I’m a little bit underwhelmed, I thought that based off the fact so many people seem to make using this distro their personality I expected… well, more I guess?
Once the basic stuff is set-up, like wifi, a few basic packages, a desktop environment/window manager, and a bit of desktop environment and terminal customisation, then that’s it. Nothing special, just a Linux distribution with less default programs and occasionally having to look up how to install a hardware driver or something if you need to use bluetooth for the first time or something like that.
Am I missing something? How can I make using Arch Linux my personality when once it’s set up it’s just like any other computer?
What exactly is it that people obsess over? The desktop environment and terminal customisation? Setting up NetworkManager with nmcli? Using Vim to edit a .conf file?
Also, I never saw anyone saying anything about a “year of the Linux Desktop”. It’s just a meme.
Both were a thing in discussions many years ago. That’s why they became a meme.
But since then it’s basically only used ironically because people quickly noticed they’re a meme.
It was certainly said seriously in the late 1990s and early 2000s. It was the kind of phrase you’d find in computer magazines that came with a Linux CD-ROM stuck to the cover.
This guy from Intel claims to have been the first to use it in 1999, but I think it was a more widely used hype phrase around that time, when desktop Linux was becoming just about usable.