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Question for all the Arch peeps, what's the goal/purpose of Arch? As an outside observer it seems needlessly complicated and most of the complexity being speci

Question for all the Arch peeps, what's the goal/purpose of Arch? As an outside observer it seems needlessly complicated and most of the complexity being specific to Arch. Why not just run Slack or Debian if you want a barebones full distro? Slack and BSD's are closer to old school UNIX. Arch is after my time, am I missing something?

viraptor 9y ago
Debian is not kept as up to date as arch. There's also no AUR equivalent. AUR had Steam for Linux packaged for example about 2h after the official release, with people adding the missed dependencies very shortly. Also not having many prescribed defaults is sometimes nice. I want KDE with that display manager / lockscreen. And I can have it without uninstalling some metapackage which will make updates harder in the future. (like gnome-desktop on Ubuntu) I haven't used slack for over a decade, so can't really comment. Also until recently it was one of the few distros with nicely integrated grsec kernel. :-(
- Tomte 9y ago
  So Arch community packages are "released" without even cursory testing whether it works (missing dependencies)? And you feel that's a good thing?
  - larschdk 9y ago
    Packages go to the 'testing' repository to allow checking for thing being broken. They usually only stay there for a short time (a week or so, often less).
  - likeclockwork 9y ago
    He's talking about the AUR not the official community repo. It was tested on the AUR and the feedback was integrated to identify the dependencies. It's since graduated from the AUR to the official community repo. The AUR has pretty much everything, community maintained. The arch build system makes it trivial to package something no matter where it comes from. You can use it to repackage a .deb or a .rpm (it'll even download it from its official home and verify checksums), or a project from a git repo, for specific releases, or tracking a branch, or what have you. There's all kinds of software on the AUR and it's all up to date. The official repos also move very fast, compared to other distros. Read about a new feature in a recent version of some software you use? Just update, it's probably already landed in arch. You don't have to wait six months for a release window to install software that's already ready.
    - Tomte 9y ago
      You're playing games with names. I didn't say "official community repo", but "community repo", because I don't know about Arch. Then you're calling this repo which I must not name community repo "community-maintained". So it is a community repo. All while people in this thread advertise for Arch because this community non-community repo is so awesome. But when things break people are not allowed to take it into account. If you try to lure people with this AUR, at least own its failures, not only its successes.
      - likeclockwork 9y ago
        Nothing you've pointed at is a failure, it's simply the process. How can you call up in two hours, rapidly tested and brought to 100% shortly thereafter, a failure? How can using the software you want to use immediately after its release ever be called a failure? Success is waiting for two months for a release window? No thank you.
        Tomte 9y ago
        I'm not saying that anyone did something wrong. I simply find it remarkable that someone actually chose this failure for his advertising. There are certainly many instances of quick turnaround times that don't center on failure.
        viraptor 9y ago
        Why do you keep repeating it was a failure? Do you consider betas of software failures as well? The they're not perfect immediately either.
  - viraptor 9y ago
    Mixing names. Community repo is different from AUR. The first has rules, the second one is a free for all. AUR steam was missing dependencies in a way that specific installed apps weren't functioning right, but that's not something you could figure out from the binary itself. For example Portal depended on texture compression which wasn't included by default. Without buying everything in the Steam store you wouldn't know that. The good thing was that it was corrected within a day. How long does a typical distro bug report take, before it's even looked at?
    - majewsky 9y ago
      This is also Arch, but I just yesterday reported a bug to the distro maintainers because the upgrade to Perl 5.26 broke my monitoring. A fixed package was published into the repo within 3 hours: https://bugs.archlinux.org/task/54322 https://bugs.archlinux.org/task/54322 I guess I got lucky though. A turnaround time that short for community projects also depends on whether the contributor in question happens to be at his desk at that point.
- microwavecamera 9y ago
  Well Debian stable, but you can sync up to testing, unstable or experimental (if you want bleeding edge) for newer packages and have a rolling release. I'm running Kubuntu right now, not that I'm a huge ubuntu fan, but it has the latest KDE plasma desktop with the debian package manager if you just want a KDE that works with minimal effort plus a kick ass package manager and you can upgrade without reinstalling like Fedora. I know how to do stuff manually, I'm old lol, but I use Linux as my main desktop OS and have been for years. More years than I like to think about because it just reminds me how old I am now. It's nice to just be able to install a distro and be up and running in a few hours instead of a few days. You can add grsec (are anything else kernel related) to any distro, just compile a kernel. If your going for the retro thing, Slack and BSD's is the way to go. I guess what I'm getting at is what need is Arch trying to fulfill?
  - viraptor 9y ago
    Experimental Debian is still far behind arch. As you said, you could get grsec in any distro by recompiling kernel. In Arch it was available immediately as a package. People took care of updating it / applying the new releases.
    - microwavecamera 9y ago
