[gregates]

Hate to be the one to drag AI into every conversation, but I recently switched to arch linux and it's been delightful -- largely because of Claude. I have leaned on Claude heavily to diagnose and resolve issues that I probably could have theoretically solved on my own, but which also probably would have made me switch back if I didn't have help to resolve them quickly.

(Yes, I know arch linux is not what you want if you're a "I just want something that works" person switching from windows. That's not me, I'm more of a "I want all the control and responsibility guy". I just don't have four hours to spend figuring out how to get hardware video acceleration working in vlc by trial and error the first time I try to play a video. Twenty minutes though? OK. I'll even learn something in the process.)

[nsvd2]

I think Arch is a great general purpose distribution because it doesn't try to hide anything from the user - all the details are right out in the open. That and excellent community documentation.

[graceful6800]

I'm a lifelong Arch user (btw) but I would also call out Manjaro as a less full-contact way of using Arch. It's got a slow and stable release cycle, it's fairly reliable because it stays behind the bleeding edge like Debian does.

But you still get the raw unadulterated power of the archwiki, and the same full control of the internals. It's a great middle ground between Ubuntu and rawdogging pacstrap.

Then again you still have the slightly heretical option of running Manjaro but using the unstable repos so you're getting the full Arch experience