You are not logged in.

#776 2021-08-15 15:53:09

m6x
Member
From: Germany
Registered: 2020-04-01
Posts: 19

Re: why you choose ArchLinux?

I started my Linux journey in 1998 with SuSE for a little while and then Slackware for a couple of years, then Debian for a couple of years, then Arch from 2005 onward. Arch has remained my favorite desktop distro to this day. On servers, I continue to prefer Debian's legendary stability.

1. Arch keeps it simple on a technical level, that means it's easy to understand and customize for more experienced Linux users
2. pacman, PKGBUILDs and the AUR are all really great. It's maybe the main reason why I switched from Debian to Arch back in the day: I hate the Debian packaging processes. Arch made all of this simple without having meaningful drawbacks, and because Arch made this simple, its user repository has grown massively big. Chances are high that you don't need any other sources except official repos + AUR. Much better than PPAs as well.
3. I like that Arch has little to no extraneous stuff which invokes additional complexity. For example, in a Debian-based system you have tons of non-standard weirdly preconfigured configs, weird extra tools like the "alternatives" system and so on. Since I started using Linux seriously with Slackware Linux, I have grown to like simple stuff where the administrator is able to understand every part of the system quickly and where nothing is really a "black box". In DEB distros, learning everything is harder to achieve because the system is more complex. Also, it means that information from tutorials is harder to transfer to DEB distros, unless they were written specifically for DEB distros. With Arch, software is packaged much closer to the original. Now this doesn't mean that I dislike Debian in general, it just means that I dislike dealing with it on my daily driver desktop system. The areas where Debian shines make it more suitable for servers than for desktops.
4. I dislike RPM distros the most (mostly the same applies as for Debian, in addition to that the RPM-based distros tend to be the most commercial ones as well). When you dislike RPM and DEB based distributions, Arch is an obvious choice
5. I also dislike source-based distros. I have used Crux for a couple of months, and while it was fun, it also became clear that binary package based distros are just much nicer to use in general and that you don't really gain much from compiling everything. You're never going to look at the source in 99.8% of all cases anyway. OK, this point is getting weaker over time due to much faster compile times nowadays. But anyway.
6. I also like the philosophy of Arch in general, and I hope that Arch will always stay true to its philosophy.
7. Despite Arch being quite bleeding-edge, it's still rock solid. If something breaks, it's something minor which can be isolated and resolved quickly. This is thanks to "frequent and small updates" instead of "rare and big updates". With small updates, it's easier to isolate and resolve problems.
8. I almost forgot the Arch Wiki. It's insanely good.

Last edited by m6x (2021-08-15 15:56:47)


int pi = 3;

Offline

#777 2021-08-15 16:44:56

felipos
Member
Registered: 2021-08-14
Posts: 2

Re: why you choose ArchLinux?

it provides binary packages and a nice installation script

Offline

#778 2021-08-16 02:25:43

ectospasm
Member
Registered: 2015-08-28
Posts: 273

Re: why you choose ArchLinux?

m6x wrote:

I started my Linux journey in 1998....

The only difference in your post from my experience are the minor details.  I started with Linux on January 13, 1997, I had to install Slackware for an undergraduate class at the time.  My distro flow on my daily drivers was Slackware->Gentoo->Ubuntu->Debian->Arch.  I left Slackware in 2000 or 2001 because (at the time) it lacked proper package management (Gentoo is what taught me the value in that).  Then, after some compile of basic software either failing or taking two weeks to compile on my dual-Opteron system, I ran screaming from Gentoo to the shiny new thing on the block (Ubuntu, circa 2005).  A coworker suggested I use a real OS (Debian), so I was using that from about 2008 through now.  I started with Arch about 2013 or so because I was tired of Debian being so behind on desktop software versions.

I like Arch for all the same reasons, but what really prompted me to give Arch a try was googling for broken things on Debian.  Invariably I'd find the answers on the Arch Wiki, which were easy enough to adapt for Debian.

I'm retiring my old Debian VPS (my new VPS started as Debian but now runs Arch after I did this and this).  The only remaining Debian system I have is my router.  Just updated to Bullseye yesterday, and like you said I'm tired of all the Debian cruft all over /etc/.  I've tried to keep all my router configuration in git, and every other update prompts me to add stuff to .gitignore, or `git rm --cached` stuff that I shouldn't have put in git in the first place.  I've been reluctant to convert it to Arch because the wife wants Internet all the time.  Even during the Bullseye upgrade our Internet connection went down unexpectedly before I rebooted.

