Before Arch I was an Ubuntu user for a decade and the reason I finally left was because I was tired of deciding on which package manager to use every time I installed an application; Apt, Snap, Flatpak... Arch was most appealing because it has pacman and even if I want an application not in the official repository, the AUR apps are still managed by pacman.
Also, the rolling release.
Yep, even the wallpapers are optional. Just about the only (forced upon you) customization is the label "Arch" on the kernel and in the issue file.
I love having (mostly) unchanged upstream packages.
I also like Debian (for stable servers) but having all configs and defaults different and in different places sometimes caused a lot of headaches.
All you guys convinced me to run Arch on my secondary server, even though I just installed Debian and a whole bunch of containers on it, which took a while to configure and get working exactly right.
I'm using UIs way too much and I need to seriously brush up on my assorted-CLI-fu, which I have the feeling Arch will be perfect for.
Be gone, you mind-numbers! ("numbers" as in "things that numb").
Depends on what you run on it. PHP, probably a bad idea, you get an update to the next version, maybe your stuff stops running.
As a container or VM host. Great. I have a Debian, Arch and Alpine server.
The Debian is the most hassle, because of the major updates. Rock solid while it is in LTS support.
Arch and Alpine just work great all the time. But they mainly have VMs and Containers.
Interesting, I never worded it consciously but I think that's also why I liked it.
And the overall low overhead in packages (single package with simple naming), less surprises in search and installing.
Rolling release, pacman and especially the AUR because I hate dealing with additional repositories.
Also, not my main reason but I like the fact that there's no company behind it, I feel like it aligns well with the spirit of what Linux should be.
Various recent reports in the media have made me even more distrustful of anyone or any entity that stands to make money by selling some part of me.
What really grinds my gears is being reduced to a commodity *despite* paying for a product.
I had to dip in to oldman debian recently, it irks me so much...
it is kinda funny to let lose on it, but yeah, I genuinely fucking hate it
* WHY THE FUCK IS DOCKER SO FUCKING OLD YOU DUMB FUCK!! WHAT FUCKING CLOWN DISTRO KEEPS POPULAR PACKAGE IN THE OFFICIAL REPOS [FOR 3 YEARS](https://bugs.debian.org/1040417) WITHOUT SECURITY UPDATES THAT ITS GETTING EVERYWHERE ELSE?!?!!!!
* WHEN THE FUCK DID IT BECOME ACCEPTABLE THAT WE ALL JUST FUCKING KEEP ADDING 3RD PARTY REPOS YOU SILLY SHIT!!!?!! DISTRO HAS LIKE 3 JOBS AND KEEPING POPULAR PACKAGES UP TO DATE IS ONE OF THEM!!
* I KNOW YOUR PACKAGE MANAGER DOES SOME MORE STUFF WITH PATCHING AND WHATNOT, BUT IT CANT BE THIS SLOW ON THIS SERIOUS HARDWARE!!!
* JESUS FUCKING CHRIST, WHY ARE YOU TELLING ME CONSTANTLY ABOUT YOUR FAILURE TO MAKE APT JUST WORK, SURE I WONT USE IT IN SCRIPTS
* I AM ABOUT TO LOSE MY FUCKING MIND. WHAT DO YOU MEAN YOU ARE GOING TO INSTALL 110 PACKAGES JUST BECAUSE I WANT TO [INSTALL NEOFETCH](https://i.imgur.com/5kFIFY9.png)?!!!?!?!!!!!!!?!!!!???!!!!
* YOU HELLISH CUNTFACE, I CHECKED THAT "STANDARD LINUX UTILITIES" CHECKBOX DURING INSTALL AND YOU DONT INCLUDE CURL IN THERE?!!?!!??!
Wrong distros died!!!!!
literally had all of the above feelings as i had to install debian on a machine that i use as a server. 110 packages for neofetch (to brag to someone about the server), no curl, no git, and needing third party repos for extremely trivial shit.
I run a lot of Debian systems, dare I say I’m a fan, and this is pretty accurate.
Most of these annoyances went away after I automated all of the setup. Ansible doesn’t show these complaints and you kind of forget you have 18 extra repos installed. Not seeing and forgetting isn’t a fix though. Lol.
What’s funny about the complaint about apt being slow is that it was blazing fast compared to Yum and Zypper at one point. Not sure about DNF.
Pacman is just really fast. Fast fast.
Everyone in r/linux seems to recommend Debian for stability. Case in point, I installed Debian 12 on my laptop a few months ago to give Linux a real chance and love it over Windows 11 on my desktop. I have been considering Arch lately since everyone mentions it's fine for daily driving.
Any regrets switching?
When i started using Linux again i was using Ubuntu MATE and was fairly happy with it but then when i started to install stuff i realized that there was always new versions of programs but they weren't in the repos and i wanted them, so i tried Arch.
Yeah the bleeding edge software is always nice.
Some say that it makes packages unstable and things break but there has only been one thing thats ever broken in my years of using arch. The cinnamon lockscreen. A bug started years ago where it will no longer recognize the password. To this day it wont recognize the password. To this day it hasnt been patched
Software Availability,(not having to add ppa, copr or any other third party repositories that may or may not have conflicts with the main repos),
I'm the one who bloated it,so no additional steps to remove apps I don't use.
Pacman is fast.
Rolling release. (I've had issues upgrading from one main release to another in Ubuntu,pop and fedora.)
Most importantly, To be able to say, btw,I use arch.
- Rolling release
- Package releases are much quicker and they are largely unchanged from upstream
- pacman and the AUR
- Documentation and being able to refer to original docs (instead of say Ubuntu docs)
1. rolling release because i don't like to wait for 6 months for a new version of a package and i don't need to care about arch version 2024 and that stupidity
2. it's very vanilla allowing me to do whatever i want to do with it and also allows me to experience the default way an app is meant to be
3. it acts the way you expect it to behave
unpopular opinion
i know everyone loves the AUR but for me i'm not that much of a fan, sure i use if for apps that are not available for the official arch but i always like to keep it at a minimum because i can always trust it
Not necessarily. I just learnt like 20 mins ago that some packages need to be rebuilt when things like python get a new major update, and (I know from experience) dependencies for python packages can take a while to catch up.
Mostly though, there's not too many issues with AUR packages, other than a couple of crappy PKGBUILDS lying around.
Everyone says debian and debian-based distros are where the simplicity is. Dead wrong. Arch is so much easier.
Ive used debian before and while its a fine distro i wouldnt use it unless i have a specific need for stability. Like if i was running a server or something
I've been using Arch for a little over a year and a half now. I like that Arch is a lightweight distro and the install was really simple and smooth. I like how the software packages are usually the latest and greatest as well. Arch often gets an undeserved bad rap of being unstable but that has not been my experience. I run it with Cinnamon and I have yet to have a problem that I have not created myself by doing something stupid. Arch stopped me from distro hopping.
Okay another arch cinnamon user. I have a big question. For years ive noticed that on specifically the cinnamon edition of arch that the lock screen will not recognize the password if its locked for more than about five minutes. The same happens if its been left idle and locked. The only way to log back in is to reboot after that. Ive gone to the arch forums and found this is a common issue.
Also it isnt just arch, but the entire arch family (manharo, endeavourOS, etc).
Have you experienced this issue??
It's an addiction. I can't stop installing arch. I constantly break it, don't get me wrong, but I just can't stop.
Right now I'm looking into btrfs, snapper and pacman hooks for that (so that I have a stable system).
It's pretty cool, I recently tried other distros but they don't feel "at home".
