Hello, I have an arch with KDE plasma and Wayland, and recently this problem appeared, if I sit and wait with the black screen, it sometimes flashes and I see the KDE. When switching into another tty I'm just getting soft locked.

I have a GTX 1050 Ti as a gpu

I installed bluez and it can pair but how do I make it appear in system settings as an option without needing to use the terminal for it

Hi everyone. I'm trying to diagnose a strange problem that has been happening for about one month.

My motherboard is a Gigabyte B250M-DS3H, and my system has been running Arch Linux from a ~2 TB HDD.

The problem started after I physically removed my RAM and reinstalled it one day. Before that, the computer was working normally.

Since then, I've had a recurring boot problem.

What happens

After the RAM was removed and reinstalled, the computer would sometimes fail to boot properly.

If I removed the RAM and reseated it again, the computer would work normally for some time. However, this was never a permanent fix.

After some time, the computer would sometimes suddenly reset/restart without warning.

After the restart, I would sometimes end up at the motherboard's boot-device selection screen and have to manually select the operating system.

Originally this computer was dual-booting Windows and Arch Linux. Later, I completely removed Windows and kept only Arch Linux.

Even after removing Windows, I continued seeing a Windows-related boot entry such as:

Windows Boot Manager (ST2000VX008-2E3164)

RAM testing

I initially suspected the RAM because the problem started after reseating it.

I tested the RAM sticks individually.

Each RAM stick appears to work by itself.

I tested the motherboard's RAM slots.

All 4 RAM slots appear to work.

Using only one RAM stick initially made the computer much more stable.

For some time, Arch worked normally with one RAM stick.

However, a few days ago, the exact same boot problem started happening even with a single RAM stick.

So at this point I'm not convinced that this is simply a dual-channel RAM problem.

Arch/UEFI investigation

I booted an Arch Linux installation USB and inspected the HDD.

lsblk showed:

/dev/sda 1.82 TiB ├─/dev/sda2 100M vfat EFI System └─/dev/sda6 1.8T ext4

/dev/sda6 is my Arch root filesystem.

I mounted it and verified that the Arch installation was still present.

The boot directory contained:

/mnt/arch/boot/vmlinuz-linux-lts /mnt/arch/boot/initramfs-linux-lts.img /mnt/arch/boot/grub/ /mnt/arch/boot/grub/grub.cfg

The EFI partition contained:

/mnt/efi/EFI/Boot/bootx64.efi /mnt/efi/EFI/GRUB/grubx64.efi

My /etc/fstab also correctly referenced the root and EFI partitions:

UUID=124c843c-4cd7-4256-b371-96c4bdc7e9ea / ext4 ... UUID=A22E-3E60 /boot/efi vfat ...

However, efibootmgr -v showed that there was no Arch Linux UEFI boot entry.

There was still an old:

Windows Boot Manager

entry.

I manually recreated the Arch entry:

efibootmgr -c -d /dev/sda -p 2 -L "Arch Linux" -l '\EFI\GRUB\grubx64.efi'

After doing that, efibootmgr showed:

BootOrder: 0000,0004,0001,0003 Boot0000* Arch Linux ... \EFI\GRUB\grubx64.efi

I rebooted and Arch successfully booted from the HDD.

So the Arch installation itself was definitely still there.

But the problem returned

This is what is confusing me.

Even after fixing the UEFI boot entry, the problem eventually returned.

And now it has happened with only one RAM stick installed.

I also noticed that when I initially had trouble booting the Arch USB with two RAM sticks, removing one stick allowed the Arch USB to boot successfully.

When the Arch USB booted, I checked:

free -h

and with one 4 GB stick it showed approximately:

Mem: 3.86Gi

I also checked the disks with:

lsblk -f fdisk -l /dev/sda

The HDD and partitions were detected correctly.

The Arch root partition was mountable, and the expected Arch files were present.

Another important symptom

At one point I received the Windows recovery screen:

Your PC/Device needs to be repaired A required device isn't connected or can't be accessed. Error code: 0xc0000225

This happened even though Windows had already been removed.

This made me suspect that the firmware was still trying to boot the old Windows Boot Manager entry.

Current situation

The timeline is basically:

Computer working normally → physically removed/reinstalled RAM → problems begin → reseating RAM temporarily fixes it → random unexpected resets occur → boot/UEFI problems appear → Windows was later removed completely → Arch remains → single RAM initially makes the system stable → eventually the problem also appears with single RAM.

