There’s a particular kind of Linux distro that exists to make a point. Not “here’s a stable base you can build on,” but “here’s how I think you should compute.” Opinionated distros. The ones with a philosophy baked into the package selection before you’ve even opened a terminal.
I like them. I build them. ArchBang has always been one — a minimal Arch base with a specific idea of what a desktop should feel like. But being opinionated cuts both ways, and it’s worth being honest about the opinions I’ve since dropped.
The eye-candy years
Rewind a decade or two and a huge amount of desktop Linux energy went into effects. Compiz gave you wobbly windows that jiggled like jelly when you dragged them. There were flame effects on workspace switches, windows that would catch fire and burn away when you closed them. And the crown jewel: the 3D desktop cube, four workspaces mapped onto the faces of a rotating cube you could spin with a flick of the mouse.
None of it was fake cleverness either. Getting that stuff running well took real engineering — compositing, OpenGL, window manager hooks all working together at a time when a lot of the underlying stack wasn’t built for it. Showing someone a wobbly window demo in 2006 was a genuine “wait, Linux can do that?” moment.
And then I got bored
That’s the bit I want to be honest about. It was technically clever. It was also, for actual day-to-day use, a novelty that wore off fast. You show your mates the cube once. You wobble a window once. After that it’s just something between you and the thing you’re trying to do — another frame of animation to sit through before the window lands where you dragged it.
I never disliked the effects because they looked bad. I got tired of them because they didn’t earn their keep. Once the “ooh” wore off, all that was left was overhead: more GPU driver dependency, more things that could break on a fresh install, more milliseconds between action and result. None of it made me a faster or happier user of my own machine.
What I actually want from an opinionated distro now
That experience is basically the whole reason ArchBang, MiniBang and GreenBang look the way they do. The opinion isn’t “no polish” — it’s “polish should cost nothing.” A window manager that snaps instantly. A shell that starts fast enough that you forget it had to start at all. Effects, if there are any, should serve orientation (which workspace am I on, did that window actually close) rather than spectacle.
It’s a different flavour of opinionated. Compiz-era distros were opinionated about what a desktop could do. Mine are opinionated about what a desktop should cost you — in RAM, in boot time, in attention. Both are legitimate positions for a distro to take. I just know which one I still want to be using in ten years’ time.
The cube was a great demo. It was a terrible daily driver. That’s the difference I try to keep in mind every time I’m tempted to add something shiny to a build.
/rant
Been watching the hype over a certain distro at the moment — starts with an O, you know the one — I’ll admit it, I’m a bit green with envy. I catch myself thinking: yes, I could do that, I could ship with that. But does anyone actually need that many features, or is that just my impression of what users need? Sure, ArchBang ships with an opinionated set of packages, look, theme, and so on. But it’s very much a base to work from.
Might be something I can try, if you need a feature, package, config etc.. drop me an email mrgreen[at]archbang.[org] or on telegram [at]mrgreen_archbang and so at least I get some feedback on what users want.
Stay safe…..