This article is intended for those with intermediate knowledge of Linux and programming. Although, keywords will be highlighted and may be hovered over for definitions.

Everybody's workflow is uniquely defined all the way down to things as small as their posture. My workflow is objective for me, but subjective for many others. An artist is only as good as their tools but most people use setups that are suboptimal at best.

By far the most crucial upgrade to my process was making the switch to Linux from Windows. I could spend hours explaining every reason why I prefer to not use Windows, but the most vital reason is that it impedes development. I decided to go all the way into the Linux "deep end" and chose to use Arch as my first distro, which while many hype it up as the hardest distribution to install or use, I find that to be overblown or based on ego.

Since Windows is primarily created for a consumer userbase, much as Apple products are, most of the operating system's features can get in the way of development, as they are aimed at the average user. The major issues that impede development are as follows:

• Shoehorned Updates
• Bad Package Management
• Incompatible Development Software
• Advertisements in the paid OS
• Strict Window Management

Arch solves all of these issues for me. Being able to use pacman along with yay makes installing dependencies and development utilities a matter of seconds, not minutes. Whenever there are important updates, they can be installed without having to reboot the entire system.

I also chose Arch because of its status as a community maintaned distro, which leads it to having no interest in bad practice. I don't have to worry about Arch like many have to about Canonical's Ubuntu.

Finally for window management, there are many tiling window managers to choose from, but due to my current circumstance of having an Nvidia card, I'm forced to use wayland. Which in turn, makes Hyprland the perfect option for me. The closest thing Windows had to something like this was Powertoys' window snapping tool.

This snapping was a good idea, but missing the underlying issue of the window manager still requiring you to manually snap each window into place everytime you want to get your development setup going. For those with a single monitor, being able to have the system automatically split up windows so you may type in one and watch the changes in another should be the standard.

Sometimes what's most efficient is what you're used to, but you shouldn't always limit yourself to what you know.