The Official Unofficial 'Arch is Best' Thread

Head_on_a_Stick · 2015-05-08 21:13:05

magnetux wrote:

Debian is in my heart, my Jessie is perfect, stable and configured with love. I can't sleep with an other girl, can I?

I know exactly what you mean: for me, choosing between Arch & Debian is like choosing between two of my children...

The answer to your question is yes -- just use both, they won't mind

scryan · 2015-05-10 06:01:00

No real reason (other then maybe this delicious Swami IPA)....

But thank you Arch, for hands down not only being the best distro/OS, but community I have experienced.
I still don't understand how Arch ends up being easier then Ubuntu... But I can't be the only one here to think so. The downside is I have to be competent , but you have made computing so easy.

Schwertspize · 2015-05-16 05:33:26

I think, The best way is to buy an USB drive with 4 or 8 gb, run a vm, only connect the USB key and just install arch on this pendrive. If you faill, there is only /dev/sda and you lost NOTHING than some time, because if you dont succeed, Just try it again. Read the beginners guide and if you got that install, Just power off the vm and your computer and try booting from that USB dongle. If you can boot and get into an login shell, or into bash, you may try it on your hard disk. Probably even boot from the USB key instead of the image, just Google "arch install scripts" and read the wiki guide.
BTW you can then try arch on the USB stick and if you dont like it, you can just Reboot and format the USB, so give It a try.
Remember that in this case you Cannot install everything on your USB pen drive, The bash system is about 1,5 gb but a desktop might cost much more space then just a bash and the coding tools in base-devel.

Last edited by Schwertspize (2015-05-16 05:37:02)

fsckd · 2015-05-16 18:30:58

Skip the dongle and make an image. Costs less.

Aerial Boundaries · 2015-05-17 03:24:09

It has been teaching me to take matters into my own hands!

I noticed for instance, that I couldn't find any script to pull album art from Cmus for Conky to display, so I spent half the day coding a little bash script (which I plan to upload to cmus' wiki once I've used it enough!)

I never would have dreamt of doing something like that before Arch, having very little knowledge from my days with ubuntu. I know that there are tonnes of people who could have done it in 5 or 10 minutes, but I am damn proud of my self.

Cheers

nomorewindows · 2015-06-08 02:47:25

nomorewindows wrote:

You should've went out and bought one of those 3D printers, 2D printers are getting so passe these days. 3D printers are running Linux onboard!

Oops! Here I am quoting myself, it adds spice to the conversation! I saw one in the store today, and it uses sugar found in field corn for the 3D cartridges. And I thought using corn for ethanol gas, was all they were going to use...
Just as long as I can still power my cheese grater using kerosene, and it runs Arch, everything will remain normal (I guess).

Last edited by nomorewindows (2015-06-08 02:48:29)

QuantumUser · 2015-06-15 21:19:20

-Rolling release is great, I like having up-to-date technology.
-Having to DIY means better understanding. It's nice.
-SPEED. So much speed.
And of course, customizability. Getting to experiment with different DEs and the like is fun and useful (I didn't know my now-favorite DE, LXDE, existed until I started with Arch).

CrazyLinuxNerd · 2015-07-15 17:40:16

I have to admit, Arch really can do a damn good job at being lightweight and customizable. As a long term Fedora/CentOS/RHEL user (10 + a few years more which I will not mention due to the risk of sound old..) and finally getting around to finding a use case for Arch so far it has done the job well.

I wanted a lightweight distribution for my ageing laptop (2008) and I needed something which will not lag with its UI, is not pretending to be a tablet or smartphone and also not feel like a computer that's from the 90s trying to run a modern OS. With many distributions more and more stuff is being strapped on top to add more features and in my opinion, quite a few gimmicks without the ability to remove them without half the OS going with it due to dependencies...

Don't get me wrong, more features and gimmicks can be a good thing for some users however on ageing hardware it is not necessarily a good thing. In my opinion there is no such thing as a best distribution or a perfect distribution each one has it's own quirks, drawbacks, and advantages etc. I simply use the distribution which I feel is best suited to the task I have intended for it.

