ArchCraft, A Unique Blend of Linux and Unixporn

Today, I'm taking a quick first look at the latest release of ArchCraft, an Arch-based Linux distro that features a highly customized openbox session, as well as a highly customized bspwm session. Archcraft is focused on being minimal, lightweight and stunningly beautiful.

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[adityashakya]

Hey DT, Archcraft Developer Here. I would like to point out some things here, The purpose of this comment is, I can tell you what you missed, what you did not do correctly, and how you could have done a better and well deserving review.
Also i hope i can convince some people here who you've misguided.

2:40 Get started, You could have clicked on it.
5:00 Help and Tips opened, You could have opened it.
5:10 Help and Tips is at the top in rofi menu, again you could have opened it.
5:24 No the panel should launch an App Launcher (like on most other DEs) and Right Click on desktop suppose to launch openbox root-menu, that's what and how openbox does it.
5:38 Mouse driven menu system is provide, But the openbox way which is Right Click on the desktop.
6:07 You're supposed to adjust the resolution via openbox menu (preferences > display). I mean you kept complaining how things should have done by openbox menu.
6:30 No, not weird at all. First WMs are supposed to be keyboard focused, So it is on Archcraft. Press the Enter key on pre-selected YES. And Yes... Mouse works as well, Unless you bothered to double click on it (rofi default BTW).
6:44 Yes, It won't. xfsettingsd won't let you. Arandr is there to manage multi-monitors only in Bspwm. In Openbox, you do it the Openbox way (again, preferences > display). You can do that via xfce4-settings as well, But then you manually had to reload polybar and restore nitrogen wallpaper (user don't have to do it manually that why I added that pipemenu in openbox menu)
7:16 And you finally get there... only if you've put some efforts before creating a video.
7:42 Yes, That's why its there. 7:55 It's important, and community knows about that as I've told them many times.
8:22 It's right there, first entry in the menu and I've manually put it on the top so that should be the first thing people open. however it does launch on first start of each WM. You just chose to ignore that.
8:32 all you did is laughed like a J*RK.
8:38 Right in front of your eyes.
8:46 No it won't. It's not a DE. It's a WM.
9:11 Correct, It has a plack/dock so you can manage you windows (ALT+TAB, SUPER+TAB can do that as well), pin your favorite apps to launch them quickly, It does acts like a taskbar too.
9:22 Wrong, Polybar can be used with Any kind of WMs whether it's stacking or tiling. I just choose polybar and not tint2. Also, there's a script for polybar that acts as task manager, polywins. Yes, It's present in Archcraft. And Easy mode uses that as well. Just don't be so self oriented, Other people does prefer other stuff.
9:46 Workspaces are not only important in tiling WMs, Workspaces are important on every Window Managers. How many windows can you open on a single workspace? Workspaces are very important in any WM. Again self oriented.
10:01 Instead of laughing, You could have press ALT+TAB, or you could have click on dock.
10:09 See... You got it back.
10:14 It's not useless, It shows you and let you manage so much important stuff. Volume, brightness, let you connect to network, shows you internet speed, let you quickly play music, switch to workspaces, much more.
10:32 Again, self oriented, Some people prefer other things.
11:39 Yes borders are not used in some themes. But you can still resize with title-bar corners, or with keybinding.
12:16 Windows wallpapers are for window eleven theme present in Archcraft. it does serve a purpose.
13:38 You did not, Well mpd is right in front of you, ncmpcpp is installed as well. And for videos... there's Mplayer installed as well. You should have played a video. Yes VLC is not installed by default, But that doesn't mean it has nothing for multimedia.
14:36 Those entries are auto generated, with gnome menuentires data.
15:39 That is not weird, It's your Damn VM.
16:00 by pressing SUPER KEY, That's how.
16:16 No Bugs, Just a design choice, for better UX. You're gonna love it too once you realize that, 26:38
17:21 Yes, No Flatpaks, No Snaps, Nothing... Not only because it's a minimal system but also Arch community hates snaps, and i do respect that.
18:25 Again, You keep telling about your choices, A developer does not create a Distro for one person's choice and taste. Just because it's not according to you, doesn't mean it's not right or weirdly done.
18:32 It's not more geared towards tiling, Openbox is primary WM of Archraft. You would know it if you bothered to open help and tips and read the About tab.
18:37 Funny, So called WM user tries to use a mouse over and over again. despite knowing it works on pressing Enter.
19:00 There you do again DT, You have it again, Look... There's About, Openbox, Bspwm, Tabs. Everything is right in front of you. What is what, how to operate a WM that is configured by some other person, By keeping the diversity of the users in mind, keybinding... In forms of table so that even a child can understand. do it man.
19:39 So many gusses, but no efforts to read the actual keybindings (it's super+c btw)
21:34 You won't. Same way you could not have guessed that it's just an alias for SUPER KEY. How would you know you did not read anything in help and tips. Wait, 21:12 There it it, line 142, 143... Ksuperkey, yeah. Doing what it suppose to do.
21:54 Agreed, That's why you don't even have to press multiple keys to open it. Just Press SUPER key to open it and again, SUPER key to close it.
22:03 Man I'm laughing...
22:08
22:19 What is... well is was right in front of your old eyes man, 21:12
23:10 BTW the resolution is just an issue with your VM, there's no problem on real hardware, No problem on virtualbox (which most people use i guess).
23:50 Trust me I'm laughing too man, on your stupidity. Usually when you use a WM configured by some other guy, the first thing you do is, you looks at their config structure. so you know, how the wires are connected. But... why would you bother.
24:29 Yes Sir... polybar.sh Eventually.
24:49 Thanks to your shitty VM
26:38 Well I'm glad you do like the SUPER key binding to rofi, you'd love it better if you just, once... once launch help and tips to read the bindings.
27:08 Yes sir, Two very highly customized WMs, and you've not even covered 5% of the customization and configuration. BTW, Archcraft also have pre-customized i3wm, dwm, xmonad, fluxbox, herbstluftwm, berry, which you can install as a package after installing Archcraft. It also has an XFCE and LXDE flavor. And so much more to offer.
27:25 Not Overly, Beyond Overly. You've done a horrible job reviewing Archcraft.

