Arch Linux. What makes it different from the other distributions? Why is there some weird elitism paralleled by disgust around it?
In: 1021
Pros:
* Although the command line installation seems daunting, it is pretty simple once you follow tutorials or the documentation.
* Ability to select what package you want to install at a level no conventional distro provides.
* A barebones working installation of KDE Plasma Desktop Environment on arch consumes about 315 MB of RAM in my 4GB RAM old desktop. A Ubuntu KDE installation consumes about 660 MB of RAM in the same machine for comparison.
* Since it is a rolling release distribution, you don’t need to wait for major updates. It always keeps happening.
* I like trying out latest versions of applications. I’m using Linux, why not try the latest versions of the apps to know what’s going on! Arch enables me to use the latest versions of all applications without the need of waiting for a major update.
* The Arch user repository contains all the applications you could want to install in a Linux environment. The positive of having the latest version available in the distro itself is that the performance of the application is much better than the version available via snaps/flatpak and simply opens faster and operates faster to my eyes.
Cons:
* If you do not update your applications for a long time, and then check for updates, there is a high chance of breakage. In my teenage years, I used to fix these issues by searching for similar issues in the forums or via documentation. At some point, these are not worth your effort. Now that I have a job, I cannot continue to use this distro.
* Manjaro brings a lot of the benefits of Arch in a friendly way. People might want to try other easy to use distros like Solus for having latest applications.
* People are not usually helpful in the forums. They are unforgiving to newcomers. Your best bet is to ask a youtuber in a comments section. You will get better replies in youtube comments section that will help you than a complicated list of commands without context in arch forums.
* Installing Arch is easy, using it for a long time is difficult. It requires some maintenance that requires time and effort many people would not want to give in. “BTW I use Arch” is a weird meme that people use to flex that they are technically superior and have better understanding of computers than normies. I have split opinion on this. While Arch installation and maintenance teaches you about what packages are actually used to run the desktop environment, the lock screen,etc., you are not actually going places with this knowledge unless you are a sysadmin. You are better off learning Kotlin/Flutter in Windows or Mac and be technically superior to someone who knows only to install obscure applications.
The difference is that Arch is pretty bare bones compared to most other mainstream distributions, and that’s it’s appeal. The lack of everything leaves a lot of space to grow and develop it to your taste rather than someone else’s. It also allows you to express your opinions on software more than other distributions by virtue of it.
The elitism’s from the community of people who believe that somehow using Arch makes them inherently better. It’s an immature take that IMO isn’t even all that correct as Arch has became pretty user-friendly with all it’s documentation. If they wanted to brag they should’ve used Gentoo.
I was a Linux sys admin in college and took a lot of OS courses and such back then as well. I haven’t had to use Linux professionally for a while (unless you wanna count being an android developer as working with Linux). I mostly mess with it as a hobby. If I had to explain like you were 5 I would say it’s kind of like the first time you tried coloring with colored pencils instead of crayons in the sense that you now have way better control of the coloring process (getting to pick and choos exactly what packages to load and things like that). Eventually you get good enough at art that you realize whatever you wanted to do with colored pencils you can basically accomplish with crayons or whatever else even if some of the details end up a bit different (if you know how to use arch there is no reason why you can’t load up a bare bones version of any distro and build it up the same way you would arch) . Eventually you become a working adult and realize none of that matters and everyone just uses pencils anyways (the second this kinda stuff becomes your job the reliability of just SSHing to a remote machine from a mac or windows machine usually outweighs whatever benefits you have of running Linux straight on your machine) obviously the art metaphor kinda falls apart at the end there but idk this stuff would be kinda hard to explain to a 5 year old.
Not gonna comment on elitism or disgust. I think I’m not really up to date on whatever sorts of social media or discussion forums are out there for Linux distributions to experience that.
As far as what makes Arch unique compared to more common Linux distros, consider what a distro is. You need Linux itself, a bootloader, an init system, a shell, some set of core utilities at least reasonably close to fitting the POSIX standard, a basic filesystem somewhat close conforming to the Linux Filesystem Hierarchy Standard, and a package manager. On top of that, for personal use systems, you’re usually going to want things like a graphical window manager, desktop environment, soundsystem support, networking support. Most Linux distros are fairly prescriptive about these things. They’ll give you a graphical or ncurses based installer that makes the bulk of the decisions for you. You’re getting GNOME and Pipewire and you’re going to have WiFi and Bluetooth support. You’ll probably even get things like a calendar, e-reader, weather app, things you might expect to be built into a smartphone OS or Windows.
Arch gives you almost none of this out of the box. There is no installer. To install Arch, you mount a minimal Arch from a USB stick, and then run all of the commands to create disk partitions with filesystems on them and install the packages you need. If you follow the Wiki instructions, you’ll get Linux, some firmware for common devices, and the base package that gives you most POSIX utilties in the form of GNU coreutils, sed, grep, and what not. After that, you choose what you want. I’m pretty sure officially only systemd is supported as an init system, but there are plenty of examples using others if you want to do that. No bootloader is prescribed and you can choose whichever you want. Shell is up to you. Text editor up to you. Desktop environment, and exactly what graphical apps you want that usually come with it, up to you.