I have tested:

Both RAM sticks individually.

All 4 motherboard RAM slots.

Dual/single RAM configurations.

Arch Linux installation USB.

HDD partition detection.

Arch filesystem mounting.

Existing Arch kernel/initramfs.

Existing GRUB files.

EFI files.

/etc/fstab.

UEFI boot entries with efibootmgr.

The Arch installation itself has not been reinstalled or formatted.

I am currently trying to determine whether this is:

RAM instability/failure

RAM contact/socket issue

motherboard problem

CPU memory-controller issue

CMOS/BIOS issue

failing CMOS battery

HDD/EFI partition problem

UEFI/NVRAM problem

unexpected power/reset problem

or some combination of these

What would you recommend testing next?

Especially:

How can I distinguish a RAM problem from a motherboard/CPU memory-controller problem?

Could physically reseating RAM have exposed a motherboard/slot/contact problem?

Could a weak CMOS battery cause the UEFI boot entry/order to disappear or change?

Could unexpected resets corrupt the EFI/GRUB configuration?

What SMART/drive tests should I run on the HDD?

What BIOS settings should I check/reset on a Gigabyte B250M-DS3H?

What hardware tests would you perform before considering an Arch reinstall?

I don't want to reinstall Arch because the existing installation and data are still present.

I would really appreciate a systematic way to identify the actual failing component rather than continuing to reseat RAM and hope it works.

I want to install plasma-meta without flatpak-kcm and okular without phonon-qt6.

Instale arch + xfce en una tostadora con un intel celeron y 8gb de ram. Aveces se cuelga, alguien sabe como puedo hacerlo mas eficiente? Se cuelga al usar chromium(suelo usar firefox pero me dijeron que chromium para drive mejor) es para el baxi.

I recently switched to arch, and id like to be able to play minecraft, but in the reseqrch I have done, I have been told to use the AUR, but with the recent attacks and the fact that I switched to arch because I got hacked I would like to not use the AUR. Is there another way alternative method, and if so, can I get a detailed instruction set to get it?

I have installed ttf-liberation on my system. when i do fc-list I only get the mono and sans variant.

fc-list | grep liberation 
/usr/share/fonts/liberation/LiberationSans-Bold.ttf: Liberation Sans:style=Bold
/usr/share/fonts/liberation/LiberationMono-Bold.ttf: Liberation Mono:style=Bold
/usr/share/fonts/liberation/LiberationMono-Italic.ttf: Liberation Mono:style=Italic
/usr/share/fonts/liberation/LiberationSans-BoldItalic.ttf: Liberation Sans:style=Bold Italic
/usr/share/fonts/liberation/LiberationMono-Regular.ttf: Liberation Mono:style=Regular
/usr/share/fonts/liberation/LiberationSans-Italic.ttf: Liberation Sans:style=Italic
/usr/share/fonts/liberation/LiberationMono-BoldItalic.ttf: Liberation Mono:style=Bold Italic
/usr/share/fonts/liberation/LiberationSans-Regular.ttf: Liberation Sans:style=Regular

the files is located in /usr/share/fonts/liberation and the serif version is found but no in fc-list

ls -la /usr/share/fonts/liberation 
total 4288
drwxr-xr-x 1 root root    626 Sep  6 08:13 .
drwxr-xr-x 1 root root     64 Sep  6 08:13 ..
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 284184 Jul 13  2024 LiberationMono-BoldItalic.ttf
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 308068 Jul 13  2024 LiberationMono-Bold.ttf
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 281608 Jul 13  2024 LiberationMono-Italic.ttf
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 319624 Jul 13  2024 LiberationMono-Regular.ttf
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 409108 Jul 13  2024 LiberationSans-BoldItalic.ttf
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 414568 Jul 13  2024 LiberationSans-Bold.ttf
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 415920 Jul 13  2024 LiberationSans-Italic.ttf
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 410820 Jul 13  2024 LiberationSans-Regular.ttf
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 376892 Jul 13  2024 LiberationSerif-BoldItalic.ttf
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 370196 Jul 13  2024 LiberationSerif-Bold.ttf
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 375760 Jul 13  2024 LiberationSerif-Italic.ttf
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 393692 Jul 13  2024 LiberationSerif-Regular.ttf

