The best feature of Arch is not the AUR, but the Arch Wiki. Nothing beats that. What makes it especially awesome is that even non-arch users can learn from it.
I would have to agree with you. Another great reason to stay with Arch. I get the impression that the main problem he has with Arch, is some of the community members think they're better than everyone else. I have had some issues with that myself.
@@matthewpaolini Yes, gentoo is a Linux distribution, an operating system based on the Linux kernel. If you want to learn more about it install it on a virtual machine or old computer, the amd64 handbook
I am an Arch Linux user, but that doesn't mean I have no respect for other distributions and I don't consider myself a fangirl at all. Things aren't black and white. Most distributions are good.
I think you're missing the point. Its not about one distro being better than another. Its that when you use an arch system that is YOUR baby. You're the maintainer. Is that technically true if you're using ubuntu, fedora, mint, or whatever else? Yes, I suppose, and I think its fair to say that arch is overrated because of that, but its also genuinely true that by virtue of installing arch you have a better understanding of that system than any other distribution--even debian, save building your own linux install from scratch (which while extreme, is something you should seriously want to do if even for only education). I think its difficult for people to get into the mindset as to why developers become so zealous about the software they right, and I think the reason for that is that they wrote it--they created it. It is their child, and all of its ugly crayon scribbles have to be posted to the fridge with equally ugly magnets. When you think about it this way, its understandable that people would become so invested into their system because when you run arch it really does feel like you're the one putting in the work. So I'd say in the end its really less about people feeling that arch is the best, but instead that their install of arch is the best.
@@Batwam0 Yea, that's probably it. And that's exactly why I say that you should use whatever's good for you. Only ever had 2 issues with arch, and 1 of them was me being dumb because I trusted the 20 people online that said I could downgrade LibC for the ability to play MultiVersus, the other was the grub update issue. But I don't recommend arch to everyone because that's just my experience. I like my system, but that's because it's my system. Some people all they need is mint debian edition and firefox
I switched to Arch 10 years ago because I had specific proprietary drivers for my Canon printer. At the time on all existing distributions these packages had compatibility issues at 10,11 or 12th level. It was the hell. The only way was to adapt the package according to the sources. 2 solutions came to me: Arch or Gentoo. Arch synthesized the best of 2 worlds (compilation and distro) At the time, I had more than 1500 Aur packages, today I only have 200 because ultra serious repositories have emerged. But compared to all my previous experiences and despite packages in the latest version, I've never had so little compatibility problem than with other distros. Yes Arch is not a professional distribution in the sense that there is not this integrity checkpoint like in Fedora or another distribution but that does not prevent it from being very very stable. Yet I did everything that shouldn't be made to wait long, long months before making the updates or only a few days. Incompatibility problems seem easy to solve to me: either by installing the new version of the conflicting package, or by uninstalling it (to re-install it afterwards), or by forcing the installation of the new package (very very rare) and I've never managed to crack a cast. It is all the more remarkable that I use an old graphics card which is no longer managed in the manufacturer drivers and also zfs (with caches and logs in files on SSDs) which is not grub compatible and which is not incorporated into the kernel but is vital for starting Arch To be honest, the real problem where I was tearing my hair out was the validation of package author keys which did not exist in the Arch world (although we can override them), but finally we can validate them with key validators from Ubuntu Even the internal technical changes of Arch (I am thinking of the change of services from SystemV to Systemd) did not cause any major problems. The documentation is outstanding and worth the 9/10 rating and that's why it's so stable. Fedora Oracle also have beautiful documentation but professional oriented and special cases are rarely mentioned in their wiki unlike the Arch wiki Arch is not complete, it lost x86 and only supports Arm and x86_64. it is not perfect, but it presents so few bad surprises You have to choose your distro according to your needs. But if you don't have a specific need related to a distribution, to try Arch is to adopt it and I don't miss Fedora, Debian or other at all.
I am an Arch boy. Yes, I've watched the entire video. No, I'm not butthurt. No, I didn't unsubscribe. Though, it is sad to see a real one like you go. I acknowledge that Arch has a lot of issues regarding reliability, which has often been the cause of users turning away from it. In contrast to that there's Fedora, which I've heard is as smooth as a baby's butt. I, however, can never stray from Arch. I find gratification in tackling and solving system issues when they occur. Now if you'll excuse me, I have my audio to fix and I may or may not have watched this entire video with just subtitles and no sound...
I think the reason why Matt likes Fedora is the stability of the OS and by extent, stability of the apps. Debian and debian based distro will offer you the same. So you have plenty of choices don't worry. I don't think Fedora's testing ground will make a problem but who knows. I use pop!os by the way 😂 and for the longest time i was a mint fanboy.
@@insidetrip101 I REALLY wish somebody would have told me this. Pop! OS was a catastrophe, due mostly to problems with pulseaudio. Ubuntu grows progressively worse with every passing year. Debian was absolutely impossible to get into a state suitable for desktop use, never did get around to personalizing it because installing the graphics driver resulted in a blackscreen on reboot about 7/8 times.
