I like operating systems as boring as possible. Let it manage the underlying system while I focus on work. I think you just convinced me to try Arch now.
Linux
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).
Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.
Rules
- Posts must be relevant to operating systems running the Linux kernel. GNU/Linux or otherwise.
- No misinformation
- No NSFW content
- No hate speech, bigotry, etc
Related Communities
Community icon by Alpár-Etele Méder, licensed under CC BY 3.0
Arch offers a combination of rolling software updates, a simple but easily customized base, pacman for the package manager, the AUR, a barebones installation process by default, good documentation, and active development. That may or may not be a good combination based on your goals.
Other distros offer a different combination of characteristics. Those characteristics are a starting point and you can get to the same destination no matter what you use. The trick is figuring out what starting point is closest to your destination or which starting point makes the journey fun for you. For some people, Arch is that. For plenty of people, Arch isn't that.
You're forgetting the finest feature - you have to tell everyone in the real world and online that you use arch btw.
I like to do this to irritate people because I have a steam deck.
"I got a steam deck for Christmas. It runs arch, btw"
That's basically it. Some Arch users are genuinely just picky about what they want on their system and desire to make their setup as minimal as possible. However, a lot of people who make it their personality just get a superiority complex over having something that's less accessible to the average user.
How can I make using Arch Linux my personality
That cracked me up x)
Anyway, I'd say it's good that the OS is out of your way once set it up. Even though I don't use Arch directly, I like how comprehensive the AUR is (even though there may be repositories more packages, like nix and whatnot), think the ArchWiki (like the GentooWiki) is a very useful resource, even if you use a completely different system.
Let me ask you... Why would you do something like that? I mean, Arch is just a piece of software, why would you wanna be obsessed with or turn it your personality?
Don't you have anything more meaninful to worry about?
Am I missing something?
Yep. You got meme'd -- Arch is a distro like any other.
You'll know it when you feel the satisfaction of getting to enter pacman -Syu
in the terminal several times a day and a new update or two comes in. lol
a lot of people base there personality off it because they installed it from scratch and customize it exactly how it fits them. ofcorse that's not going to be everyone because everyone is different.
😂
Fresh packages all the time without any hassle or snaps/flatpak/appimages, and theoretically never needs to be reinstalled. What's not to love.
OP was pretty fucking snarky though, ngl. Some of us enjoy using arch based distros without being walking memes, and far more people complain about people talking about arch than actually talk about arch these days.
Nobody's raving about the install, that's just useful for people who don't know what makes a Linux distro.
It becomes your personality after a few years because every update might break anything, and you need to regularly maintain random shit. Also if you forget to update regularly, the chance of everything crapping out rises exponentially.
I hope you're using something like btrfs, because rollbacks are a must.
No longer using Arch, but I can tell you what I liked about it:
- it basically only does what you explicitly tell it to, making the setup very flexible. There's no stuff the OS hides behind its own tools really (resulting in little to none "DO NOT EDIT THIS FILE" situations).
- It is very up to date and the rolling release generally works well, there's no pain with changing releases or anything.
- The package manager, including creating your own packages, is dead easy and fast. Caveat is that once you look deeper into it, it gets more complex as you need to keep a container for clean building around. Still, with the right tooling, it's very manageable.
- As already mentioned, the documentation is very good.
- Packages are very close to upstream, in most cases just being something like "./configure; make; make install".
- Generally very unopinionated.
It's like owning a screw driver, a really nice professional grade, well forged screw driver, with a molded grip handle.
Does it do anything that the $1 cheap knock off screw drivers can do? No, its just a screw driver.
If you use it every day, you may grow to like all the tiny features and comforts and customizations, or maybe not.
ArchLinux is a tool just like embedded linux systems, does basically the same thing as every other OS, its not life changing, but if you may grow to like its little details just like a custom screwdriver.
Arch is perfect, it's like THE Linux. It's not really opinionated about anything, it just helps you do it. Hell you can "pacman -S apt" and slowly become a debian
That's the magic of it: latest software, rolling release, edit some config files, do anything you want, spend half your time tweakin'
Before the install script, i setup arch manually and added the gnome package that bringd DE and all the good Gnome stuff with it. it was then just the same as any other Gnome DE really. People taut the AUR, but OpenSUSE has same with their software.opensuse.org where packages maintained as experimental or community can be accessed (or by adding OPI). Since OpenSUSE had built in snapshotting, rollback and GUI admin (plus curation to do cleanups and maintemamce already OOTB) I uninstalled Arch. The ArchWiki though, that thing is a masterpiece
I'm trying out Arch on my laptop atm, and tbh the only real advantage (at least for me) is that the packages tend to be a lot fresher than on Debian-based distros. The question is how many of your packages you really need to be that fresh.
I think a lot of Arch users feel like wizards because they connected to the home wifi using the command line, but if you've tinkered with (/broken then had to fix lol) other distros, you will have done all this stuff before
It's a linux distro, just like all other linux distros... Idk what to tell ya
I mean if you want to be blasé about the fact not everyone has the same technical skills as you, sure…
troll detector noisy