the JWM ISO lets me install Xfce and the whole system via a terminal-based lite-GUI, right?
correct
Am I able to skip having a display manager entirely since I prefer autologin?
correct but the XFCE template will install a DM by default. As being said, it's easy to remove it when the system is fully installed.
I'm also uncertain how does Pacopts and Cower differ in syntax and operation from yay, and how system upgrades and packages are handled.
if you're accustomed to use yay continue to use it. Pacopts is not suitable to yay(or yaourt or whatever the AUR helper). It's a very small program and it will not grow to provide functionalities as yay.
PipeWire is probably out too as it depends heavily on GNOME, and I'm not sure if an ALSA-only GUI mixer like PulseAudio Mixer's exists, short of terminal-based alsamixer.
Pipewire, pulseaudio, pavucontrol,... is provided and work well. They are built without the support of systemd or libsystemd
Obarun uses Zsh, but is this irrelevant as I don't write Zsh (or even Bash) scripts?
zsh is the shell by default, but bash is provided too and a lot of script running under obarun are made in Bash. Also, you can switch your shell to bash if you prefer. What you can do on Arch, you can do here, except the systemd part.
The Optimus Manager package from AUR might be out too as it needs a SystemD service
a lot of package on Arch provide the systemd service but this doesn't mean that the daemon itself need systemd to run properly. As far as the daemon is build without the support of systemd you can "translate" the systemd service to a 66 frontend file.
but maybe Bumblebee or others still works
to be honest, never used, but i know user having nvidia card and running obarun without specific issue. To be sure you need to test obarun with your hardware.
How does 66 simplify life compared to Artix's non-66 S6 init/service management?
The answer risk to be long :). The short answer is:
- One file to handle all type of s6/s6-rc service.
- Friendly API command to handle service (66-{enable,disable}, 66-{start,stop})
- Friendly API command to see status of a service (and fully detailed) (66-inservice).
- User service management
- Instantiated service
- Configuration file service management and API to change it easily(66-env)
- ...
To name a few without talking about the technical view....
The vast majority of Artix user are not aware about this:
https://gitea.artixlinux.org/artix/s6-scripts/src/branch/master/README.md