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possiblylinux127 , (edited )
@possiblylinux127@lemmy.zip avatar

I never really understood the desire for Arch

Edit: more like the desires of Arch people

survivalmachine ,

You trade a little system stability for bleeding-edge package access.

possiblylinux127 ,
@possiblylinux127@lemmy.zip avatar

It seems to be geared toward people who want to constantly maintain there system. I'm surprised at the number of people who like to tinker and often break the OS they daily drive. I use Linux because it protects my freedom and is low maintenance.

I guess the benefit of Linux is freedom of choice

Phanatik ,

One of the simplest ways to safeguard against breakage is to have your /home on a separate partition. I realised I wouldn't need to backup and reformat it from the beginning, I just need to wipe the root drive and reinstall again.

It's made even easier by writing an installation script. Simply put, you can pipe a list of packages into packstrap and use a little convenience package for pulling a partition scheme out of a file.

I like to tinker and I'm aware that things will break so I have these tools that let me rebuild the system again in as short a time as possible.

nous ,

You dont even need a separate partition, just delete the non-home directories and reinstall. pacstrap might even do that for you 🤔 it has been a while since i last needed to reinstall. And most of the time you dont even need a full reinstall, Arch is trivial to fix most things from a live cd by partially following the install process - most often get a chroot and start reinstalling select packages/configs in some of the worst case scenarios.

hayk OP ,

yes, i think we can all agree at least on the last point: that developing forward as a community, any Linux is better than corporate OSs. not because they're evil products of capitalist agenda (even though that's the case), but because developing them allows you to have a choice, and also incentivizes large companies to meet these security and freedom standards.

nous ,

It seems to be geared toward people who want to constantly maintain there system

That is where your assumptions are wrong. It is for people that know how and want control over their setup. But after the initial setup maintenance is no worst that any other distro - simpler even in the longer term. Just update your packages and very occasionally manually update a config somewhere or run an extra command before hand (I honestly cannot remember the last time I even needed to do that much...). Far easier than needing to reinstall or fix a whole bunch of broken things after a major system upgrade that happens every few years on other distros.

People that like to tinker and break their system can do that on any distro. That does not mean it is high maintenance, quite the opposite in fact as it is easier to fix as Arch is generally easier to fix when you do break something (so does attract people that do like to tinker). But leave it alone and it wont just randomly break every week like so many people seem to think it does.

octopus_ink ,

I’m surprised at the number of people who like to tinker and often break the OS they daily drive.

People who don't use Arch or a derivative (or have tried once but didn't stay long enough to get comfortable with how it works) seem to think this happens much more than it does

I run the command "yay" once a day if I think of it, every few days if I don't.

A little less often than that, whenever I think of it, I spend 5 minutes checking for pacnew files (admittedly THIS is potentially a pain compared to other distros, but EOS has a tool that makes it pretty easy)

That's pretty much it.

Technically you should check the main Arch/EOS/Manjaro page before updating because in the rare event that manual intervention is required there will be instructions there. I usually don't, and haven't had a showstopper from it yet.

I can't remember the last time it took me longer than download time + 5 minutes to upgrade my EOS system, and that includes the recent transition to Plasma 6.

possiblylinux127 ,
@possiblylinux127@lemmy.zip avatar

Yeah I don't want to have to take time to maintain my system. Manual intervention is not something I would ever want to do.

If you like it that's fine but it is a weird thing to brag about.

octopus_ink ,

If you like it that’s fine but it is a weird thing to brag about.

Brag? lol ok. Have a good one!

Petter1 ,

Have you seen how the AUR works?

possiblylinux127 , (edited )
@possiblylinux127@lemmy.zip avatar

Yes, it is not confidence inspiring

Petter1 ,

Sorry, I don’t understand what you try to say here…

possiblylinux127 ,
@possiblylinux127@lemmy.zip avatar

Damn auto complete

aleph , (edited )
@aleph@lemm.ee avatar
  • Community-driven distro
  • Bleeding edge software
  • Rolling release instead of point release
  • Amazing software availability
  • Highly customizable
  • Documentation and community support
possiblylinux127 ,
@possiblylinux127@lemmy.zip avatar

I suppose it can't be to bad as it seems to be pretty popular

hayk OP ,

yeah, i mean apart from people satisfying their masochistic desires and highlighting their moral superiority by using CLI (look mama, ima hacker), Arch is genuinely a great OS. and, honestly, like i argued in my post, not as "masochistic" to install as people paint it to be.

ProtonBadger ,

There are other distros with the same points, they're not unique, save for the wiki. A lot of users of other distros refer to the Arch wiki. The AUR is much celebrated but I personally found it annoying having to carefully vet every package and having moved to another distro I don't miss it.

I think the main reason to choose Arch is it's for tinkerers/hobbyists. Its community is very enthusiastic which is always nice, though many can become a bit obnoxious on forums.

aleph ,
@aleph@lemm.ee avatar

There are other distros with the same points, they're not unique, save for the wiki.

Are there? Like what?

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