What do you think of Arch Linux

[AdamMcC642]

If you've ever used Arch Linux before, what was your experience like?

[Pjotr]

Never used it. I prefer easy.

[Distro-Don]

If I liked Arch Linux, I would be on their forum.

[niowluka]

I didn't like it due to its 'bleeding edge' philosophy, which meant upgrades would break stuff more often than not.

On a plus side it's got a fantastic wiki page with many, many informative and helpful articles.

[Neil Edmond]

Never used Arch, but have used Manjaro. Manjaro is kind of like the Mint of Arch, and my experience with it was fairly good.

[xfrank]

Never used. I used Manjaro (a user friendly version ready out-of-the box). Pure Arch seems to me too time consuming.

[richyrich]

I got tired of constant updates and constant upgrades . . every day, sometimes every hour . . for every little file or lib . . gets tedious after a while.

[AdamMcC642]

Nothing to do with Arch Discussion, or much of anything really...

Please note: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Fo ... ng_systems



TGN'ed...

That site mentioned claims opinions are okay... so they moved it to their section called "Topics Going Nowhere"

[exploder]

I used Arch for a while, the speed it has is great but it took a lot to keep it running. I was always fixing something and there were just too many updates. Some claim to hardly ever have problems but I wasn't one of them... I switched to Manjaro, it is so much easier to maintain. Manjaro uses update packs for the most part. They pull packages from the Arch stable repos and test them for a week or so before adding them to their stable repos.

I run the supported Xfce stable release and have only had a couple of very minor problems. Arch has great documentation but it is geared toward advanced users. Manjaro targets new users. There is nothing wrong with Arch, it just takes more time and work. Manjaro also has very good and well organized documentation. Manjaro does an amazing job of keeping the wiki up to date, that's how I found the answers I needed.

If you have the time to put into it Arch is great, if you don't than Manjaro is a better option. Arch and Manjaro run faster than anything I have ever used!

[lmintnewb2]

Waves to Exploder ... hope you're doing well fellow nixer. Been a long time. Had seen you in the Debian forum not to long ago. Can't say many good things about the state of affairs on that forum/community. Pretty sad imo. Mostly just wanted to say whazzzzzup.

Only tried Arch a couple times, liked it both times. Though got some helpful advice about making Arch more enjoyable. KISS = keep it simple, w Arch being cutting edge and vanilla was advised by a more experienced person to avoid complex stuff, ie: Kde/Gnome DE's etc. Which involve TONS of depends that could result in upgrade issues. So stuck w windows managers ie: Openbox and had no problems. Personally prefer wm's anyway and have never been big on eye-candy or bloat.

Keeping it simple reasonably enough means less borkage and therefor less time fixing any borkage. Don't doubt there are plenty in the Arch Linux community who have no problem maintaining their install(s) w minimum downtime.

Would have to conclude those people employ common sense techniques to protect themselves too. ie: They keep incremental backups, that can quickly be restored if something goes wrong, keep a testing clone or vm to dip toes in water before doing major dist-upgrades etc. No matter which gnu/Linux distribution xyz-person prefers those are just good idea's in general me thinks.

Overall have nothing but good things to say about Arch. Have much respect for the person behind it, the knowledge of it's community and the nixy kickbuttness that is the blessed Archwiki. Same time, agree w Exploder too. Prefer distro's that focus more heavily on being user-friendly and less prone to borkage, logically less time/labor intensive to maintain.

Don't have to have the absolute latest versions of packages and there's no shortage of ways to install cutting edge on pretty much every distro anyway.



Vll!

[exploder]

lmintnewb2, great to see you again! My time on the Debian forum was pretty short lived, like always. I did find out that my hard drive was filling up because of systemd! The log files growing was the problem and setting a size limit was the solution.

You make a very good point about keeping things simple by using a window manager. Window managers do not have any bells and whistles so there is not much of a problem with things breaking. As I remember, you have always liked keeping things light using window managers. Maybe I should have tried that approach with Arch? I like Fluxbox and Openbox quite a bit and I have seen people do amazing things with them.

I have had a lot of hardware issues with Debian and the Ubuntu base, real bad glitches with graphics and I just can't find a decent solution for it... I hopped around for quite a while and finally decided to go with Manjaro. You would think a cutting edge distro based on Arch would have made the problem worse but it didn't! Everything works perfect, even Plymouth displays flawlessly every time!

