The Official Unofficial 'Arch is Best' Thread

jaitt · 2023-05-09 10:04:25

I've only used Fedora and Arch, and I think the Arch repo has much more software than Fedora's. Also, you can almost find any software in the AUR.

RandomRanger · 2023-07-12 13:30:29

Four weeks ago I switch from Windows to Mint, and two weeks ago I switched from Mint to Arch with the main goal of both to get more control over my device so I can squeeze out more battery life. In my first 2 weeks of using arch I've gotten my power usage down to around 7W which equates to a 9hr battery life, vs the 2ish hours of battery I was getting on windows (thanks to Optimus being broken again, and whatever else goes on in the background). I'm incredibly excited about my Arch install, and I simply wanted to share :-)

Last edited by RandomRanger (2023-07-12 13:31:13)

Caue · 2023-07-30 23:35:07

Nice!!

I started like this, not because of the battery, but to have more control of my system. in my case, I did this path, Windows > Ubuntu > Arch.

Best choice I've made!

2ManyDogs · 2023-07-31 11:09:31

Threads merged.

cgb_spender · 2024-01-20 21:12:45

I started with Ubuntu several years ago, got disappointed in version 22.04, switched to Debian, it's great but does not work well on my newest superpowerful PC. Arch works great on all my PCs, both old and new ones! Fedora and Fedora-derived distros failed to install on most of my computers, I am guessing that these distros do not support new hardware and many old hardware configurations.

Last edited by cgb_spender (2024-01-22 11:39:07)

ectospasm · 2024-02-19 00:11:46

I was introduced to Linux on January 13, 1997[1], in a programming class. The professor called it UNIX, but it was actually Slackware, made available to the class over the campus CSLIP (19.2Kbps, all you needed was a RS232 port, baby! NO MODEM!). He had various 1.44MiB disk sets available; I think I only installed the main OS set and maybe the network disk set (I don't think I had enough space for the X set). Using FIPS, I resized my 540MB FAT32 (FAT16?) partition, and set up a 100MiB ext2 partition (I guess, don't really remember what filesystem it was). I was in heaven, having cut my teeth on MS/DOS and was dragged kicking and screaming into the GUI world with Windows 3.1 (and later Windows for Workgroups 3.11).

Sometime in 2000 I decided to give Linux From Scratch (LFS) a try, but failed miserably when I didn't heed the warnings and tried more up-to-date versions of the software it has you compile. Somehow I stumbled on Gentoo (which is essentially like LFS with a decent package manager), and used it from 2000-2005.

In 2005 I got really tired of big packages taking upwards of a week to compile, so I ran screaming to Ubuntu since I knew it would be that different. I got a job at a company whose claim to fame was a notable open source project that primarily ran on Linux, and a coworker convinced me to try Debian. I was much happier with the switch, and I was on Debian from 2007-2021.

I've been using Arch since 2015, and after landing on the Arch Wiki most times when trying to fix something in Debian[2] I decided to install it on my daily driver. No better way to force yourself to learn a new OS, right? Over time, I found myself increasingly annoyed with the Debian way of doing things, with bespoke patches and configuration utilities, not to mention Debian Stable[3] is always woefully out of date. I finally replaced my last Debian machine (a DIY router) with Arch in 2021, and haven't been happier!

As you can see, I haven't done a lot of distro hopping, and I typically stick to a distro for a good while before I give up and move onto something else. I have been pretty much reliant on myself for configuring things for a long time; Arch is perfect for this, and never gets in the way. If I were to try something new, it wouldn't be on my daily driver; I'd probably install NixOS, because it's that different, but I have no real plans to do that.

[1] The first words out of the professor's mouth were,

DrLynnAbbot wrote:

"January 12, 1997, HAL-9000 goes online." (the first line of the novel 2001: A Space Odyssey)

For the longest time I thought the first class was that day, but January 12, 1997 was a Sunday, so I wasn't in class. I think I was in a Monday, Wednesday, Friday section, so it was something like 08:00 or 09:00 that Monday morning. My whole world changed that day.

[2] I always found the Debian documentation to be woefully out of date, so it was quite refreshing to find the Arch Wiki articles were mostly apt to my problems.

[3] Use Sid/Unstable you say? That's all well and good until it thaws and the Debian devs decide to overhaul and play with any subsystems you rely on. Case in point: I was on Sid when they decided to overhaul how Debian handles Haskell packages, and I could not compile my xmonad.hs for several weeks. This happened as I was trying to fix something in it, and had to wait for this to be abated before I could continue working on it. For whatever reason, I eschew having language-specific package managers installed that aren't part of the distro; so things like cabal and stack were something I didn't want to use.

