I have 2016 MB Pro with EndeavourOS as well. I can’t say I don’t like it, but I tend to have quite poor luck with my installs. Each time I get to the customization stage, sth breaks a little. Probably should go pure Arch.
Nevertheless, on MacBooks up to 2014 it should be much easier and require less effort.
What? I know it’s a bit chaotic, but can be more readable than bash sometimes imo. Originally chose it because writing stuff for sed was getting too complex at some point and saw suggestions to use Perl for complex regex instead.
Another i3 user here. I slowly transitioned from KDE when switching keyboard layout stopped working as well as some other DE related things.
Ended up writing custom script for switching. Currently implemented with rofi in Perl, bc I like the syntax.
I still like having a bit nice gui, so i have wallpapers, some icons, etc. But I fell in love with terminal along with neovim : ) , soo kinda looking for that middle ground between look, performance and functionality.
Haven’t finished tweaking all the configs to my liking, but after that vanilla Arch is the direction I plan to go, since many things in my current install that I have as well as haven’t customized work a bit questionably or exist for no reason.
And don’t get any Macbook past 2014. 2015 and later kinda ditched normal connectivity and MagSafe. I have 2016 with only 2 C ports and a jack and it is not the nicest experience out there.
Btw, on recent machines the ports are back. I wonder why, …
I can recommend trying it. Used it on my MacOS installation. Free version works great, but I felt the need for some paid features sometimes (more convenient workflow). But you can totally get job done with the free one just fine.
Just a blind guess, but maybe some issue with the makefile?
I consider st a great choice when using i3 or dwm. Customizing it takes time, but RAM usage is what I usually check and in case of st it is comically small.
Currently studying Computer Engineering. I did manage to get most stuff working without needing Windows.
It came usually at the cost of extra work, but I’d say it was worth it. So far I even got to writing makefiles for C++ projects targetting some Atmel chip (Microchip Studio is Windows only). And in some cases I even found better tools than what they privided us with.
Unless you need some very very specific program or run into some wierd constrains you will be fine.