Arch Linux

Reader supplied reviews for Arch Linux Average rating 9.2 from 243 review(s) Please select 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: 2025-02-08 Votes: 6 I've been using Arch for some time and have noticed some peculiarities. Yes, the software on bleeding edge is new, but it is not the most stable and not the fastest. Debian, known for its slow updates, works more responsively. The software is simpler there, perhaps less functional, but much better polished. (Debian has its own peculiarities, such as an extremely slow package manager. This is not so noticeable if you have an NVME or SSD or even HDD, but if you decide to install the system on a flash drive or SD card, you will greatly regret choosing something that uses dpkg.) Void Linux, for example, also works more responsively than Arch. A typical situation in Arch: you update the system and notice an increase in the speed of work, you update the next time and something breaks, you update again - something is fixed, but everything works slowly. This cycle is repeated, to one degree or another. Of course, you can update less often, say once every few months, but then the software will not be on bleeding edge and this advantage is lost. Frequent massive updates also make my SSD sad in terms of the number of bytes written. Many of the installed applications are updated more often than they are used. As for bugs, well, from my observations, they do not appear often, no more often than in similar distributions. By similar, I do not mean Arch clones. One of the reasons why I chose Arch was a clear and logical build system, so I was able to quite easily make the desired changes to the necessary packages. However, with frequent updates, you also often have to rebuild manually compiled applications. And such maintenance eats up time. For comparison, the package build files in Debian are much more intricate. The init system, well, with the speed of modern processors, this is almost insignificant. SystemD can handle sockets, i.e. launch services when accessing them, which Runit or SysV cannot do. Logs are saved in the database and access to them is mandatory through journalctl and grep directly in the log file will not find the desired line, only through a pipe from journalctl. The ability to use the built-in DNS cache in SystemD is also an option. From a security point of view, of course, SystemD looks much more vulnerable than one program performing only one action. If SystemD undesirable, you can always install Artix while preserving everything else from Arch. Installation. For me, this was not a big deal. It was enough to figure it out once, save the terminal history to disk as a script and, if necessary, run it again. Was this review helpful? Yes No Version: current Rating: 10 Date: 2025-02-05 Votes: 9 The first time I installed this distro, it was a real challenge, but now it’s way easier thanks to the official installation script. You can still do everything manually if you want, but for those who just want to get up and running quickly, the script makes the process super simple. One of the things I love most is how clean and minimal it is, no bloat, just exactly what you need. The rolling release model means you're always on the latest software, and I’ve rarely had issues with updates breaking things. And even when something did break, it was quickly fixed upstream, so I never had to deal with problems for long. Pacman is one of my favorite package managers: fast, efficient, and with a simple tweak, it can download multiple packages at once, making installations much quicker. And then there’s the AUR, which is a lifesaver when you need software that’s not in the official repos. Plus, the Arch Wiki is hands down one of the best Linux resources out there, not just for Arch users but for anyone using Linux. Compared to other distros, I love how much control it gives me, and once you get used to it, it’s hard to use anything else. Was this review helpful? Yes No Version: current Rating: 6 Date: 2025-01-29 Votes: 0 It’s a solid choice for enthusiasts who enjoy tweaking their system to perfection. However, my recent experience with Arch Linux left me a bit disappointed, primarily due to stability issues. Untested updates without no refined rollback system with modern boot procedures are a no go for me. And the packaging experience is alright but submitting is tedious since it's hard to find someone "trusted by the community" to take over a new package. It's nice if want to learn how a GNU/Linux system works under the hood tho. Was this review helpful? Yes No See all 243 reader reviews of Arch Linux...