[alexarnesen]

Arch is the first system I have been able to support, fully. As in, 100% of the issues I run across with my distro, I can resolve. I used to run Ubuntu as my gnome desktop distribution, and when it worked (99% of the time), it was a superior experience to Arch. However when running Ubuntu I would inevitably run across some issue that seemed to require a level of sysadmin chops that I never have possessed. For the past year I've been running an Arch desktop, I have resolved every issue by using the Arch wiki and Google/ stack overflow. I suspect that partly, the Arch approach is appealing to those of us who prefer a simpler system, because those are easier to grapple with in a support context.

[Enginerrrd]

This has been exactly my experience as well. Ubuntu would have fewer issues initially, and almost no setup, but after setup it would break more often and always find ways to break in new and interesting ways that were very difficult to resolve, and I never could understand what was wrong.

With Arch, I was able to fix every issue that came up, full stop. But it required much more setup. It also breaks way less often. Prior to Arch, I never really felt that "full-empowered linux-user" feeling. It was always voodoo. Now I DO get that feeling and I really feel in charge and in control of my system. Interestingly, I still run ubuntu server for a couple servers, (I generally prefer debian for servers, but that's a separate discussion.) and I still find the occasional issues that come up to be difficult-to-resolve voodoo, despite having a much greater level of understanding of how linux works and does things.

[stonemetal12]

Would you recommend Arch to someone without a lot of Linux experience? Ubuntu has me thinking of switching to a different OS.

[bavell]

If you're interested, I'd recommend checking out the Arch wiki - imo it's one of the most comprehensive repositories of Linux info out there and pretty easy to follow. Even other distros use and link to it since it's very general and has a huge scope. Great reference for power users and starting point for beginners.

[trevcanhuman]

I’d recommend going for it, and as others have said, be prepared to read the Arch Wiki, a lot. I think what’s most important would be to simply have the guts and the inspiration to keep going, even if you think you’ve lost all hope. Personally, I started out my Linux journey with Ubuntu, then distro hopped and tried PopOS, and Ubuntu-based distro with extra things here and there. Then, I took a Linux course online (for free) and gave me general fundamentals, it advertises as the “The Start from scratch Linux course”. After that and spending tons of time on Reddit and seeing post after post and the memes about ‘I use arch btw’ I decided to try it out. It was definitely fun and a tad time consuming at first, but after that I’ve learned a ton more about Linux and how things work. I’ve only had a broken system a couple times. Again, the ArchWiki is your friend.

[pxc]

I had a similar experience when I was a kid, with Gentoo rather than Arch.

It doesn't stay hard for very long. And when it gets easier, it stays easier basically forever, no matter what distro you use.

Manually configuring everything with Arch is a pretty good way to learn a lot about what goes into a working GNU/Linux system, and not as painful as some people make it out to be.

[pxc]

Unpopular opinion: the only people I'd recommend Arch to are people without a lot of Linux experience (who are interested in learning).

Once you learn the basics of what goes into a distro and you know how to set things up and troubleshoot, there's no reason to use a distro with a package management story as backwards as Arch's.

After you're done with Arch, learn to write packages for a couple distros (practice building them on something like OBS[1], which lets you build and distribute packages for almost any distro). Then choose your distro based on the quality of the tooling it is built on and package whatever you need that isn't already in it.

—

1: https://build.opensuse.org/

[matheusmoreira]

What's so backwards about Arch's package management? I've written PKGBUILDs for my own software and used that to make packages I could install on my system. Works pretty well in my experience.

[pxc]

Lots of cosmetic warts, like combining nothing but CLI flags instead of a subcommand interface or the necessity to use subshells and pipelines to achieve functionality that's native and obvious in other package managers. Some of my favorites kinda suck that way too, though.

Poor support for managing multiple repositories: no facilities for it built into pacman, no notion of vendor (which is useful for managing packages that may be duplicated across repositories, but with different versions or build options), the main repos are small so a huge number of packages you might want to use have an unofficial status that is much more markedly second-class than on other distros (must be compiled from source/no binary caching, installation process is either very manual or requires unpackaged tools).

No support for treatment of past transactions in the CLI for ‘undo’-like behavior or rollbacks.

No tools for managing the behavior of the dependency resolver, like to make upgrades less destructive or to automatically retry solving with more aggressive solutions that involve more downgrades and removals.

No plugin architecture, so additional functionality like integration with CoW filesystems for snapshotting requires wrappers, which is clunky and may not be composable.

No support for declaring a version for pinned packages (just the stateful IgnorePkgs, which says ‘keep whatever I have’) or restricting upgrades based on constraints or classes (e.g., in Gentoo Portage).

And it doesn't really support any of the more interesting recent innovations, like installation/upgrade atomicity, installing multiple versions of things side-by-side, installing packages on a per-user basis, running multiple package management operations at the same time.

But the single most backwards thing is the whole situation with the AUR being in eternal limbo but also a de facto standard due to the small size of the official repositories.

Pacman does have some outstanding strengths relative to most package managers: speed (by a wide margin vs. most distros) and ease of writing packages. Another thing is that if you're unbothered by the awkward status of the AUR (and having to build its packages from source), Arch users don't typically do much repo management.

[nicta]

My personal experience with Linux has been Ubuntu ~1 week -> Debian 2 days -> Arch 11 years now.

It will require some time learning and reading through the wiki. I would definitely recommend trying it in a vm first.

[ativzzz]

I recommend checking out EndeavourOS. It's an Arch based OS that sets you up with a friendly installer and a desktop environment out of the box, then gets out of your way. You don't get the fun experience of installing arch from scratch but it's a gentler introduction to the ecosystem.

I switched from ubuntu to Endeavour as my first dive into Arch recently and have been happy with it.

[freebuju]

Arch recently introduced a general prompt-style installer script that should be able to help you setup and install a working Arch on any system.

https://python-archinstall.readthedocs.io/en/latest/installi...

[assbuttbuttass]

You can give it a try but be prepared to spend a lot of time reading the wiki

[pxc]

This is the best reason I've heard stated for preferring Arch. Thanks for sharing!