@@insidetrip101 No, stability comes from testing. The stability comes from the software being tested before they're even in the repositories, the opposite of the rolling release where the general public is supposed to be quality control. I get more new packages on my Fedora system than on my Arch system, but its more stable because there is more quality control behind it. Yes, it takes a day or two longer before you get the shiny new version, but that's where stability comes from. Not everyone wants to be their own system administrator/ quality control engineer/ developer. That may be what you want to do, and thats what I did professionally, but that's not "how to use a computer". Using a computer for most people is watching youtbube videos like this one while your game downloads or writing code in a stable development environment.
@@topherfungus8424 "No, stability comes from testing. The stability comes from the software being tested before they're even in the repositories, the opposite of the rolling release where the general public is supposed to be quality control. " Care to explain how that's different from what I said? Sure, I emphasized the testing more so on the end of sysadmins performing upgrades, but yeah you're right debian is going to have more of a tested system than most other repos. But in either case, its irrelevant because its still saving the sysadmin the trouble of testing during upgrades. Its still a really bad idea to just upgrade without having first preformed any tests. You cannot rely on Debian to do that for you, and they even provide a disclaimer that they provide no such warranty that you can rely on their packages to work. That means you have to provide the warranty yourself by testing if you actually want reliability in your system. If you don't want the responsibility of your system you should DEFINITELY not use arch, but you probably shouldn't be using any form of a linux system besides something like a chromebook that is heavily managed for you in the same way as other proprietary software. I'm sorry that you don't like that, but it really is true. With great power comes great responsibility. Linux will never become mainstream because it requires responsibility, and if it stops requiring that responsibility, then it will stop being what makes it great.
I'm an Arch user. I'm not mad or anything, but I'm just confused. I listened to the whole video, and I missed the part where you explained why Arch is overrated. You mentioned a bad experience you had, but you admitted it was your fault. You also explained how most AUR software can be obtained on Fedora with flatpaks or building from source, but admitted it's still a little easier in many cases to use the AUR. That maybe makes up a little ground between Arch and Fedora, and but doesn't provide a reason to prefer Fedora or think Arch is overrated. What else did I miss? As I say, I'm confused. I don't know what I'm supposed to react against, because I just don't understand what your reasoning is. For me package freshness and the outstanding wiki are as important as package availability when it comes to why I choose Arch. I will admit the community could be a little better, but it's mainly driven by passion for something they like, which I can appreciate.
Maybe I could speak on his behalf, I think its overrated because there's nothing really special or unique about it anymore, I use to use arch over a decade ago, but now I can get the same sort of experience on tumbleweed, on tumbleweed you can do a minimal install, but you can get an even leaner install than you can on arch, it also has an aur equivalent called opi, but you don't need to build the packages, there's less software in opi but there's more software in tumbleweed's repo's anyway, its a rolling release, but its more stable, you can go for months between updates without issues, I'm not saying arch is a bad distro, I'm just saying for me anyway there's a better alternative.
@@benjy288 Thanks. I don't know whether or not I'd agree without trying it for myself, but that's an argument I at least understand. I still wish I knew what Matt was thinking though ...
When you start out the piece with "Arch done me wrong" followed by "Well, yeah it was MY fault", it really puts a pin to the balloon of everything that you say after. I'm glad you are running with something you enjoy. But after a DECADE of running Arch, and dabbling with other distros to keep up with what's what in the distro 'world', the term "agree to disagree" is the first thing I think of.
Arch? Flaws??? "whatchu talkin bout willis?" hehe. Access to more software? Is it a significant difference? Access to the software you need? Levels the field, imo. Me? Biased? Absolutely. And subject to "bias confirmation", and selecting my own "bubble" to maintain it. Unsub because of a perceived neg... perfect example. By definition, no one is objective. :) Being able to discuss with an open mind... that is how we learn.
Even without the AUR, Arch has by far the best package management system, and is the most well documented distro out there. The reason RTFM is actually good advice for Arch users is because the manuals are really freaking good, nothing else comes even close. When I was using it, I never ran into a situation where I couldn't find out how to do something. That said, I'm currently a Fedora user, and the more I use it, the more I feel like it's the best distro I have ever used.
I'm an Arch user, and don't hate anybody else. This is silly, don't be the guy that divides all the Linux world in two parts: my distro, the other distros. I'll also use Fedora is it is a rolling release, just that.
