Arch is for new users, experienced ones use Gentoo
Calm down there Satan.
echo 'os-distro/gentoo -satan' >> /etc/portage/package.use emerge -yvuDN @world
Neither one of those will put hair on your chest, Saddle up NixOS, that’ll make you want to stab people in the eye… still fun tho
Every time I’ve tried using Arch, something breaks.
I couldn’t even configure a static IP on setup. You have to keep looking up commands with obscure syntax and no examples
If your use-case allows, it’s probably easier to set a reservation on your router.
It does not. I needed to only offer DHCP for half of the subnet so that I can restrict Internet access for that half so that a Quest Pro can’t get updates and still be on the same subnet as the desktop
So you fixed it with a simple search and a bit of research, r-right?
No, I fixed it by shutting down the PC and restoring from my backup. Plus, how can I search or research when the first thing to go is my Internet access?
You people don’t have phones?
Why should I have to use my phone, when I have a whole computer sitting there like a lump of chips and random stuff?
You’re really going to settle on an os with imperfections? With arch, you could finally do what you’ve been meaning to do without the constraints that others’ small minded inefficiencies produce. Just think about it. An OS precisely to your liking. No compromises, just your apotheosis. Become what you were meant to be. (Mate btw)
Nothing like getting to screw up your computer your way! Ultimate customization* 😄
*am Arch-based user
I don’t even notice Debian, which is exactly how an operating system should work.
And yet…
I love this
Here’s the thing. When I talk to friends interested in Linux, it’s always Debian or Fedora that I suggest. I think they draw a good line for what the average user wants and needs and they’re stable. In fact, I used Fedora for a long time, and all my homelab stuff runs Debian. It wasn’t until computers themselves became a hobby that I switched to Arch. And I think that’s likely the cutoff. If you’re a computer user, stable distros are great. If you’re more a hobbiest… Well, the Arch wiki can own your free time.
“Man I wish I could do more with my new computer” – Fedora
“Yeah I just want to breathe some new life into this old laptop and have it last me until the end of time” – Debian
NixOS has entered the chat
Normal distro -> arch -> gentoo -> nixOS -> QubesOS -> Debian pipeline.
The only problem with Debian is that I want packages from this century.
Thats what you think you want but by the time you’re at the end of the pipeline you just want a computer that works.
So far, that’s exactly why I’ve stopped at Nix.
Everything is declared exactly how I want it. If something would break, it just bails on the update. If I want to set up a new machine, I just clone my config and build it.
I’m not sure what could be more “just works” than that.
When I went 24.11 it exploded in some fantastic manner. None of my boot menu rollbacks worked. I spent a long ass time trying to recover the upgrade. I eventually realized it would be a lot faster to wipe, reinstall, re-import my old home and configuration.nix and I was back up.
25.05 didn’t even flinch, just worked.
Now I’m patiently waiting for postmarket to sort out LTE modems on phones before I buy an old pixel and install nixos on it :)
In my experience that means packages from this century. Eventually you do need a new software for something. Trying to get software from 10 years ago to agree with software released in the last 6 months leads to breaking things or finding myself doing Linux From Scratch on top of debian or ubuntu.
It turns out if everything is new everything really does just work. That’s why I use Artix (child of Arch). It’s less pain. You just have to ignore the myth that these systems are “hard.” Graphics cards and Steam work out of the gait. There is a reason why StreamOS is built on Arch.
No more compile hell in the rare case you need to compile because the AUR does the same thing, but in a single command line resolving all dependencies. It’s like compiling without the experience of compiling.
Just make sure you always
pacman -Syubeforepacman -S {package}. No exceptions. Or in rare cases you may have to chroot from a live disk andpacman -S linuxto fix your initramfs. If you do that one thing nothing ever breaks.
Debian is where the jaded users end up when they lack the will to flash another usb stick.
“I’m good, fuck it.”
Sounds lovely for making a swiss-army-knife of distros.
i was happy with Arch on my server.
then, i installed NixOS on it.
Arch on my server
Sane people usually go bungee jumping or cave diving to get their irrational danger kicks.
Been running my mail server on arch for six years and counting. Best decision given the circumstances!
Eh arch is perfectly stable for server use.
Can even get a debian experience by not updating ever.
