@Gh0st
Yes it does eventually, but it takes very long (around a few minutes, almost as long as a harddrive booting into Windows. I'm using an nvme so this is not a storage speed problem (also that Linux boots faster in general than Windows).
However even if you waited for it. It's not worth it, a lot of programs do not launch and are in Disk Sleep status(htop) also that you can't turn off the pc. You will have to do a hardware reset/power-off.
Yes, either downgrade the kernel or install another kernel (lts).
As for how I dealt with the downgrading:
1.) I downloaded the official release. The weekly release uses the same kernel(atleast the one I had gotten) so you might encounter the same problems again making it a waste of time. (Tip: use xfce or other live images for copy paste functionality and can also visit both Artix and Arch Linux wiki for references.)
2.) I then ran cryptsetup benchmark
to load the encryption algorithms.
3.) Decrypted the encrypted LUKS partition, then mounted the partitions. (I'm not sure on how I mounted the lvms if others know please pitch in for me )
4.) After all is mounted. I then chroot into the system.
5.) Uninstalled the current kernel: pacman -Rs linux-zen linux-zen-headers
6.) then updated grub: grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg
7.) cd into /var/cache/pacman/pkg/
8.) looked for the latest 6.8 kernel via: ls linux-zen-*6.8*
.
Then installed it with: pacman -U linux-zen-6.8.9.zen1-2-x86_64.pkg.tar.zst linux-zen-headers-6.8.9.zen1-2-x86_64.pkg.tar.zst
More on info: https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Downgrading_packages#Downgrading_the_kernel
9.) Don't forget to add linux and linux-headers to the IgnorePkg list line in /etc/pacman.conf:
IgnorePkg = linux-zen linux-zen-headers
10.) set those files immutable just in case: chattr +i linux-zen-*6.8*
11.) Then I installed the lts kernel (linux-lts linux-lts-headers). (I also installed the standard kernel (linux linux-headers) for testing reasons. Up to you)
12.) don't forget to update grub(again): grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg
13.) Reboot. And it works as intended.
@Dudemanguy have not tried it but I'll test it later with the standard kernel 6.9 (Though even if that did work, I think the problems I've listed above will still occur)