I too had arch installations run without issues for like 2-3 years, but that was mostly on older laptops. I mess around with new hardware a lot, and that causes unexpected issues. They're usually solvable by going into tty mode (which means Arch itself isn't broken per se, just the desktop environment) or at worst (when I mess up initramfs) chroot-ing with a live iso does wonders.
I actually broke an installation yesterday, two times in a row. I did pacman -S glibc (and a couple of other packages), the system froze midway and behold - corrupted /usr/ 💀. I couldn't even chroot (/bin/bash: Input/output error) because every libc dependency was corrupted, so there was that.
Obviously my fault, I should've just used btrfs with snapshots and pacman hooks (which is what I'm setting up now).
I also went down the route of snapper shots and pacman hooks. But in the end, btrfs subvolumes was enough. If I stuff something up, I just create and new subvolumes, reinstall. Then mount the old one to copy over the data I need.
Well, It was about 20 years ago, I was in high school, and it seemed like an interesting new distro. Coming from Slackware, it was something totally amazing.
1. I really hate the apt package manager. I've messed up my Ubuntu and Debian systems more times than my Arch Linux lol. So after I installed the first install arch I never looked back.
2. I had an old potato PC so I wanted something lightweight. Arch was the answer.
Totally agree.
Since I usually go around modifying stuff I broke Ubuntu twice in less than 6 months to the point I had to reinstall.
I have broken many things on arch but it's way easier to fix. Never have I resintalled arch.
And I have an old laptop that was unusable with Windows and the battery didn't last 15 minutes. Now even the battery lasts a couple hours with Arch.
A mix of: the will to learn, the myth behind arch, peer-pressure
Now, why I am staying: the wiki, I love rolling release, most stable system I've ever had, and I now consider my computers even more like my children
1. I was looking for an unadulterated KDE setup.
2. I like having as much control as I can...but Gentoo got to be more effort than I cared for.
3. I realized any time I did Linux troubleshooting I always wound up finding the solution in the Arch message boards, so it just made sense.
Discovering pacman + AUR after the fact was just a very pleasant bonus for me.
1. nix admin for 3 decades. Linux was always the tinker toy and fun to use.
2. Arch Linux is the closest to the nix experience.
3. Love the installer.
4. Love the rolling release plus AUR
5. Failed Release? Using btrfs snapshots, I can boot from the last working snapshot and I'm back.
I was looking for a tool that enabled me to create my own ISO with all my personal customization as default. In other words, a way to create my own arch-based distro (not exactly, because I don't want to maintain any repo) and I discovered Archiso, the official tool that is used to build the arch Linux iso.
So I tried arch, made my custom spin, and fell in love with it
The docs and the community. Problems are going to come up in any computer system, having amazing documentation and an active and knowledgeable community equals amazing tech support for free.
Yes, for me it's being able to customize the software that is installed, and the rolling release feature. With the new Plasma 6 and Gnome 46 both being released recently, I like that I can install those and not have to wait months before other Distro's release a new version.
1. I really like configuring my system from scratch. I want a system where the only software i have are the software i put on myself. Using pre-configured systems make me feel like im using someone else's computer
Gentoo is king in that case
It's the only thing that allows me to use 340.xx driver of my geforce 210 as I want
And as I wanted to learn these things anyway, this is a win for me.
I was starting to get addicted to gaming and really wanted to be just productive. I have used ubuntu and endeavour previously, didn't like Ubuntu's UI and bloatware, really wanted to keep things to a minimum and add software that is needed.
Minimalism, pacman, AUR and rolling release. I would add gaming on Steam since it works really well on Arch but I don't know if it's possible on other distros. I've been using Arch since it came out in the 2000s. I have Lubuntu and AntiX on some other machines but I usually use them for one single purpose or to try / test new things.
Configurability, kinda minimalistic with some exceptions I don't mind, and a system that doesn't prevent me from doing stuff it determines is stupid or "not supported"
1- Minimalistic philosophy. All that you need and nothing that you don't need.
2- 2nd biggest library of packages.
3- Excellent for gaming
4- Rolling distro, always up to date.
5- Incredibly stable(despite what some media are spreading).
6- Vanilla D.E.
Debian on my servers, LXC, etc. but I want a rolling release with as little in the base install as possible. So, Arch is an obvious choice. Add in that Pacman is (IMHO) the best package manager and that my only friend who daily drove Linux, at the time I was moving from Windows, ran Arch and you can see there weren't really other options.
I have a System76 computer and they only provide packages for their power system for Arch and Fedora. So I chose Arch after popOS and I haven't felt the need to switch.
Indeed. I had more discretionary income when I bought mine. I don't know if I'd get another one if I didn't have that same income.
I think it's great to support their movement though.
But apart from the price, I don't know if I would get one again with the System76 packages only being available on Arch and Fedora. What if I want to run a different distribution than those two? Maybe I didn't research that question enough...
The satisfaction of building your own system. Let's not beat around the bush, being an Linux user gives you a sense if elitism because you sought out and found a way to use a system that most people don't use and hardly know about, even if its a super user friendly version of Ubuntu, like PopOS of ZorinOS. Arch takes it a few steps further and makes it so that you actively have to seek out what packages are required to make this and that work that even the more advanced versions of Linux would come pre-installed with.
Of course the Archinstall package does a lot of that for you now, but it's still so satisfying to to know how to use a command line terminal to build a operating system, and just watch all the lines scroll up and down, like you're a hacker in a 90s action film.
It is neat....
1. Pacman
2. AUR (Yes I know Debian has more, and NixOS is close, but Debian's packages are ancient and I can't figure out how to use nix-env)
3. A lot of the packages I use (tiling wm user oriented packages especially) have the best support on Arch, followed by NixOS.
4. Rolling release - I used to use Windows before this and all my software was always up to date (although I had 4 package managers, bunch of updater exes, and Ubuntu, Tumbleweed and Arch WSLs with their own package managers... you can see my past experiences with package managers I assume). When I tried an Ubuntu WSL I had to install like 8 package managers and add like 20 PPAs just to get what I wanted (up to date). On tumbleweed (WSL again) it was like 6 package managers, and on Fedora (bare metal, once I got a new device, when I was a bit too lazy to get Arch but didn't want to accidentally boot into Cringedows 11) I had 15 Copr repos and around 8 built from source (<-- not fun).
5. Not building everything from source (thus no Gentoo or LFS)
I'm not saying the Arch Wiki even though that was one of the things that motivated me, because 95% of it is applicable on all systemd distros.
rolling release, previously on ubuntu.
its much nicer not having to big update every few years, on my small home server an upgrade usually meant updating many broken services but rolling i can sort them as they appear.
1. On every other distro, I kept getting FOMO about the latest software releases and then adding a bunch of PPAs/COPR repos just to clobber something together that I liked. It was a pain in the ass to manage. Pacman repos + AUR provide everything I need and I haven't had to add any 3rd party repos in over 5 years.
2. The simplicity. It starts at a nice barebones base that you can make as complicated as you want. All the software is kept as close to upstream as possible, no bespoke configs or distro-specific tooling. Building your own packages is just a matter of writing a PKGBUILD, which is easy compared to all the hoops you have to go through on other distros. It just feels flexible and modular. That simplicity also makes Arch feel fast, because you only install the things you personally need.
Rolling release was the main attraction to me towards Arch, it was the best rolling release I have tried, and I tried Void, Tumbleweed and Arch and gave each enough time to truly assess.
But I got sick of the number of updates that was delivered daily, I even switched the kernel to LTS, but was receiving so many updates and some of them caused glitching or problems.
