 In the last few weeks, I've been getting a lot of viewers of the channel ask me about ArchCraft OS, which is a ArchBase Linux distribution, I guess, that is minimal and has some window managers installed by default and it's supposed to look really good and it's supposed to be all flashy and it's supposed to be kind of the ArchBase distribution of choice for people that love things like the R slash Unix porn subreddit, right? If you love those beautiful Unix porn screenshots, right? You're going to love ArchCraft is what people tell me and I don't like reviewing Linux distributions very often these days. I don't do too many of these anymore and I especially don't like reviewing Linux distributions that are not for me. I know they're not for me and I I'm just going to tell you right now. I prefer function over style and when I did that Instant OS review a couple of months back and I completely trashed Instant OS and unfairly in many ways but I knew going in I wasn't going to like it anyway even if it worked just fine for me. It's not my kind of Linux distribution, not my kind of window manager flashy with all the whizbang effects and all of that. I fear ArchCraft may suffer the same fate. I'm going to try to give it a fair look. This will be a first impression look. I downloaded the ISO ArchCraft just had a release by the way. They released a new ISO on August 18th which is just four days ago from this recording so it's a very fresh ISO. I'm going to spin up a quick VM and we're going to take a look at it in a live environment directly off the ISO. Before we get into the virtual machine though I do want to show you guys the ArchCraft website because it is a very well done website. It's very professional looking, very attractive and it's one of the things that many Linux distributions, regardless of size, smaller distributions even many of the bigger distributions, they have sometimes terrible websites, ugly websites, sometimes the websites don't have good navigation. It's hard to find information on them and things like that. ArchCraft, this website is very well done. Now what exactly is ArchCraft? Again I don't know anything about this going in but according to the website it's minimal, it's stunning, so it's supposed to be light and it's supposed to look good and it's window manager only is another thing. If I go to the features tab because really just telling me it's minimal and it looks good doesn't really tell me much about the distro. Under features they do list the programs that will be installed so they have ABIF which is the ArchBase installation framework, a generic offline installer. I'm not going to run through the installation. If you've installed one Linux distribution you've installed them all and I've installed a couple hundred ArchBase Linux distributions over the years. I really don't want to take the time to run through another installer. Grub2 and Plymouth, Xorg, these are all just standard Linux packages that are on almost every Linux distribution. There's really nothing to see there. LXDM is a display manager, yeah that's nothing special. Now the window managers that are installed by default are Openbox and BSPWM, Compton is the compositor, Polybar is the panel I guess they're using and probably both Openbox and BSPWM. Rofi is our command launcher. Really nothing too out of the ordinary actually. We do have some keyboard shortcuts, some key bindings. I may keep this page open off to the side because some of these key bindings don't look like they're very standard key bindings. So I may need to come back to this. So I will leave this up. Let me go ahead and pull up a VM. All right so I'm gonna take a look at this using vert manager and when I first boot it off the live iso we come to the LXDM display manager and there is a live user named live user. We are asked for a password. Now I'm just gonna take a guess since the user was live user. I'm gonna say the password is probably also live user because if it wasn't the same as the username I have no idea what the password would have been. I would have had to go to the documentation to figure this out. Now the screen resolution is not 1920 by 1080 which is the resolution for my monitor. So what I'm gonna do is I know they're using Xorg so they probably have Xrander installed XR and R. Does super and enter bring up a terminal? Super and enter does not. Super shift enter. Alt enter. What in the hell brings up a terminal? All right so already key bindings that most people use for tiling window managers just to bring up a terminal are already not working. Typically in things like DWM and Xmoned the default key binding to bring up D menu or some kind of run command prompt is super P. So super P. Super P does work. Okay so at least I can do this. I know looking through their list of programs installed that they have termite installed as far as a terminal. Oh wow that font. That font is unreadable. It's small and it's blurry. Wow. Anyway let me do a quick Xrander space dash s. You guys are not going to see this command Xrander space dash s space 1920 by 1080 as the command I'm gonna run just to get a proper screen resolution here and wow that is just so small. The font is just crazy small. It's even worse when I went to 1920 by 1080. I've never seen font that small out of the box out of the gate with any Linux distribution. I don't know. This is already starting out pretty bad. Now again I want to give this a fair shot but whoever is creating this distribution that's insane. I mean it really is ridiculous to have a font that small. I don't know what kind of display the creator of this distribution is running unless he's running