      https://wiki.debian.org/grsecurity https://wiki.debian.org/grsecurity Just install it yourself. I don't get what the big deal is. If you have to edit a bunch of config files then just do it yourself. If you want something straight forward there are better options. If you want something closer to traditional *NIX there are better options. If Arch is your thing that's cool, but as an oldish (41) Linux user that's been using Linux primarily since the late 90's I'm not sure what Arch is going for. I'm not trying to be harsh, but honestly I just don't quite get what Arch is doing. It seems to introduce an added level of complexity that specific to Arch. If your into that sort of thing, there's better options. If your looking for something easier there's better options. I just don't get it. lol
      - viraptor 9y ago
broodbucket 9y ago
Latest stable software (this is such a massive deal), it's as lean as you want it to be, and you have the AUR where you can install pretty much any piece of software on the internet in one command. Once you get it running (which doesn't take long once you know what you're doing), it does exactly what you want it to do, is always running the latest and greatest, and in my experience lets me get what I want done faster than anything else. Slackware and Debian are nowhere near as current as Arch, and don't have anything near comparable to the AUR. The main downside of Arch is that you want to be updating somewhat regularly (every couple months at max). This isn't an issue for desktops/laptop I regularly use, and I run Arch on my home server that gets updated around monthly, but it's not a "set and (almost) forget" like Debian stable or CentOS. EDIT: I run Arch on my work laptop and my home server (which runs my blog and some services) and it's never fallen over in several years. Occasionally updates will require me to do something, but if there's an update that requires manual intervention they post about it on archlinux.org.
- majewsky 9y ago
  For the "you have to update it every once in a while" problem, I built a small cronjob that automates the updates, but allows me to intervene. Source is at [1], and it talks to me via XMPP. [2] [1] https://github.com/majewsky/system-configuration/blob/master/src/automation-upgrade.sh https://github.com/majewsky/system-configuration/blob/master... [2] https://github.com/majewsky/xmpp-bridge https://github.com/majewsky/xmpp-bridge
qarioz 9y ago
It's only complicated for the first time. My setup is running just fine for 5+ years. Compared to when I use Ubuntu, have to upgrade every 6 months and suddenly I got headache because all custom configuration doesn't work anymore or custom repository doesn't work anymore because the maintainer is missing. Slackware is fine, but Patrick and a bunch of guys is only a small team, and custom package can only do so much. Bless him and may Guinness always flow freely. Debian is problematic, because their libraries are usually old.
- favadi 9y ago
  Ubuntu LTS is supported for 5 years, so you don't have to update every 6 months.
  - btschaegg 9y ago
    Except if you are relying on current changes in certain software for your development work - current meaning newer than two years ago. Unless, of course, you add a public PPA that randomly stops working in the future and/or will screw up your next distupgrade.
larschdk 9y ago
For me it's the easy of keeping up to date with the latest-and-greatest versions of packages too (NodeJS, GCC, CMake, etc.). The latest Ubuntu/Debian typically gives you TWO YEAR OLD versions of common software. Upgrading packages on Ubuntu/Debian feels such cumbersome (add a PPA, compile yourself). It even feels easier to keep up to date on Windows... The lack of layers of configuration is subjectively simpler and clearer for me. It rather read 'man someprogram.conf' and use 'vi' than try to understand how some other package generates its configuration file. Yes, it's not as stable. Sometimes stuff breaks. I'd rather fix it now than later.
oxplot 9y ago
I consider myself a power user and I've found Arch to be the only distro that doesn't get in my way. Everything is minimalist. My favorite feature is Arch's build system. It's sooo simple that it's in fact a pleasure to write PKGBUILD files for every little thing I want installed. I've never, in the 2.5 years of my Arch installation, ever copied files directly to /usr because it took a few minutes to whip up a new package and let the package manager take care of conflicts, etc. for me.
Zancarius 9y ago
> Why not just run Slack or Debian if you want a barebones full distro? Slack and BSD's are closer to old school UNIX. Arch is after my time, am I missing something? I can't speak for other Arch users but to me, selecting it as my primary OS has been a natural evolution. I first cut my teeth on OpenBSD. Probably not the best choice, but it was the late 90s when I was first exposed to Unix-like OSes, and a friend of mine was something of an OpenBSD evangelist at the time. I then migrated to FreeBSD, and later (around 2005?) to Gentoo. I tried numerous other distros around that period and never really found one I liked (one that felt, well, BSD-ish) more than Gentoo. I admit I only dabbled in Slackware, but Gentoo made more sense to my BSD-addled mind--perhaps because portage was at least passingly analogous to the ports collection, which I still very much admire. Of course, having to rebuild literally everything on the system or use unofficial binary overlays just for binary packages grew increasingly more frustrating, particularly for desktop use, and I lamented about this on Slashdot many years ago. A kind soul suggested Arch and persuaded me to try it, suggesting that it was close enough to Gentoo that I may enjoy it. I did, and I've been using it ever since--probably for about 5-6 years. I suspect its relative similarity to Gentoo has probably changed with systemd--for better and worse--but one of the things that's simultaneously both very exciting and frustrating is Arch's constant evolution. I can honestly say that's definitely for the better. It is still possible to build a minimal system in Arch fairly easily, so I'm not quite sure I follow why this may not qualify as "barebones." I'll grant that the absolute minimal base image "out of the box" will still weigh in around 330-360 megs, but I have had limited success reducing that footprint for abusing containers via custom builds (I seem to recall it was necessary to remove the Perl dependency in OpenSSL to shave off a fairly sizable chunk--that may not be true anymore). The other side of the coin is that it's similar enough to Gentoo (with PKGBUILDs) that you can very quickly build your own custom packages, but it's also a binary rolling release system which gives you access to fairly new things relatively quickly. I'm aware there's also Aptosid, but I'm not a huge fan of Debian-based distros for my own personal use (preference, mostly). If I had to wager a bet, I think a good chunk of Arch users post 2012 are in the same boat as me. They're recovering Gentoo users. Therein may perhaps be a better answer. > As an outside observer it seems needlessly complicated and most of the complexity being specific to Arch. Ostensibly, that may seem true until you scratch the surface. One of the things that's important to understand about Arch is that its maintainers ship upstream packages with minimal changes. Everything you receive is more or less packaged as the developer intended. This can lead to some inconveniences if you want things mostly preconfigured (or configured through an ncurses GUI), but I'd submit that the Arch wiki is absolutely fantastic answer to this. It is this design choice that follows, at least spiritually, with the BSDs and Gentoo, and is also one of the reasons why Debian/Ubuntu's default decision to start services immediately after installation (MySQL, etc) without providing the option to configure first befuddles me. The other side of the coin is that at least some of that complexity isn't strictly due to Arch-specific choices as much as it is these defaults I mentioned. The init system is entirely systemd with no overlays and no compatibility layers outside what systemd itself provides. Once you learn pacman and how to use PKGBUILDs there really isn't anything that deviates substantially from any other systemd-based distro. I'll agree there are some sharp corners here and there, sometimes due to choices made during upgrades/migrations (OpenSSL's recent update comes to mind), but I suspect at least some of your observations may simply be due to what you're familiar with versus what Arch provides. Out of curiosity, what is it that you feel is "needlessly complicated?"
executesorder66 9y ago
The reason I like it is because I can build my OS from the ground up. And Arch makes this super easy with pre-built packages and an awesome package manager. Most other distros you download a pre-built OS, and then you remove all the stuff you don't want. And add stuff you do want. With Arch you just add all the things you want. You know exactly what is installed, and where/how it is configured because you did it yourself. It's also much easier to switch between DE and/or WM with Arch than most distros.
majewsky 9y ago
It's funny how you complain about Arch being "needlessly complicated", then suggesting to use Debian instead. I'm building packages for Arch all the time (mostly for personal use). The one time I tried to build a Debian package, I gave up after spending multiple hours of going through all the ceremony that's involved in that. I'm not saying that Debian is hopelessly overengineered. All the complexity is there for a reason, because Debian strives to cover 100% of what everyone needs. Arch is content with achieving 95%, if it means that you can avoid a huge part of the complexity that comes from catching the last 5%. For example, some Debian packages use a dialog system to set themselves up during installation. Arch avoids that complexity and instead expects the user to read the wiki on how to configure the application in question.
- btschaegg 9y ago
  This. Plus, makepkg is awesome. If, say, I need a specific font installed, I have no trouble with whipping out a short PKGBUILD that downlads, checks, and installs the files - providing me with the option to manage it using Pacman. Its simplicity seems so essential to me that I can't imagine why there are so few distros providing tools like it.
anotherevan 9y ago
I love Arch, personally. Have been using it for quite a few years now as my desktop and love the rolling release paradigm. That said, when setting up machines for others I pick the current LTS release of Kubuntu and install unattended-upgrades to ensure security updates get maintained. It provides a much better ongoing maintenance story for machines that are less "pets" and more "tools". § Due to a disk crash, I recently had to reinstall Arch for the first time in quite a few years. IMO the install process has become more opaque. I seem to remember the wiki use to have a newbie install guide which was really helpful and explained a lot of things as you go, or at least what the common practices were or the pros and cons of different options. That seems to be gone and anything that may be an opinion seems to be excised from any install instructions, and you're left to stumble around different pages a lot more, which is a bit of a shame.
onestone 9y ago
The truth is almost exactly the opposite of what you say actually. Yes, Arch is more difficult to install and configure the first time because it requires you to actually understand the steps it takes. But the top quality documentation really makes that not so difficult. Arch is actually much _easier_ to maintain afterwards (once installed and configured) than almost anything else. This is because it does not add layers of useless abstraction, very much unlike DEB and RPM based distros. Packages are very close to upstream, with only minimal patches when really necessary, unlike RPM/DEB distros which heavily customize and patch most packages. Packages are also very easy to create, you can learn to do that in minutes, again very much unlike DEB and RPM which are needlessly overengineered and have whole ecosystems of helper scripts aiming to help with that complexity, but you have to spend a lot of time to actually learn them as well.