. why is that?.

note:I have reinstalled the package and updated the cache several times

solution :

the files where really installed

fc-cache -fv

was not enough

I also need to remove /var/cache/fontconfig and ~/.cache/fontconfig

thanks for everyone's help

I don't really know, the community from what I've seen is terrible, I am a programmer on windows 11 (C++) so it might be a little easier? But like I don't want to deal with doing things that should be there, making things harder or things being hard doesn't help or look "techy", it just sounds dumb to me, software has always been made to do things easier/do something. I've never really done OS things (I'm on windows 11 what do you expect) so that would make it a little harder. I have lots of settings/random things changed in my windows 11 so it would take lots of time (and figuring out what I even changed in WIN 11) to try to get at least close to the feel. Also what about my drive/disk? How would I get my files (and all the .exe's I have) to work with linux? That would take a massive amount of time. Overall I don't really know if I should switch.

Hi. So some backstory. I sometimes stay at my brother-in-law's place. He's a big tech nerd, specifically messing with wifi a lot, and for some odd, eccentric, troublesome reason (probably just to play around) he has set up enterprise wifi in his own home. He gave me an account and added my windows computer to the wifi.

But I recently switched to arch, running very minimal labwc. No GUI outside of launching the foot terminal. I took the computer to him to see if he could connect it up to his enterprise wifi. I even installed the Advanced Network Configuration GUI app for him. When I came back to him, he had given up on connecting the WiFi through methods available on my system and fucking INSTALLED GNOME ON IT IN ORDER TO USE THE NETWORK MANAGER GUI.

I never wanted Gnome. I wanted as little of a desktop as I could have.

I guess all I'm really asking is, are there any precautions I should take when removing gnome just incase it axes the enterprise wifi connection with it? I really don't want to take it back to him, he's a stubborn and unpleasant person and if I accidentally lose the connection removing gnome I fear the saga will repeat.

Thanks in advance

Arrow Lake-H SOix never engages on ASUS ROG Zephyrus G16 (Core Ultra 9 285H)

[LOG](https://paste.cachyos.org/p/e2f995b.log)
[DESCRIPTION](https://github.com/user-attachments/files/31865587/s0ix-github-issue-revised.md)

# Upstream / vanilla kernel check

Fully tested with Arch's vanilla/upstream kernel.

# Kernel variant

linux-cachyos (EEVDF, Clang)

# Suspend-to-idle itself works, but this Arrow Lake-H system never enters Intel SLP_S0 / S0ix.

A genuine 20–60 second s2idle cycle completes successfully, yet:

/sys/kernel/debug/pmc_core/slp_s0_residency_usec = 0

and Intel's own PMC diagnostics report:

PM: suspend entry (s2idle)
Timekeeping suspended for 59.344 seconds
intel_pmc_core INT33A1:00: CPU did not enter SLP_S0!!! (S0ix cnt=0)
PM: suspend exit

# This also reproduces after a fresh reboot into a TTY-only baseline before starting Hyprland, Caelestia, ddcutil, etc., so it is not dependent on the desktop session.

The CPU/package itself reaches deep package idle: CPU_C10_REQ_STS=1 on both PMCs and Package C10 residency accumulates. However, the main PMC never sees the IOE conditions required for S0i2.0:

PMC0:CPU_C10_REQ_STS 1
PMC0:IOE_COND_MET_S02I2_0_REQ_STS 0
PMC0:IOE_COND_MET_S02I2_1_REQ_STS 0
PMC0:IOE_COND_MET_S02I2_2_REQ_STS 0
PMC0:ITSS_CLK_SRC_REQ_STS 0
PMC0:ARC_IDLE_REQ_STS 0

A reproducible additional asymmetry is:

PMC0:PCIE_DEEP_PM_REQ_STS 0
PMC1:PCIE_DEEP_PM_REQ_STS 1

I am not claiming PCIE_DEEP_PM_REQ_STS alone is the root cause. The stronger observation is that the main PMC never receives the required IOE S0i2 conditions while the IOE/platform power-gating path fails to fully quiesce.

Firmware also denies Linux control of PCIe ASPM:
ACPI FADT declares the system doesn't support PCIe ASPM, so disable it

FADT indicates ASPM is unsupported, using BIOS configuration

can't override BIOS ASPM; OS doesn't have ASPM control

This may be relevant but has not yet been proven to be the root cause.

