're supposed to choose And the problem is that that step in the void installer is really really important, right? If you don't give yourself access to those groups that you need Certain things on your computer might not work. You might not have access to external hard drives You might not have access to sound, you know Any of these things could be possible if you don't know what you're doing with arch labs There's nothing like that. I will say that it does require a modicum of Knowledge about linux in terms of what each step actually does because it doesn't have a lot of explanation for what each step Is supposed to be doing But it does have a blurb at the top of each little screen And it allows you to get a sense of what it's doing, but it doesn't explain it in depth So it does require you to have some knowledge of what linux is and how it installs and maybe even how arch installs itself So you go through you select your keyboard and your Locale and you create your user and you give it a root password And then you can select between what window managers you want. So they offer DK, which I believe is going to be their default Usually their defaults are at the top and DK's at the at the top they offer dwm i3 BS PWM and open box. I think those are the ones that they offer I chose to install several of them because that's just the way that I usually do things because I want to install everything So I I installed several of them and it worked just fine And then somewhere during the process of installation. You are also given a screen of packages that you can install This is a selection of the most popular packages on linux things like audacity and vim and emacs and Gimp and all this stuff. There's Maybe 30 or 40 different packages that you can choose from and obviously this is not the entire breadth and width of the Arch Linux repositories being offered to you, but the most popular Applications are there for you if you want to install them or have the installer install them for you I should say and this is our first indication of just how minimal arch labs is because If you've select nothing on this page, you're not going to get anything, right? You're going to get the window manager that you chose and any absolutely essential utilities to run those Window managers, so you'll get a terminal of some kind So if you just installed dwm just for example, you'd get st installed You get d menu so that you could use you a launcher or some kind and that's pretty much it Now there are some other utilities that it comes with which I'll show you here in a minute But base install if you select none of those applications in that one screen You're going to get very very few actual applications installed and you'll have to do that post install now personally I really like distributions that offer this functionality So distributions like arco and other distributions like that that offer you a screen somewhere during the installation that allows you to choose What applications are installed once your Installation is finished. I think that that entire process is really good But I don't think that it is user friendly at all because you have to know What those applications are you have to know what you need in order to actually do this So user friendly I shouldn't say user friendly. I should say new user friendly. So that's more important It is actually user friendly It's not new user friendly because you have to have some knowledge And that's kind of the theme throughout this entire installation You have to have some Knowledge of how to do this right and what you're doing right It doesn't require a ton of knowledge like it would if you're just installing arch Linux the old fashioned way Or if you're installing gen 2 or Linux from scratch or whatever. It doesn't go that far but it's a level of Knowledge needed more than what you'd get if you're just using a calamari's installer or the ubiquity installer or whatever So it's it's somewhere there in the middle. So that's the installation So let's actually go ahead and take a look at arch labs now that I've have things installed. So So like I said, I installed all of the window managers And if you install all the window managers, just like I did, you'll find that they all look pretty much Identical and they've done a good job of keeping the look and feel Fairly symmetrical across all of the window managers that they offer. So you're not going to see any garish or Over the top theming here. It's just a basic window manager. Now. This particular one is called DK. Now, I've never actually used DK before But that's what this is now supposedly DK is similar to DWM and that's as far as my knowledge of DK actually goes So if we actually go into the configuration file here, you'll see that it is actually a Window manager that is configured in a shell script similar to herp slough wm or Bspwm both of those are configured in some kind of script. It doesn't have to be a shell script, but you get the idea, right? You can configure this inside of a of a shell script and that's what's provided for you by default and the Default look and feel is all configured right here. So if if you are going to get into This particular window manager, this is where you do all your work now I don't have any opinions whatsoever on the DK window manager. I have no I know nothing about it This is the first I've actually heard of it as far as I'm aware. I'm I mean, I think I may be very vaguely remember trying it out once But if I it was like a pass through like I've never actually Spent any time in it whatsoever Now according to this what I'm seeing right here. It uses