Love from India 🇮🇳 Matt! I have watched each and every video of yours that is why I have also shifted to fedora for a while now and I have no issues except the Nvidia drivers and they just suck in every distro so no complaints with fedora it's just best in my opinion. I have noticed that my laptop's battery life has increased drastically I have used many linux distros even Arch for some time but the battery and memory management is top notch in fedora. Love your videos and keep it Up 👍
Outrageous! You insulted the glorious, magnificent and even more sacred than TempleOS, Arch! Now you will suffer the RAGE of a social outcast for such naughty words!!!! Thank you for that, it's time for the elitism to end! Archinstall exists after all. Only reason I'm using Endeavour (aside from being the only non-toxic arch community i know of) is because it's the distro that works better with my hardware (tied with Ubuntu, but you know, Canonical), the rest of them either suffer from performance related issues or have some wonky unexplainable thing going on. For Linux's success we need to stop being so critical, who cares what color of shirt you are using. Here's a bad poem about the topic: (god, this got lengthy) Vanilla Gnome is Great KDE Sucks Im an elitist Go touch grass.
I have always been of the mindset that "the best" distro is the one that allows you to get your work done the easiest. Since I got good at installing it, Arch is just easier for me to use than most anything else. I did briefly stray and use Fedora 36... I liked it! But I just always come back to Arch. I love tinkering, putting it together, trying new configurations, etc. Plus, I use an old laptop and to be honest, a lot of more modern distros just don't work...and if I am going to put that much effort into making a distro work, I might as well use Arch and configure it exactly the way I want. But again, that doesn't make it the best! It just makes it the best for me. There is an argument to be made AGAINST bleeding edge and FOR more stable packages, so there is that.
The AUR is overrated more than arch itself. The AUR is frustrating when there are multiple versions of an app I want but don't know which one I should download. Do I go for a -bin or -git version or decide based on 'votes' or 'popularity' any other flavour... ffs.
If you don't understand these questions, then you should learn the answers before you start using the aur. The best way to do that is to write your own aur script to compile something yourself and enter it into pacman just like in an aur script. People use the aur as a crutch, and that's missing the entire point of arch. You're the maintainer of your own system, and a good maintainer isn't going to install something into their computer they don't understand. Its your job to understand these things, and you're definitely using arch incorrectly if you're using the aur that way. The good news is that's alright because this is what arch is for: it literally is the best distribution to become self sufficient in your computing. True, you can do this on just about every other distribution, but no other distribution enables you to be the absolute sovereign over your computer as well as arch does. It might be a little overrated because it doesn't really offer anything different from any other linux distribution, but it is definitely the spirit of arch, and I think you can make that argument about anything that any distribution does well.
Was using NixOS for quite some time but it become a bit more difficult to handle ngl specially its download sizes are large and if cloudflare decides to go down at the wrong time I am doomed so I switched back to arch because here atleast download sizes are
@@drishalballaney6590 the trick is getting a binary cache set up. I use nixos mainly for the automatic rollback. If I fuck my system in an upgrade, I always know I can roll back to the latest working config
Hi Matt, I have watched your video about Arch with great interest. I've been using Linux since the 90's and have tried them all. First I started with Grub and then enjoyed my very first distro openSuse war and then it was the first real workable version of Linux distro. I have a helpdesk for Linux in my home city in Europe and it's completely free, I have many people who have come over from Microsoft or Apple and switched to Linux and honestly most of them choose Ubuntu based version, mainly because it is very stable and easy to use. I have some members who have opted for an Arch version, but meanwhile have a version of Ubuntu; I have to admit that for newbies Arch is a disaster and therefore usually have to put an Ubuntu-based version such as Mint, Zorin, Ubuntu, Pop OS or Feren OS, the stability and ease of use are the deciding factors. Arch is a step too high for many. I myself use Zorin 16.1 PRO as a daily OS because it is fast, very stable and easy to install. I am satisfied and all those who have come over too, they will not and do not want to change, no matter what others say! Antoine,greetings from Antwerp
i was a debian user for a while, and i was irritated by the fact that i kept on needing to manually build & install things, and the AUR just had them. the arch install process disturbed me, so now i’m a devout endeavourOS fanboy.
Over the past 10 years or so I have tried them all, Arch, Ubuntu, Fedora, Suse, bla bla bla. I ended up on Mint Cinammon. I wanted to love Arch but had too many issues with Hybrid Intel/Nvidia graphics. I've tried it on AMD desktops as well and updates have broken my system to the point I had to reinstall. This happens too often for my liking. I don't dislike Arch. In fact someday I plan to install it again but I have to get work done on my computers. I can't be wondering if the next update will break something. So for now I'm a Linux Mint fan boy. I don't buy that Mint is only for newb's. I believe that Mint is for anyone that wants a stable system that just works.
The next update rarely break things, that's somehow a myth spread by non arch users and you could and probably should (with all distros) just backup before updating anyway.
I’m going to arch fanboy a bit and explain why I will probably never switch away from arch. To address your points about the AUR, I’d say the biggest advantage obviously of this over manual builds is how easy it is to keep everything up to date with one of the AUR helpers like paru. My second reason is that I don’t like my operating system making too many choices for me. With arch, there are very few defaults and I choose what to use it when to switch. Maybe Fedora knows better than me when it comes to switch to wayland but idc. I want to make that switch when I choose it.
