A minimal, clean Artix Linux (dinit) install whose only job is: boot into labwc (Wayland stackable compositor, Openbox-style), present Noctalia v5 as the desktop shell, and run Steam + Lutris + Faugus with the RTX 3090 driver correct. Dual-booted on a separate disk; Bazzite stays untouched.

Two scripts. install.sh runs from the live ISO and produces a bootable Artix on disk 2. bootstrap.sh runs after first boot and turns that bare Artix into labwc + Noctalia v5 + Steam. Both are idempotent. Re-running them IS your recovery story (docs/adr/0001).

The path from a blank disk to a working labwc desktop, in order. Skip nothing — the disk-safety pattern is load-bearing.

• Bazzite's disk physically unplugged (NVMe: unscrew; SATA: pull the data cable). The installer can only wipe what it can see.
• BIOS confirms disk 1 is gone (Setup → Storage).
• Ethernet cable plugged into disk 2's box (Wi-Fi works too via nmtui, but Ethernet on a stationary gaming desktop is one less thing).
• USB stick, ≥4 GB, ready to flash.

Get the weekly artix-base-dinit-YYYYMMDD-x86_64.iso from https://artixlinux.org/download.php — the "Weekly ISO images" block, base row. The stable ISO is known to fail for scripted installs (see feribsd/artix-install's notes); the weekly is the supported path.

Flash to USB:

# Identify the USB device (NOT a real disk!)
lsblk -d -o NAME,SIZE,MODEL
sudo dd if=artix-base-dinit-*.iso of=/dev/sdX bs=4M status=progress oflag=sync

Or use Ventoy / Balena Etcher / Rufus / Popsicle — anything that does a bit-exact USB flash.

• Tap the firmware boot-menu key (F11/F12/Esc — board-specific) and pick the USB.
• Live ISO logs you in as root / artix on tty1.
• If your keymap isn't US: loadkeys no-latin1 (or whichever).
• Network: plug Ethernet (DHCP picks up automatically) or nmtui for Wi-Fi. Confirm: ping -c1 artixlinux.org.

pacman -Sy --noconfirm git
git clone https://github.com/Atbice/artix.git /root/artix
cd /root/artix

# Inspect what's about to happen — never run a destructive script blind:
./install.sh --help
lsblk -d -o NAME,SIZE,MODEL,SERIAL   # confirm the target disk

# Then go:
./install.sh --disk /dev/nvme1n1

What install.sh does, in order:

1. Guards: refuses if not Artix live ISO; warns if more than one disk visible.
2. Prints a plan summary (disk, partitions, init, kernels, microcode, networking, swap, bootloader, hostname/user/locale) and waits for you to type INSTALL.
3. Prompts for root + user passwords (via stty -echo — never on argv, never written to disk).
4. Partitions the target disk: 512 M EFI (FAT32) + remainder ext4. Single root, no /home split, no Btrfs subvolumes. See docs/adr/0001-ext4-no-snapshots.md for the trade.
5. basestraps: base base-devel dinit dinit-rc seatd seatd-dinit turnstile turnstile-dinit linux linux-lts linux-firmware amd-ucode networkmanager networkmanager-dinit zramen zramen-dinit grub efibootmgr git nano.
6. Chroot config: timezone, locale, vconsole keymap, hostname, /etc/hosts, root + user passwords, sudoers %wheel, pacman ergonomics (ParallelDownloads=5, Color, ILoveCandy), enables dbus seatd turnstile NetworkManager zramen via dinitctl --offline enable, installs GRUB --removable on the target disk's ESP, grub-mkconfig.
7. Unmounts everything.

./install.sh --help prints the full flag list. --dry-run prints every command without touching state. --yes skips the typed confirmation (for fully automated rebuilds).

reboot and remove the USB. Power off. Reconnect Bazzite's disk. Power back on, tap the firmware boot menu, pick Artix. You land in a TTY. Log in as your new user.

Quick sanity checks:

ip a                 # Ethernet got an address (NetworkManager up)
free -h              # zram shown as Swap
uname -r             # linux mainline; pick linux-lts from GRUB to verify it boots too

If either kernel fails to boot or nvidia-dkms wedges later, hold the firmware boot key and pick Bazzite — that's your fallback while you fix Artix (or re-run install.sh + bootstrap.sh to rebuild).

sudo pacman -S git    # already there, but harmless
git clone https://github.com/Atbice/artix.git ~/artix && cd ~/artix
./bootstrap.sh        # multilib → pacman pkgs → nvidia config → mkinitcpio → dinit services → paru → AUR
sudo reboot

Flags: --no-aur (skip paru + AUR — Noctalia not installed) · --no-update · --cachyos (optional layer, see docs/06-cachyos-layer.md) · --dry-run.

After reboot: tuigreet on tty1 → log in → labwc session, Noctalia v5 auto-starts via the noctalia & line in ~/.config/labwc/autostart (sample in docs/02-nvidia-labwc.md).

nvidia-smi                                            # 3090 visible
cat /sys/module/nvidia_drm/parameters/modeset         # → Y
echo $XDG_SESSION_TYPE                                # → wayland
echo $XDG_CURRENT_DESKTOP                             # → labwc

Steam → log in → Settings → Compatibility → enable Steam Play for all titles. Faugus and Lutris are in Noctalia's app launcher.