For my laptop Arch appears to have found its self a new home! Now my laptop is quite old see, and it no longer has the ability to boot operating system discs, it reads them, boots to grub, gets to initializing hardware and.. I/O error sr0... yup it stops... the disc stops spinning entirely regardless of disc used. USB boot does not work either due to no option in BIOS for it. PXE booting is literally the ONLY way to install an operating system on this old beast! I was pleased that Arch provides a .lkrn for booting a PXE installation media from grub which I was able to boot from the existing CentOS 6 (now replaced with Arch). This saved me the trouble of having to re-setup my network to accept PXE again. Although for some users a laptop like this would probably confuse them as to why they cannot install windows... (It BSODs if you try to boot the installation media haha)

As such this laptop now-a-days can only ever run Linux.. but that's cool as I only use Linux anyway and ditched windows entirely long before vista came out.

Once it was up, I'm sitting looking at a console prompt at first I wondered if the media actually failed to boot correctly.. but nope it's supposed to be like that. In a way, I was a little surprised but then I realised you could pretty much do a Gentoo-like install without all the compiling.. so I was happy. I've used Gentoo before so installing Arch brought back a few memories :-). Once I got my LUKS partitioning all setup it came to installing software.. easy peasy and no major compiling.. and it only installed what was really needed. I like that. Really. I do.

So now my laptop has Arch Linux with XFCE and running blazing fast even on this hardware. I'm very impressed and can certainly see a number of good use cases for it and it most likely will stay on my laptop for the foreseeable future. Much like my workstation will remain CentOS for stability purposes (it must be ready 24/7 with absolute minimum maintenance due to work)

Big thanks to all the people involved in Arch Linux, you've done a great job with this distro!

cardinal-biggles · 2015-07-16 00:37:05

Arch is about the best distro I could find for my Linux-only gaming rig. It's funny, a couple years ago I would have gotten laughed at for having a mid-range gaming rig only running on Linux because there were literally no games for it besides a few open source games and some indie games... But now it's actually possible with all the work Valve has done to make gaming on Linux a reality. It's pretty sweet.

2 things about Arch are major draws for a gaming machine. First, it's a rolling release so it gets the latest software. What's great about that is that I can have a bleeding-edge NVIDIA driver without having to mess with xorg-edgers like I had to do in Ubuntu. Second, it has less crap running in the background. Arch only has stuff running in the background that is essential to the software you installed yourself, and nothing else. Distros like Ubuntu run things in the background that aren't really essential to a working system (*cough* apport *cough*) and eat up resources that could be dedicated to gaming. Those two things are essential to get the best performance out of a gaming machine.

Cinnamon, the desktop I run both for daily use and for gaming, isn't exactly the best for gaming, but that's not Arch's fault

Last edited by cardinal-biggles (2015-07-16 00:46:45)

QuantumUser · 2015-07-16 01:04:51

pacman.
I mean, wow. I'm giving Fedora a spin so this is the first time I've used a different package manager since I started with Arch, and dnf just feels crappy to use from the terminal (the GUI is fine, but why would I want to use a GUI?). It's also slow. And the dependency management sucks (it just tried to install 30 or 40 dependencies that were installed by default, then threw and error and refused to install what I was actually trying to install because those were already installed).

Last edited by QuantumUser (2015-07-16 01:05:55)

sesese9 · 2015-07-16 15:56:03

I <3 Pacman...I almost was using pacman commands in Ubuntu on apt-get. Now, I truly love pacman!

QuantumUser · 2015-07-17 05:40:23

Yeah, I put in "apt-get -S" a couple of times. It feels much more natural somehow.

In other awesomeness: Lightweight. I got a full install running on a flash drive easily, using up about 1GB of space (which is mostly Openbox, Xorg and Firefox). That would never work with Ubuntu or the like (I think a base Ubuntu install is... 3GB or so?).