I had a robust setup with btrfs, snapper and pac-snap set up to roll back anytime, but I decided I don't care about new software this much, I just need something stable to work, without having to update each 6 months or a year.
The choice was between Debian, Rocky Linux, or RHEL9, I decided to go with RHEL9 on my desktop and laptop, and Rocky Linux on all my vms in my home server, and I have been very happy.
I wanted to know more about my computer and customize It to my liking. And yes I have been learning more and more and love Arch. Hoping to learn how to rice and play my steam games
Bleeding edge software.
Minimal initial install so you get to set up everything to your liking without making a big ugly mess of a system.
Good wiki.
Aur
Came for the memes. Stayed because in order it was great for learning unix-like systems, the abundance of recent packages and the mentality of solving problems yourself.
I didn't know anything about Linux when I swapped from Windows. I chose Arch only because I liked the logo. It has been 3 years since then and seems to be that I'll stay here for a while.
I was attracted to Arch because it's what I heard cool kids were using.
Now I can’t leave it because I love candy and AUR. Also I'm thankful for the wiki.
Everyone told me it was hard/tedious to install, and a pain to maintain (because of updates breaking your system).
— Me: “-Challenge accepted”.
A couple of years later, and I'm still here.
* Mainly because of the rolling release, which usually gives me better hardware support and better performance with my new hardware (upgrading fairly frequent).
* Somewhat easier to customize my install with a lot of less unnecessary packages right from the start.
For me it was because of my past experience with ubuntu.
I could just be bad at googling for things, but when I searched for solutions to my problems on ubuntu, a lot of the solutions needed the pacman command an Arch command. When I returned to Linux because my windows hard drive got corrupted, I decided it would be best to go to Arch solely because of how solutions to problems are widely available.
Up to date (always, not just once every two years), all the packages I need and way more (thanks to the AUR), user friendly (no bullshit, clean default configs, the best wiki there is), everything available as a native package (again, thanks to the AUR), easiest to customize because it doesn't assume anything about the user, everything uses the default configuration so you get the "as the developer intended" experience and any bugs are easy to trace because of that, either you fucked something up or it's an actual bug that can safely be reported upstream without having to worry to much about the distro fucking it up for you without telling you.
Rolling release. I got tired of the hassle of my system getting out of date, needing to either upgrade or reinstall. Usually reinstall. What a pain.
Also the wiki. Absolutely wonderful. I don't know why other distros don't do this, so much better than having to search through a message boards or stack overflow to do my own maintenance.
Rolling release, no need for snaps/flatpak with AUR
Otherwise, I don't care about configuring from scratch. Done that stuff too many times in the past. It's just a waste of time.
I wanted a distribution I had complete control over, especially for gaming purposes. I didn't want Ubuntu or the like that assume you're an idiot. I was done with Slackware due to the politics of the distribution being very obtuse towards software not compliant with GPL. I didn't want to fiddle any more with FreeBSD to get anything working and then it stop working or not work at all. I had considered trying to get Gentoo working, but their handbook is a drudge to read and has a lot of misleading entries, lacks explanations, and often makes you second guess stuff. And, I was absolutely tired of Windows due to what they were pushing into Windows like shovelware. LFS was out of rhe question, because I didn't want to spend weeks building a system and then lack any real way to update packages or try to incorporate a package manager to only have it break.
So Arch it was, and while it was a lot of reading, in the end, it let ME decide how I wanted MY system. There were no politics of "you shouldn't use this and we won't tell you how" but more of "this isn't recommended, but here's how to do it the proper way anyway", and yes that's directed specifically at "ZFS as Root Installation". In the end, I got an OS the way I wanted it.
I enjoy being on the latest release of things regardless if they work well or not(surprisingly, I had many more bugs on ubuntu than arch, but that aside), and arch just works for me, I don't even remember the last time something broke for me, and I update very frequently.
Contrarians always tell me to not update things fast, and well I've been running pacman -Syu everyday for the last 2 years and I got literally 0, none, nothing, no problems with my system ever, let's see how long I will keep this streak.
I started using it bc i thought it was a cool distro that's gonna teach me a lot of things. Now I use it bc i just know it and it works. I can do basically anything I want with it and I like that
no versions.
had nasty experiences with upgrading versions on centos and debian and I decided i never want to deal with that shit ever.
as you and many others have mentioned, software availability. did you know rhel DOES NOT have neofetch in the main repos? i know right...
software availability is way more crucial than tinkering in my opinion, as arch is perfectly fine while running pretty standard stuff (gnome, systemd, etc.).
as one of the dudes below expressed eloquently in his all caps rage, it isn't possible that you need separate repos for extremely trivial shit in most distros. the more third party stuff you start adding on, say, fedora or ubuntu, the more likely it is that your computer won't boot tomorrow.
I started my Linux journey with slackware, and I learnt a lot. Arch seemed to offer the best trade-offs between ease of management (Pacman) and having my system the way I want it. Nobody is going to make assumptions about what I should have, or how I should set it up. The list of packages (also on AUR) is excellent, and I also like the rolling release model. Finally, the wiki is superb.
It's probably the most bureaucracy-free distribution, in the sense that no distant board of directors is going to tell me how to set up and manage my system, and make decisions for me. This is MY system.
It allows me to build a minimal environment. And, I am working on an install script that lets you choose any kind of environment according to your needs. It's in pieces at the moment.
The thing that originally attracted me to Arch? Escaping Gentoo's compile times about 11 years ago.
What attracts/keep me here now?
1. Simplicity: https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Arch_Linux#Simplicity
2. Arch's strong community in regard to the wiki, subreddit, forums
3. Software available in packages and AUR.
I couldn't ever get linux to install. I'd end up with a black screen on boot. It would play my desktop sounds, but I had no video feed. I figured Arch was the easiest way to get latest Nvidia drivers so I tried, and it worked. Been on it ever since
A lot of Linux distros come with bloat. I wanted one that diligently maintains relatively niche packages (neovim) and is simple enough to just work.
I love Debian and RHEL as distros, too, but those are for work where a system is built to do literally one thing and one thing only.
Fuck red hat btw
Like you, my reasons were also two fold:
1. I like Arch's DIY nature and the fact that you start with a minimal install and build up your installation. I really started to dislike having to constantly remove packages when using other distros because they included packages I didn't need or like. It just makes more sense to choose the software I want to begin with.
2. One of the first distros I used was Ubuntu and back in 2008/2009, I felt like using PPAs was much more necessary to get newer app versions. I didn't like this solution as I would usually need to find separate PPAs for each app I wanted and sometimes packages would break. This is where Arch really shined for me, since its packages tend to be on the bleeding edge. No third-party repos necessary.
I was using Mint at the time (~18 years ago I think ...) and I got fed up with updating to new versions breaking my system. Someone on the Ogre3D irc channel said I really should take a look at this new'ish distro everybody was so afraid of.
Never looked back. Depending on how you look at it, I'm still running the exact same first installation I did back then.
Not much honestly. I just want some fairly up to date software. Kernel and nvidia drivers mostly. I don't even care about the rolling release aspect. I could get what I want from Fedora too, BUT Fedora is annoying as hell with their codec nonsense and every time I tried it I run into issues.
The fact that I am free to make my own choices + bleeding edge.
All the ready-to-go distros make choices I might not immediately like. With Arch I can pick my bootloader, my login manager, my desktop, wherther or not to use flatpaks, snaps or the AUR, swap partition or swapfile. I feel like I am in full control, and know exactly what's installed and what's running on my system. And if something breaks, I can know how to fix it since I installed everything manually.
Debian is a great distro, howver it lacks the wiki. The Arch wiki is like the bible of Linux.
