How do THESE guys use Linux? - Linux for Newbs EP 0

X: / typecraft_dev
discord: / discord
This video is sponsored by eraser.io!
If you've ever watched tech influencers, you may have noticed something unusual. A small subset of them use a very similar configuration using linux, a tiling wiindow manager -- like i3wm, neovim, and tmux. This is the start of a new series where we install linux from scratch, and configure a tiling window manager, a cool status bar, and way more goodies!
So stick around nerds, its going to be a fun one!
Chapters:
0:00 - intro
1:18 - The setup we're going to make together
1:55 - The linux distribution
4:30 - The tiling window manager in a linux system
8:02 - Showing off i3wm
9:18 - Comparing with Gnome
9:44 - LETSGO

[@typecraft_dev]

Hey Everyone! I misspoke and called Gnome/KDE Display "Managers" When really I meant "Desktop Environments". I'll be sure to clarify in the next video when we install arch and choose a Desktop Environment / Window manager. Thanks!

[@rharmonson]

On mixing up "Display Managers" and "Desktop Environments", it happens to the best of us. Good call out that the Linux OS is not a dependency for improving your workflow. Arch is amazing but impractical for larger pools of assets. Not saying it cannot be done using NixOS, Ansible, or some other alternative, but for most, it is not practical beyond a few assets. I accomplish the same with Debian but it does mean I must compile from source outdated components. I miss AUR. Pick your poison scenario, really.

[@abbashaider7165]

I opened the comments section to point that out. Thanks for correcting that. In practice display manager is just a login manager and nothing more. It is among the wrongly named symbols

[@nostalgianinja]

Even then, Desktop Environments contain everything needed for their respective (floating) window managers to operate. And hey, it happens to the best of us.

[@samanthbapu6207]

Happens post a few drinks ...

[@softwarewalaa]

Im waiting for the all the episodes/parts , he is literally the guy who can teach us everything with the ease and simple beginner to advanced level 🥹

[@JoelJosephReji]

Btw a small correction: the Long term support releases didn't really get affected by the xz vulnerability because their xz packages were already pinned at an old version. Ironically enough, Arch and several other bleeding edge rolling release distros had the version with the backdoor distributed for a short period of time before it got patched to the newer safe version (even though the backdoor didn't work on Arch since the ssh distributed via Arch didn't depend on xz).

[@newton-342]

Yes. Altough thankfully only Debian was targeted, thus the exploited versions weren't dangerous on Arch. But if Arch had been targeted, it would have been pretty bad

[@JoelJosephReji]

@@newton-342 yeah but they wouldn't have been able to use the same attack vector on arch. They would have had to attack a different project then

[@paultapping9510]

the xz vuln. got into Debian Sid but not Debian Stable, which really underlines why the Debian dev model is a great idea.

[@SoHawful]

Yeah, that stood out to me too. I love arch, but "latest security patches" also means "latest vulnerability patches". That's the bleed in bleeding edge.

[@youdontknowme2508]

My man single handledly creating more nerds in this world lol. Keep them coming you nerdo

[@laskargoaselarong]

Keep the nerds multiplying

[@Jalan-Api]

There are 2 ways of doing that, knowledge and repro. Which do you choose

[@youdontknowme2508]

@@Jalan-Api First one

[@Jalan-Api]

@@youdontknowme2508 XD

[@simonlauer9379]

One minor thing: display managers are just the thing you get after booting up prompting you to login. Gnome uses GDM and KDE uses SDDM, by default. Display Managers typically allow you to start different sessions. On GDM for example, you could launch into the Gnome Desktop Environment, or into i3 if installed 🤪

[@typecraft_dev]

UGH I KNEW I would say something wrong. Yes that's correct I'll be sure to fix that in the next video!

[@timdithmer9184]

I love the way people tend to give feedback on your videos and the way you handle it. You can feel the positivity which is not normal in YT comments usually!

[@typecraft_dev]

@@timdithmer9184 I've found YT to be a very positive place (for me at least). I'm just having fun showing off stuff I think is cool!

[@glidersuzuki5572]

Maybe you can call them login managers too. Atleast that's the name I like compared to the confusing display manager terminology​@@typecraft_dev

[@nerdg2]

Hey look🧐, two nerds having a polite conversation, rare but love it!

[@alexcricles]

RIP neofetch

[@Redyf]

I'm glad to see you're going to cover these topics, many people don't switch to linux because of the initial learning curve. I believe the series will help a lot with that 🙌

[@LinuxEssentials79]

Chris, I love your content and I'm so excited. I can't wait to dive into this journey!

