[jamessu]

I've been using arch for about 3 years and I think that things break just as often (actually, probably more often) and you're generally not left with a better sense of what the root cause is. Sure, you have less software installed, but you're also usually running bleeding-edge versions of everything and things are noticeably less stable.

I do think that from an educational standpoint, arch linux is a good OS to use, as you will probably get a lot more comfortable with the linux environment. This is largely out of necessity as you will spend a great deal of time setting up and fixing your system.

If you have the time to debug the various components of your system, it can be quite fun and educational to use, but if you're interested in getting work done I cannot recommend arch linux at all.

[gh02t]

Huh, it seems people's experience varies a lot. I've been using Arch as my primary OS at work and home for something like 4 years now. It's been quite stable and low maintenance. It has broken a 3 or 4 times, but my Windows install that I play games on has broken more times than that.

[qwertyuiop924]

Yeah, that's been my experience as well. I tried ubuntu first, and that broke every 6 months. Finally, a kernel upgrade rendered my system unusable, and I switched to Fedora once it was fixed. Fedora didn't break as much, but it still broke. Finally, I switched to Arch. I've been able to fix any breakage, and my system's been fine ever since.

[michaelmrose]

Isn't it strange in 2016 that its considered ok to break at all?

[qwertyuiop924]

No. Software breaks. The question is when, and if it's fixable. With Arch, I find the answers are "soon" and "yes".

[qwertyuiop924]

Aaaaugh! I meant "not so soon." Arch breaks infrequently for me.

[michaelmrose]

I liked the first response better.

[aceperry]

I've never used Arch, although I've considered it. I was a Gentoo user for many years, and went through some breakage here and there. I finally went to Ubuntu and friends because it was cutting edge enough without the breakage that I've always experienced with cutting edge stuff. Even with the breakage from Gentoo, it was always much better than Windows, although windows has gotten much better since the Win95 days. I hardly have problems with Ubuntu, and I use mostly Xubuntu on my laptops.

[qwertyuiop924]

I find it plenty usable for work. And because you're usually hand-writing the configs, it's much easier to root-cause than ubuntu. And it doesn't break every 6 months.