Accordingly, it is loved by power users because it makes almost no decisions for you. For people used to the convenience you get from any mainstream operating system, not so much. There are no Arch-provided graphical tools for doing anything. Get used to using the shell. You want Internet to work? Write out text files in your shell and then tell the init system to start a service that uses them. If you’re used to getting a wizard that does most of that for you, or even a system that just sets up the Internet for you without asking for input other than maybe which WiFi network to connect to, you might hate that. If you’re running a system on a very minimal PC that doesn’t even need WiFi or Bluetooth because it has no radio capability, you might love it, because it won’t force you to install anything you don’t actually need and won’t use.
Another defining characteristic, but less in the realm of completely unique, is that Arch uses a rolling release model. That means you will always have something very close to the latest version of all upstream packages. As soon as Pipewire releases a new version, you’ll get it maybe a day or two later at most. No waiting six months for a Debian or Redhat release cycle and always being a version or two behind. The upside is you always have the latest and greatest up-to-date features and the maintainers don’t have to backport critical bug fixes and security patches. The downside is your system is quite a bit less stable. In practice, I personally think rolling release is ideal for desktop PCs, but stable point releases are ideal for servers. It’s a matter of opinion, though, but people on the Internet tend to have very strong opinions.
Arch Linux is less hand-holdy, but not for any particularly good reason.
When you install ubuntu, you get an installation wizard. It takes you through the steps of installing and setting up a functioning system, and it also comes with a good deal of standard packages, including a window manager and desktop environment.
Arch Linux provides neither of those things. There is no installation wizard; you will just have to go to the arch wiki and follow the steps outlined there. For the most part, I personally don’t think the steps are much worse than using an installation wizard, apart from the fact that you can fat-finger things and it can break stuff. But broken stuff is always recoverable.
There are no packages either, but most people who choose arch consider this a benefit. It doesn’t come with `gnome` and hundreds of other related things that are required to get it to work, that you then have to tear out before you install whatever WM you actually want to use. But installing the things you need, to get a running system that is basically as functional as a new ubuntu installation, is a matter of running a single command — just like when you install anything in ubuntu.
The elitism surrounding arch linux is almost entirely unwarranted, and it’s mostly perpetuated by people who barely know what they are doing, and think that installing arch linux is some sort of hacker’s rite of passage(it is not). So they finally manage to install arch linux, then they join some community of likeminded people where they all sit around and pat each other on the back for managing to complete the monumental task of following a step-by-step guide in the arch linux wiki… and to perpetuate the inane arch linux elitism, of course.
In my opinion, arch linux should just.. include an installation wizard. It’s just a no-brainer, and I have no clue why they haven’t. I’ve heard various explanations like “keeping the bar high” so that arch linux devs and users don’t get inundated by newbies or something, but it’s just completely nonsensical, and what we get instead is the circlejerky community we have now that surrounds arch linux.
Arch Linux users are basically bug testing bleeding edge software for the rest of the Linux community, so everyone lets them feel special for running an unstable OS that’s held together with duct tape.
It’s like when kids brags about lacing their own shoes. It is a big deal for them because it took a little more effort. But there are other kids who prefers laceless shoes, and it doesn’t mean that they don’t know how to tie a knot, but prefer simple things.
Speaking about arch, it’s a distro that has no versioning, so you’ll never have a major release (on the contrary of Ubuntu having one or two major releases per year, or Windows itself having Windows 8, 10, 11, etc). This means that with a simple command you’ll have your system up to date.
Also their package system is very efficient and fast (they use zstd for package compression). And if a package is not on their repositories, you can go to aur.archlinux to find a package “template” and build/install it with a single command, unlike debian/ubuntu which is more complicated to build a package from scratch.
Are the Slackware people dead? Installing Arch is like going to Disneyland where as we had to install Slackware from a magazine without internet. That is if we were lucky enough to have a magazine.
Let’s equate computers to cars:
MacOS is a Tesla. Shiny and fully featured, but little user customization outside what they give you. And you probably have to take it to a repair shop for anything more than the most minor issue.
Windows is a 1995 Ford Taurus. Basic and reliable, a lot of ways the user can maintain it, but most people still take it to a repair shop for most things.
Debian and it’s derivatives are Honda Civics. Folks who use these can range anywhere from basic users to car enthusiasts who want to know and control as much as possible. Folks who own this car probably have at least the ability to do oil changes, replace engine parts, etc.
Arch is a ratrod. This is a car built up from a very basic base, customized to the gills, and probably contains parts made specifically for that one car. There is a strong community of rat rodders who share knowledge and experience, but still like the personal challenge of learning everything they can about their car.
True ELI5:
It’s like how people get super elitist over camping.
Arch is the equivalent of someone refusing to live in a house they haven’t personally logged the trees for and built by hand.
If you want to learn how operating systems work, and you don’t mind taking a computer out of action for a bit, it’s definitely worth the experience!
Otherwise, unless you already have years of know-how and stubbornness behind you, every little task is enormous effort, and you’ll find yourself sleeping under leaves as a “temporary solution, before you have a UI”.
Seriously, I tried it on my MacBook a few years ago, and I was using a text browser through all of it. It took me 2 weeks to figure out how to get the WiFi working
Latest Answers