Replacing Debian with Arch may be an entire weekend project.  Guess I'll finally have a use for that UniFi Security Gateway I got a couple of years ago, but I prefer DIY for my equipment.

Offline

#779 2021-08-22 18:55:44

Tharbad
Member
Registered: 2016-02-27
Posts: 268

Re: why you choose ArchLinux?

Wanted a stable ditsro but also got tired of finding ways to solve bugs that were solved in upstream.

Offline

#780 2021-08-23 17:48:51

Flemur
Member
Registered: 2012-05-24
Posts: 72

Re: why you choose ArchLinux?

I've tried a bunch of different linux distros, and ended up coming back to Arch about a year ago (my profile says I registered here in 2012, and IIRC an update broke the OS after I ran it w/o reading the notes about it, so I switched to something else...perhaps nothing or windows).  I was a unix programmer in its heyday, but that was almost entirely designing/coding math algorithms (+Motif GUIs) and I never learned much about the underlying OS, which I still don't know much about except now zsh replaces the old ksh.  Installing unusual software thru the AUR is easier than the other distros' methods.  Edit: I like a light fluxbox desktop rather than a "desktop environment", and that's a lot easier to accomplish with Arch than it is by removing the extra DE stuff which most distros supply. (I recently tried to 'build up' from a base Debian install and had endless nasty problems, unlike with Arch).

Last edited by Flemur (2021-08-23 17:52:40)


"If you do not change direction, you may end up where you are heading." -- L.T.

Offline

#781 2021-10-10 20:51:41

jbonez50
Member
Registered: 2021-09-11
Posts: 7

Re: why you choose ArchLinux?

I use Arch because it is fast, highly customizable and forces me to learn the things I don't know about Linux

Offline

#782 2021-10-10 22:02:44

kjell
Member
From: Norway
Registered: 2012-03-26
Posts: 99

Re: why you choose ArchLinux?

3 main reasons;

* Rolling
* Fast updates.
* Pacman.

Still got server running arch since 2012, not reinstalled once.  Virtually no issues. Same with desktops. Honestly do not know why arch has that "it breaks" reputation.  Perhaps if you update once a year, it will.

Offline

#783 2021-11-13 11:26:04

Ralf
Member
From: Ruhrgebiet
Registered: 2013-03-15
Posts: 44

Re: why you choose ArchLinux?

As more or less already pointed out by other. You cannot chose Arch. Arch does chose you.

Offline

#784 2021-11-13 15:56:12

ectospasm
Member
Registered: 2015-08-28
Posts: 273

Re: why you choose ArchLinux?

I finally converted my DIY router (Intel NUC I bought in 2015) to Arch last month.  I had a day off from work and the wife was out of the house, so it was an ideal time to convert it from Debian.  Now, all of the personal Linux systems I manage are Arch Linux, except for my father's VPS (which runs the family domain, it runs CentOS 7 IIRC). 

I like Arch because as long as you keep it up to date, it runs pretty smoothly.  Every now and again some application will need some tweaking to get functional again.  Most of the time that's because some AUR package or dependency changed its name, or updated to an incompatible version.  This BBS and the IRC channel is quite useful for seeking help.  The best part of Arch is the community, no matter what you're trying to do there's always someone willing to help.

Offline

#785 2021-11-13 20:22:11

Head_on_a_Stick
Member
From: London
Registered: 2014-02-20
Posts: 7,655
Website

Re: why you choose ArchLinux?

Back in Arch thanks to Debian's FF debacle[0]. Bloody Mozilla.

Offline

#786 2021-11-13 20:44:16

ugjka
Member
From: Latvia
Registered: 2014-04-01
Posts: 1,789
Website

Re: why you choose ArchLinux?

Back on Arch because life is easier on Arch


https://ugjka.net
paru > yay | webcord > discord
pacman -S spotify-launcher
mount /dev/disk/by-...

Offline

#787 2021-11-13 20:59:57

Head_on_a_Stick
Member
From: London
Registered: 2014-02-20
Posts: 7,655
Website

Re: why you choose ArchLinux?

Yay! Welcome back ugjka :-)

Offline

#788 2021-11-14 02:37:40

Soultrigger
Member
From: Brazil
Registered: 2021-11-04
Posts: 102

Re: why you choose ArchLinux?

