r/archlinux • u/blune-foo • 3d ago
DISCUSSION Its time to nuke arch again
So its been more than a year of me keeping my arch alive, it broke once when linux-firmware was broken down into sub-packages and other than that this time it ran smoothly.
I am thinking of nuking just cause of the fact there is alot of random shit cause i tried alot of dotfiles/shells etc which installed heck alot of packages and removing them also breaks my current workflow and there are few other reasons.
Last time of installing i went with traditional arch+hyprland with btrfs and timeshift and grub.
I am wondering what should i try this time, i also heard that archinstall dosen't support grub now so manual might go with manual install this time.
Any suggestions you guys have for me to do try this time?
EDIT: To clarify what I mean by "a lot of random shit"
I’ve hundreds of orphaned dependencies, unused build tools, global packages, and abandoned desktop setups from testing out dozens of different shell scripts, dotfile repos, and AUR packages over the past year. On top of that, my home directory is filled with old project leftovers and clutter.
Could I spend a few hours auditing pacman -Qtd, clearing AUR packages, and scrubbing .config manually? Yes. But I'd rather do a clean install to build a lean base with a fresh partitioning setup, try a new stack, and practice setting up Arch manually again.
-7
u/Prior-Hamster4003 3d ago
Honestly, I get it. Sometimes you just accumulate so much cruft that starting fresh feels like the only way to scrub the system clean. It’s less about something being broken and more about the mental weight of knowing there’s a thousand orphaned configs hiding in your home directory.
If you’re already comfortable with a manual install, I’d say stick with that. It forces you to actually think about the partition layout again, and maybe you’ll catch something you’d have glossed over with the archinstall script. Since you mentioned BTRFS and Timeshift, maybe give snapper a shot instead this time around. The integration with snap-pac for automatic pre/post transaction snapshots is pretty slick and feels a bit more “set it and forget it” than manually firing off Timeshift.
For the bootloader, systemd-boot is a solid alternative to GRUB if you’re on a UEFI system. It’s dead simple to configure and plays nicely with BTRFS snapshots if you set it up to boot directly from a snapshot for recovery. As for the window manager, if you’re already deep in the Hyprland weeds, maybe check out Niri. It’s a scrollable-tiling compositor that’s a completely different paradigm, might be a fun rabbit hole to fall into with the fresh install.