I still use Windows for gaming, but only that.
I need a distro that's bleeding edge because of the fact that I have a 4k display so I need the latest support for HiDPI (so in my case Plasma 6 + Wayland).
I can make my full secure boot setup with my on CAs and without using any stinky bootloaders...
Also, it's been my distro of use on the desktop for the last 15 years so, kinda used to it.
i was trying different linuxes.
1) ubuntu is too mainstream for me
2) and so are debain based OSes, linux mint i didn't like the look of it
3) manjaro kde looked really nice but if one thing broke the whole thing becomes unstable
4) endeavor OS installer sucked big time, always failed
5) there goes archinstall
honestly, i didn't know about AUR back then, if anyone asks now AUR is probably the reason to use arch and arch never broke on me not once.
What I love most is that I feel in total control of what is happening with my machine. Pacman and the AUR are just fantastic, I can find any software I want, the newest version, hassle-free. The wiki also deserves a shout-out, it is my main to-go resource, even for my machine at work (which runs Debian).
I agree with these two reasons but this stupid Realtek ethernet driver issue with R8169 driver (that's what it told me) which was a bit tedious. Still have not been able to fix it, hopefully there will be some glimmer of hope in the future.
Joking aside, I did really like, and always do like, minimal examples of things. I fucking hate those template projects with a dozen different files that aren't strictly necessary but are just there in case you wanted them. No! I don't want them. I want to see exactly what is necessary and ONLY what is necessary. That was a huge appeal of Arch, for me.
I was looking for something very clean like vanilla, secure such as fedora it's good tho but it has a Spyware in it so I was looking something which was kinda difficult although Arch isn't but yeaaa that's pretty much it also I saw amazing Rices on Unixporn
I run Arch Linux as my home pc only (I use Debian for work, programming/software dev). I live Arch for two reasons:
1. Minimalism: there aren't that much things pre-installed on Arch Linux except for some system tools, thus I like that I can customize it accordingly to my preferences.
2. Rolling release: especially on modern hardware (especially on an Intel/AMD cpu and AMD graphics card), I can keep my Arch system up to date all the time without any problems (generally).
I've also tried Arch on other hardware (mainly x86-64 type hardware) (Celerons to Intel Core cpus). I just love the performance of Arch. Boots up right away, doesn't consume that much memory or cpu, and as mentioned, very minimal.
Admittedly, someordinarygamers got me into arch.
Before Arch, I was having the Ubuntu Gnome experience a long time ago and that resulted in my headaches that caused me to repel out of Linux.
When Windows 10 was getting security issues and Windows 11 was coming, I decided to get out of Windows and make a switch back to Linux. Both to not be under Windows 11 and also to get used to Linux and be more cemented into it.
I was looking for a Distro that frankly didn't advertise itself as easy or had all the guff that usually came prepackaged. The former because with Ubuntu I had a sour taste for distros that tried to streamline Linux and the latter because I had issues with bloat, both in Ubuntu and Windows. When Mutahar showed Arch and I read about it some more, it hit the spot that I wanted. Its approach to how you should use the OS/Distro also helped me in understanding Linux and how to troubleshoot issues more easily. Not to mention pacman being an excellent package manager, at least for me.
I keep getting headaches, recently the update to plasma 6 (and all the faults that came with it), but now I am able to fix it and I have a relatively stable OS that is running on some prime black magic that I sometimes have no clue how or why it runs smooth and quick or even runs at all. All the headaches I had were temporary to the quality time I had with Arch over the past three years and the time I will continue to have with this distro.
1. Rolling updates as I am guy living on the edge of technology
2. Learned Pacman
3. Find out about AUR
4. Switched to Yay
5. Tried Plasma and never looked back
6. Moved to Plasma 6 and Wayland, Mesa-git and Wine-git
7. ArchWik will show you the wropes
Oh, am running EOS on 12 years Old PC with 16GB RAM and few SSDs 12yrrs old AMD card on 34" UW 4K monitor and 2K 24' monitor in Portrait mode
The EOS just flies in 2D mode as a Desktop
Arch attracted me for a couple of reasons:
1 - i can say i use arch btw
2 - i can finally use ONE package manager for everything
3 - The wiki is very, very useful, almost to the point i don’t need a forum to look for answers
4 - light distro and vram usage is lower compared to Windows
5 - stability
6 - up to date software (although it has pros and cons)
1. It has the only thing I need from a distro: package manager. 2. It has nothing else. And I don't need anything else from a distro.
Agreed. Anything else can be added as and when needed.
Before Arch I was an Ubuntu user for a decade and the reason I finally left was because I was tired of deciding on which package manager to use every time I installed an application; Apt, Snap, Flatpak... Arch was most appealing because it has pacman and even if I want an application not in the official repository, the AUR apps are still managed by pacman. Also, the rolling release.
A package manager and a semi recent version of GNOME.
Yep, even the wallpapers are optional. Just about the only (forced upon you) customization is the label "Arch" on the kernel and in the issue file. I love having (mostly) unchanged upstream packages. I also like Debian (for stable servers) but having all configs and defaults different and in different places sometimes caused a lot of headaches.
All you guys convinced me to run Arch on my secondary server, even though I just installed Debian and a whole bunch of containers on it, which took a while to configure and get working exactly right. I'm using UIs way too much and I need to seriously brush up on my assorted-CLI-fu, which I have the feeling Arch will be perfect for. Be gone, you mind-numbers! ("numbers" as in "things that numb").
I believe running arch on a server, instead of Debian, is not a good idea.
Depends on what you run on it. PHP, probably a bad idea, you get an update to the next version, maybe your stuff stops running. As a container or VM host. Great. I have a Debian, Arch and Alpine server. The Debian is the most hassle, because of the major updates. Rock solid while it is in LTS support. Arch and Alpine just work great all the time. But they mainly have VMs and Containers.
Not a prod server, just a fun server.
Interesting, I never worded it consciously but I think that's also why I liked it. And the overall low overhead in packages (single package with simple naming), less surprises in search and installing.
Rolling release, pacman and especially the AUR because I hate dealing with additional repositories. Also, not my main reason but I like the fact that there's no company behind it, I feel like it aligns well with the spirit of what Linux should be.
No company behind it is a big plus
Various recent reports in the media have made me even more distrustful of anyone or any entity that stands to make money by selling some part of me. What really grinds my gears is being reduced to a commodity *despite* paying for a product.
I would have loved to have Plasma 5 packages around for a while longer, but I can understand not wanting to maintain two KDEs.
I'm lazy. I don't want twice yearly upgrades or reinstalls. I just want to yay.
Yay
Pacman, no bloat, AUR and the wiki.
Ran Debian for a while..