I played with linux distros here and there, just livecd or install to see the state of something (mostly wine and games, it is incredible how great it has gone in the last 2-3 years from the original tests I made. About 3 years ago I decided to have at least a dual boot at all times with Linux and decided to go with Arch after about a week installing many distros and seeing how it goes (when I saw I could do most of what I did in windows, mostly games).

I liked the ideas of Fedora (but somehow it always was hard to setup in my machine, amd drivers always screwed me there and guides never seemed to work hmm). My enterprise uses Opensuse, but I never had lucky either with something that should work out of the box (for being a distro for entreprise with installer and so on). Ubuntu I never liked, and somehow I never liked any debian based distros, but I never tried Debian, so I cant say it is bad. I really liked the Solus project, but also had some issues.

After testing them all I learnt what I liked most, which is bleeding edge rolling distros. Also I learnt that whenever something broke most of the time the right answer was with an Arch user or in the Arch Wiki itself.

When I acessed the wiki to learn more about the distro and saw it principles and history, I saw it was the one I would like most. (Also when the wiki explained something it was technical with enough information to let us understand and speculate, and when things didnt work usually it was I who screwed up haha)

Besides the logo inspired in Star Trek, but I might have gotten that wrong.

I wasted so much time, but now I decided to learn Linux for real, I am deep diving the wiki and I also got some books I plan to do a deep dive.

This is the first time I tried to use the forums and people were very technical and straight to the point in a way that pleases me. I am loooking forward to my relationship with the community.

I also agree 100% with m6x post #776.

Last edited by Soultrigger (2021-11-14 02:40:34)

Offline

#789 2021-11-14 06:27:17

leonavis
Member
From: Bremen, Germany
Registered: 2021-06-27
Posts: 70

Re: why you choose ArchLinux?

When I first tried it, it was more like a challenge to me. People talked about it like it was incredibly difficult to handle. But since I'm actually using it I realize more and more that that's not true; in general, if anything, it's the easiest distribution if you're serious, because everything is saved, easily accessible, in some file, and the Wiki compared to other distros is just awesome. So sure, one needs to put in some work. But I'm far from some IT-programming-demigod, and the OS seems easy enough to handle to me.

I also tried Gentoo, but it seemed to convoluted to me. Debian is a nice choice too, but I was quite shocked by how bad the documentation is - at least in comparison.

I started with Suse in... 2002? 2003? Somewhere around that time. I was quite young, 13 maybe, but already had a lot of hate for Microsoft's shitty ways. It was, however, a jump in the cold water (Why does it want to know what to do with an exe? It's an application, damn it!), and didn't last long. Got serious about it some years later, though not too serious. Still got a small SSD with Win10 in my PC, just in case I need it for some weird Software that just won't work on Arch.

Offline

#790 2021-11-14 10:16:03

Awebb
Member
Registered: 2010-05-06
Posts: 6,268

Re: why you choose ArchLinux?

Head_on_a_Stick wrote:

Back in Arch thanks to Debian's FF debacle[0]. Bloody Mozilla.

ugjka wrote:

Back on Arch because life is easier on Arch

Why am I not surprised? Been there, done that. I never made an announcement here, because I always had some Arch box running in some capacity. It always goes like this:

1. Arch does something I don't like.
2. Another distro does the thing from 1. better than Arch.
3. The other distro does everything else worse than Arch and I remember why I started using Arch in the first place.
4. Arch it is.

Offline

#791 2021-11-14 13:07:07

Ammako
Member
Registered: 2021-07-16
Posts: 267

Re: why you choose ArchLinux?

I've considered OpenSUSE, but at the end of the day, the OBS doesn't beat the AUR.

Offline

#792 2021-11-28 14:30:12

danrees
Member
Registered: 2021-10-10
Posts: 4

Re: why you choose ArchLinux?

Head_on_a_Stick wrote:

Back in Arch thanks to Debian's FF debacle[0]. Bloody Mozilla.

Wow, I had no idea about this. Fortunately I don't really use Firefox on my Debian server and use Arch on my laptop. What is the Debian response to this? It seems crazy to ship a stable release with a version of Firefox that is already out of date and not being maintained.

Offline

#793 2021-11-29 08:43:54

TDodd
Member
Registered: 2021-11-21
Posts: 3

Re: why you choose ArchLinux?