NOCx420 · 2024-03-06 19:15:15

Started with the good old kali linux hackerman posts. I installed kali soon after, dabbled with linux for like 5 years here and there before dual-booting to work out kinks and migrate my stuff. I've been on arch since 3 years now. It is the best.

c00ter · 2024-03-06 22:01:04

I started in Linux when the kernel went stable at 1.0, and I bricked a monitor trying to set the scanrate (unnecessary), after installing from a Walnut Creek CDROM. My wife's ire meant that my Linux "experiments" were done in secret for a long time afterwards. But I persisted, I installed & ran everything from Mandrake, Connectiva, later Red Hat, SuSE, PCLOS, Ubuntu, etc. onwards, before settling on Debian Testing. That continued until around 2012, when...

I started with ArchBang (w/Openbox), a derivative, on an x86(386) Netbook. Loved it, but went on to Cinnarch (later Antergos), briefly Manjaro, then worked up enough courage to install Arch per the *Installation Guide* in early 2014.

Arch, I found, filled *all* my holes and I have not strayed. I play with all of the derivates--but always come home.

Last edited by c00ter (2024-03-06 22:04:02)

Trilby · 2024-03-06 22:20:02

c00ter wrote:

Arch ... filled *all* my holes

Now there's a good slogan candidate for the 2024 Arch Linux NSFW T-Shirt contest (that I just made up).

Now who can make an arch logo out of a couple of "adult toys".

Last edited by Trilby (2024-03-06 22:21:45)

flamemagister · 2024-04-15 06:53:01

Just adding my appreciation to Arch and its community - yep this is my distro!

Arch, for me, has the perfect balance of minimalism / do it my way and "just works" when required. After distro hopping a lot over the past five years I think what makes a distro great (IMHO) is not just the distro itself but also a strong community - which Arch has in spades.

It is a distro that needs a lot of reading, patience and experimentation but totally worth it. I use Ubuntu (for now) on my notebook - simply because it has lots of idiosyncrasies and Ubuntu seems to work OOB - in slower time I will revert to Arch, and Ubuntu Server on well my server. But Arch is where my heart is on my daily driver desktop.

Thanks to all the countless devs who make this distro work and to the community that keeps it alive.

FM.

Last edited by flamemagister (2024-04-15 06:53:40)

fish4terrisa-MSDSM · 2024-08-18 15:06:59

Arch is the only distro that really passed the right to design for me, and it's rolling upgrade method makes me always up to date. And, it seems to be a mircale that Arch is both new and stable, it rarely broken down without any hardware problems, and it's wide package choice make it possible for me to always find a alternative way to make the things work again when something refuse to work. For example, if the mkinitcpio process is interrupted with a battery problem, then I have to use a recovery removeable disk to make the ubuntu work again,as multiple kernels isn't widely supported in ubuntu.However, in arch, I can always boot with another kernel instead, with linux-zen, lts and many other choices, all of them will be upgraded automatically when system upgrades.
It seems that both for server and personal computers, Arch is always the best choice
Thanks for everyone keeping this distro alive and well :-)

ImNamo · 2024-08-22 23:42:28

Started using Arch in August of this year...
Already used an "Arch-based" distro like Manjaro but, honestly Manjaro just sucks and I've never enjoyed it, but with Arch Linux?
I absolutely love it, I've rarely broken Arch but using tools like "Timeshift" absolutely saved me some amount of time
Also customized Plasma 6 a little bit more, and even if some features are missing/broken like Latte-Dock, I honestly don't care about most apps that don't work anymore

One of the things that took me a while to learn was setting up correctly, making the CPU fan work at maximum for better performance, installing drivers, etc...

Huge thanks to the developers and the wiki editors for making Arch an awesome distro to give it a try

4rch.conf · 2024-09-19 23:13:35

As much as I have an urge to run around and distro-hop, I always come back to Arch. The amount I learned setting up my first system, and as much as some issues frustrate me, it is just overall fun to fix. Now I just have a bunch of old computers and other devices with other distros, with Arch on my main computer. Best distro.

BluePyTheDeer_ · 2024-10-26 00:45:15

Writing "Arch is the Best" in all languages I can in a loop

Python

while true:
  print("Arch is the best!")

Dart:

void main() {
   while (true) {
       print("Arch is the best!");
   }
}

Marwellus · 2024-11-24 18:23:35

I like Arch Linux

It's not my first distro, there had been several other distros over the last 20 or so years. The first one was SUSE afaik with an stone old version of KDE. Since I was young and stupid back then, I very much disliked it and went on using Windows 98 :-p

Later I became a web-dev and found out that Linux is awesome on web servers, and I fell in love with bash and open source in general, the LAMP stack became my bread and butter for years. But regarding using Linux on the desktop ... well, it's another story. From time to time over the years I gave it another shot and I've to say it's really impressive how much linux has developed in general. The early attempts were often plagued by a lot of problems regarding hardware and my I own misunderstandings, using a wild combination of work arounds that tended to break my entire system sooner or later. Besides, I liked to play with it a lot till I broke it nonetheless.

