I like how efficient Arch is, in the sense that you have nothing and now you get to pick and choose what you want.

My main desktop I use for full time software development and video editing is from 2014. I've run Windows on it forever. I put Arch on it ~8 months ago.

A full desktop environment I put together based on niri boots at 1.1 GB of memory. Every app I want is installed (tons of CLI tools, various GUI tools, Docker, video editors, browser, etc.) all together comes in at 10 GB of disk total for everything based on what `df -h` says for my root partition.

My machine does have 16 GB of memory so I'm not pressed for memory, but it's nice to know the machine runs on a system designed to not be bloated.

After switching from Windows 10 Pro, it felt like I got a hardware upgrade. Things open faster and generally speaking everything just feels snappier.

As an aside, it was super fun spending a few days setting everything up in a repeatable way which I've now replicated on a number of systems with https://github.com/nickjj/dotfriedrice.