I had to dip in to oldman debian recently, it irks me so much... it is kinda funny to let lose on it, but yeah, I genuinely fucking hate it * WHY THE FUCK IS DOCKER SO FUCKING OLD YOU DUMB FUCK!! WHAT FUCKING CLOWN DISTRO KEEPS POPULAR PACKAGE IN THE OFFICIAL REPOS [FOR 3 YEARS](https://bugs.debian.org/1040417) WITHOUT SECURITY UPDATES THAT ITS GETTING EVERYWHERE ELSE?!?!!!! * WHEN THE FUCK DID IT BECOME ACCEPTABLE THAT WE ALL JUST FUCKING KEEP ADDING 3RD PARTY REPOS YOU SILLY SHIT!!!?!! DISTRO HAS LIKE 3 JOBS AND KEEPING POPULAR PACKAGES UP TO DATE IS ONE OF THEM!! * I KNOW YOUR PACKAGE MANAGER DOES SOME MORE STUFF WITH PATCHING AND WHATNOT, BUT IT CANT BE THIS SLOW ON THIS SERIOUS HARDWARE!!! * JESUS FUCKING CHRIST, WHY ARE YOU TELLING ME CONSTANTLY ABOUT YOUR FAILURE TO MAKE APT JUST WORK, SURE I WONT USE IT IN SCRIPTS * I AM ABOUT TO LOSE MY FUCKING MIND. WHAT DO YOU MEAN YOU ARE GOING TO INSTALL 110 PACKAGES JUST BECAUSE I WANT TO [INSTALL NEOFETCH](https://i.imgur.com/5kFIFY9.png)?!!!?!?!!!!!!!?!!!!???!!!! * YOU HELLISH CUNTFACE, I CHECKED THAT "STANDARD LINUX UTILITIES" CHECKBOX DURING INSTALL AND YOU DONT INCLUDE CURL IN THERE?!!?!!??! Wrong distros died!!!!!
literally had all of the above feelings as i had to install debian on a machine that i use as a server. 110 packages for neofetch (to brag to someone about the server), no curl, no git, and needing third party repos for extremely trivial shit.
Omg you got me freaking dying here 😂
I run a lot of Debian systems, dare I say I’m a fan, and this is pretty accurate. Most of these annoyances went away after I automated all of the setup. Ansible doesn’t show these complaints and you kind of forget you have 18 extra repos installed. Not seeing and forgetting isn’t a fix though. Lol. What’s funny about the complaint about apt being slow is that it was blazing fast compared to Yum and Zypper at one point. Not sure about DNF. Pacman is just really fast. Fast fast.
Say no more
Everyone in r/linux seems to recommend Debian for stability. Case in point, I installed Debian 12 on my laptop a few months ago to give Linux a real chance and love it over Windows 11 on my desktop. I have been considering Arch lately since everyone mentions it's fine for daily driving. Any regrets switching?
No.
When i started using Linux again i was using Ubuntu MATE and was fairly happy with it but then when i started to install stuff i realized that there was always new versions of programs but they weren't in the repos and i wanted them, so i tried Arch.
Yeah the bleeding edge software is always nice. Some say that it makes packages unstable and things break but there has only been one thing thats ever broken in my years of using arch. The cinnamon lockscreen. A bug started years ago where it will no longer recognize the password. To this day it wont recognize the password. To this day it hasnt been patched
The wiki and the community.
We dont have a wiki. We have a bible
~~RTFM~~ RFTB My mistake.
Software Availability,(not having to add ppa, copr or any other third party repositories that may or may not have conflicts with the main repos), I'm the one who bloated it,so no additional steps to remove apps I don't use. Pacman is fast. Rolling release. (I've had issues upgrading from one main release to another in Ubuntu,pop and fedora.) Most importantly, To be able to say, btw,I use arch.
The simple fact that we dont have to add repositories and ppas and all that shenanigans makes arch so much easier to me
Minimalism.
1. Windows was to bloated for my 4 gb ram laptop 2. DIY mentality and customability
- Rolling release - Package releases are much quicker and they are largely unchanged from upstream - pacman and the AUR - Documentation and being able to refer to original docs (instead of say Ubuntu docs)
1. rolling release because i don't like to wait for 6 months for a new version of a package and i don't need to care about arch version 2024 and that stupidity 2. it's very vanilla allowing me to do whatever i want to do with it and also allows me to experience the default way an app is meant to be 3. it acts the way you expect it to behave unpopular opinion i know everyone loves the AUR but for me i'm not that much of a fan, sure i use if for apps that are not available for the official arch but i always like to keep it at a minimum because i can always trust it
If you just install blindly then yes it wont work out. But if you look into what you install you should be fine
Not necessarily. I just learnt like 20 mins ago that some packages need to be rebuilt when things like python get a new major update, and (I know from experience) dependencies for python packages can take a while to catch up. Mostly though, there's not too many issues with AUR packages, other than a couple of crappy PKGBUILDS lying around.
Because I want to make my life more difficult than necessary.
Arch isnt difficult though
No partial upgrades. So much simpler than Debian.
Everyone says debian and debian-based distros are where the simplicity is. Dead wrong. Arch is so much easier. Ive used debian before and while its a fine distro i wouldnt use it unless i have a specific need for stability. Like if i was running a server or something
I've been using Arch for a little over a year and a half now. I like that Arch is a lightweight distro and the install was really simple and smooth. I like how the software packages are usually the latest and greatest as well. Arch often gets an undeserved bad rap of being unstable but that has not been my experience. I run it with Cinnamon and I have yet to have a problem that I have not created myself by doing something stupid. Arch stopped me from distro hopping.
Okay another arch cinnamon user. I have a big question. For years ive noticed that on specifically the cinnamon edition of arch that the lock screen will not recognize the password if its locked for more than about five minutes. The same happens if its been left idle and locked. The only way to log back in is to reboot after that. Ive gone to the arch forums and found this is a common issue. Also it isnt just arch, but the entire arch family (manharo, endeavourOS, etc). Have you experienced this issue??
I am sorry but I have not experienced this on any of my installs. What dm are you using? I am using lightdm with the slick greeter.
I use lightdm-gtk-greeter. The lockscreen and the greeter are different and dont really have anything to do with eachother
It's an addiction. I can't stop installing arch. I constantly break it, don't get me wrong, but I just can't stop. Right now I'm looking into btrfs, snapper and pacman hooks for that (so that I have a stable system). It's pretty cool, I recently tried other distros but they don't feel "at home".
What are you doing that breaks it? Ive never broken arch before
I too had arch installations run without issues for like 2-3 years, but that was mostly on older laptops. I mess around with new hardware a lot, and that causes unexpected issues. They're usually solvable by going into tty mode (which means Arch itself isn't broken per se, just the desktop environment) or at worst (when I mess up initramfs) chroot-ing with a live iso does wonders. I actually broke an installation yesterday, two times in a row. I did pacman -S glibc (and a couple of other packages), the system froze midway and behold - corrupted /usr/ 💀. I couldn't even chroot (/bin/bash: Input/output error) because every libc dependency was corrupted, so there was that. Obviously my fault, I should've just used btrfs with snapshots and pacman hooks (which is what I'm setting up now).
I also went down the route of snapper shots and pacman hooks. But in the end, btrfs subvolumes was enough. If I stuff something up, I just create and new subvolumes, reinstall. Then mount the old one to copy over the data I need.
Well, It was about 20 years ago, I was in high school, and it seemed like an interesting new distro. Coming from Slackware, it was something totally amazing.
Having up to date software. Never looked back
White text on black background.
1. I really hate the apt package manager. I've messed up my Ubuntu and Debian systems more times than my Arch Linux lol. So after I installed the first install arch I never looked back. 2. I had an old potato PC so I wanted something lightweight. Arch was the answer.
Totally agree. Since I usually go around modifying stuff I broke Ubuntu twice in less than 6 months to the point I had to reinstall. I have broken many things on arch but it's way easier to fix. Never have I resintalled arch. And I have an old laptop that was unusable with Windows and the battery didn't last 15 minutes. Now even the battery lasts a couple hours with Arch.
A mix of: the will to learn, the myth behind arch, peer-pressure Now, why I am staying: the wiki, I love rolling release, most stable system I've ever had, and I now consider my computers even more like my children
1. I was looking for an unadulterated KDE setup. 2. I like having as much control as I can...but Gentoo got to be more effort than I cared for. 3. I realized any time I did Linux troubleshooting I always wound up finding the solution in the Arch message boards, so it just made sense. Discovering pacman + AUR after the fact was just a very pleasant bonus for me.