VRR + tearing: <adaptiveSync>fullscreen</adaptiveSync> and <allowTearing>fullscreen</allowTearing> in ~/.config/labwc/rc.xml.

A second pass that adds the CachyOS repos (x86-64-v3 optimized rebuilds), switches to linux-cachyos, and pulls in ananicy-cpp + CachyOS's ananicy rules. Run the base bootstrap first and confirm everything works, then:

./bootstrap.sh --cachyos

Honest tradeoffs and the parts that need manual porting (sysctl / udev / cpu-governor / scx-scheds) live in docs/06-cachyos-layer.md.

• No HDR under labwc. We're explicit: you don't use it, so this isn't a loss. If you ever want HDR for a specific game, run it through gamescope (pkgs/pacman.txt has it commented; docs/04 explains).
• VRR + tearing work — <adaptiveSync>fullscreen</adaptiveSync> and <allowTearing>fullscreen</allowTearing> in ~/.config/labwc/rc.xml (see docs/02-nvidia-labwc.md).
• Noctalia v5 is the load-bearing risk. It's pre-alpha upstream ("expect breaking configuration and behavior changes"). bootstrap.sh is built to re-fetch + rebuild idempotently, but if upstream pushes a bad commit you can pin to a known-good SHA — see docs/05-maintenance.md. The conservative fallback is noctalia-shell v4 from AUR, swappable in a few minutes.

• Btrfs + snapshot rollback (evaluated 2026-05): rejected. ext4 picked for raw performance; rollback story is "boot Bazzite or re-run install.sh" instead. Details in docs/adr/0001-ext4-no-snapshots.md.
• Stay on Void Linux (evaluated 2026-05-22): rejected — Quickshell is not in void-packages, source-builds on a rolling distro are fragile, unofficial single-maintainer xbps repos are the COSMIC-trap. (We've since dropped Quickshell entirely in favor of Noctalia v5's native-Wayland rewrite, but the Void packaging argument still applies to the v5 build-dep chain.)
• niri (evaluated 2026-05-22, flipped 2026-05-24): the original pick. Scrollable-tiling Rust/smithay compositor. Flipped to labwc for the more conventional floating+tiling workflow and the larger wlroots ecosystem. niri stays a perfectly valid alternative if scrollable-tiling clicks for you later.
• Noctalia v4 (AUR) (evaluated 2026-05-24): the conservative path. Stable QML/Quickshell shell at v4.7.7. We chose v5 instead for the native-Wayland future-proofing — but if v5 churn becomes painful, swapping back to v4 is editing pkgs/aur.txt to add quickshell noctalia-shell and reverting the source-build section in bootstrap.sh.
• elogind (evaluated 2026-05-24): rejected on systemd-DNA grounds. elogind is technically a standalone daemon and works perfectly well on Artix, but its source lineage is systemd's src/login/ (forked
  • maintained independently since ~2015). We picked the from-scratch combo turnstile+seatd instead. Trade: turnstile is pre-1.0 and upstream-quiet (~7 months since last commit). Swap-back is 5 lines in install.sh + pkgs/pacman.txt — see docs/adr/0002.
• COSMIC desktop (evaluated 2026-05): still deferred. labwc + Noctalia scratch the "modern non-KDE Wayland" itch. Revisit when its NVIDIA + gaming story is solid (Epoch 2/3, ~2027).
• runit / OpenRC / s6 (other Artix init systems): dinit picked. runit is dead-stable but unordered; OpenRC is shell-script-heavy and slowest boot; s6 has the steepest learning curve. dinit wins on dependency ordering, declarative files, and active upstream.

README.md                       this file
docs/
  01-install-artix.md           Artix dinit install, dual-boot, two ESPs, ext4
  02-nvidia-labwc.md            RTX 3090 + labwc + greetd + dinit services
  03-shell-noctalia.md          Noctalia v5 source build, autostart, fonts/portals
  04-gaming.md                  native Steam + Lutris + Faugus (AUR), gamemode, mangohud
  05-maintenance.md             rolling-release survival (pacman + paru + linux-lts fallback)
  06-cachyos-layer.md           OPTIONAL: x86-64-v3 rebuilds + linux-cachyos + ananicy
  adr/
    0001-ext4-no-snapshots.md   why ext4 over Btrfs (rollback strategy)
pkgs/
  pacman.txt                    official-repo packages (base+desktop+nvidia+gaming+fonts)
  aur.txt                       faugus-launcher (+ commented extras). Noctalia v5 not on AUR — source-built by bootstrap.sh.
  cachyos.txt                   OPTIONAL: linux-cachyos + ananicy-cpp + cachyos rules
etc/
  modprobe.d/nvidia.conf        KMS + suspend memory preservation
  mkinitcpio.conf.d/nvidia.conf nvidia modules baked into initramfs
  greetd/config.toml            tuigreet → labwc on tty1
services.txt                    dinit services to enable via `dinitctl enable`
install.sh                      live-ISO installer (partition + ext4 + basestrap + chroot config + GRUB)
bootstrap.sh                    post-install provisioner (multilib + pacman + paru + AUR + services)

Note on the repo name: the directory used to be called void for git-history continuity from the Void pivot; the contents are Artix now. Paths like /var/home/bice/dev/void are intentional if you still see them.