May be a mean sounding question, but I’m genuinely wondering why people would choose Arch/Endevour/whatever (NOT on steam hardware) over another all-in-one distro related to Fedora or Ubuntu. Is it shown that there are significant performance benefits to installing daemons and utilities à la carte? Is there something else I’m missing? Is it because arch users are enthusiasts that enjoy trying to optimize their system?
rolling release is a big plus for me, also the modularity and choice of what packages i want on my machine
it’s also not really any harder to use than any debian/ubuntu based distro i’ve used
in ~3 years since i’ve switched to arch i’ve only broken it once and it took 15 minutes to fix
Because it comes with a nice BTW
Yes and no to all of those reasons, and many others.
There isn’t a right or wrong way to install/use Linux. As the saying goes “you do you”. If going through the Arch learning curve doesn’t appeal to you, don’t do it. If you’re the sort of person whose curiosity sometimes leads them to do silly things that aren’t necessarily logical but that you find enormously fun and satisfying, then maybe go for it.
Im also wondering this.
I’ve tried installing it on 2 different pcs a few times and ive not gotten it to work yet lol. Granted I didnt spend a lot of time on it.
I appreciate you can build the system yourself but its almost choice overload for adhd me and ill end up installing every single package anyway that ill never need, which negates the point of arch.
It’s not “trouble” if you’re already familiar with Linux. It’s not the way I would go as a user of 20+ years, but it’s not just for desktop use.
If you’re looking to build a platform for something, it’s perfect. Look at why Valve switched to use to for SteamOS. You have an underlying framework of a stable system, and you just create automation to slap it all together into the base layer of all the things you want without having to worry about specific things breaking the stack you’re building on top of it.
It’s like a blank page instead of a notebook with line guides.
It helps make more sense if you think of everything you’ve got to build on it already existing in a git repo. Merge > Build > Release. Makes perfect sense, and you save yourself creating an entire distro to maintain from scratch.
I don’t think that currently there is much difference in terms of performance, unless you are using a very bloated distro.
Personally I prefer Arch compared to Ubuntu, Fedora or similar (including Endeavor, Manjaro etc…) because I simply want to build my OS, piece by piece.
There is basically nothing else about it, I just like feeling the system I am running as something I created (kinda) and knowing exactly what is running and why it’s there.
Obviously you could achieve the same with other distros (and even go deeper with things like Gentoo or Guix) but Arch makes it very easy to do it.
EDIT: oh and being rolling release too, as another user mentioned. I would never go back to a fixed release distro.
It’s the IKEA effect. You tend to like something more if you built it yourself.
spoiler
… and you understand it more when you build something by yourself, so it’s easier for you to fix it when it’s broken.
you understand it more when you build something by yourself, so it’s easier for you to fix it when it’s broken.
For me, this is a big selling point. Instead of trying to figure out why someone did something or wrestling with their decisions, I know what I did, why I did it, and if necessary, and I can change it.
In a perfect world, yes.
In reality, i knew what i did and why i did it, two years ago, after which i never had to touch it again until now, and it takes me 2 hours of searching/fiddling until i remember that weird thing i did 2 years ago…
and it’s still totally worth it
Oh or e.g. random env vars in .profile that I’m sure where needed for nvidia on wayland at some point, no clue if they’re still necessary but i won’t touch them unless something breaks. and half of them were probably not neccessary to begin with, but trying all differen’t combinations is tedious…
i knew what i did and why i did it, two years ago, after which i never had to touch it again until now
Hahaha, true. This is why I try to keep as many notes as possible, leave lots of comments, add READMEs, links, and otherwise document what I did and why.
It’s not perfect, it’s often tedious, and I don’t always do it, but when I come back 2 years later wondering why I set some random option, it’s pretty nice having at least some hint.
I saw a gif about some cool hyprland dotfiles and i fell in love.
Instructions said it was designed for arch.
There are many more other reasons i stayed. Its great to actually feel in charge of my system.
Debian/ubuntu has its uses in server reliability but its missing snap for daily use.
Fedora is to close to corporate for my personal interest.
I think for many people, whether they’re tinkerers or programmers or whoever, enjoy the freedom that comes with Arch.
I wanted a rolling release distro, and Arch has an amazing wiki. That’s why I chose it. Though I ultimately moved on to CachyOS (Arch based), because it’s a lot more pre configured than Arch.
People swear there’s secret sauce in the Cachy kernel too.
Placebo is a hell of a phenomenon though lol
There are some benefits, but its situational and only affects you while your hardware is very new. Eventually the base kernel catches up in most cases.
I’ve observed some notable improvements when benchmarking with the CachyOS kernel on NixOS via Chaotic’s Nyx using moderately old hardware:
https://programming.dev/post/38304031
Haven’t yet tried replicating the same comparison on newer hardware, but would be interested to see what others have tested. Any observations?
It’s actually less trouble. Back when i used ubuntu based distros I ended up using the arch wiki anyway, and I never successfully upgraded from one ubuntu LTS to the next without problems anyway, so I figured why not try the distro that doesn’t have upgrades and has amazing docs. It’s much more stable.
I initially started using it because I needed the newest drivers and back ports on Mint was taking to long, since then I’ve stuck with rolling release so I don’t have to deal with driver hell. I stick with Arch over say Debian Tumbleweed at this point mostly from momentum.
I never found using endeavour any more trouble than using Ubuntu or fedora, and I’ve used both in school or work so, my question back to you, why do people choose corporate coded distros like fedora or Ubuntu when easy to use, up to date and free as in freedom distros like endeavour exist?
I’m going extra silly: why do you wear bikinis when swimsuits exist? Dunno, preferences. People have them.
Yepp, from where I sit Endeavour is the best of all worlds. Plus, it’s purple.
The thing stopping me from using Arch is that most programs come out as debs and you have to wait for them to show up in the AUR. Example: when Mullvad VPN first came out it was only available as a deb. How long did it take to show up in the AUR? Who made that available? Was it the Mullvad folks or someone else? That’s the kind of thing that concerns me.
So on arch can you choose to run the deb anyway and get updates through the package manager, or is it that only AUR applications are the main application type? Or can you use both?
I have a number of apps that are super small teams/individual made that I can’t expect them to care about the AUR. What do you do in the case that an app developer doesn’t use the AUR?
This is me talking out of my ass a but since I do not do it, but you can create your own AUR packages pretty easily. If you have the Deb, you could be rocking it in Arch too.
On Chimera Linux, I do make my own packages. Just so easy.
I wanted my computer to be secure but headless. Suse, fedora both had supposed instructions but in classic Linux style they had a bunch of out of date commands and software and it didn’t work. Fedora always required a human to enter a password on boot, suse just bricked.
Endeavarch had instructions (a maze of unclear gibberish, to be honest) that actually worked and did what I wanted with minimal fuss and it’s been operating well for 2 years.