[@sherrilltechnology]

Your video is the reason I am doing a series on Arch Linux on my channel and I love it, it is harder to learn at least for me, but just learning the commands is so much fun thank you sir for an incredible video!!

[@awab3178]

I don't comment often but I just have to say this couldn't come at a better time. I've been experimenting with Linux customization but the learning curve is steep and it is wonderful to have someone lay everything out in a simple intuitive and comprehensive way. Everything is slowly starting to click & very excited to see your channel. Thank you.

[@jonatasmoraes141]

Wow!!! We see that another great playlist is starting. I'm excited about it.

[@formigarafa]

Thanks, man. I love the talk about integration of the tools more than talking about the tools themselves.

[@IshaanBahal]

Always remember, rolling release requires you to befriend arch-chroot but if you do an arch setup without the new distros like manjaro etc, you befriend it much sooner, likely on your 2nd broken install.

[@danielfrisancho09]

not at all, arch + btrfs and creates snapshots so you can back to the point before update also arch its more stable than manjaro

[@myartikool]

@@danielfrisancho09 btrfs + btrfs-assistant + snapper + grub-btrfs If something goes wrong - boot to a working snapshot -> open terminal -> snapper rollback and you're good

[@LorenzoLopezVillalobos-sl5hn]

You are such a good presenter. I was able to get 99% of what I needed up and running on my Mac with your guidance, keep on making this great content man!

[@Dainslief31]

Man , youe neovim series got me hooked nd bkw tbis series too gonna blow up sooner or later 🔥🔥keep it up ! Thabks Nerd !

[@willianf]

Awesome video! I am looking forward to watching the entire series. I have a similar env in my macOS with yabai, skhd, neovim, and tmux :)

[@SimonCardona-oi8sm]

When I decided to go with vim I founded your KZbin channel with vim series. Last week I decided to go further and install arch and this series comes. Man.. I love this channel so much, thanks you !

[@typecraft_dev]

Great to hear!

[@khanriza]

Can't wait for the Arc install guide!

[@mSykeCodes]

Awesome start! I wish I had had something like this when I was starting to play with this style of setup. Had to learn how to configure i3 from scratch myself haha

[@drewfowler2408]

Love this! Excited for the coming episodes!

[@FastGunner2001]

Pumped for this series. My wife is taking her first steps into the GNU world and is pumped to see the next episode already.

[@eliacortesi2787]

LOVE IT! Is it so bad wanting the next episode like NOW? Keep working nerd, doing GREAT!

[@typecraft_dev]

you're getting me all pumped up I'm going to try and get it out ASAP

[@TomokoJinx]

great video very exited for this series as someone who wanted to get into the ricing part of linux for along time

[@typecraft_dev]

Awesome! We’ll definitely be doing some ricing

[@ohdarlin692]

arch documentation is really amazing. In the past I used debian and fedora derivatives. If something broke I search tons of forums and read people's problem, comparing them with mine and then fix it somehow. Not the best experience. But with arch I almost exclusively use their simple doc and it solves all of my problems. Also there described comparability with different tools, not only pure arch Linux setup, which is great

[@valerianmp]

Arch Wiki is amazing

[@Allysroadtorecovery]

Fantastic video looking forward to future episodes

[@Fanta666]

I switched from i3wm to sway, and am psyched to watch this series and level up my use of these tools!

[@axelpaillaud7542]

This is really a great idea for a series, we are currently missing that ! I kinda disagree a little bit with your arch point of vue, but anyway, I also use arch btw, and I think its a really good distro to do programming. Thanks Typecraft, can't wait to see the next !

[@MohammadLsk]

Thanks man. Excited for next episodes

[@alexsix1719]

Man, LOVING the videos lately! I'm running Fedora with AwesomeWM myself, and it's been such a great change. Still running (and loving) macOS for work, but whenever I can dip into Linux, I'd much rather do that.

[@mazZZzilaplayer]

Can't wait for new episodes coming!

[@flightman2870]

Thanks a lot. I was waiting for a complete noob rice tutorial for all this time. I think this is the one. Love

[@moinbagban87]

Wallpaper source ??

[@maxhudotdev]

Nice vid, recently got into linux and this vid would have been super helpful when I was just starting out

[@AdamM]

This was great. Looking forward to the series.

[@nerdg2]

Dude, just why didn't you exist earlier man, do you know the shit i went through to get to where this video gets a person ? Dude an year of hell, literal hell to finally call linux home. Your channel is god man!

