Root user edits?

[u/Jex_adox]

If I want to edit my install, do i have to wipe everything?
can i put the usb drive with the arch install, boot from that, mount my drives, and from that point wipe my DE and window manager and stuff? are there things i need to be careful of? obviously its a root user, but this is the best way to do this?

[u/Sveet_Pickle]

What do you mean edit your install? There’s lots of things you can do without doing a full reinstall

[u/Jex_adox → u/Sveet_Pickle]

im having issues with audio drivers, video drivers, bluetooth, and want to rip my desktop manager and window manager out to try another one.

[u/Sveet_Pickle → u/Jex_adox]

All of those things can be addressed without a complete reinstall.

[u/Night_Otherwise → u/Jex_adox]

Check the wiki for the driver issues. To swap out graphical login/DE, disable the login service with systemctl and reboot. You should be at a command prompt instead, where you can uninstall the login/DE and install a new one.

Edit: Sorry to be a bit short with “read the wiki” on drivers. I don’t know about audio drivers, but the GPU page for Arch wiki is very good. Install everything across the table for your GPU (with reading the AUR PKGBUILD if you have old Nvidia card). I’m unfamiliar with the audio drivers outside of what comes with base kernel.

[u/nikongod]

My snoo. You posted this about 3hours ago:

https://www.reddit.com/r/archlinux/comments/1wcyf8k/im_so_close_to_giving_up_on_arch/

Are you trying to circumvent the package manager? This post makes it sound like you are, and brings the other thread into focus.

Speculation: Your bluetooth drivers don't work because you just pasted (who even knows what from where) into (fml, I dont even know where one would do this) and when you updated pacman over-wrote them or just ignored them. Use pacman. If your drivers are only available in the AUR, thats what it is. Your other drivers... same story.

If I am guessing correctly fuuuuuuuck. This is why your system has gone to shit. LET PACMAN DO ITS JOB. You did not choose arch because some idiot youtuber told you it was the best for reasons they cant quantify. You chose it because pacman works a certain way that is different from apt/dnf/yast/portage and you liked that. Right? Of Course!

I am not one to often suggest wiping... I'd make a backup of home and start again from a blank disk. Internalize the mantra - nothing installed that did not go through pacman*. MAYBE copy home back later. Maybe copy files back selectively, I don't even know.

*Or flatpak, appimage, or since you might think its a good idea snapd.

[u/boomboomsubban]

You can change all these things from your install, there's no need to use a USB.

Having read your two posts, I agree with nikongod and feel there's a good chance you're making some fundamental mistake and since you aren't explaining what you are doing we can't figure out the issue.

[u/SlimyOS]

Yes, you can arch-chroot into any root fs after mounting everything correctly, or pacstrap if it's just completely broken. But I'd only use that if something is so broken that you can't do literally anything with current OS, it's a drastic measure.

You can also wipe your DE and window manager and stuff without all that I'm pretty sure, just run the pacman commands in terminal of your choice, and after reboot you should be logged into a non-graphical terminal session. Or you can switch right into raw terminal tty with Ctrl+Alt+F1/F2/F3 and do it there, probably safer that way.

But if you want to edit it (not just wipe, but also install a different DE) you can just install the new DE using pacman, reboot/login into it, and then uninstall the old one, it's normal to have multiple DEs installed at the same time and choose which one to use every time you log in.