I guess, you know the drill ;-) But it hadn't been all about frustrations - I learned a ton. And forgot a lot later again :-p

And now I'm trying out Arch Linux, just got the image, put it on a stick and fired it up. Except two little problems caused by my own stupidity, installing it on my lenovo laptop (S540-14IWL) by just following the guide was a child's play. Driver support has become incredibly strong, just wow, no problem on this front whatsoever, even most of the special keys work out of the box.

I'm using Gnome (just love it, it's been always my favourite), the entire sys boots up from cold in not time, it's slim and sleak and does exactly what I want it to do: listening to Extra Terra and hacking code in Neovim. Well, *trying* to hack code in Neovim :-p Since I'm using Arch now it seemed mandatory to me ;-)

Guys, it's an incredible ton of impressive work you all have done over all these years, I'm just blown away, thank you, I appreciate it very much!

Keep rockin' :-)

porcelain1 · 2025-03-20 00:10:40

watching pacman upgrade is FUCKING THRILLING
parallel downloads goes hard, nuff said.

Vamp898 · 2025-03-21 06:37:37

porcelain1 wrote:

watching pacman upgrade is FUCKING THRILLING
parallel downloads goes hard, nuff said.

I don't know^^ parallel download existed long before pacman had it and parallel compiling is even cooler than parallel download.

Watching pacman upgrading is cool, but there are package managers which are, for sure, more thrilling when upgrading^^

dootfs · 2025-04-30 06:01:49

From Fedora to Ubuntu to Manjaro to Arch, and I've finally arrived at the end of the wiki trail with a fully installed OS and a demystified understanding of the underlying build.

Xylerfox · 2025-05-20 00:47:36

Hello,

Despite my Arch Linux journey starting technically last year, I've been using it more this year.

Currently, my laptop is the machine with Arch as the sole OS on it.

My main praise about Arch is the efficiency. The Framework Laptop 13 is a wonderful machine, and thanks to the amazing work by the community, the laptop runs Arch very well. But, I wasn't expecting this level of efficiency. The laptop doing light work, like typing this post, it's using between 6 and 10 watts. This is with the screen at 30% brightness and full keyboard backlight. I'm amazed, and before Arch, I never knew the fan on the laptop's cooling system had a 0RPM mode.

Overall, I'm very thankful to the community and developers of Arch! It really is the best,

I now see why people using Arch have such a fond feeling for it. Once I got my laptop running as it is now, there's nothing like it. Arch + KDE just enforces my love for computing again, x3

WorMzy · 2025-05-20 07:26:11

Mod note: merging with the 'Arch is the best' thread.

Arch Linux

#1251 2023-05-09 10:04:25

Re: The Official Unofficial 'Arch is Best' Thread

#1252 2023-07-12 13:30:29

Re: The Official Unofficial 'Arch is Best' Thread

#1253 2023-07-30 23:35:07

Re: The Official Unofficial 'Arch is Best' Thread

#1254 2023-07-31 11:09:31

Re: The Official Unofficial 'Arch is Best' Thread

#1255 2024-01-20 21:12:45

Re: The Official Unofficial 'Arch is Best' Thread

#1256 2024-02-19 00:11:46

Re: The Official Unofficial 'Arch is Best' Thread

#1257 2024-03-06 19:15:15

Re: The Official Unofficial 'Arch is Best' Thread

#1258 2024-03-06 22:01:04

Re: The Official Unofficial 'Arch is Best' Thread

#1259 2024-03-06 22:20:02

Re: The Official Unofficial 'Arch is Best' Thread

#1260 2024-04-15 06:53:01

Re: The Official Unofficial 'Arch is Best' Thread

#1261 2024-08-18 15:06:59

Re: The Official Unofficial 'Arch is Best' Thread

#1262 2024-08-22 23:42:28

Re: The Official Unofficial 'Arch is Best' Thread

#1263 2024-09-19 23:13:35

Re: The Official Unofficial 'Arch is Best' Thread

#1264 2024-10-26 00:45:15

Re: The Official Unofficial 'Arch is Best' Thread

#1265 2024-11-24 18:23:35

Re: The Official Unofficial 'Arch is Best' Thread

#1266 2025-03-20 00:10:40

Re: The Official Unofficial 'Arch is Best' Thread

#1267 2025-03-21 06:37:37

Re: The Official Unofficial 'Arch is Best' Thread

#1268 2025-04-30 06:01:49

Re: The Official Unofficial 'Arch is Best' Thread

#1269 2025-05-20 00:47:36

Re: The Official Unofficial 'Arch is Best' Thread

#1270 2025-05-20 07:26:11

Re: The Official Unofficial 'Arch is Best' Thread

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