something from the mid 1990s like you know maybe he's running one of those old 15 inch you know CRT monitors or something but here in somewhat modern times we need a bigger font because that actually is hurting my eyes even looking at the screen right now. By the way I don't know what window manager we're in. I was hitting super enter thinking it would bring up a terminal. I assume we were probably in BSPWM but remember open box is also installed so if I close this terminal and right click on the desktop okay so by default it does launch you into open box. Open box is the I guess the default window manager in LXDM unless you specifically change it over to BSPWM. We may take a look at BSPWM too in a second. I need to fix the wallpaper in the panel. You know what I probably need to do is I'm gonna preferences here in the go to preferences in the menu and I want to edit some stuff. I want to edit some of the open box configurations edit auto start. Let me click on that and wow this editor I can't read the text it is so small. This is unbelievable how small this text is. I really don't understand this but what I'm going to do is I'm going to put Xrander space dash S1920 by 1080 in the auto start file and I'm going to go ahead and save that and I'm going to do that just so we get a proper screen resolution every time we log in. So what I want to do is I'm going to exit open box. Let me log out. S are you sure? I'm assuming I have to type Y for yes. Okay that worked and then we'll go ahead and log back in with the live user password. All right now we the panel is fixed the wallpaper is fixed we got a 1920 by 1080 screen resolution but man this font is too small to use. Seriously I'm going to have to pause the recording for a second and see if I can figure out this font issue because there's no way I can read this. It is physically is hurting my eyes straining to to read this four point font or whatever they're using here. If I go under preferences and I go to appearance settings I wonder if that's right. I'm going to click on it and see what that brings up. Okay and it brings up this appearance tool where we can change the icons and the fonts. Great fonts the default font is Scientifica medium eight point so but if it's eight point font it's the smallest eight point font I've ever seen it's more like four or five point font. Man this thing is extremely small. Let's see if I can make it like 11 point. I'm going to go ahead and select that and now when I right click the open box menu is still small the windows look all right. It really didn't do what I wanted it to do says this font will be used as the default font when drawing user interface text. Okay you know I hate to do this but I'm going to have to take the time to actually configure this thing just so I can read it. I'm going to have to figure out how to change the the font and the open box config. Let me right click. This is not what a first look at first impression kind of video really needs to be but I don't really have any other choice here. Let me open up the rc.xml does that and we change some font stuff in it. Yeah man I can't read the text editor there though this text editor is so small. Oh I see some font settings I see eight point font everywhere in this configure so I'm just going to change everything that looks like it mentions eight point font. I'm going to change it to 11 point font and see if that fixes things. I may have to log back out and log back in to fix this but even with the 11 point font and the programs themselves that 11 point font looks very very odd. Are they using a bitmap font instead of a ttf font or otf font a true type font because bitmap fonts don't scale well. You pretty much you have to view them at a specific size and that may be why they have it set to such a small size as that scientific font maybe it only looks good at eight point font because bitmap fonts are a relic of the past like the 1980s 1990s when you had much smaller screens and you know you didn't have varying sizes as far as monitors and display resolutions everybody was pretty much using like 640 by 480 or whatever the heck those extremely small resolutions were back then now though these kinds of resolutions don't really work so I think I've already saved that so let me right click and see if I can find a way to restart openbox go to the openbox menu and this font is so small it's hard to navigate the menu openbox restart and now and that really didn't change anything either I don't know what's going on here let me exit openbox let me log out and log back in type y for yes kind of strange to have to confirm that you want to exit openbox when you go through a menu system and have to click on exit it's not like you accidentally chose to exit but I don't mind that little safety measure this menu is still too small this menu is what I can't do anything with this change the font okay change the font for openbox okay at least they had change font as a menu change font to sans regular yeah heck let's bump it up to 12 point font all right all right that works oh thank god all right at least I can read that all right so this is openbox if I wanted to open up something I'm just going to open up the file browser here can I open up whatever they're using I don't know if they're using tunar and the fonts look like garbage that scientific font or whatever they were using this is tunar for the file manager here yeah the icon set well it's not a bad icon set kind of colorful uh the poly bar at the top you know this is configured kind of nicely it's attractive I can't read the font though that font is so bad uh can I change the font for poly bar and