Arch Linux

Reader supplied reviews for Arch Linux Average rating 9.2 from 229 review(s) Please selecting a rating in the range of 1-10. Please write at least a few sentences about the distribution while limiting your review to 4080 characters. What are your thoughts on Arch Linux? Please include a few pros and a few cons, along with your overall impression of the operating system. Our FAQ page has tips on writing a good mini-review. Version: -- current2011.08.192010.052009.082009.022008.062007.080.80.70.60.50.40.30.20.1 Rating:    -- 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 out of 10 Your review (minimum 250 words): Past reviews - sort by: DateVotes Version: current Rating: 10 Date: 2024-08-05 Votes: 22 Arch, for me, feels like a builders take on Linux. You start from scratch and build precisely what you want. Like any good structure common sense is needed to make sure it keeps standing. Choosing a limited range of quality materials, staying away from over utilising the AUR. Making sure your choice of software is minimalist and essential with a solid sensible kernel. Then back everything up and make sure you limit upgrades to maybe twice a month. I have taken this approach. Arch has been as solid Debian with, in my view, better use of more contemporary packages. Its especially good on newer hardware, in a way other flavours of Linux don't come close to. One word of caution, this is not for conventional users. You must be prepared to put in real effort. Also I'd recommend steering clear of derivatives. I have yet to come across a single one that is more reliable than pure Arch implemented correctly. Indeed some derivatives break the rule of simplicity that defines Arch, which is why they become unstable. Not nonsense about the "bleeding edge". Arch is not bleeding edge, unless you are reckless enough to make it so. In short, If you are hard working, gain a sense of accomplishment from learning and developing your system your way, you will I suspect quickly come to appreciate just how fantastic Arch can be. Was this review helpful? Yes No Version: current Rating: 9 Date: 2024-08-01 Votes: 6 I've learned more about linux with Arch than any other distro, and I started fiddling with linux in the mid 90's. Being in an windows enterprise environment for all of my carreer, I've always had only enough linux knowledge to barely get by. Retired now, and despising windows Spyware, I started heavily getting into linux about 3 years ago. Arch specifically, about a year ago. It's been a wild ride! It's gotten to the point that I pretty much won't install any "derivative distros" anymore. Pretty much only Arch and Debian. Rocky being the exception because of what IBM / Red Hat did to Centos.... that said I use Debian mainly for Servers, and Arch for desktops and vms running different DE's or WMs. Pros: 1. Rolling Release - People question the stability, but I like it better than hoping "LTS upgrades" won't break stuff, and I also install very few AUR packages (on my main system... VMs are a different story). Technically it is also more secure to keep up on latest packages. With zero to few AUR packages, the stability is absolutely fine. 2. The DIY approach and Archwiki - The easiest way to actually LEARN linux. Gentoo and Linux From Scratch are great, but take too long due to compiling. So, Arch is better if you don't want to get into the weeds about learning how to complie source. I'm a systems guy, not a developer, so compiling holds little interest for me, and I want to avoid it if possible. Obviously git packages mostly need to be compiled (like paru), but that's a minimal need to complie. 3. The AUR - Pretty much haven't found a package that isn't on the AUR, and the few that aren't are on Flathub or Git. IMO, a much better approach with an AUR wrapper than, say, adding repos in Debian just to get a specific package. Again, a majority of my AUR installs are on VMs via qemu / virt manager, or on my proxmox server. Cons: 1. Some packages in AUR aren't maintaned quick enough and break when updating. However, this also presents an opporunity to LEARN how to fix it or work around it. 2. Some package in the main repository gets depreciated or changed, usually breaks one or more AUR packages. Again, an opporunity to LEARN how to fix it or work around it. 3. The Archinstall script (if you use it) often breaks on older ISO images. Even if you try to update the script and mirrors, often there are times when weird things happen on the install... so, it's just easier to get the latest monthly ISO and run the script that came on it. 4. Stock US mirrors for install are fairly slow in my area. I have to run reflector before installing, - easily saving 2/3'ds the time to download the packages for install, even though reflector takes a couple minutes to grab the fastest mirrors. So, if you really want to learn linux (without compiling), Arch is the way to go! Was this review helpful? Yes No Version: current Rating: 9 Date: 2024-07-21 Votes: 4 Coming from Fedora (personal use) and RHEL (work), I can honestly say that this OS is by far the best Linux distro I have ever used. I don't care for pretty UIs or gaming support. All I care for is that it fast to install, packages are fast to install, updates are fast to install, the overall OS look and feel is faster than anything I've ever tried except maybe FreeBSD. I will not be ditching RHEL or its clones for work, but I am switching away from Fedora for personal use. In the past, I trialled Ubuntu and other Debian clones, but they're all slow and clunky compared to Arch. I wish the package manager was a bit more robust, but I have yet to scratch the surface of this OS and its innards. It was a breeze to install on an AMD Ryzen with Radeon Graphics, and intel LAN. Bluetooth works out of the box, you need to use systemctl to enable it, but it's no biggie. I picked UFW over firewallD to keep things simple. I also picked Gnome over KDE for simplicity as well. 1Password works flawless on it, and that makes me happy. It's usually a pain to set up on other distros. Was this review helpful? Yes No See all 229 reader reviews of Arch Linux...