viraptor 9y ago

Debian is not kept as up to date as arch. There's also no AUR equivalent. AUR had Steam for Linux packaged for example about 2h after the official release, with people adding the missed dependencies very shortly. Also not having many prescribed defaults is sometimes nice. I want KDE with that display manager / lockscreen. And I can have it without uninstalling some metapackage which will make updates harder in the future. (like gnome-desktop on Ubuntu) I haven't used slack for over a decade, so can't really comment. Also until recently it was one of the few distros with nicely integrated grsec kernel. :-(

Tomte 9y ago
So Arch community packages are "released" without even cursory testing whether it works (missing dependencies)? And you feel that's a good thing?
- larschdk 9y ago
  Packages go to the 'testing' repository to allow checking for thing being broken. They usually only stay there for a short time (a week or so, often less).
- likeclockwork 9y ago
  He's talking about the AUR not the official community repo. It was tested on the AUR and the feedback was integrated to identify the dependencies. It's since graduated from the AUR to the official community repo. The AUR has pretty much everything, community maintained. The arch build system makes it trivial to package something no matter where it comes from. You can use it to repackage a .deb or a .rpm (it'll even download it from its official home and verify checksums), or a project from a git repo, for specific releases, or tracking a branch, or what have you. There's all kinds of software on the AUR and it's all up to date. The official repos also move very fast, compared to other distros. Read about a new feature in a recent version of some software you use? Just update, it's probably already landed in arch. You don't have to wait six months for a release window to install software that's already ready.
  - Tomte 9y ago
    You're playing games with names. I didn't say "official community repo", but "community repo", because I don't know about Arch. Then you're calling this repo which I must not name community repo "community-maintained". So it is a community repo. All while people in this thread advertise for Arch because this community non-community repo is so awesome. But when things break people are not allowed to take it into account. If you try to lure people with this AUR, at least own its failures, not only its successes.
    - likeclockwork 9y ago
      Nothing you've pointed at is a failure, it's simply the process. How can you call up in two hours, rapidly tested and brought to 100% shortly thereafter, a failure? How can using the software you want to use immediately after its release ever be called a failure? Success is waiting for two months for a release window? No thank you.
      - Tomte 9y ago
        I'm not saying that anyone did something wrong. I simply find it remarkable that someone actually chose this failure for his advertising. There are certainly many instances of quick turnaround times that don't center on failure.
        viraptor 9y ago
        Why do you keep repeating it was a failure? Do you consider betas of software failures as well? The they're not perfect immediately either.
- viraptor 9y ago
  Mixing names. Community repo is different from AUR. The first has rules, the second one is a free for all. AUR steam was missing dependencies in a way that specific installed apps weren't functioning right, but that's not something you could figure out from the binary itself. For example Portal depended on texture compression which wasn't included by default. Without buying everything in the Steam store you wouldn't know that. The good thing was that it was corrected within a day. How long does a typical distro bug report take, before it's even looked at?
  - majewsky 9y ago
    This is also Arch, but I just yesterday reported a bug to the distro maintainers because the upgrade to Perl 5.26 broke my monitoring. A fixed package was published into the repo within 3 hours: https://bugs.archlinux.org/task/54322 https://bugs.archlinux.org/task/54322 I guess I got lucky though. A turnaround time that short for community projects also depends on whether the contributor in question happens to be at his desk at that point.
microwavecamera 9y ago
Well Debian stable, but you can sync up to testing, unstable or experimental (if you want bleeding edge) for newer packages and have a rolling release. I'm running Kubuntu right now, not that I'm a huge ubuntu fan, but it has the latest KDE plasma desktop with the debian package manager if you just want a KDE that works with minimal effort plus a kick ass package manager and you can upgrade without reinstalling like Fedora. I know how to do stuff manually, I'm old lol, but I use Linux as my main desktop OS and have been for years. More years than I like to think about because it just reminds me how old I am now. It's nice to just be able to install a distro and be up and running in a few hours instead of a few days. You can add grsec (are anything else kernel related) to any distro, just compile a kernel. If your going for the retro thing, Slack and BSD's is the way to go. I guess what I'm getting at is what need is Arch trying to fulfill?
- viraptor 9y ago
  Experimental Debian is still far behind arch. As you said, you could get grsec in any distro by recompiling kernel. In Arch it was available immediately as a package. People took care of updating it / applying the new releases.
  - microwavecamera 9y ago
    https://wiki.debian.org/grsecurity https://wiki.debian.org/grsecurity Just install it yourself. I don't get what the big deal is. If you have to edit a bunch of config files then just do it yourself. If you want something straight forward there are better options. If you want something closer to traditional *NIX there are better options. If Arch is your thing that's cool, but as an oldish (41) Linux user that's been using Linux primarily since the late 90's I'm not sure what Arch is going for. I'm not trying to be harsh, but honestly I just don't quite get what Arch is doing. It seems to introduce an added level of complexity that specific to Arch. If your into that sort of thing, there's better options. If your looking for something easier there's better options. I just don't get it. lol
    - viraptor 9y ago