whoever is making this uh you done you put in a lot of work but my god you got to do something with those fonts can I change the poly bar font if I click on change font poly bar okay we up that from sans 10 point to sans I don't know 12 select that all right that's better all right we're starting to get somewhere already that's that's a bit more readable what are they using for wallpapers let's change the wallpaper I click change wallpaper it opens nitrogen okay because so much of this distribution seems to be all about style rather than function I would expect they spent some time with wallpapers and icon sets you know things like that and it really is an attractive distribution I just want to see most of the wallpaper packs it looks like there's some archcraft artwork you know some branding and that's actually nice I kind of like the minimal looks you know just minimal colors here yeah I really like that I could work with something like that yeah I don't mind that and what I'm just going to go with it I kind of like that now what I'm going to do is I'm going to go ahead and exit open box and let's go ahead and get into bspwm and let's see how their bspwm desktop looks so first thing I want to do is go down here and choose bspwm instead of open box and then let's do the live user password all right now bspwm looks pretty good the panel at the top I can actually read it but that's poly bar again and we've already changed the font and poly bar so I think had I not changed it over an open box I probably couldn't read the the font and the poly bar let me do a super enter and see if that brings up a terminal it does my god though that terminal font it's still extremely small yeah I don't know is x prop installed no it's not I was going to see what terminal window what kind of terminal emulator the default terminal was a super shift c to close no super q to close super x to close what are you using to close windows I'm going to have to go back to the cheat sheet and so let's check the key bindings for bspwm and it looks like a super return of course got us the terminal super shift return opens a terminal in floating mode okay that's interesting how do I close a window I mean that's like other than opening stuff closing windows is probably the most important key binding I put it toward the bottom of the list alt plus f4 really that's the best key binding you could come up with closed window alt f4 a windows key binding no absolutely not that's like the dumbest key binding alt and any function key should not be a key binding for anything important alt f4 how about super shift c or super q super x I mean most keyboards especially hacker kind of keyboards like most linux users many of us don't even have function keys or we're using programmable keyboards where the function keys are actually on a second layer of the keyboard don't ever use the function key in a key binding not for anything that actually you're going to use often like closing windows let me get back over here and I have to type alt then I have to type the layer two key on my keyboard of all my ergo ducks easy and then the four because four is really going to be function for as long as I have the layer two key also pressed down and that actually works meant but it's I have to do some finger gymnastics to make that work on my keyboard let me do a super p for the run prompt super p I would assume brings up rophy that doesn't a super d super r super r I guess gets us a run prompt and I'm not sure run as root and that's not what I want I don't want to open something as root so let me escape out of that what actually gets us rophy not rophy as root though just I want to open up rophy looks like we have mod plus n for rophy network mod plus m for the mpd rophy menu my x for the power session I guess menu my w for the windows menu and mod r for apps as root okay well how do you just launch rophy you know what I know how I could figure this out let me open up a terminal and I'm assuming vim is installed I'm gonna open dot config slash sx hkd the simple x hotkey daemon and the sx hkdrc you're you're not seeing anything I'm typing because that font is just incredibly small heck I I can't see what I typed I just went with it I was hoping that I actually typed the correct things because the font is just too damn small to read man let me see in their key bindings what launches rophy let me just do a search for rophy uh alt plus f1 oh my god they're using the alt key and a function key uh alt f1 that's horrible you know what I'm done guys uh alt player two f4 to close that I tried guys I tried to give it a shot you guys that want to try out archcraft go ahead again this it's not my kind of thing I prefer stuff that is normal and is usable not something that is somebody designed for screenshots and uh has font that I can't read and requires keyboard shortcuts that no tiling window manager user in history has ever used for their tiling window manager before I go I do want to thank a few people I want to thank Michael Gabe Nate Corbinian Mitchell entropy UK John Devin Fran Archvist 530 Chris Chuck DJ Donnie Dylan George Lewis Omri Paul Robert Sean Tobias and Willie these guys they are my highest tiered patrons over on patreon they are the producers of the show and these guys none of these guys asked me to take a look at archcraft so I do want to thank each and every one of these guys now some of these people on this next screen some of you guys asked me to take a look at archcraft you know who you are I still want to thank you though I appreciate your support over on patreon because this channel is supported by you guys the community all right peace guys