[@besibesi2170]

Hey man awesome series this and configuring neovim You make so understandable for people like me 👍

[@shaunkruger]

What a time to be alive, through the advanced technology of tiling window managers we can run multiple full screen applications on individual desktops that in no way resembles the way I used tty1-6 on the console when I first got started with Linux in 1998.

[@mlv60]

i love theseeee!!!! (video series, but influencers mentioned as well)

[@Mr.AmeliasDad]

I'm already running Arch with Hyprland, Tmux, and Neovim. Just here cause your content rocks!

[@TiagoEgas]

a solid .1 intro, nice to se a breakdown type of workflow.

[@muhammadmostey]

I cant wait I was about to move all my files on Windows to follow with you, it's been 7 days I hope if you can post everyday in this series, I'm really exited and wanted to learn neovim on linux asap

[@typecraft_dev]

apologies for making you wait. been a busy week outside of youtube for me. They'll start coming out quicker and quicker don't worry. thanks for your patience!

[@bwemery5]

cant wait to see your i3 configs

[@llljammylll]

Looking foward to this series.

[@claymorwan]

I've been struggling to install arch linux like that for the past weeks, can't wait to watch the next episode hoping that it helps

[@KevinVinck]

Curious to see how to get i3wm working with a HiDPI display. All of my Linux machines are laptops with HiDPI displays and when I tried setting up i3 I ended up spending too long trying to figure out how to get both i3 and the applications to scale properly before giving up and going back to KDE.

[@dixitvara]

I like this series, so i am excited to know more about linux ❤ thanks

[@pankajthapaliya2336]

Excellent video. Thanks for sharing it

[@vimrichie]

You’re just like Netflix. Always putting out a new series. The only difference is that you don’t cancel on them.

[@typecraft_dev]

lol

[@CodeWithAhsan]

damn! This is more exciting for me than any Netflix series. Super sad that there’s only one episode available so far 😄 I’ll wait all to come out so I can migrate from windows. I absolutely hate using neovim on WSL (ubuntu). I am new to neovim btw and set up things from your neovim setup course initially. Thanks for the amazing content :) can’t tell how much I appreciate it

[@typecraft_dev]

awesome I'm glad you're excited! I'm excited too!

[@sayantanX]

i need this wallpaper. can someone tell me where to find?

[@jasonbourne757]

I come here for the intro and stay for the content, everytime..!

[@friendly__drone9352]

Interesting! If I wasn't working on a fairly new macbook then I'd look at getting a laptop with Linux. which machine do you use Typecraft?

[@zdeneksc2895]

Hi, I see that you using that nice terminal bar with all those rainbow colors, I cannot find a video where you're setting that one up? I already have TMUX with Catpuchin but still missing that one piece. Can you help me out? EDIT: Is it a starship? Can I get the setup?

[@Szymonides252]

Nice, I'm really looking forward to seeing your config! Btw, have you ever considered using NixOS instead of Arch?

[@lisovyy]

nicely put. out of curiosity, have you switched to linux long term or is it more of an experiment?

[@j1d7s]

Another great video series coming our way, thanks nerd 🤩! Regarding your choices, I prefer Arch too because of the rolling release model, the Arch wiki and the haptics of the package management. And Arch nowadays is really easy to install, much less of a hassle than e.g. Gentoo. When I first used Arch in 2020, I was a bit extreme, I only installed the bare necessities and also a tiling window manager (bspwm). Nowadays the main thing regarding productivity for me is to have NeoVim and tmux nicely configured (in part thanks to you!). I am using KDE Plasma since I am mainly using Laptops and usually it does not make a lot of sense to have more than one window open on a single desktop, so I don't see a big appeal in using a tiling window manager, but maybe I will learn some new aspect why it would make sense for me, too... I have key combinations for the main GUI-applications and I always open them on specific desktops 1-6 so I don't even need to think about how to switch between them.

[@mattsadventureswithart5764]

I use a mix of windows since 1996 and linux various distros (on and off, currently on) since 2000. What makes using multuple workspaces superior to windows alt-tab? Ive never managed to find what killer feature it has and why i should prefer it to the windows way. Somebosy please explain.

[@yohendryy]

How do I get those terminals prompt headers?

[@isyedaliraza]

Awesome as always ❤️

[@ev3rybodygets177]

wezterm when? Love the vids keep up the work!

[@typecraft_dev]

I’m going to have to cover wez term

[@itsfkf6106]

​@typecraft_dev honestly....imo kitty is better

[@zephyrthesearchrescuedog8358]

Yeah teej uses wezterm

[@gustavojoaquin_arch]

​@@itsfkf6106wezterm>>>>>>>kitty Wezterm implements the kitty graphics protocol and is writted in Rust btw

[@007arek]

@@itsfkf6106 with what?

