I’ve been daily driving Linux for 17 months now (currently on Linux Mint). I have got very comfortable with basic commands and many just works distros (such as Linux Mint, or Pop!_OS) with apt as the package manager. I’ve tried Debian as a distro to try to challenge myself, but have always ran into issues. On my PC, I could never get wifi to work, which made it difficult to install properly. I’ve used it on my daily driver laptop, but ran into some issues. I thought a more advanced distro, that is still stable, would be good overall. However, not getting new software for a long time sounds quite annoying.
I’m wanting to challenge myself to get much better with Linux, partitioning, CLI, CLI tools, understanding the components of my system, trying tiling window managers, etc. I’ve been considering installing Arch the traditional way, on my X220, as a way to force myself to improve. Is this a good way to learn more about Linux and a Linux system in general? I always hear good things about the Arch Wiki. Is there any other tips someone can give me, to sharpen my Linux skills? I was even considering trying out Gentoo on my X220, but the compiling times sound painful. I wouldn’t daily drive Gentoo or Arch, just yet, but I would try to use them as much as possible for general use.
Arch is pretty painless on the long run, almost everything is available when you combine AUR and official. I’ve had some package manager issues after not using my laptop for like 6 months but I believe it more a lack for arch knowledge rather than a problem for intermediate / advanced user.
What was frustrating, like in every single imperative distro it that I feel like the system isn’t clean anymore after a while and I end up reinstalling or hoping for another distro.
What I found to daily drive everything rock solid but in a funny way is NixOS, which is declarative. If you have some time and curiosity I would recommend checking how it works. No more distro hoping / installs for me