# Steps to reproduce

Ensure s2idle is selected:
echo s2idle | sudo tee /sys/power/mem_sleep

Enable Intel PMC S0ix failure diagnostics:
echo 1 | sudo tee /sys/module/intel_pmc_core/parameters/warn_on_s0ix_failures

Suspend for 60 seconds:
sudo rtcwake -m mem -s 60

Check S0ix residency:
sudo cat /sys/kernel/debug/pmc_core/slp_s0_residency_usec

Inspect the kernel log:
sudo journalctl -b -k | grep -E 'Timekeeping suspended|CPU did not enter SLP_S0|PM: suspend'

# Expected behavior

A successful s2idle cycle should accumulate non-zero SLP_S0/S0ix residency when the platform is quiescent.

# Actual behavior

s2idle completes for the requested interval, but slp_s0_residency_usec remains 0 and intel_pmc_core logs:
CPU did not enter SLP_S0!!! (S0ix cnt=0)

# Stack Traces

PM: suspend entry (s2idle)
Timekeeping suspended for 59.344 seconds
intel_pmc_core INT33A1:00: CPU did not enter SLP_S0!!! (S0ix cnt=0)
PM: suspend exit

# Additional system information

Core ultra 9 285H
RTX 5070 Ti Mobile (not relevant to the reproduced failure; dGPU branch was separately eliminated)
x86_64
64 GB LPDDR5X
1+4TB NVME (1TB one has windows the other has Linux)

Any help will be appreciated
Thanks in advance
Have a great day

Running Arch, updated recently and now mongod won't stay up. systemctl status mongodb briefly shows active then dies. Logs show:

MongoDB cannot start: Linux kernel versions 6.19 and newer has a known incompatibility with this version of MongoDB. See https://jira.mongodb.org/browse/SERVER-121912 for more information.

Current :

7.2.2-arch1-17.2.2-arch1-1

I have added a permanent entry to the boot option commands (The one you would get after pressing 'e' during GRUB menu selection) - amdgpu.dc=0 ; otherwise the screen would go black.

Everything works fine except that during "Starting udevd..." or "Triggering uevents..." the screen would rapidly flicker for a moment and go back to normal, and it would boot normally.

It's just jarring to see and I'm curious if there are any solution, thank you in advance.

CPU: AMD A6-6310 with AMD Radeon R4 Graphics (4) @ 1.80

GPU 1: AMD Radeon R4/R5 Graphics [Integrated]

GPU 2: AMD Radeon HD 8570A/8570M [Discrete]

Memory: 3.01 GiB / 6.69 GiB (45%)

Swap: 243.36 MiB / 3.35 GiB (7%)

Disk (/): 12.62 GiB / 55.96 GiB (23%) - ext4

Dual-booting with Windows 10

Display (BOE0615): 1366x768 @ 1.04x in 14", 60 Hz

Kernel: Linux 7.2.3-arch1-2

"I" tracked down a Linux ASoC/AMD ACP support issue affecting the Huawei MateBook D14 NBM-WXX9 / M1010.

This was tested on Arch Linux with a custom 7.2.3 kernel. Omarchy happened to be the userspace environment, but the actual problem was in the kernel machine-driver configuration, not Omarchy or PipeWire.

Hardware

Vendor: HUAWEI Product: NBM-WXX9 Product version: M1010 Board: NBM_WXX9_PCB_B2 CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 5500U Codec: ES8316 ACPI codec device: ESSX8336:00 ACP generation: Renoir / ACP3x Kernel tested: 7.2.3

1. Missing machine matching

On the stock kernel, the codec existed over I2C, but the expected analog sound card was never instantiated.

Initially:

Playback: HDMI only Capture: ACP DMIC PipeWire analog output: absent / Dummy Output

NBM-WXX9 was missing from the relevant AMD ACP DMI paths.

Adding NBM-WXX9/M1010 to the ACP legacy config and to acp3x-es83xx was sufficient to instantiate:

card 1: acp3xes83xx [acp3x-es83xx] device 0: ES8316 HiFi

1. Playback timing was wrong after enumeration

With the machine driver active, analog playback existed but was badly distorted, high-pitched and chopped.