DT, Man... I don't care whether you review Archcraft or not, Just don't do it wrong. The same way you did with InstantOS. 50% of the problems are causes by you stupid VM. I've not asked for an apology video and i won't. It just not right. You are trusted by so many people. Don't misguide them. People pay you to do the job, Do it correctly. Put some efforts man. Archcraft is not for everybody and i've told that to people many times. It requires the knowledge on WMs, Dotfiles, Configs, etc.

Try to do a better job next time. Instead of just downloading ISO and firing it up on your VM, First spend some time with that particular distro, Explore it understand it, then tell people what it is and how it can be used. There's no team in Archcraft. It's build and maintain by me alone and I've done hard work on it. People who know and understand Archcraft, Loves it. And that's the only thing matters for me.

Good Luck for future reviews.

[nul]

Archcraft uses a program called ksuperkey to simulate alt+f1 as super key. And Rofi handles super as keybinding to escape rofi. And that customized polybar is in a script. Simply run "bspbar".

[Axenide]

The "welcome screen" is called "Help and Tips".
Also, in Rofi you have to double-click.
I used Archcraft for two months, but the problem is that it has a VERY specific configuration. In a lot of cases you can't do the "common process" to do things, just like you tried to change the resolution.
Anyways, it's a really good distro, with lots of themes. Basically unixporn without the effort.

[nigelwheat]

This review is like watching a caveman review fire. Trying to comprehend something he just doesn’t understand and being upset when he burns himself.

[kylestubblefield]

I love that you continue to troll the people with the strong and complicated password

[tinatingles]

Archcraft is beautiful and a delight to use. But you HAVE to start out looking at the help & tips to get your bearings as it’s so keyboard-focused. Once you memorize the keybindings you need then it’s super efficient…it is so thoughtfully-configured. But you have to spend a little time with it.

[johnjbateman]

This review didn’t sell me on trying Archcraft. Starting this review, then watching Aditya’s videos on it, reading the GitHub, and then coming back to this to see how DT used it (wrong) sold me. Just what I was looking for! I’m not skilled enough yet (or have enough time to learn) to customize an arch distro, so this is the perfect start.

[rachdaadilla]

Been using it for months, really awesome and speedy. The update also come with features. And the customization is unique, indeed.

[aaryamanmathur]

The thing i love about archcraft is that it is very easy to customize as a noob.. Im a pretty novice linux user and archcraft is the distro which stopped my distro hopping

[zbarczy]

Crunchbang is not dead, it is called Bunsenlabs now, and it is indeed fast and good.

[ujkyujhrbdfgjy]

I've heard of ArchCraft for a while, never gotten deep into it. I'm glad you made this video though, otherwise I would never have considered giving it a chance.

[marsdrums]

Arch on it's own is perfect for tiling window managers I think. When I switched to Arch almost 3 years ago now (February 2020) my main goal was to not run a desktop environment like Cinnamon or MATE or KDE. I wanted something VERY different (to me) running on my machine. I'm glad I did that. I love tiling window managers! Awesome and i3 especially. I live in Awesome pretty much.

[lucasvillani]

I've been using Archcraft for more than half a year now.
It's wonderful for anyone that doesn't have the time to rice your own desktop.
I have some complaints tho:
• Sometimes the theme you selected changes after an update, it's rare but it happens.
• In some themes, the buttons on the bar get off of your screen.
• If you open an app and change the workspace while it's opening, the app will open in the workspace that you're on, and not the one that you were.

Edit: I didn't update to the 2023 version so maybe those problems are already solved.

[Doing_Time]

openbox is nice but rare to find fully implemented/integrated in a finished product; lxde was an oasis of usability in the wandering through the wilderness between kde 3's tragically premature death and tde reaching maturity; I don't actually tolerate any other linux desktop well, but I'm always open to trying and seeing new implementations. Thanks for saving some time for me...

[rhianor]

I've been using Archcraft for almost 3 months now, and is very stable. I use the i3wm.

[dejanzabaljac]

Using Arachlabs for a long while on my 3rd pc, never had any glitches or problems. Tried Archcraft last year on laptop and had a ton of issues.

[Curtis]

Archcraft is my favorite distro and the new version is awesome. My only issue with it is that it's not really a rolling release distro (yet), as you have to reinstall it to use the 2023 version.

[bmmartin]

Is there a way I can install their custom Openbox rice on any other Openbox install that I have, say Ubuntu with OpenBox?

[SleepeJobs]

Also has theme generator, the config templates are easy to extend to other custom themes

[aldosierra]

If you watch closely at 4:54 you can see that the password is "dt" you can even use ", " and "." to go frame by frame and watch, since is vm thats fine, but i didnt know this was a thing with sddm, you can just watch what the user is typing?? is this a bug? or it actually works like that?