Why? Because I enjoyed the challenge of installing Arch. Because Arch is lean and the user has full control on what gets installed. Also, the memory footprint agrees with my 6 year old laptop. I like having the newest software. I really enjoy learning how to do things myself.

Offline

#794 2021-11-29 17:06:10

Head_on_a_Stick
Member
From: London
Registered: 2014-02-20
Posts: 7,655
Website

Re: why you choose ArchLinux?

danrees wrote:

What is the Debian response to this?

*tumbleweed rolls across stage*

Offline

#795 2021-12-04 01:48:58

plpippen
Member
Registered: 2021-11-27
Posts: 4

Re: why you choose ArchLinux?

I've ran NetBSD on all my machines since the 1.0 release of it. Wanted to try GNU/Linux but loved having control over what's installed plus the wiki is awesome.
I had a laptop that I couldn't install an FSF-endorsed GNU/Linux on so I bought another from libquidity that would and install arch on the current laptop.
I like having control over what's install on my computers/laptops.
It's fun to just tinker and learn as I go along.

Offline

#796 2021-12-25 20:23:04

ganthore
Member
Registered: 2017-12-28
Posts: 5

Re: why you choose ArchLinux?

I used Gentoo for a very, very long time. I was drawn to it for its high customization potential and I'll admit that I got crazy with altering the CFLAGS/LDFLAGS and stripping the kernel down to only what I needed which always ended in disaster at the worst times. I felt like I was in a never-ending loop of shooting myself in the foot. One year, I realized something needed to change when I finished installing OpenOffice, then innocently updated libpng the next day only to find out that I had to rebuild hundreds of packages along with OpenOffice again. That situation was my breaking point where I couldn't stand "compiling my life away" anymore, so I found archlinux, played with it, and after a period of time, made a full switch once I concluded that it encouraged me to maintain a very minimalistic installation without the headaches of unmasking and hacking around ebuilds for hours on end. If I really, really need something bleeding edge, modifying a PKGBUILD from asp or writing my own is very straight forward and I don't have to worry about breaking half my system in the process.

Today, I run archlinux on all of my systems with i3 as my main window manager. When I don't want to be a keyboard warrior, I run plasma with the minimalistic plasma-desktop package installed along with a few extra bells and whistles. It works very well for me and I've never seen a pressing need to change ever since I switched over. Sometimes I'll experiment with other distros in a VM just to see what I might like to mimic in my arch installations.

Note: I also used FreeBSD starting around version 8. I liked the base system and native, legal ZFS features at the time, but custom building/updating ports packages made me feel like I was running into very similar problems I experienced with Gentoo. Updating a package only to run into segfault errors became a weekly problem. If I use systems like that today, I always opt for the binary releases and only custom build a port if it's necessary.

Last edited by ganthore (2021-12-25 20:39:36)

Offline

#797 2021-12-25 20:38:27

Lilitu-Blackstar
Member
Registered: 2021-12-23
Posts: 51

Re: why you choose ArchLinux?

because i cant get away from the aur... its like a gift thats a curse.  oh how i long to run away with gentoo yet the aur is the ring that binds me here

honestly if there were just a more stable version of arch i would be glued there.  as sometimes i do not get to update for weeks or months

it does have the vital boxes ticked, even if its not my favorite

Offline

#798 2021-12-26 08:06:55

CatCatCatCatCatCatCat
Member
Registered: 2021-12-23
Posts: 4

Re: why you choose ArchLinux?

the wiki is very nice. i learn things best by doing them and arch makes you do it yourself a lot of the time, very good for teaching myself.
im not particularly minimalist unlike many who use the distro but i do like that arch starts small and nearly everything on the computer is something i researched and installed myself. i like feeling that i really know my machine. planning to completely make the switch and stop dual booting when i get a new computer.

Offline

#799 2022-01-01 18:08:12

Welt
Member
Registered: 2020-09-04
Posts: 66

Re: why you choose ArchLinux?

ilAli wrote:

Hello. i am a newbie to linux, why you choose ArchLinux?

Large community that is helpful, fully customisable and really great repo which is large and constantly developing never falls behind updates.

Offline

#800 2022-01-01 20:09:31

zpg443
Member
Registered: 2016-12-03
Posts: 271

Re: why you choose ArchLinux?

The rolling release approach, wiki, and the AUR. Three things. Together, they make Arch an easy choice.

Offline

Board footer

Powered by FluxBB