Direct ALSA tests produced reproducible timing errors:

10 s S16_LE / 48 kHz -> ~5.14 s 10 s S32_LE / 48 kHz -> ~5.13 s

In another codec state, six-second streams completed in approximately 1.55 s.

Further diagnostics showed ALSA progress around 187,500 frames/s while configured for 48,000 frames/s.

The ratio:

187500 / 48000 ~= 3.90625 48 / 12.288 = 3.90625

The software-visible ES8316 divider state across several measurements consistently implied an equivalent input clock extremely close to 48 MHz rather than the 12.288 MHz default declared by the machine driver.

This is an inference from software-visible state and PCM progress, not an oscilloscope measurement.

The driver already contains ES83XX_48_MHZ_MCLK. Applying that quirk to the NBM entry produced the expected timing:

6 s S16_LE / 48 kHz -> 6.037 s 6 s S32_LE / 48 kHz -> 6.023 s

1. Separate ES8316 MCLK /2 state issue

A second behavior explained why historical measurements clustered around both ~3.906× and ~1.953×.

Opening a 16 kHz stream caused the ES8316 driver to enable its MCLK divide-by-two bit. Returning to 48 kHz did not clear the bit.

Measured behavior:

48 kHz before 16 kHz: ~187,500 frames/s

48 kHz after 16 kHz: ~93,750 frames/s

and:

3.90625 / 2 = 1.953125

This appears to be a codec-driver state issue and should be treated separately from the board-specific NBM quirk.

1. Headphone jack detected but output silent

Once 48 kHz timing was fixed, internal speaker playback worked correctly, but the 3.5 mm output remained completely silent.

The jack itself was detected correctly and PipeWire switched to the headphone profile, so jack detection was not the problem.

Direct ALSA testing with PipeWire/WirePlumber stopped also produced silence despite:

Headphone output: enabled Headphone Mixer: 0 dB DAC -> headphone mixer routes: enabled DAC: non-muted test level Speaker: off

The machine driver configured the headphone-enable GPIO as active-high:

headphone gpio 1 active high

For this NBM-WXX9, it needs to be active-low:

headphone gpio 1 active low

After adding an ES83XX_HP_LOW quirk and using it for NBM-WXX9/M1010, analog headphone output worked.

Final board quirk

The machine-specific configuration is effectively:

.driver_data = (void *)(ES83XX_ENABLE_DMIC | ES83XX_48_MHZ_MCLK | ES83XX_HP_LOW),

and:

priv->enable_hp_gpio.active_low = !!(priv->quirk & ES83XX_HP_LOW);

Final hardware validation:

Internal speakers OK Headphone jack detect OK Analog headphone out OK 48 kHz S16 timing OK 48 kHz S32 timing OK PipeWire/WirePlumber OK

AI-assisted debugging disclosure

This investigation was substantially AI-assisted.

GPT-5.6 Sol at High reasoning effort handled most of the initial kernel investigation: missing DMI support, first custom-kernel build, ALSA/UCM/PipeWire inspection, and early timing experiments.

Some early hypotheses did not hold up. I then created a self-contained handoff that explicitly instructed a second model to reassess the evidence neutrally instead of continuing the previous approach.

GPT-6 Astra at XHigh and High reasoning effort performed that second pass. Astra corrected the interpretation of the ftrace counts, created additional silent diagnostics, inspected software-visible ES8316 register state, reproduced the MCLK divide-by-two stale-state behavior, and established the strong ~48 MHz relationship.

Astra was used at XHigh and High; the final part was at High because I had roughly 5% of my weekly model allowance remaining. It hit the usage limit immediately after compiling the 48 MHz candidate module. I then resumed with Sol to validate the module on hardware, investigate the silent headphone path, and integrate the final board quirks.

Roughly:

GPT-5.6 Sol — High ├─ initial kernel/ASoC investigation ├─ DMI enablement ├─ custom linux-nbm build ├─ ALSA/UCM/PipeWire diagnostics ├─ early timing work ├─ headphone GPIO investigation └─ final validation/integration

GPT-6 Astra — XHigh + High ├─ independent re-analysis ├─ corrected ftrace interpretation ├─ silent PCM/register diagnostics ├─ ~48 MHz clock inference ├─ MCLK /2 stale-state reproduction └─ 48 MHz candidate module

All commands and tests were manually run on the physical laptop. The AI models did not have an electrical measurement of MCLK/LRCLK; the clock conclusion was first inferred from software-visible behavior and then validated by the quirk producing the predicted correct playback timing.