I am an arch and bsd user since forever and I wholeheartedly agree with you. The best and worst thing about the arch is the community and arch wiki. I use pop os at work because sometimes its more work on arch to not mess up things.
There will always be some in any community that will be toxic toward others or newcomers. I remember trying arch once and got roasted when I asked for help for a total newbie issue, and got booted out of a Fedora channel in a chat network after asking for help with an issue too, no reason given, and the mod refused to talk to me when I DM'd asking why lol. I'm always polite, never aggressive and always try to help others if I can, no matter how obvious the issue seems to me, because it won't be obvious to others.
I got into Linux back in late 2018, back when the gates of Arch were still kept by the difficulty of installing it. The gatekeeper has since been deposed, and I've found that running Arch Linux really isn't any more difficult than running Debian Sid. Don't get me wrong, I love my Arch installation, but that's only because it has been more motivating for me to learn new things, because I came into it expecting that I would HAVE to. I was only partially correct in that assumption. I have learned significantly more than I needed to to simply run Arch, and I've just been riding that wave. But the truth is that I could just as easily go back to Debian and continue to ride the wave. Arch has been significantly easier than I thought it would be. There isn't a whole lot that's special about it. It's just...Linux. Which as far as I can tell was really kinda the whole point of Arch to begin with anyway - to be a simple, minimal, lightweight Linux experience, to just BE Linux. Btw, I still haven't managed to successfully install Arch the manual way. I've only ever used archinstall, and I think archinstall is great (even though it seems to be broken right now). My point is this. Your title, while somewhat inflammatory, is true. Arch really is overrated, and elitism is stupid. The only thing difficult about Arch is installing it, which hasn't been difficult for a while.
I'm an Arch user, it's best feature for me is the build it yourself, without the Gentoo or LFS compile times. But if I was to move off it, I would go to Artix. Amazingly light and still in the Arch family. I have seen elitism on many distro support pages. I love to help other Arch newbies, I enjoy helping people on their Linux journey, but agree that the memes comes from somewhere.
This is the problem with the idea that one distro is the absolute best. We overlook its flaws. We attempt to push our personal tastes and preferences on everyone else. Now, there is nothing wrong with having a distro you love. However, someone else probably has a different distro she loves. We are all different people with different tastes, preferences, and needs. I can say that my current favorite distro is Slackware while still respecting someone else favoring a Distro I don’t like, personally, Gentoo. The fanboy mentality leads to endless arguments, fights, and divisiveness IMO.
Why was arch called great? 1) The AUR was a wonderful innovation compared to the way distros traditionally just had repos that are only maintained by a handful of distro maintainers. If they did not think a package was worth maintaining it would not be available. With the AUR, having all users in the community now able to create and maintain packages in the repo was a fantastic new idea vs the way distros were done in the past and created a massive vast amount of software that was not previously available anywhere else. The AUR is not about software that is available in other distros or flatpaks, its about having software that is obscure and not available anywhere else just as long as there are a few users that want to maintain an install package for it. Basically, If your software is in flatpack, you are not an AUR user. 2) The ARCH wiki is a fantastic set of documentation and resources used even by non-arch users. 3) Its the most up to date distro. NONE OF these things have changed, they are still the reasons why Arch is a great distro.
I went to Fedora when Nobara came out. I enjoyed it greatly and would recommend. But got bored, tried a couple things... then went back to Arch. Installed a couple things from the AUR and immediately felt like I was home.
You are absolutely correct in the context of status Arch Linux versus Fedora, Suse Tumbleweed either Debian Bookworm . It's a matter of personal preferences.
Even if arch is rolling release you won't get the kernel updates day one. I think that's one flaw I'm starting to see about arch. I came for up to date everything even though it might be buggy but I'm not getting the latest versions of the linux kernel or even mesa drivers.
It came straight from his arse. We always help each other on Arch. Just have a look at the wiki which is a result of the community. There would not be that splendid wiki if we were that toxic. Yeah it can happen that we will link you to the wiki but that has a reason. That reason me not being able to explain it any better than the wiki already does. RTFM is not an insult, it is a well meant advice. Besides it was very common in my days. Just have a look at my C64 manual. It tells you everything there is to know about the C64. The problem is today's youth and their education. They can't even read and write properly anymore.
Soon after I reinvograted my old potato laptop a couple of years ago, I used Arch + XFCE for over a year and I loved it. A couple of months ago, I added more RAM and thought of trying out GNOME and chose Fedora Silverblue as my distro. I'm just loving it!
I tried out Fedora for a few months myself. Very stable distro, but I was very disappointed by some issues, like Blender not having support for CUDA out of the box (Same goes for Rendering with the AMD Pro drivers). Had the same problem with a couple of other programs and I felt that when they choose to go so hard against closed source, it's not a distro for me. Another thing that made me miss the AUR was how copr was structured and how slow the website was..