Last edited by QuantumUser (2015-07-17 05:43:00)

Alkaiser · 2015-08-24 00:59:23

I've tried a couple other distros, including Ubuntu which used to be a really good option for me years ago. I then moved to Arch, and to be honest I just love being on this distro. I'm a huge fan of customization, speed, and such. I knew that getting into Arch means using this site a lot w/ some googling; can't forget that getting on this distro also means taking care of it as if it were your baby. Installing Arch along with some desktop eye-candy (I use Cinnamon) on a fresh HDD evokes a feeling like no other.

Plus, the name Arch just sounds highly attractive and awesome!

Last edited by Alkaiser (2015-08-24 01:00:44)

JohnBobSmith · 2015-08-24 09:54:59

When I first was trying out Arch, I didn't know jack all about what I was getting into. Now that I have learned, grown, and matured with using varying Linux distros for some time, I felt quite comfortable installing Arch as a primary OS. In fact, the minimalistic aproach suits me exactly. I have always used the XFCE desktop where possible, and building my own desktop from the ground up is very rewarding. I get to keep my xfce panel, use feh for the wallpaper, i3 as the window manager, and experience a web browser I had previously never heard of, midori. Arch is truly incredible.

Through my loss of Linux Mint as my primary OS, I get to experience the joy of using Arch instead. As one door closes, another one opens they say.

Heres to possiblities and success. Cheers!

yuannan · 2015-08-30 18:34:20

,

Last edited by yuannan (2023-01-06 04:34:10)

Oblivion7 · 2015-09-02 12:24:09

Arch was the first distro that I EVER used (as crazy as that sounds) and no matter what I ALWAYS come back idk why but I just truly love this distro. About 6 years ago I got tired of the bs windows was giving me so i was like screw this there must be another way and that's how I found Linux (I did know there was a thing called linux but I had no idea what it was) I learned there was many distros I could use but none of them seemed to be my cup of tea. I wanted a distro I could make my own and have no bloatware on it (one of the reasons I ditched windows sorta..) eventually I found arch I knew it had a learning curve but I was willing to give it a try. I belive it took me 2-3 tries to get it working I remember partitioning had me so confused.. good times good times.. but then i got an arch install working and setup xfce and all that jazz and it was fantastic and I never had so much fun using an OS. About a year later I wanted to try some others just to see what they had such as openSUSE, Ububntu , Mint and Debian. I remeber I lasted about 2 days on Ubuntu that was the longest out of them all now I have done alot of bouncing after that I mean I even gave manjaro a shot (not bashing Manjaro its an awesome little OS) and guess what I came crawling back to begging for forgiveness, you guessed it. Arch. It seems that arch just does it for me and it does it very well. Now I do dual boot with windows 10 but that is because I play video games ALOT and sadly game support for Linux just isn't there yet, maybe one day that will change but for now that's just how it is so now I am a slave to the Microsoft empire as windows 10 is stealing and recording my personal info (it even does it if you opt out) and guess what you cant escape it they gave it to all versions of windows hidden in a "essential" update. So yeah Arch was my first and (probably) will be my last, peace~

EDIT: I think when im felling adventurous and want to try other Os's ill just use good ole virtualbox from now on
EDIT#2: How about you guys? Do you find yourself always coming back to arch?

-- mod edit: merged with "Arch is Best" thread. Trilby --

Last edited by Trilby (2015-09-02 13:19:32)

digitally404 · 2015-09-13 16:13:36

I said it once (I think), but I'll say it again.

A big thank you to all the arch linux contributors out there. They have done a fantastic job maintaining an operating system that, in my opinion, has become the best linux distribution for desktop users.

I've learned more about linux by using arch than I have about any other OS in my past life. Mainly it's due to the fantastic community and the excellent wiki. Thank you to those contirbutors.

I've been arch'ing about two years now without any major issues. Some hiccups here and there, but that's to be expected for any Operating system (linux, mac, windows).