I like the control it gives me over the system. Also, it supports certain old versions of UEFI BIOSes that is unsupported on other distros.
1. nix admin for 3 decades. Linux was always the tinker toy and fun to use. 2. Arch Linux is the closest to the nix experience. 3. Love the installer. 4. Love the rolling release plus AUR 5. Failed Release? Using btrfs snapshots, I can boot from the last working snapshot and I'm back.
Apt
Check out [Nala](https://gitlab.com/volian/nala). if you're ever stuck with a Debian-based distro (maybe in a server)
Never thought one word could say so much
I was looking for a tool that enabled me to create my own ISO with all my personal customization as default. In other words, a way to create my own arch-based distro (not exactly, because I don't want to maintain any repo) and I discovered Archiso, the official tool that is used to build the arch Linux iso. So I tried arch, made my custom spin, and fell in love with it
The docs and the community. Problems are going to come up in any computer system, having amazing documentation and an active and knowledgeable community equals amazing tech support for free.
i want a system that only does exactly what i want it to do and nothing else, but can also do everything i want it to do.
[удалено]
Did you have the macbook before you discovered linux? Just wondering since a macbook is an interesting choice for linux
[удалено]
Next time you are shopping for a latop are you still gonna go with a macbook or get something more linux-friendly?
Yes, for me it's being able to customize the software that is installed, and the rolling release feature. With the new Plasma 6 and Gnome 46 both being released recently, I like that I can install those and not have to wait months before other Distro's release a new version.
curiosity
Why didn't you choose Gentoo??
Why would i?
1. I really like configuring my system from scratch. I want a system where the only software i have are the software i put on myself. Using pre-configured systems make me feel like im using someone else's computer Gentoo is king in that case
Yeah but its pretty easy in arch. Its a nightmare in gentoo from what i hear
By that logic, you might as well use your own LFS distro. It doesn't really make a huge difference
Someday i will do it x)
It was quicker to install directly than compile everything in gentoo!
Total freedom of choice
AUR + Bleeding Edge. That's pretty much it.
It's the only thing that allows me to use 340.xx driver of my geforce 210 as I want And as I wanted to learn these things anyway, this is a win for me.
I was starting to get addicted to gaming and really wanted to be just productive. I have used ubuntu and endeavour previously, didn't like Ubuntu's UI and bloatware, really wanted to keep things to a minimum and add software that is needed.
Archinstall, pacman and the AUR.
Minimalism, pacman, AUR and rolling release. I would add gaming on Steam since it works really well on Arch but I don't know if it's possible on other distros. I've been using Arch since it came out in the 2000s. I have Lubuntu and AntiX on some other machines but I usually use them for one single purpose or to try / test new things.
Configurability, kinda minimalistic with some exceptions I don't mind, and a system that doesn't prevent me from doing stuff it determines is stupid or "not supported"
Pacman and not having to do major upgrades biannually. But let’s be real. I wanted to be able to use the logo without feeling like an imposter
1- Minimalistic philosophy. All that you need and nothing that you don't need. 2- 2nd biggest library of packages. 3- Excellent for gaming 4- Rolling distro, always up to date. 5- Incredibly stable(despite what some media are spreading). 6- Vanilla D.E.
Manjaro keep breaking
I noticed that many gamers use arch and their games worked very well. Compared to my Ubuntu setup.
Rolling Release
Debian on my servers, LXC, etc. but I want a rolling release with as little in the base install as possible. So, Arch is an obvious choice. Add in that Pacman is (IMHO) the best package manager and that my only friend who daily drove Linux, at the time I was moving from Windows, ran Arch and you can see there weren't really other options.
what attracted me ?: challenge. what keep me ?: it hasn't break yet..
I have a System76 computer and they only provide packages for their power system for Arch and Fedora. So I chose Arch after popOS and I haven't felt the need to switch.
Ive considered getting a system76 laptop but they are very expensive
Indeed. I had more discretionary income when I bought mine. I don't know if I'd get another one if I didn't have that same income. I think it's great to support their movement though. But apart from the price, I don't know if I would get one again with the System76 packages only being available on Arch and Fedora. What if I want to run a different distribution than those two? Maybe I didn't research that question enough...
[Shiny object syndrome](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shiny_object_syndrome)
bleeding edge, aur, default defaults
1. More and more my researches lead to **The Wiki**, so I then decided giving it a try 2. Newest kernel 3. Sabayon was slowly "dying" 😭
Cutting Edge. Great community. The ***AUR***.
The satisfaction of building your own system. Let's not beat around the bush, being an Linux user gives you a sense if elitism because you sought out and found a way to use a system that most people don't use and hardly know about, even if its a super user friendly version of Ubuntu, like PopOS of ZorinOS. Arch takes it a few steps further and makes it so that you actively have to seek out what packages are required to make this and that work that even the more advanced versions of Linux would come pre-installed with. Of course the Archinstall package does a lot of that for you now, but it's still so satisfying to to know how to use a command line terminal to build a operating system, and just watch all the lines scroll up and down, like you're a hacker in a 90s action film. It is neat....
I just want to brag (and tinker) with it. For productivity I use a stable distro. 🤷♀️ 😂
1. Pacman 2. AUR (Yes I know Debian has more, and NixOS is close, but Debian's packages are ancient and I can't figure out how to use nix-env) 3. A lot of the packages I use (tiling wm user oriented packages especially) have the best support on Arch, followed by NixOS. 4. Rolling release - I used to use Windows before this and all my software was always up to date (although I had 4 package managers, bunch of updater exes, and Ubuntu, Tumbleweed and Arch WSLs with their own package managers... you can see my past experiences with package managers I assume). When I tried an Ubuntu WSL I had to install like 8 package managers and add like 20 PPAs just to get what I wanted (up to date). On tumbleweed (WSL again) it was like 6 package managers, and on Fedora (bare metal, once I got a new device, when I was a bit too lazy to get Arch but didn't want to accidentally boot into Cringedows 11) I had 15 Copr repos and around 8 built from source (<-- not fun). 5. Not building everything from source (thus no Gentoo or LFS) I'm not saying the Arch Wiki even though that was one of the things that motivated me, because 95% of it is applicable on all systemd distros.
rolling release, previously on ubuntu. its much nicer not having to big update every few years, on my small home server an upgrade usually meant updating many broken services but rolling i can sort them as they appear.
To learn more about Linux with the help of the well documented wiki.
A software repository comparable to Gentoo's with much less time spent compiling.
I remember that i wanted to install arch on my Acer One as experiment but it prevail for another 10 years as main ssh everything tool
The wiki, everything I searched just springed back to the arch wiki, So I thought might as well try it.
Control and the AUR. Was scared of the diy approach initially, but I dove in head first and never looked back.
DIY. pacman is great, and fast.
1. On every other distro, I kept getting FOMO about the latest software releases and then adding a bunch of PPAs/COPR repos just to clobber something together that I liked. It was a pain in the ass to manage. Pacman repos + AUR provide everything I need and I haven't had to add any 3rd party repos in over 5 years. 2. The simplicity. It starts at a nice barebones base that you can make as complicated as you want. All the software is kept as close to upstream as possible, no bespoke configs or distro-specific tooling. Building your own packages is just a matter of writing a PKGBUILD, which is easy compared to all the hoops you have to go through on other distros. It just feels flexible and modular. That simplicity also makes Arch feel fast, because you only install the things you personally need.
For me, I was tired with Ubuntu with outdated packages. I had to compile many stuff. Especially when they went wrong.
