Arch Linux

JetGum_386

Member

Registered: 2025-04-23

Posts: 19

Re: Why do you use Arch

Once you experience a rolling release, it's difficult to get back to something different. And Arch is the rolling release *par excellence*. Plus, it's stable, it has the AUR, the wonderful Wiki... and it's fun.

joshthetechie

Member

From: USA

Registered: 2025-06-27

Posts: 3

Re: Why do you use Arch

I was introduced to Arch about 13 years ago when I first started using Linux. While I have distro hopped over those 13 years I still find my way back to Arch as I feel more at home here.

Arch is specifically useful for me as I get to customize my installation exactly how I want it, and it has also taught me the inner workings of Linux. (The Arch Wiki is probably the best source of information for most Linux topics and issues.

souldrone

Member

Registered: 2022-10-16

Posts: 3

Re: Why do you use Arch

It works reliably.
Every mistake I make can be fixed by me.
Packages are new and special care is taken for new kernels.

I just don't have to fight with the operating system each day. It works.

athan

Member

From: EU

Registered: 2023-10-03

Posts: 17

Re: Why do you use Arch

I'm curious what attracted people to Arch vs other distros...

I really hate opinioned setups / distros which unfortunately most of today's ones are.
I also strongly prefer recent versions of kernel, system and userland applications and as close to their mainline as possible. Not patched, not modified, not “improved” in any way.
Arch is by no means perfect, but it brings together all of the above and that for me is more important than any of its negatives.

Last edited by athan (2025-07-04 23:40:06)

blinkingbit

Member

Registered: 2023-02-03

Posts: 59

Re: Why do you use Arch

I moved to linux after seeing the capabilities of linux in college. Linux shells are easier to learn and the scripting language of things like powershell were too close to programming, it felt like I were making a java or c# program rather than using a terminal.

I started using kbuntu with xfce (the distro installed in machines around uni), but it felt like a crappy desktop experience. I tried in my own laptop default ubuntu, but it felt sluggish with ram and cpu being wasted in god knows what.

To solve that slugginesh I moved to debian looking for stability and speed, this time I tried to customize a little bit the installation avoiding heavy desktop environments (I returned to xfce basically). This worked only because the change of desktop environment. Here was when I actually realize that all distros are almost the same thing, the only thing differentiating them is the defaults, the package manager and things that the average user don't even care about.

After all that journey I tried arch. I wasn't planning on staying with it. It was like a learning course about linux and after that I thought I would be able to customize one of the "stable ones" to fit my needs. But after trying it, the only bad thing about arch was its bleeding edginess... which wasn't that bad. My system broke, yeah, several times... BUT here is where it comes the fun part: everyone expects that your arch installation will have problems, so everyone its sharing their solutions. If a driver explodes, by the time I suffered it someone has fixed it before me. And the major problems I had were hardware/driver related that could have happen in other OS or distro anyways.

Most of my dramas have been solved by the same people tho. I don't know if my experience would be the same without seth lurking on the forums 24/7 helping people.

After solving all the inconveniences that I had, what I have on my hands? A full customizable system which I mostly understand. Everything running is on purpose and I don't have programs that I don't need.

TL;DR: I use arch because it has the best feedback loop  problem->learning->customization->problem. My system improves with me. That means that it starts as bad as I'm currently are but can improve beyond what default installations have. I think it already is on that stage. I could accomplish the same thing if I moved away from it, but the feedback loop would stop or slow down.