Thanks again everyone, it's been a real pleasure to use this OS, and I will continue to use and enjoy it for many years to come. Excuse me, It's time for me to donate.

MatejLach · 2015-09-13 23:30:41

Echoing @digitally404, thanks Arch devs for all the years of service and I'll also add my thanks to all the upstream projects; The GNOME Developers, systemd devs, ffmpeg, Linux kernel maintainers as well as tons of others and perhaps most importantly to The GNU Project, because without gcc, glibc, coreutils and the GPL none of this would be possible.

Last edited by MatejLach (2015-09-14 00:59:35)

CaptainKnots · 2015-11-16 19:36:01

I started out with Slackware and then Red Hat back in the 1990s, and then naturally moved on to Fedora Core. After that, I went to Debian and then Ubuntu, and then back to Fedora. After awhile I got tired of all the bloat that was starting to appear in those distros more and more. A friend told me about Arch and I jumped right on it. I broke my install a few times messing around with way too much, so I got annoyed and went back to Fedora. About two years ago I got tired of that whole scene yet again and decided to jump head first into Arch and stay there no matter what. I'm still on the Fedora KDE bug team, but I've been happily using Arch since then. It fits my needs for a distribution, and rolling release is really what I always wanted. Gentoo was a good toy for a bit, but Arch just works for me much better. I know that Arch isn't for everyone, and I don't knock the usefulness of other distributions, but for my computing needs, Arch is the perfect fit and I love every minute of it. [testing] is love, [testing] is life. I even get daring now and then and play russian roulette with 'yaourt -Syyuua --devel --aur --noconfirm' which I have aliased to 'yolo' in zsh. Hey, gotta live life on the edge sometimes, right?

Last edited by CaptainKnots (2015-11-16 19:36:27)

tyrannis · 2015-12-03 08:04:30

I've only been using Linux for about 5 months, I was drawn to it after reading about switching to Linux from Windows 8 in Maximum PC. They recommended Ubuntu, but I know enough to do my own research and settled on Linux Mint for my first distro. While I enjoyed it I was interested in using a more "advanced" distro, i.e. one that would require me to learn more about how a system works, and also I was interested in building my own system from scratch. After reading about other distros online, and briefly trying Korora, I came upon Arch and read about the Arch way, and it really resonated with me, so after getting my main machine fixed I did my first Arch install about a month ago, and I've loved it ever since.

Last edited by tyrannis (2015-12-04 15:41:40)

smalhan · 2015-12-04 06:08:50

Went from windows to osx to ubuntu and finally at Arch, never been happier !

tjcurra2 · 2015-12-06 02:00:18

Arch is amazing! I'm running it on an early 2008 Mac Pro tower and it's by far the best distro I've found for a mac. I still have a small OSX partition available but I never use it anymore. I have also learned so much since switching over thanks to all the amazing people who have contributed to the Wiki! I am a student studying genetics and bioinformatics, and I am much more productive on my Arch system while studying thanks an efficient customized DE. This is also the first semester that I've exclusively used open source office software for every project, paper, and lab report I have had to produce. Big Thanks to everyone who has contributed to this excellent distro!

jcjordyn120 · 2015-12-11 23:41:19

I started using arch back in 2014,
I like pacman and the simplicity.

blainester · 2015-12-11 23:46:30

The best reason of course; I get to tell everyone that I run Arch.

More seriously though, I have the least amount of issues on Arch than any other distro. (Excluding Debian when I need a server) Things don't break very often and when they do, I can either rollback the offending package, or hop on the forums and since everyone is running similiar packages the problem is usually already asked and probably solved on the forums. Compare this to Googling for problems on Ubuntu and wading through all the crap.

Another thing I like is that packages are super easy to make. If something doesn't exist on the AUR, it's super simple to make your own PKGBUILD and install it like any other package which can be upgraded or cleanly installed later.

jasonwryan · 2015-12-12 00:24:14

Merging with the Arch is the Best thread...

Arch Linux

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