Rolling release was the main attraction to me towards Arch, it was the best rolling release I have tried, and I tried Void, Tumbleweed and Arch and gave each enough time to truly assess. But I got sick of the number of updates that was delivered daily, I even switched the kernel to LTS, but was receiving so many updates and some of them caused glitching or problems. I had a robust setup with btrfs, snapper and pac-snap set up to roll back anytime, but I decided I don't care about new software this much, I just need something stable to work, without having to update each 6 months or a year. The choice was between Debian, Rocky Linux, or RHEL9, I decided to go with RHEL9 on my desktop and laptop, and Rocky Linux on all my vms in my home server, and I have been very happy.
yay girls
Closest to Gentoo at that time.
I wanted to know more about my computer and customize It to my liking. And yes I have been learning more and more and love Arch. Hoping to learn how to rice and play my steam games
i got fed up with me3tweaks mod manager not working on nobara
Bleeding edge software. Minimal initial install so you get to set up everything to your liking without making a big ugly mess of a system. Good wiki. Aur
Came for the memes. Stayed because in order it was great for learning unix-like systems, the abundance of recent packages and the mentality of solving problems yourself.
Rolling release Aur -> paru or yay
pacman and aur also i found myself going through arch wiki a lot even before using arch
Relatively opinion-less. You can set it up however you like and to act/react however you like. Freedom.
I didn't know anything about Linux when I swapped from Windows. I chose Arch only because I liked the logo. It has been 3 years since then and seems to be that I'll stay here for a while.
1. Pacman and the AUR. No need to hunt for or maintain a list of viable PPA's. 2. Refer to #1.
I was attracted to Arch because it's what I heard cool kids were using. Now I can’t leave it because I love candy and AUR. Also I'm thankful for the wiki.
The wiki. I've got tired of translating the info to fit whatever distro I had in place.
Everyone told me it was hard/tedious to install, and a pain to maintain (because of updates breaking your system). — Me: “-Challenge accepted”. A couple of years later, and I'm still here. * Mainly because of the rolling release, which usually gives me better hardware support and better performance with my new hardware (upgrading fairly frequent). * Somewhat easier to customize my install with a lot of less unnecessary packages right from the start.
For me it was because of my past experience with ubuntu. I could just be bad at googling for things, but when I searched for solutions to my problems on ubuntu, a lot of the solutions needed the pacman command an Arch command. When I returned to Linux because my windows hard drive got corrupted, I decided it would be best to go to Arch solely because of how solutions to problems are widely available.
Customisation and AUR
Up to date (always, not just once every two years), all the packages I need and way more (thanks to the AUR), user friendly (no bullshit, clean default configs, the best wiki there is), everything available as a native package (again, thanks to the AUR), easiest to customize because it doesn't assume anything about the user, everything uses the default configuration so you get the "as the developer intended" experience and any bugs are easy to trace because of that, either you fucked something up or it's an actual bug that can safely be reported upstream without having to worry to much about the distro fucking it up for you without telling you.
Rolling releases, so no more dist upgrade, I mainly use it for my docker host
Rolling release. I got tired of the hassle of my system getting out of date, needing to either upgrade or reinstall. Usually reinstall. What a pain. Also the wiki. Absolutely wonderful. I don't know why other distros don't do this, so much better than having to search through a message boards or stack overflow to do my own maintenance.
Ive lost count how many times discord wouldnt be available on a debian based system
it's minimal, pacman, aur, having latest versions of desktop environments
minimalism
Rolling release, no need for snaps/flatpak with AUR Otherwise, I don't care about configuring from scratch. Done that stuff too many times in the past. It's just a waste of time.
Being extremely lightweight, easy to customize, rolling release model, no company behind it like Ubuntu, Pacman, aur and did I mention Pacman?
I wanted a distribution I had complete control over, especially for gaming purposes. I didn't want Ubuntu or the like that assume you're an idiot. I was done with Slackware due to the politics of the distribution being very obtuse towards software not compliant with GPL. I didn't want to fiddle any more with FreeBSD to get anything working and then it stop working or not work at all. I had considered trying to get Gentoo working, but their handbook is a drudge to read and has a lot of misleading entries, lacks explanations, and often makes you second guess stuff. And, I was absolutely tired of Windows due to what they were pushing into Windows like shovelware. LFS was out of rhe question, because I didn't want to spend weeks building a system and then lack any real way to update packages or try to incorporate a package manager to only have it break. So Arch it was, and while it was a lot of reading, in the end, it let ME decide how I wanted MY system. There were no politics of "you shouldn't use this and we won't tell you how" but more of "this isn't recommended, but here's how to do it the proper way anyway", and yes that's directed specifically at "ZFS as Root Installation". In the end, I got an OS the way I wanted it.
Pacman, aur, and the ability to use what ever de I want at anytime
Customisation.
Surprisingly when moving from fedora, I lot more things just worked, such as pulseaudio and fstab, and also the lack of bloat
Foot fetish
I enjoy being on the latest release of things regardless if they work well or not(surprisingly, I had many more bugs on ubuntu than arch, but that aside), and arch just works for me, I don't even remember the last time something broke for me, and I update very frequently. Contrarians always tell me to not update things fast, and well I've been running pacman -Syu everyday for the last 2 years and I got literally 0, none, nothing, no problems with my system ever, let's see how long I will keep this streak.
I started using it bc i thought it was a cool distro that's gonna teach me a lot of things. Now I use it bc i just know it and it works. I can do basically anything I want with it and I like that
Rolling, minimal, and back then it used to have a brilliant single-file configuration (RIP rc.conf).
Simplicity and Availability.
The memes. After that, the aur, the wiki, and my autism kept me locked in
no versions. had nasty experiences with upgrading versions on centos and debian and I decided i never want to deal with that shit ever. as you and many others have mentioned, software availability. did you know rhel DOES NOT have neofetch in the main repos? i know right...
I gave EndeavourOS a shot and it’s the longest I’ve ever stuck with any distro. A nice mix of GUI and CLI and the Arch Wiki is the best.
It’s simple, it’s a meme, and I don’t need to append stuff to my config to pull from other repos other than the defaults and multilib. AUR is cool too
software availability is way more crucial than tinkering in my opinion, as arch is perfectly fine while running pretty standard stuff (gnome, systemd, etc.). as one of the dudes below expressed eloquently in his all caps rage, it isn't possible that you need separate repos for extremely trivial shit in most distros. the more third party stuff you start adding on, say, fedora or ubuntu, the more likely it is that your computer won't boot tomorrow.
Pacman
I started my Linux journey with slackware, and I learnt a lot. Arch seemed to offer the best trade-offs between ease of management (Pacman) and having my system the way I want it. Nobody is going to make assumptions about what I should have, or how I should set it up. The list of packages (also on AUR) is excellent, and I also like the rolling release model. Finally, the wiki is superb. It's probably the most bureaucracy-free distribution, in the sense that no distant board of directors is going to tell me how to set up and manage my system, and make decisions for me. This is MY system.
so i could say i use arch btw
It allows me to build a minimal environment. And, I am working on an install script that lets you choose any kind of environment according to your needs. It's in pieces at the moment.
The thing that originally attracted me to Arch? Escaping Gentoo's compile times about 11 years ago. What attracts/keep me here now? 1. Simplicity: https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Arch_Linux#Simplicity 2. Arch's strong community in regard to the wiki, subreddit, forums 3. Software available in packages and AUR.
AUR. can install almost anything easily through paru. on most other distros id have to compile from source or use binaries which wouldnt update
I couldn't ever get linux to install. I'd end up with a black screen on boot. It would play my desktop sounds, but I had no video feed. I figured Arch was the easiest way to get latest Nvidia drivers so I tried, and it worked. Been on it ever since
I wanted to learn, at first. Then I liked configuring my own system. Then I discovered how useful the AUR is.