[@abdallhfattah8934]

i been waiting for such a course :)

[@_boux]

2:40 funny point right there, since rolling release distros were the ONLY distros affected by the exploit, mostly fedora's rolling release. Stable releases or LTS releases didn't have the version of the library with the exploit yet when it was discovered

[@alxt111]

Great video. A couple corrections: point release distros also deliver security updates as soon as possible. rolling release is got for if you want the latest and greatest features not more security. You often say display manager when meaning desktop environment. A display manager is just the lock screen in linux lingo.

[@typecraft_dev]

Yes I totally misspoke you’re right thanks!!

[@dicusardenis922]

I will enjoy this eposodes, this is what i need, keep going :)

[@jawuku3885]

Thanks for this introductory video! I've always been stumped by the workflow of tiling window managers, so have always avoided them in the past. You've convinced me to give it a try at least. I look forward to your upcoming videos.

[@aparuproychowdhury]

Amazing content. I am excited to watch the next one. When is it comming?

[@ahmedpranto6669]

Subbed and ready for the whole series

[@PHoSawyer]

Wheres the rest of the series? Great videos! hopefully more coming up soon! 🙌

[@typecraft_dev]

Yes more coming soon!! (Next couple days) thanks for your patience!

[@PHoSawyer]

This came across as really rude 🙈, I meant to say I'm hyped for this series and excited to see more 🙌💪, as soon as it's ready I'll be hyped to view 👍

[@ZenityStudios]

im ready for part 1, 2, 3, etc. thanks

[@jntlmb]

Amazing, love the content!

[@Gengurke]

Great start to the series! Where can I get this beautiful wallpaper?

[@terotahvo6849]

With tiling window manager you have to every time type name of every program you want to run? Like in ms-dos? What is good about that?

[@human-yy3xt]

typing the name of a program in an application launcher and hitting enter is usually faster than having to first move your hand to the mouse, then find one, and clicking one, and then moving your hand to the keyboard again. well, that is assuming you have a decent WPM. if you type really slow it might just be faster to use the mouse. but then again... that's a skill issue.

[@chyldstudios]

I use Arch with KDE, zsh, tmux, neovim and vs code. Virtual desktops on KDE work very well.

[@itsfkf6106]

vs code? >:o

[@harshdeepanshu277]

much needed series!!! keep going..............

[@MrBodoFraggins]

For those interested, there is an extension for gnome called Forge that is a very good tiling manager.

[@SaffronPaprika]

At it again with another awesome course.

[@2EOGIY]

How do you minimize windows with those tiling window managers? Hyprland has special desktops where you can move windows when not in use but need to run, e.g., Spotify, Discord, or anything else.

[@scrapmine]

Short answer: You dont. Long answer: You probably can if you try hard enough.

[@fruitloop831]

Just starting to teach myself to use i3wm, I have it installed alongside plasma and depending on the task I am doing depends which I log into.

[@rodelias9378]

Thanks nerd. I look forward to watching next episodes

[@loggerboy9325]

Ur content is gold keep up the content!!!

[@micaelviana]

what is your keyboard/switches?

[@incursio1122]

Was planning of installing arch since the package managers for debian sucks, just what i needed sir. Thanks a lot. Pacman supremacy!!

[@typecraft_dev]

Heck yes!

[@jas0x139]

Pacman is pretty insane. You can set the parallel downloads to around 100. Then when you run archinstall you can go from installation to being logged into your DE of choice in about 4 minutes.

[@adamcbrewer]

Please let us know where to find that wallpaper

[@timjames4306]

The mustache man is back with another incredible series ❤🎉

[@mrmadhan8557]

For gnome users you can use spacebar gnome extention for i3 like workspace

[@macmanuelodumeru3708]

What about for Windows. Lol

[@ghosthunter0950]

I would appreciate if you did a full setup with the manual install of arch as well for educational purposes. The arch wiki doesn't tell me much beyond the basic installation and the same goes for most of the videos beyond really old ones. I don't mind if you even start with an already basic install done and just helped setup what we need after that.

[@itisciprian]

tj and prime using popos - and using Linux only for the window manager. Great series.

[@blocSonic]

Great series idea!

[@typecraft_dev]

Thanks! I’m excited

[@gand0rfTRZ]

Loved your series about setting up neovim. It helped me out a lot and I really love using it now. Can't wait to see more from this series. Multiple workspaces are a great tool to have. Just hate that it took Windows so long to make it a standard option. before then, using Linux at home and coming to work and having to use windows always felt like I was downgrading. Still kind of does, but it isn't as bad anymore. Still will never put Windows on my home machine again.