lemon barb So does that mean DK doesn't come with its own bar or is that just a part here? I'm not actually sure so again I've no knowledge of of DK whatsoever, but if we were to log out and show you one of the other Window managers that I installed so I think log out is super shift x super Super alt shift q. Yeah, there we go. Now. Oh during the installation I forgot it does allow you to choose between different display managers I chose lie But it also does allow you to just log into to your system via a tty so you can use start x Or you could use light dm. Those are the three that it up that gives you an option for So let me choose that show you what bsp wm looks like So this is what bsp wm looks like and forgive the wallpaper that just changed just Messed up when I changed the resolution you get the idea They all look just like this basically some of them have a menu bsp wm happens to have a menu So I'm not actually sure Yeah, this is still st And I think the default configurate the default zoom for st is super shift page up But that doesn't seem to work or not super shift control shift page of control page up. No, none of those things work Uh, so they've either changed that or I'm miss or remembering it's either one as possible So if we go into our configuration for bsp wm here and them into Bsp wm rc There's not a ton of stuff here in terms of the Configuration, but we can see they're actually using tint to is their panel. So this is tint two Which I've never actually used on any of my configurations before This is a very very minimal configuration of bsp wm It's there's nothing wrong with that obviously, but they've done and that runs through basically all of their window managers that I've tried I've tried i3. I tried the bsp wm one I've tried dwm, which I can't find the configuration for I'm assuming it's in slash opt I didn't actually end up looking and I've tried the dk one for a little while and they're all relatively Minimal when it comes to their Their configuration files. So the the longest one is actually I think dk Outside of what I'm assuming what the bsp or the dwm the dwm one looks like because that's just gonna have all the source code and stuff in it But they're all very minimal and they all look basically like this some of the bars bars are at the bottom Some of the bars are at the top So look and feel are all basically the same no matter what window manager you're in One thing that I will say is that the the key bindings across window managers are not the same So keep that in mind sometimes the super key is super sometimes the super key is alt Which one it is really depends on which window manager is and bsp wm the super key is super Why they decided to change between window managers? I'm not exactly sure that's it was kind of confusing me But I don't think that they expect people to install more than one window manager So it probably doesn't matter for most people. So if we hit alt p we'll actually see what is actually installed here So we're going to control over or control Tab over to d run and you'll see that there's some stuff here that's pre-installed. So some of the stuff I installed so I chose firefox. I chose neo them and I think I selected Rofi actually rofi was already here There was a third one that ranger was the third thing that I chose to install those are the things that I installed During the installation also neo fetch I installed afterwards Other than that everything here is what you're seeing is what they would have out of the box If you chose none of the things during installation. So the customized look and feel this is actually an xfce feature So if you wanted to change the g2k theme, this is what you'd use You could also change the icon theme from here the mouse cursor theme from here as well Now what's interesting is that they use this instead of x lx appearance, which is what most people use when it comes to Managing these types of things. So it does have some of the xfce back end Although that does seem to be about it when it comes to what's actually considered xfce everything else is not here So you don't see it like the settings manager or anything like that It has uh x term and then as rofi, which is what you're seeing on screen now It does come with pycom pre-installed and oh, I also ensure I chose to install lacrity That was a me thing other than that that's literally it has htop installed by default So if you wanted to see what htop wouldn't you know look like that's what htop looks like that's Literally it that's all there is to arch lin or arch labs links and the reason why I keep Stumbling over the whole arch labs thing is because if you go into a terminal here and do neofetch If you can spell neofetch which I can't wow neofatch It's really bad You can see it shows you it looks it says it's arch linux. It doesn't say arch labs. It says arch linux and You can see this package count here of 635 that that's minimal and that has three Window managers installed maybe even four. So I I installed dk i3 Bspwm and dwm. That's three window managers And all of them including everything that comes along with the system only added up to 635 Um and you know, I'm not really wasn't surprised, but that's still pretty damn minimal Now this is arch linux. You're expecting all the latest stuff. I chose zsh for the shell during installation You can choose between uh zsh bash and I think fish was there. I'm not I can't actually remember It has the 6.22 kernel, which is the latest one that is stable And most of the all of the window managers use st as their default terminal So I would if I were to use this I would change that