Arch believes in giving you packages exactly the way the developer intended them to be and they very seldom patch anything. In the wiki it said, how can you complain about something to a developer that is not working when you have changed it by patching it? (Not their exact words but the same idea.) That makes a lot of sense! I have always liked the idea of a rolling release too.

[jtarin]

On a plus side it's got a fantastic wiki page with many, many informative and helpful articles.

Agreed.....Google takes me there often.

[xenopeek]

Upgrades on Arch Linux have been completely problem free for me. From what I've seen a lot of problems stem from people not reading the news before upgrading or not reading what pacman tells them to do after installing the upgrades. I have had 30+ DEs and WMs installed simultaneously without any problems during upgrades

While Arch Linux meets my needs best right now, I think for most users a system like Linux Mint is a better choice. Not because maintenance of Arch Linux takes any more time or is more complex than Linux Mint, but because of the learning curve. With Linux Mint you can jump in without reading anything, and (unfortunately ) most users do. For Arch Linux most things you need to know are spelled out on the wiki, but you likely will have to read a bit before your first installation and first upgrade.

[lmintnewb2]

Lol @Exploder ... still guilty as charged fellow nixer. Debian forum imo has really become a scraping bottom of barrel kinda place. Sheesh ... even worse than buntu forums in ways ! Though that has nothing to do w Debian itself, I still <heart> Debian linux. Is good 2 see you're keeping body, soul and OS's together Exploder. Thank the gnu/Nix gawds for projects and communities like Linux Mint !

Still don't want bloat or eyecandy, just doesn't make sense to me to use 400mbs of RAM, when are options that do the same or more, that use 24mbs. Even now that I've gotten ahold of hardware that doesn't belong in a museum, still much prefer the do more, use much less approach to gnu/Linux.

Which imo is another virtue of running Arch, you can keep it as light and minimal as you desire or install everything under the sun. So it really is your OS. Who wouldn't like that kinda thing ? Same thing can be done w all the others too to great extent me thinks. Including LM o course. So yeppers I do like Arch and still really like LM too.

Xyz distro may do things a bit differently but equally kickbutt software regardless. Just 2 more cents from an anonymous dork on webz.

[Fred Barclay]

I like the distro. The forums are an interesting experience, though. I learned pretty quickly that the attitude I've been using on the Mint forums--i.e. people actually want to help you through anything--doesn't fly on the Arch forums. They definitely have higher expectations; and you better have researched everything and be prepared to defend why you want to do anything a certain way. It's a tad disappointing, but I didn't set up the forums. There is a lot of good info out there though, and I feel more comfortable with terminal than ever before, and I'm a terminal guy anyway.
Culture shock!

[DrHu]

They Arch forums are very good with details (descriptions) on howto resolve Linux user problems, for their release
--but because they are so detailed, they often help with other Linux distributions (Gnome based)

[MartyMint]

I'm okay with Arch, but Manjaro makes it a little more accessible for me...

[var]

I dislike pointless setup procedures. I want something that gets my work done.

[badbodh]

i liked arch because of the 'tailor-made' installation. Yes it takes a lot of effort to set it up. Manually installing grub, display manager etc *sigh*. But i got to install only what i needed. i have 10Gb partition reserved for installing a linux distro, while ubuntu or mint leaves only 1Gb space for my use, arch linux gave me 5 Gb empty <insert exclamation marks here>. Yet everything i needed was right there: a basic gnome desktop with control panel, firefox, office, vlc player. Stability was the only issue. Too many updates that , according to the arch philosophy, i am not supposed to trust because they may break things. And it did break

If i may, i would like to suggest gentoo. Start with minimal install, download and compile what you need. Tailor-made but more trust here. i haven't tried it yet because of time-effort investment, right now i need my linux-mint to get my job done asap

if anyone has given gentoo a try please share your story. i do plan to try out gentoo if i can set a play-date (say about a week or more). It looks tougher than arch that's for sure.

[Flemur]

i liked arch because of the 'tailor-made' installation. Yes it takes a lot of effort to set it up. Manually installing grub, display manager etc *sigh*. But i got to install only what i needed.

I got the same effect with Debian net-install, the main differences being that the Debian install was easier and more reliable (updates don't break system as happened with Arch a few times) and uses apt/synaptic, which is nice if you're already familiar with them.