The choice of init system (what actually boots the computer) doesn't matter to much. I blindly picked OpenRC years ago and haven't really regretted it. My impression is it is the least fancy one and most common, but I could be wrong. I've worked with it directly (something you probably won't do), and it's reasonable. Even if you never touch it, it is nice to know that if you had to it wouldn't be horrible.

For all the things you want to do, going with an arch based is the right choice. Way more options for creative software and all the features devs have added in recent years (not a five year old package).

I think all of those desktop environments are good, and there isn't one I'd disrecommend. I do happen to like XFCE because it's light, reasonably customizable and easy to do so.

What's cool is that while you tend to pick a DE (desktop environment) when you pick your instalation ISO, you can trade it out or install multiple with one command line.

To install all of them (not that you would)

sudo su #drop into root privilage
pacman -Syu #always be updated within the last couple days before installing anything
pacman -S xfce4
pacman -S plasma-meta
pacman -S gnome
pacman -S mate
pacman -S cinnamon
pacman -S lxqt

Just pay attention at the end, it will often recommended optional things to install that pair with what you just installed. There is a 10% chance one of them will be needed for the full experience, and it generally doesn't hurt to install them.

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Back to the init system. One nice thing Artix does is it packages base-packages seperate from init packages. Basically the question is do you want it to run on boot or give you something you can run manually. So if you want to run automatically on boot you just find the associated {base}-openrc package and install that.

For example, let's say you wanted to run Deluge.

pacman -Syu
pacman -S deluge

But if you want it to run on boot (always on)

pacman -Syu
pacman -S deluge-openrc (or whatever init system you pick)
rc-update add deluge

That last line is only sometime needed, but not always and usually pacman will remind you at the end if it is needed. It just adds it to the boot list if the first command didn't do that for you already.

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I say go for it. Some people say Artix is too hard. Only one way to find out. Plus.. not really. They are warning of immaginary gremlins. Just go for it.

But when you do have it installed, let me know. I'll help you set up the Arch repos in addition to get more goodies. Probably a good idea for all the media stuff you want to do.

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It's one of the most anti-woke distros there are. They just haven't made any drama inducing statements to that effect, which Lunduke wants because he earns his influence covering drama. They just don't cowtow to any leftist demand made of them and leave it at that. They were ahead of the curve at getting support for xlibre.

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We should ask how you are making your installation thumbdrive. I've had both positive and negative experiences with almost every usb creator in existance. Rufus has mostly given me a good time.

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How are you dividing your hard drive? Are you going to do a full wipe or a duel boot? No matter what distro I'm installing I have the habit of using gparted from within the live OS first before following the OS's installation helper. It's a nice graphical system. And it's just nice avoiding anything auto-magical when setting up the disk. I think most people do that. That would be common when doing any distro. It's not hard, but it would be easier to give you advice if we knew what your target/goal is.

Basically, on the minimal end you are going to want to have one partition with an ext4 format. Whether that's the whole drive or you have other stuff is up to you. On the optional end you can keep windows partitions around, or have a swap partition for expanding your ram (you can also just use a swap file or not worry about it for now). Less important question, are you going to be using an SSD or a hard drive? If SSD, people get opinionated about the swap stuff. Pour one out for Winston's drives. Technically people should be opinionated when using windows but windows doesn't allow you to have opinions.