For a developer the AUR is the best thing. For other people that spend most of their time in browser it does not matter what you use. All distros are basically the same and constantly talking about them is POINTLESS
I wonder in what distro is it the easiest to replace repo library packages with your own build so that dependencies still work correctly. Is makepkg the best option? Or do one of the other distros have something better? Also IMO the best thing about the AUR is that there are sometimes patched versions of other packages. For example, using system electron for everything, enabling a less stable pr, etc. Another benefit of aur vs ppa, etc. is that you see the build script instead of the binary so less likely to be malware. The biggest risk is the major breakages for sure. There was a broken kernel update recently that could break your monitor apparently.
I'd easily hop on NixOS, but it's not as good in terms of software as the AUR. There's so much software that I got working and I don't have to manage on my own, it's crazy
As an Arch User, the only reason for me to stay is convenience. Installation might makes you ends up into elitism rabbit hole, but the convenience to works almost all i need quickly after all the initial setup is what i need. Sometime it got some hiccup out of the bleeding edge, but trying all the new stuff is what i want and i expect some hiccup with the bleeding edge nature of arch. Because i expect those hiccups, and the convenience of all the documentation and aur ( I understand why you call it overrated) makes all my works much faster compared when i'm on my ubuntu and fedora days (not because arch is faster, but arch "flexibility" provide me with the possibility to setup all what i want according to my workflow).
@Watcher If your system is potential vulnerable it WILL break if you change anything in the grub config. So if you plan to do that then you also need to run grub install.
I've used arch for years and at no point would I claim it's the best. Arch is arch. Some people should use arch. Most people shouldn't. This isn't a competition, distros are meant for different use cases. Trying to rank them on a linear scale is useless and a waste of time.
Installing packages manually is not only about ease. It's more dangerous since you can make mistakes, and you don't know that someone effectively vetted the installation process; and also it would not be updated. AUR (or something like it) is not just convenience; but it's safer.
I love Arch because: 1. Minimal install 2. I like the feeling of "building my own system" 3. 2 makes me learn more about linux 4. Low resource usage (only 300mb ram usage cold start) 5. By using Arch I feel obligated to use a wm, which I love, organizes so much my work (I usually have 2 browsers open ~20 tabs each, vscode, terminals) I usually talk shit about Ubuntu, only because it uses too much resource (2gb ram from cold start) but I like PopOS
I think, the difference between the distros is very marginal. I have a double-boot machine and I have both Ubuntu and Arch on it, and even though I mainly use Arch for my personal coding and use, I always keep Ubuntu for the client-facing work: demos, Teams calls etc. as it is supposedly more stable and less prone to the sudden update-driven issues. Even though I did face issues with Ubuntu, and probably had them more often on Ubuntu than on Arch, I still believe keeping several distros handy is important. As for the personal comfort, I think the desktop manager (DM) is more important than the distro itself. And I didn't notice much of a difference between Arch and Arch-based distros and Debian 12 and Debian-based distros when compared with the same DM. Package managers, bars etc. are not that important in my mind. So, I don't quite get the point of being a fan boy of one Distro over another, but I do think that the DM matters a lot, and being a fan of i3 or GNOME or KDE may and should take place, and that makes sense as they are very different.
I've been using Debian and I love it. Has great documentation, is rock solid, and flexible enough that I can customize and get my hands dirty but not break things so easily.
I use Manjaro atm and it's falling apart more and more with every update they do. Fedora is looking very good but the grass is always greener on the other side.
The real reason Arch is such a good distro is it's package manager - which is simply the best there is... True, it has weird choice of argument usage - but it second to none.
I have run lots of different distros to include Arch. I have asked lots of stupid questions. I have seen alot of people get roasted in forums for all distros. Arch communities will scare you out of asking a "stupid question" more than any other distro I have tried.
People talk about the AUR but the real deal id the ABS (Arch Build System). You can easily integrate anything from custom kernels to GUI apps into it. I use Ubuntu as my server, I wish it had a smarter way of handling secure boot. I used to go with Gentoo in the past because it empovered me to make (make, get it?) the system I use, but I got tired of the coompilation, that is why I went with vanillia Arch at the end of the day. I used Systemd on both, I think that matters more than the package manager even. In the future I am looking to build my own Fedora desktop up from the server install, kind of like Arch. I just feel like I am more locked in in Fedora (more preinstalled stuff, so I have zo manually tear down and rebuild, even on the server edition), but we'll see.
You get the lastest version of most packages in Fedora but definitely not every package. I've been using it for months now, and to this day the latest available version of imagemagick is 6.9, and I have written a few scripts that require 7.x to work. One of such scripts is several years old, written on Windows 7 (I used Cygwin at the time). You can pretty easily use imagemagick 7.x on Fedora by getting the nix package (or the AppImage version, but it's slow), but that's not very obvious as most people are unaware of the nix package manager. Trying to install the official RPM packages also doesn't work (it installs fine, but some magick commands fail with an inscrutable error message). The fact that Fedora is still stuck on 6.9 in the official repos even though the first 7.x release was all the way back in 2015 is insane. I wouldn't be surprised if you can already get imagemagick 7 on freaking Debian Stable at this point.
