> Install NixOS
> Learn about Nix
> Organise your dotfiles
> Learn about flakes
> Organise your dotfiles
> Learn about modularisation
> Organise your dotfiles
> ...
You know how some people compete to see who can get Doom to run on the craziest platforms, like a calculator?
Installing Arch with the fewest packages is like that. There's something oddly satisfying about stripping everything back to the most basic level - to make things work for you within the most constrictive environment you enforce for yourself.
It's like eating a spicy shellfish dinner and super gluing your asshole closed.
Yeah I remember that one time I tried to uninstall Banshee because I didn't want it and Ubuntu's repos were set up that it by default just tried to uninstall GNOME entirely. And it was GNOME 2 so uninstalling it was a bad thing at the time.
You don't use GNOME to get rid of bloat. You use it to get a fully functional opinionated desktop without tweaking too much.
If you want no "bloat", whatever that is, use some minimal compositor like Sway or something.
Personally, I say: Give me all the bloat, I love it! I love every cool and quality of life feature there is. I have enough space on any desktop computer.
Yes, I understand that, but I don't need all the games and stuff installed by default. Sway is a whole different experience. I use i3 on my older laptop (Macbook A1181 w/ Libreboot) but I personally wouldn't want to use it unless I needed to.
GNOME is a gorgeous desktop environment, I just hate the fact that I have to take a additional 5-10 minutes every install just removing all the stuff I don't need. Is there a debloater script for GNOME that you know of?