Installing Arch on a server is certainly a choice
Somehow it never broke (1.5 years of usage). the reason i installed nix was because arch worked but felt too messy, full of random systemd services i made and put in random places
Mines running strong even through hardware changes for 6 years now
This is the way.
And I thought all Arch users already switched to Nix OS (BTW)
I want to (and previously tried it out for a bit) but the difficulty curve (more like a difficult brick wall) is hard to deal with
Naw, archer users either become cachy users OR nix. It’s a pipe line with a y junction.
I want to switch to Nix… the idea of Nix is compelling. In practice every time I try and test it out I remember that I’m an idiot with a keyboard and I should stop.
I personally think Nix OS brings some amazing features, very few of which are relevant for me as a regular laptop user without my own server farm. Sure, reproducible builds and dynamic package versions are neat. But if it takes me 1000 hrs to learn how to write a functional config file that I now have to keep updated, if I have to work with some weird repository, there is no documentation and community infighting… Nah, I’ll stick to debian (BTW) for a while.
Nah, I looked at it and it doesn’t interest me. I like arch because, contrary to popular belief, it is quite stable (as in non crashing, not package versions) if you only install exactly what you need. I had way more stability issues on the more standard distros since they had so much extra stuff. Debian for servers every day though.
Nix looks interesting in theory, but is a lot of work and too opinionated for me. Far from an expert though and have nothing against those that like it or any other distro.
As someone considering getting Arch, what is unstable about the package versions? I thought the rolling release was a selling point, but does it actually make things more unstable?
“unstable” as in changing regularly. Not in any way to do with how reliable it is (as another comment mentioned, that’s a better way to differentiate).
I’ve had far fewer problems updating arch (once I had a clean system anyway) than I ever did trying to move through distribution updates on various other more “standard” ones.
So the updates don’t tend to break things? Is it just annoying to constantly update?
Not the same person, but my updates take like 30s (if I don’t go looking at what changed) and happen whenever I want. We’re not talking windows updates here, just
sudo pacman -Syu, seeing the list of what’s changing (etc firefox went up a version? Cool), and then saying “sure” if it looks good to me. Don’t even need to restart all the time, although I tend to do updates before turning my pc off anyway so I nearly always do.Packages tend to use the latest stable version of their software, unless you choose a beta branch instead, so if anything I think I’ve run into less broken software than on Debian-based distros because you don’t get bugs that were fixed a week ago but haven’t made it into the official apt repository version yet. If there is a bug, you can just not upgrade that package if you know about it in advance or just downgrade it until they release a fix (I’ve never had to do this but iirc you can pin a version in pacman).
Not suggesting to jump ship if you’re happy with your current distro, but arch is a great learning experience to set up and once you have a good system running it’s absolutely rock solid. Just don’t expect to install it in fifteen minutes like other distros, if you want a good install you have to do all the reading yourself (arch wiki is priceless) to make informed choices because you’re entirely responsible for piecing together your own OS.
Thank you! That makes sense. I’m on Windows 11 and therefore not happy with my current “distro” 😅 I know Arch isn’t recommended for beginners, but I hope that if I take it slow and read a lot, I might survive.
I think you can definitely survive it as a beginner if you’re both patient and happy to learn about your OS, but most people recommend trying another distro first so you don’t have to learn everything up front all at once and that’s good advice imo. Even if you’re happy to learn everything thru the wiki and want to jump into the deep end, I’d probably recommend checking out other distros on distrosea first just so you have an idea of what’s out there and what you like/dislike.
You’ll have to read about and then make a choice for every component of your system, from the filesystem to the kernel to all your user space programs and DE, so you’ll make better choices if you’ve seen some of the options in action imo.
I should also mention I’ve heard the archinstall script trivializes installing arch so if you want an easy way in you could use that - id probably keep this in mind or better, put your arch iso on ventoy along with a second choice of distro in case you get overwhelmed and just want your computer functional again.
Good luck tho, if you choose to do it I hope you have as much fun as I did! Don’t be afraid to ask questions on whichever of the Linux communities are relevant, but definitely expect a lot of “just use mint” answers if you say you’re installing arch as a new Linux user lol.