My current opinion is that, if not counting for AUR, then Void is better than Arch since it has more softwares on its main repo. And it seems to have been easier for people to put their packages inside Void's main repo rather than in Arch's main repo. Of course, I know popular AUR packages can become officially inclued into the main repo, but it seems to have been a rather slow process. AUR is the wild west while Arch's main repo has too complicated bureaucracy to penetrate.
Goodness I hopped about from distro to distro back when I first came across Linux. I seem to recall I started out on a bunch of distros, but then initially settled on Mandriva, then segued along to Magiea (I think because it was pretty), then they had some kind of internal war (I think it was about systemd, but can't exactly remember), then I discovered Ubuntu. I assumed I'd try it for a week and then move on to something else like before, but every device in my machine just worked - which was new. Couple of days dicking with the UI to get something I could work with, and I'm still with it a decade later.
Flatpak has broken packages, snap has broken packages. Debian if it has broken packages you have to wait until new build for a fix. Ubuntu breaks often on kernel upgrades. Fedora breaks on upgrades. The only aur problems I've had is I have to rebuild a package, or a package is not maintained and is missing dependencies, which I've been able to work around. Every other distro I literally would not be able to boot the gui and manually have to fix from terminal by Uninstall whatever is breaking.
At least, I don't have to google first such stupid question as "how to install vscode on fedora" if I want to install vscode on my computer, and then come back to terminal, inputting some other commands... that's the stupidest way I've ever seen to install application honestly. On arch, you just `paru vscode`, then choose number, then done. and this is fact rather than bias.
I think it's both overrated and underrated, by separate people. Many people love Arch and ignore the flaws, and many people treat it purely like a meme and make references to Arch which is really references to the Arch community, elitism, the manual install process, the Arch wiki etc... but they never actually tried it. I personally think it's great. It makes it easy to reason with and maintain your own system. I even made a habit of making or editing PKGBUILDs in the rare cases I couldn't find a package or ad to tweak it. This way every part of my system (not counting /home and logs) is part of a package, and I can diagnose, install and update it more easily. And this simplicity extends to the AUR if you want to publish packages. It's just a matter of using git to push text files with specifications. You don't even need to use Arch to maintain an Arch package. Debian and Fedora take the opposite approach with gate keeping their packages for security/ideology/license/legal/bureaucratic reasons, so the threshold is much higher. That's not necessarily bad of course, but they scare off contributors. I don't think it's perfect of course. For example if you need a specific postgres version in Arch you will experience pain. Hoping to find time to try NixOS eventually.
NixOS is brilliant, and can totally recommend it, with the caveat that learning how to make a fully declarative configuration will take some time. Some packages don'r really work well with how Nix structures things, so can require a bit of extra work, but imo, it's worth the effort. Regarding specific versions, NixOS can of course do that, but I'd recommend the more general solution of containerized development. it's so much nicer than using a local version manager or other alternatives.
I am on macOS, due to my work-laptop, but. I love in Arch that I may install everything from scratch and understand the minimal requirements to the OS, control the packages I install, but without long compilings like in Gentoo - so this not overwhelmes me and helps to gain new knowledge
ARCH IS ROLLING RELEASE: Most Distro have a dev branch, formally these branch are NOT the as Rolling Release, but can be equivalent to that; AUR: This exists because Arch lacks pkgs on it's official repos or individual devs providing a pkg specifically for Arch (take a example of CROME, Google provides .rpm and .deb), so it makes sense to have the AUR on ARCH. The AUR is technically a bunch of scripts to build and install pkgs, so if you can do it manually on your distro you won't miss the AUR. Some AUR pkgs a hard to build manually on your distro, so ARCH have some advantage here (for example Deezer). ARCH gives you a complete control, comes empty and it's up to you to build an maintain your system: The Arch install guide is a chroot install and can be replicated on any distro. I was a Arch user, and I love it
There's no such thing as "the best" distro. There's only "the best for me." Arch is the best for me, personally, but I won't argue with someone who prefers Mint or Gentoo for themselves. That's the beauty of Linux desktop.
I use arch (btw) just because of the AUR and mainly because of the zen kernel. I don't know for any other alternative kernels or am i able to change my kernel on other distros to it so i just stick to arch (btw).
I have been using Arch Linux for the past 5 years and despite what you have commented about the aur which it seems to be your main mandra I have never and I mean never had a problem installing drivers and applications, unlike your RPM operating system, however I will agree that Arch is not for the faint of heart so use what you will and us Arch users will continue to use Arch
you can install distrobox , create archlinux:latest container,install yay , install anything you would like from the aur,export binaries and applaunchers into your host using distrobox-export, its so good …. man i use arch but i mount my root partition / and read only and uses distrobox
I think CentOS Stream is a good option now for daily driving since it has been placed between fedora and rhel. Still has pretty good update cycles and stability has been in my experience very good.