absolutely immediately. I can't stand st So that is arch labs So moving on to the rest of the questions that we have to answer. So is it good If you like arch linux, you're gonna like arch labs Now the question I have and I can't answer is why would you use this Instead of just using arch linux now It's possible that you prefer a more guided installer arch labs provides that So with arch install all you'll see is a like itemized list basically of things that you have to do, right? It's not very guided, right? It does provide you some instructions But it's very much still you have to have quite a bit of knowledge about The things you need to do in order to use it. It's better than it's used to be obviously But still you have to have some knowledge arch labs is a little simpler than that and that it explains things more And it's much more guided it takes you through step by step Do this then this then this then this and then have an installed system So that's one reason why you may want to use it Another reason why is perhaps you just prefer this look and feel and you're you want a very minimal version of arch And this gives you that with a very minimal look and feel and you don't want to deal with any other Customizations or whatsoever. You're just into minimalism and that's what this is So it's a little bit easier install has a very minimal look and feel is very minimal in terms of package base And it gives you a lot of power during installation and obviously after installation of what's on your system So maybe it doesn't have as much customization there as arch does. I mean it does But whereas with arch all of your stuff that you want to install almost always happens after installation So this gives you some guided tools to select things that you want to install whereas arch really doesn't So is it good? I would say Again, yes, if you if you like arch linux arch linux is good. This is good It it feels a little bit like a copper like should I say this is fantastic? Like it's it's arch like that's it's literally what it is And I will I will say that I like the fact that all they offer is window managers I'm a window manager guy. So I prefer that kind of thing But if you are also a window manager kind of person You'll probably like this too, but most people who prefer window managers are just going to install their configuration files And at that point the the arch labs look and feel will go away So that probably doesn't play a lot of role into you know, who this is for So that kind of moves us into who this is actually for and the answer to that question is I don't know who this is for because Who would use this when they could just use arch linux and have all the power And it really does come down to that installation the installation is a little bit more guided Whereas arch install is much more do-it-yourself. So those that's really the Bottom line. Is it good? Yes. Who is it for? People who want a more guided arch linux install, I should say and people who prefer absolute minimalism, but with a Pre-configured look and feel I should say I guess that's the best way to say it I guess I don't I don't know Arch labs is a little bit confusing for me because I'm not sure why it exists now Um, I maybe it's a developer love project that they this is theirs That's what they use and they just are happy to share it with people And there's nothing wrong with that There's a lot of distributions out there that just started off as a thing that the developer wanted to have for themselves And they decided to share if that's what this is, that's fine And it's very very good. It's arch linux with a guided installer That's basically what this is and that's perfectly fine, right? If this was meant to be more than that, I don't see it But I don't think it was meant to be more than that. I think that's what this was meant to be It was just a distribution that was released You know by people who wanted something that looked felt and installed just like this So if you are An arch linux person, but you don't feel like I'll installing arch linux You want to have a little bit more of a guided install a little bit more of a Structured post install with you know wind manager or or a Pre-configured configuration of some kind of wind manager arch labs is something that you might want to try So that is it for this video. I apologize for not being as nearly as organized as I probably should have been I lost my notes halfway through So, uh, I'm pretty sure I answered the question Is it good and who's it for like four times in this last like four minutes or something like that? So I must I apologize for repeating myself over and over again. Hopefully I can pull some of that stuff out and editing That'd be really nice. So that is it for this video if you have thoughts on arch labs You can leave those in the comment section below. I'd love to hear from you You can follow me on mastodon or odyssey those links will be in the video description You can support me on patreon at patreon.com slash the linux cast links for libera pay And youtube will be in the video description as well if you'd prefer to support me there Thanks to everybody who does support me on patreon and youtube you guys are all absolutely amazing without you The channel does not be anywhere near where it is right now. So thank you so very very very very very very much for your support I truly do appreciate it again Broken record there at the word very I don't know what's going on with that. It's just one video after another I keep doing that stuff. Anyways, thanks for your support. Thanks everybody for watching. I'll see you next time