Although it is partially based on Arch Linux, Artix is a rolling-release distro that comes with a different init system. In fact, there are quite a few choices in this department, namely dinit, runit, s6, and OpenRC. Initially offered with a base command-line version and one with the LXQt-based Calamares installer GUI, Artix later became available in LXDE, XFCE, MATE, Cinnamon and KDE Plasma 5 versions, as well as two unofficial community editions (GTK and Qt). However, this week's update drops the commmunity-lxqt and community-lxde editions.

Labeled 20240819, the aforementioned update also comes with XFCE as the default desktop environment in the community-gtk version. While the community-gtk and community-qt only come with x86_64 ISOs with OpenRC, all the other stable releases which carry the same version number have the four init system choices mentioned earlier. These are all the editions available for download and their sizes:

• base, 922 MB
• cinnamon, 1.8 GB
• community-gtk, 3.6 GB
• community-qt, 3.7 GB
• lxde, 1.7 GB
• lxqt, 1.7 GB
• mate, 1.9 GB
• plasma, 1.8 GB
• xfce, 1.8 GB

For now, Wayland should be considered an experimental feature in the plasma and community-qt editions. Also, the online install option, although shown as a choice during the initial setup process, is still a work-in-progress component and users should pick the offline method when asked to choose.

Artix users and many others involved with Linux will surely enjoy having Daniel J. Barrett's Linux Pocket Guide: Essential Commandsat their side. This guide has already reached its fourth edition and is available in Kindle format for $19.49 or in paperback form, starting at $18.45.