Why i Arch.
Half-Shot Oct 15, 2013
Before i begin, i have been using Arch for a week and Linux for a couple of year. I know my way around a terminal but not enough to sufficently explain every detail of a system.

Arch linux is practically the most understated distro in its time. I hear people complain that its too hard or it takes quite a bit of knowledge to use but i wanted to set the record straight on that. The reality is that people who have used ubuntu for a year, especially non-LTS versions will reliase 3 things:
  • Ubuntu updates are never easy for those that tinker.

  • Software gets out of date on a versioned distro very quickly

  • You will at some point need to edit config files and do some terminal work, its going to happen sooner or later.


With those three things in mind i wanted to explain why i use arch other ubuntu and hopefully change a few opinions on it. Arch is one of the best communitys out there for distros; Everyone helps eachother, packages are maintained and updated days after an update and if you were to search for a linux term right now there is a good chance that the arch wiki would pop up. The arch way is in a nutshell that it does not over complicate anything, and does not simplify anything that could become more complicated as a result. So there will be some manual labor and a 2-3 hour setup time.

But. The Arch Wiki will explain every step, every detail of each bit of arch to plain english (or another langauge if you prefer) which Ubuntu or Debian could never hope to achieve. This is why i use it; the going will get tough but the community provide the maps. The other reason i use it is because the software often gets out of date and once you get a version behind the maintainers will move on and your version is left in the dust. With Arch there is no template as such. Arch itself is just a base set of packages that are needed but beyond that its just software you choose, which is why that arch is almost always faster than another operating system.

So this wasn't intended to convert the whole of GOL or anything like that but explain why I prefer to use it over a debian based distro. Also because i wanted to talk about it and i felt this might be a good place. My fanboy writing skills are now exhausted :P.
Hamish Oct 15, 2013
I switched to Arch mostly because the six month release cycle of Fedora was getting tiresome, it was getting a little inflexible when it came to certain graphical configurations I wanted such as having Zaphod Heads, I was heavily using the Arch Wiki anyway, and because I fell in love with the AUR. I still like Fedora and use it for most other purposes, but I am quite pleased with Arch on my own main machine.
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