[@TrashUx12]

You are the best youtuber ever i seen please make more and more content you are awesome

[@michaelutech4786]

I am new to tiling window management. I tried a couple of twm's but I found it difficult to transition to them, until I toyed with pop-shell, which is an extension on gnome that adds tiling features to gnome. The problem I have with tiling WMs is that both my muscle memory and a lot of software is not tuned to work with this usage pattern. I very often find myself shutting down my workflow to wonder how to do things that being used to traditional UI's would be just a couple of clicks or a ekyboard shortcut away that's not working with the particular WM I'm using. Another problem is my use of multiple screens. I used to work on a single screen, now I have four of them. Support for such a setting in tiling WM's is not great, at least not the stock configuration. F.e. I don't want all screens to switch when I change a virtual desktop, not always. Floating WM's are not great at that either, but there you're used to suckage, it's not quite as disruptive there. Gnome, KDE, Windows and macOS all follow mostly the same paradigm. When switching between them, it takes me just a few hours to forget that there was a switch. I believe the effort to retrain my brain is worth it. Keyboard navigation is incredibly efficient. For me, pop-shell is kind of the best of both worlds, in that it allows me to switch between the two paradigms with a shortcut and mix and match features from both. The "works-out-of-the-box" feature of Gnome regarding various OS integrations is also nice, because I don't enjoy having to do everything myself. It's nice to be able to do that, it's nice to have done it once, but it sucks to have to do it over and over again. I find it strange that pop-shell is not more popular. It's easy enough to install on top of any vanilla gnome, even if you have to install it from source. And it's entirely hackable, since it's JS.

[@dylanjhennessy]

Literally got shivers in the intro

[@alexanderkipnis2329]

this series is going to be a godsend 😎

[@Mooooov0815]

At this point, I am convinced that if you really want a stable and productive setup, just use the Fedora sway spin.

[@ARKTIKA13]

Nice video mate but tell me pls how can I have the look of your terminal?

[@sujezz]

Can you include things like btrfs, unified kernel image, disk encryption, secure boot for safety ? I got greenlighted to swap windows to linux on my work laptop but I only ever used ext4 on my personal laptop. For WMs I used qtile and awesome on x11 but have switched to hyprland and I'm not going back. Don't forget zen kernel.

[@scientiac]

Actually, Gnome KDE are Desktop Environments not Display Managers. Display Managers are SDDM, GDM and other login screens (managers) Display Servers are Wayland and Xorg And window managers are: Mutter (Gnome's WM) Kwin (KDE's WM) I3 Hyprland Awesome and so on

[@iotku]

Yep these are the correct definitions. Gnome and KDE (Plasma) are Desktop Environments (DE), that is, a collection of related software including Login Management/Lockscreens (Display Managers), Window Management (WM) (Where to place windows, snapping behavior, title bars, switching between windows) , and generally the things you expect to have when using a Graphical environment (such as file managers, system monitors, document readers, word processing, etc) A window manager (WM) like i3, as the name implies, just gives you the piece that handles things like window management and hotkeys, but expects you to build out most of the rest of the environment yourself. Most aren't very limiting, but things you may expect to work out of the box in a DE (like file management, Display Configuration, USB storage, etc) may require more manual setup.

[@chanukanadun]

Love this. keep it up

[@Novacification]

Just as I felt I had gathered enough information to make a Linux "IDE", you come out with a guide. Will be interesting to see how my own rookie thoughts compare and have a guide to follow when things inevitably turn out to be more difficult than expected. You mentioned tmux as well but I'm not sure I would use tmux with a tiling window manager. Maybe I'm wrong on that.

[@taatzi5554]

Interested to see this series, hope many find it useful and intriguing. I used to run i3 on arch btw, but lately I haven't bothered with all the configuring. I find that Gnome is quite ok if you utilize keyboard shortcuts like Win+Arrow keys to split and move windows effectively. It doesn't give the same granular control or speed but gets the job done. Then again I've also moved that responsibility to tmux, where I instantly jump between running processes, neovim editors and shells, which leads me to only need one workspace. Really the trouble with a tiling wm is the same as the trouble of neovim vs. IDEs. It doesn't come with anything but the bare essentials preinstalled, and expects you to do the heavy lifting in the beginning. But after it's configured to your liking everything's exactly where you want it to be and you fly between screens and applications like it's second nature.

[@pranavjadhav837]

can you make video on how to copy in neovim to browser or any other tools or software it's kind hard and impossible to setup i think i could do that so that why i stop using neovim