It’s extremely rare. Big breaking updates are normally shown in the arch news. Usually they just require a command or two to remove a conflicting package before the update. I think there’s been a few in the last year, but on the flip side I never got a clean distro update on anything but Debian and they usually took a lot more effort to clean up.
Where it may be “unstable” is if a specific program updates (upstream) with some major change or other, whereas another distro might hold off a while.
Makes sense, thank you!
The words stable and reliable should have formal definitions.
And here I am on popos 22.4, while my friend tries to make me install arch with hyprland lol
unpopular opinion: tiling wms and wayland are nothing but a flashy headache… I use Arch (with i3, btw)
Your opinion will stay unpopular, because tiling is a lifesaver. Fuck mouse controls.
I use tiling too (i3), it’s more about wayland sucking than the tiling, but combining those 2 results in a lot of frustratin little issues that need specific rules for different software.
Oh, yeah, I agree. Tried it too and had a lot of bugs and glitches
Unpopular opinion: install community distros, not corporate ones. That way you can support the developers for their hardwork. Redhat doesn’t need our money, they already make enough of it. I use CachyOS, btw.
I just switched to CachyOS and I’m really enjoying it so far. My journey so far has been Mint > Bazzite > Kubuntu > back to Mint > CachyOS and for the first time I don’t have any real complaints. There’s a voice inside my head telling me to jump to just standard Arch though. Not really sure why. Have you tried standard Arch? If so, how does it compare to CachyOS? I probably won’t end up switching, I haven’t had any issues yet and I’m a computer problem magnet and certified idiot, so I’ll probably stick to what works, but something draws me to pure Arch.
I’ve run vanilla arch for quite a while. CachyOS is a ton better. Arch is barebones and you have to do everything yourself. If you have the time and patience to do it, then more power to ya. I’m a dad of two, one of which is on the spectrum. So, I wanted something like Arch that just works and doesn’t require too much maintenance, and cachy has been just that.
I’ve not had a single major issue with it in the 3 months it’s been running on my machine. Just your normal Linux annoyances. I love how the gaming package on cachy is literally one click of a button. Also, it’s a lot faster
Thanks for your input. I’m going to be a dad soon, so I should probably stick with cachy then.
Dude, fucking congratulations 🎉🎉. And yes, your PC should never take time away from your kids. I love taking care of mine, they’re so much fun. I love that my PC just works. And if Cachy gives me any trouble, it’s gone and will be replaced with something immutable like Bazzite. I legit want my machine to JUST work with minimal issues. I have had Bazzite on a laptop I have for close to 6 months now and it’s rock solid and a true just works distro.
Thanks man, yeah I’m pretty excited. I’ve always wanted kids, it’s crazy to think I’m finally going to have one soon.
For sure, family always comes first, especially kids.
Standard arch is just a downgrade from cachy if you just want a functional computer and not have to think about it.
OpenSUSE Tumbleweed sends it’s love.
Hi, Tumbleweed 👋🏽
After trying 10+ distributions over the years the urge to try something new is not that strong, I settled on Debian based distributions.
But if I should try something new I would look into FreeBSD to get some Unix experience, or else NixOS also sounds interesting.
On Mint. Love Mint. Deb is life.
I’m trying to convince myself to try Bazzite from Mint. I have used Mint for 3 years now and need to install on a new larger drive.
I’ve really enjoyed my Bazzite experience. I’ve been running Linux for decades though, so take it with a grain of salt.
I tried arch at one point :3 im back on pop!_os tho
the right distro for you is whatever works for you. you don’t order a steak just because your friends get one, when you really want those succulent linguinis.
succulent linguinis
Dibs on band name
“You don’t HAVE any friends! NOBODY likes youuuu!” (/s)
A fitting image choice, in more than one way, lol.
If you are happy with your distro then that’s cool.
But if you got an urge to try a different distro, just install on a spare drive or partition your current drive and dual boot.
You could even try a live image or something like Distrosea without installing anything.
It’s easy, free, and you might form new opinions.
I avoid it only because of its loudest user base.
I used to be like you, then I used Arch btw. Then I actually used fedora then I started reminiscing about Arch btw.
Your message makes me think i shouldnstart a new fork of Arch, and name it “Arch btw”, and make it crappy.
It would break all the memes about arch