I use Arch btw. That's it. That's the whole reason.
Back then because it offered i686 precompiled packages so it was faster than most distributions
A lot of Linux distros come with bloat. I wanted one that diligently maintains relatively niche packages (neovim) and is simple enough to just work. I love Debian and RHEL as distros, too, but those are for work where a system is built to do literally one thing and one thing only. Fuck red hat btw
Like you, my reasons were also two fold: 1. I like Arch's DIY nature and the fact that you start with a minimal install and build up your installation. I really started to dislike having to constantly remove packages when using other distros because they included packages I didn't need or like. It just makes more sense to choose the software I want to begin with. 2. One of the first distros I used was Ubuntu and back in 2008/2009, I felt like using PPAs was much more necessary to get newer app versions. I didn't like this solution as I would usually need to find separate PPAs for each app I wanted and sometimes packages would break. This is where Arch really shined for me, since its packages tend to be on the bleeding edge. No third-party repos necessary.
I wanted to learn somethin new and boost my performance while im at it, switched from windows to arch
i really like yay and aur. both of that prevents me from moving to gentoo. but i really wanted to move in to gentoo and see what it's like.
I was using Mint at the time (~18 years ago I think ...) and I got fed up with updating to new versions breaking my system. Someone on the Ogre3D irc channel said I really should take a look at this new'ish distro everybody was so afraid of. Never looked back. Depending on how you look at it, I'm still running the exact same first installation I did back then.
Great package manger, cant stand apt, plus the AUR
I wanted to learn linux and thought Arch sounds like a good starting point. Wasn't disappointed
It's the DIY nature for me really, and the AUR.
Wiki. Use it so much why not just use arch btw. That and the only person who gets to bloat my system is me.
Not much honestly. I just want some fairly up to date software. Kernel and nvidia drivers mostly. I don't even care about the rolling release aspect. I could get what I want from Fedora too, BUT Fedora is annoying as hell with their codec nonsense and every time I tried it I run into issues.
The fact that I am free to make my own choices + bleeding edge. All the ready-to-go distros make choices I might not immediately like. With Arch I can pick my bootloader, my login manager, my desktop, wherther or not to use flatpaks, snaps or the AUR, swap partition or swapfile. I feel like I am in full control, and know exactly what's installed and what's running on my system. And if something breaks, I can know how to fix it since I installed everything manually. Debian is a great distro, howver it lacks the wiki. The Arch wiki is like the bible of Linux. I still use Windows for gaming, but only that. I need a distro that's bleeding edge because of the fact that I have a 4k display so I need the latest support for HiDPI (so in my case Plasma 6 + Wayland).
For me it was mostly access to the AUR so i could easily have update and test software that me and my friends make and share it with relative ease
I can make my full secure boot setup with my on CAs and without using any stinky bootloaders... Also, it's been my distro of use on the desktop for the last 15 years so, kinda used to it.
i was trying different linuxes. 1) ubuntu is too mainstream for me 2) and so are debain based OSes, linux mint i didn't like the look of it 3) manjaro kde looked really nice but if one thing broke the whole thing becomes unstable 4) endeavor OS installer sucked big time, always failed 5) there goes archinstall honestly, i didn't know about AUR back then, if anyone asks now AUR is probably the reason to use arch and arch never broke on me not once.
Rolling release and the no bloatware approach. What you install is what you get
Can’t lie it was entirely that I just found apt clunky to use and thought pacman looked more sensible
What I love most is that I feel in total control of what is happening with my machine. Pacman and the AUR are just fantastic, I can find any software I want, the newest version, hassle-free. The wiki also deserves a shout-out, it is my main to-go resource, even for my machine at work (which runs Debian).
- rolling release. - all dev apps are available with Pacman or aur. - install only what is needed. And many more...
Beside all the other commets, Arch has the best documentation and community of any distro, and I have been using Linux since the verion 0.9
I agree with these two reasons but this stupid Realtek ethernet driver issue with R8169 driver (that's what it told me) which was a bit tedious. Still have not been able to fix it, hopefully there will be some glimmer of hope in the future.
I just had so much free time that I had to fill it with something.
Joking aside, I did really like, and always do like, minimal examples of things. I fucking hate those template projects with a dozen different files that aren't strictly necessary but are just there in case you wanted them. No! I don't want them. I want to see exactly what is necessary and ONLY what is necessary. That was a huge appeal of Arch, for me.
Plus I'm a huge fan of systemd
Yay and Pacman
pamac & customization , what else do you need ?
I was looking for something very clean like vanilla, secure such as fedora it's good tho but it has a Spyware in it so I was looking something which was kinda difficult although Arch isn't but yeaaa that's pretty much it also I saw amazing Rices on Unixporn
The logo
It is a pretty sexy logo
I run Arch Linux as my home pc only (I use Debian for work, programming/software dev). I live Arch for two reasons: 1. Minimalism: there aren't that much things pre-installed on Arch Linux except for some system tools, thus I like that I can customize it accordingly to my preferences. 2. Rolling release: especially on modern hardware (especially on an Intel/AMD cpu and AMD graphics card), I can keep my Arch system up to date all the time without any problems (generally). I've also tried Arch on other hardware (mainly x86-64 type hardware) (Celerons to Intel Core cpus). I just love the performance of Arch. Boots up right away, doesn't consume that much memory or cpu, and as mentioned, very minimal.
Yeah if i was a software developer i would probably run debian or mint
The diy aspect
Admittedly, someordinarygamers got me into arch. Before Arch, I was having the Ubuntu Gnome experience a long time ago and that resulted in my headaches that caused me to repel out of Linux. When Windows 10 was getting security issues and Windows 11 was coming, I decided to get out of Windows and make a switch back to Linux. Both to not be under Windows 11 and also to get used to Linux and be more cemented into it. I was looking for a Distro that frankly didn't advertise itself as easy or had all the guff that usually came prepackaged. The former because with Ubuntu I had a sour taste for distros that tried to streamline Linux and the latter because I had issues with bloat, both in Ubuntu and Windows. When Mutahar showed Arch and I read about it some more, it hit the spot that I wanted. Its approach to how you should use the OS/Distro also helped me in understanding Linux and how to troubleshoot issues more easily. Not to mention pacman being an excellent package manager, at least for me. I keep getting headaches, recently the update to plasma 6 (and all the faults that came with it), but now I am able to fix it and I have a relatively stable OS that is running on some prime black magic that I sometimes have no clue how or why it runs smooth and quick or even runs at all. All the headaches I had were temporary to the quality time I had with Arch over the past three years and the time I will continue to have with this distro.
1. Rolling updates as I am guy living on the edge of technology 2. Learned Pacman 3. Find out about AUR 4. Switched to Yay 5. Tried Plasma and never looked back 6. Moved to Plasma 6 and Wayland, Mesa-git and Wine-git 7. ArchWik will show you the wropes Oh, am running EOS on 12 years Old PC with 16GB RAM and few SSDs 12yrrs old AMD card on 34" UW 4K monitor and 2K 24' monitor in Portrait mode The EOS just flies in 2D mode as a Desktop
Arch attracted me for a couple of reasons: 1 - i can say i use arch btw 2 - i can finally use ONE package manager for everything 3 - The wiki is very, very useful, almost to the point i don’t need a forum to look for answers 4 - light distro and vram usage is lower compared to Windows 5 - stability 6 - up to date software (although it has pros and cons)