I only like arch because its named after the hollowdeck computer from TNG, very similar to the reason I don't use fedora, not a fan of that particular style of hat.
For my experience as a complete beginner in the world of GNU/ Linux, what really stands out with arch is that I can have all the programs or software and configurations out of the box in every installation process, it's like automation (especially for me that I reinstall arch everyday), that's why I really love arch. But in general, all linux distributions are awesome! It's just happened that I found the perfect fit for me and I hope everyone also found their own too.
I have never used linux but a couple of years ago software has matured since then with all the different ways to install software.....
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Like many Linux users I've started with Ubuntu = Debian based Distros, and even though I prefer Distros with a stable release cycle to rolling release distros (and use them for setting up other peoples PCs) I honestly can't see myself ever switching back away to a distro without the AUR. Yes, you can figure out how to build software not in your distro's repo yourself, but it's a hassle. And yes, there is stuff like flatpak and snap and so on, but I hate the inefficency of every piece of software acompanied by another statically linked copy of all it's dependencies. So I'm limiting myself to distros with AUR support.
i think that the best thing about arch is not aur or pacman or whaterver, is that it teach you to build the system as you like, and that push the value that linux gives to you as user, gentoo do it too but in a more complex way.
Arch: You’ll be back. Soon you’ll see. You’ll remember you belong to me. You’ll be back. Time will tell. You’ll remember how I served you well. Corpos rise, distros fall, we’ve seen each other through it all. And when push comes to shove, I will send a terminally online battalion to remind you of my love.
Pacman is what I'm used to. Fedora package management isn't bad but I like building my systems from the ground up. I don't use helpers for my AUR packages other than Kalu to notify me when something is out of date. Arch is excellent but not what I recommend to people who aren't inclined to maintain their systems. And I certainly wouldn't deploy it for a commercial use. My big complaint about fedora is no support of non free software. I tried it in virtual and it was good but then tried to install it on a laptop using wireless and it wasn't happening. Plus I don't like Gnome. I'm not into using a wired connection then jumping through hoops to get wireless to work straight away. All for a DE I plan on changing. So I just used good old Arch for my laptop.
No distro should be above reproach. Every Linux distro has its good and bad points and there is no 'perfect' distro. Thanks for taking the time [and courage] to make this video. RTFM is no longer an acceptable answer to criticism in the Linux world, as it once may have been. Arch is not a religion.
Yeah and exactly why you pay 200 Dollars to get your car its oil changed. You didn't read the manual and wasted 150 Dollars. The manual is there for a reason. If you want me to hold your hand you are gonna have to pay for it.
Arch is the enthusiasts kit build car that you spend more time underneath working on than actually driving it. Fun if you are into that kind of thing, but not if you want a car that will get you there without incident.
I used Ubuntu for 11 years. But I loved the thought of a "rolling release" eversince. I now finally tried out some other distros, like manjaro, endeavour, vanilla arch, artix, openSuse tumbleweed and fedora, because I wanted to be more close to the development of pipewire. That is because I also make some music on Linux. And Ubuntu/Debian based distros don't offer this advantage of newest versions. I don't think that the AUR is a point to stay on an arch based distro. Because it is great on arch doesn't mean it is necessary outside of arch. For me there are other points that I look for. I like a distro, that I can setup very quick, when I have to. But also I like a fast system and a good package-management. What I love on manjaro is, it is almost set up out of the box, and it is easy to maintain. What I really love on arch is, it is very fast and I can get a highly debloated system. Although I use KDE. But I can easily install only the most needed packages of it. What I really love on fedora, dnf is more clear than pacman, although it is very slow. But I see very clear from which repositories I get updates. For that I have to use pamac on arch. And I don't have this much updates to download but still have the newest versions of the important software (kernel, firefox, pipewire). And for a Fedora install I use the fedora-everything-installer, to install it without graphical environment and then too only install the very needed packages on top of it. But still it isn't as fast as arch is, especially on bootup. For the last couple of month I also tried a lot in making my own custom isos, and for that purpose artix was the easiest for me until now. This way I have a system that really works out of the box. And making a new iso only takes about 10 minutes on artix, so I could make it very easy any couple of weeks. On openSuse I miss the option of an autoremove/clean/-Sc in the package manager. And it does things very different than other distros. So I don't like it very much, although it looks very nice, with its boot splash and got the highest lynis-score of all distros I tried (79 - Fedora got 67 on the second place - on arch I can reach 65). Alpine Linux and NixOs have very interesting approaches too, but they are tooo different of what I'm used to. But the thought of having a quick reconfigurable system like NixOS is interresting. I still don't have chose the one distro I relay on. On my main PC I run manjaro-testing for several month now, without any problems. On my laptop I run Fedora as a first system, to see how the upgrade process to fedora 37 will run. And the second system on my laptop now is artix. These 4 (manjaro/fedora/artix/arch) are my favourites for now. But I liked Ubuntu also very much. But now they're forcing the switch to snaps I am happy to use some other distros. I think Mint is also a good choice, although I didn't took it very serious all these years, because I heard they sometimes are putting user-experience and usability over security aspects.