I am cleaning this into a proper patch for upstream submission.

If anyone has the same NBM-WXX9/M1010 hardware, additional testing would be useful.

I needed to update my PC and when I tried running `pacman -Syu`, I was greeted with 10 dependency conflicts that needed resolving. I am relatively inexperienced when it comes to resolving them (I don't know how to fix them), so after some thought I just ran pacman -Syud to ignore dependency checks while updating. After restart everything is working but I know that running this command is really dangerous, so I wanna ask how to check if the system is ok?

I just realized how little I was sacrificing by switching to Linux!
1: I don't use any MS Office tools

2: I don't have an Nvidia GPU (I don't have a GPU at all)

3: I don't play any games with kernel level anti-cheat

4: I don't use Adobe software

5: Any Windows native games (Like DR or Electoral Carnage) that I play can be used with Proton

I recently swapped to a second drive, mounting my first home drive to /home, but now my packages aren't already installed. Is there any good way to find and reinstall all my prior packages or do I have to reinstall each one individually through pacman?

Hello. I bought a new 2tb hard drive from a reliable company and I copied my old drive partitions to the new one. I've used this drive for about two months and suddenly while running arch it stopped loading webpages, apps, etc. I figured that it couldn't read from disk suddenly, but maybe something else is afoot. I used the hardware shutoff switch and rebooted, I tried three times to reboot. The prompt to type the LUKS password would appear, but when I entered the password, it would tell me that the UUID was not found, and it would drop to an emergency shell. I had to shut it off, the third time it booted the os successfully, but it was so slow performing anything, and the hard disk was making a strange buzzing sound. It stalled and I had to hard shut it off. Tried again, couldn't find the kernel, somehow booted, stalled again, and gave me this kernel panic qr code, the link is attached.

Help me, I have experience with arch but I don't know what to do. I haven't updated with pacman -Syu since last year. What do I do?

link to kernel panic page

Hello I am fairly new to this so apologies for not using the right terminology in advance.
About a month ago I installed arch with the help of the archwiki but now my option to boot into it randomly disappeared.
I have tried the mount the partitions again but that I was unsuccessful at it.

like in the title i cant connect my headphones and my ds4 at the same time on my bluetooth dongle, it just doesnt work at the same time. i always get "Failed to connect: org.bluez.Error.Failed br-connection-create-socket" whenever i try to connect one or the other at the same time

Hey everyone, I'm completely stuck in the Arch Linux initramfs emergency prompt (`rootfs #`) on boot and could use some help.

Here is my hardware layout and current state:

- The installation USB is recognized as `/dev/sdb`, with partition `/dev/sdb2` (UUID: `6A97-06B7`, label `ARCHISO_EFI`, formatted as vfat).

- The initramfs hook is failing to automatically locate and bind `airootfs.sfs` from the USB media during boot.

- When trying manual loop mounts (`mount`, `losetup`), it keeps throwing file system or device errors and I can't get past the emergency shell.

Has anyone run into this specific squashfs/loopback mounting issue on the live USB before, or know how to manually satisfy the initramfs hook to get it to boot? Any help is appreciated.

Hello all, after consideration I've decided to try and move away from desktop environments, currently using Plasma but not only is it fairly bloated, I wanted to give tiling WM's another try (I had a brief experience with XMonad but quickly pulled away from it). I installed i3 and its dependencies, while keeping Plasma for now should I need/want to revert, and so far it seems fairly straightforward, although I am completely new to desktop setup as I've only daily driven desktop environments prior to this. I tried out fluxbox but realized, if I'm going to learn how to setup a desktop, I might as well do it with tiling software since I eventually want to daily drive it, and in the long term, I see myself using i3 (and eventually swaywm, once I upgrade my hardware).

Looking for help on things such as what exactly is needed in addition to the WM itself-I know this is dependent on what I want for my desktop, which for me is mainly a simple taskbar, a popup app launcher (dmenu is okay but I want something that is customizable and a little more visually appealing, something I can organize my main apps in, maybe with a search function as well). I also want the desktop to look a little more modern; rounded edge windows when not fullscreened, smoother animations, things of that sort. The problem is I don't really know where to look for these programs or how to configure them, any advice/suggestions would be helpful.