I am currently waiting for my new machine, which I ordered 2 weeks ago. After a lot of research and evaluation, I finally decided to pick the Lenovo T490s. I actually wanted the X1 Carbon, but I was unable to order this machine here in Austria (for whatever reason).

Nevertheless, the T490s is pretty close to the X1, and delivers a decent platform for my new Archlinux installation. While I am waiting for the delivery (expected date end of next week), I am mentally prepare myself with a new and fresh Arch installation.

In order to see, which packages will reside on my new machine, I just checked the list of installed packages on my existing Arch installation. And I was surprised! I have 1376! packages installed over the last 2 years.

$ pacman -Q | sort > packages.txt

This is not inline with my definition of minimalism. I just decided to install the bare minimum system and then add the things which pop-up along the way.

A great article about setting up a base Arch Linux system using encrypted disks can be found here.

Of course, dwm is my preferred (tiled) window manager. With dmenu and Alacritty I am fine to start. Just have a look at my list of software packages I use.