for the past two months, Ive been distro hopping. I've tried void linux, which I do like, but can't control my laptop fans automatically, because I cant seem to write my own runit service to run a shell script. Maybe I haven't tried hard enough, but I couldn't. I went to fedora 38, and I had a hard time with the nvidia drivers and wayland not getting along. I tried installing gentoo. After a half a day wasted trying to install it, I finally got into installing grub. I installed grub, rebooted into the system, and it wouldn't boot. I don't technically use the aur but for i8kutils, but while I'm searching for the right distro for me, I've been installing my software such as steam, and emulators off of flatpaks, so i can delete my root partition and jump to something different. So, as for now, I'm running Arch linux with the LTS kernel. I use Arch because configuring it to my laptop seems to be easier than fedora. I don't think that Arch is the best. It's just something that works for me. I can live without the AUR, because I got void linux running great on my laptop, just having my fans go full blast all the time is annoying. I don't see my self as an elitest because I use Arch. Like I said, Arch is what works for me.
One of the reasons that I love arch is that it's MY system, I built it myself, it has what I want. Even tho tbh my main arch install is kinda scuffed(It was my first using linux ever), it's still MY system
To be frank, most of the stuff on AUR, you are actually build the package locally and install it later. I also like how relatively easy it is to build any package on Arch if you understand PKGBUILDS. I said the same things about Arch Linux on my channel. Arch is okay, it is very good for a few things, but in general, it is... fine, and is definitely not really for the "every day" user.
I am by no means an Arch die hard, but since I started using Arch distros, I do tend to lean on the AUR a LOT and its much easier to install software on an Arch distro than a non Arch because of that. I currently split time between a few distros as a daily driver and only one is not an Arch distro (RisiOS 37 Beta) and I find myself missing the AUR when I need something. Not that its impossible or difficult, it just takes longer, its less convenient. I do agree with you. Personally, any time I run into "snarkiness" its usually in the Arch world. Its unfortunate.
The only reason i prefer Arch, is because personally i want a blank template to build upon. I know other distros also offers this. But ultimatly the good documentation and package availability is what wins me over.
When I need a good sermon, I always come to your channel. Once you go for Fedora, you have found your home. Fedora protects the main distribution from apps and technology that are unstable. They will sit in rawhide and marinate until ready.
There's no distribution that has more access to simple CLI software than arch linux. There's a tool for anything, usually multiple. The AUR is so large that I've found out about things that I never even knew were available to Linux just by doing some simple searches. My only complaint is that you can't go a long time without internet and expect things to just work when you go to upgrade. I don't see myself switching from Arch anytime soon, but if I eventually do, it will be back to Debian, probably LMDE. For that JustWerks experience. Every person that I know that is into computers has a tinkering phase, but when they get older, usually approaching their middle years, they just want what works, nothing that requires too much action or thought on their part, and I completely understand that, I'm sure the same thing will happen to me too.
How I see this video, is that once you're step a bit away from a community, you finally see its flaws and its strengths better. I know you're talking about Linux Desktop, but here's a (very) unpopular opinion, which hopefully won't get too much hate from the Arch community (love yall): on a business perspective (read: enterprise servers, cloud providers, banking systems, etc...), if Arch was discontinued, it would go almost unnoticed. So, while it can be the "top dog" on the Desktop, in the bigger picture of Linux ecosystem, Arch is smaller than Red Hat, SUSE, Ubuntu and of course Debian, in terms of world impact. Again, doing great on the Linux Desktop, but the Linux world is way bigger than just the Desktop. Thanks for the video, and as kinda stated above, I totally share your point of view.
What's your point and why should it get hate ? Ubuntu is bigger than Arch Fedora and probably all other distros put together on desktop. What does the server world has to do with desktop ? I run Debian/Ubuntu on servers and Arch on desktop, right tool for the right job.
i use arch linux a lot. i will admit that the biggest flaw is the instability. if you do almost nothing on your computer, like just use a browser and a terminal, you will never see a lot of the heinous bugs. I think that's why you see the pretentious people claiming Arch has never once broken for them, maybe they only use 2-3 apps and therefore they've only ever seen 2-3 bugs. The more packages you use regularly (not just AUR packages, a lot of official packages too), the more bugs you will have to rapid-fire patch and memorize if you're trying to do actual work. I like the challenge, and *i would say the real reason I use Arch Linux is because I love GNU/Linux so much I enjoy contributing what I can as a tester on the front lines for new versions, to try to help get the bugs fixed before they also show up in other distros*
7:30 It's the same with arch. Every time a new things is implemented you have a possibility it will not work. I don't worry about that very much because patched, sometimes, come in the same day.
