Arch is an amazing distro and every one of my experiences with the community have so far been positive. Kind of a bummer to see people dumping on it in the mailing lists and LWN.
Besides its core philosophy and approach, I like Arch for its community. Its forum and IRC channel are among the rare places on the Internet where you can openly talk about flamewar-inducing topics (like foofs vs barfs or vim vs emacs) while avoiding ignition point and actually have a constructive discussion.
I witnessed rare similar cases of the random guy knocking on Arch's door and raving in about how he knows the world and everything and that we should all bow down before him but it never escalated to the point it has on that precise case.
Agreed on the thumbs up for Arch; I'm not thrilled with the direction Ubuntu has been taking recently (at least in the desktop version) and so have been migrating my non-server Linux boxes to Arch.
Sad to see LWN publish an attack without making an effort to get the other side of the story first. If the complainer had made the patch submissions he claimed and that the Arch maintainers deny ever seeing, well it should be pretty easy to sort out before publishing the article -- if you're really interested in journalism, that is.
What's wrong with Ubuntu's direction, according to you?
To me, it seems they are fighting really hard to make Linux a user friendly desktop platform. Even if it leaves behind some ways of working that us older Linux users are accustomed to, I think this is a worthy cause.
Well, it's just my personal opinion, but it seems to me that the 6-month release cycle has practically guaranteed they would add new features before they were ready and consequently screw up something that seemed to work just fine before (e.g., Pulse audio). Frankly, that's not a trait I think that makes Linux user friendly for newbies. Now they seem to be screwing over the visual interface in a fit of Mac envy that doesn't include Apple's commitment to polished products. I hated the imperial decision to move window buttons from the top right to the top left, for example. Yes, it was simple to fix, but why should I have to when it was working fine before? (Plus that change only makes your users more comfortable if they're coming from the Mac instead of a Windows experience. The idea that Mac users will move to Ubuntu for the user experience I find extremely dubious.)
And now we're getting the Unity interface before it's really finished. I really think the new interface is something that works on netbooks but is a step backward if you're using a widescreen monitor or regular laptop.
But I'm just a knuckle-dragging throwback who likes minimalism, xmonad, and Vim, who doesn't stream audio over the network and thinks ALSA was perfectly adequate, etc., so what do I know? If I'm the sort who's happier with Arch, then I'm clearly not their target user anyway. YMMV.
See the [Arch Way](https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/The_Arch_Way), notably #1. Having a barebones system installed allows you to shape it any way you want (LFS style, without the hassle of bootstrapping and lack of package management), and sticking with as much vanilla packages as possible allows you to just use upstream doc, and makes bug hunting easier to report upstream too.
Ubuntu is the antithesis of that (no judgement here, I am fairly marvelled at the "pop the CD in and it just works" result of Ubuntu).
Part of the beauty of Linux is that people that don't like the direction of a particular distro can jump ship to another one. Does it really matter why? If enough people are jumping ship, then it's probably time to question your roadmap, but a few people here or there (especially if they are not your target audience) aren't an issue.
I'm simply interested in what his reason is, not trying to question the wiseness of his decision :) I agree that there is nothing wrong with switching to a different distribution if it suits you better.
Yes, FWIW I took it as a request for information, not as an invitation to a Klingon death match because I'd insulted your family's honor. I celebrate diversity! ... even as I remember Philip K. Dick's liberal translation of de gustibus non est disputandum as "those people can have bad taste and I don't care."
It's just personal preference. I like getting updates to applications and kernels with the six-month release cycle, but their new interface release cycle seems rushed. With Arch I have even faster access to app and kernel upgrades without the gratuitous (to me, at least) system changes.
You want to upgrade users to grub 2.0? OK, not a pressing need for me, but fine, whatever. But at least when you make that change include system support so I don't have to manually repair the grub menu's default selection every freaking time you update the kernel. </rant mode>
I witnessed rare similar cases of the random guy knocking on Arch's door and raving in about how he knows the world and everything and that we should all bow down before him but it never escalated to the point it has on that precise case.