broodbucket 9y ago

Latest stable software (this is such a massive deal), it's as lean as you want it to be, and you have the AUR where you can install pretty much any piece of software on the internet in one command. Once you get it running (which doesn't take long once you know what you're doing), it does exactly what you want it to do, is always running the latest and greatest, and in my experience lets me get what I want done faster than anything else. Slackware and Debian are nowhere near as current as Arch, and don't have anything near comparable to the AUR. The main downside of Arch is that you want to be updating somewhat regularly (every couple months at max). This isn't an issue for desktops/laptop I regularly use, and I run Arch on my home server that gets updated around monthly, but it's not a "set and (almost) forget" like Debian stable or CentOS. EDIT: I run Arch on my work laptop and my home server (which runs my blog and some services) and it's never fallen over in several years. Occasionally updates will require me to do something, but if there's an update that requires manual intervention they post about it on archlinux.org.

majewsky 9y ago
For the "you have to update it every once in a while" problem, I built a small cronjob that automates the updates, but allows me to intervene. Source is at [1], and it talks to me via XMPP. [2] [1] https://github.com/majewsky/system-configuration/blob/master/src/automation-upgrade.sh https://github.com/majewsky/system-configuration/blob/master... [2] https://github.com/majewsky/xmpp-bridge https://github.com/majewsky/xmpp-bridge

qarioz 9y ago

It's only complicated for the first time. My setup is running just fine for 5+ years. Compared to when I use Ubuntu, have to upgrade every 6 months and suddenly I got headache because all custom configuration doesn't work anymore or custom repository doesn't work anymore because the maintainer is missing. Slackware is fine, but Patrick and a bunch of guys is only a small team, and custom package can only do so much. Bless him and may Guinness always flow freely. Debian is problematic, because their libraries are usually old.

favadi 9y ago
Ubuntu LTS is supported for 5 years, so you don't have to update every 6 months.
- btschaegg 9y ago
  Except if you are relying on current changes in certain software for your development work - current meaning newer than two years ago. Unless, of course, you add a public PPA that randomly stops working in the future and/or will screw up your next distupgrade.

larschdk 9y ago

For me it's the easy of keeping up to date with the latest-and-greatest versions of packages too (NodeJS, GCC, CMake, etc.). The latest Ubuntu/Debian typically gives you TWO YEAR OLD versions of common software. Upgrading packages on Ubuntu/Debian feels such cumbersome (add a PPA, compile yourself). It even feels easier to keep up to date on Windows... The lack of layers of configuration is subjectively simpler and clearer for me. It rather read 'man someprogram.conf' and use 'vi' than try to understand how some other package generates its configuration file. Yes, it's not as stable. Sometimes stuff breaks. I'd rather fix it now than later.

oxplot 9y ago

I consider myself a power user and I've found Arch to be the only distro that doesn't get in my way. Everything is minimalist. My favorite feature is Arch's build system. It's sooo simple that it's in fact a pleasure to write PKGBUILD files for every little thing I want installed. I've never, in the 2.5 years of my Arch installation, ever copied files directly to /usr because it took a few minutes to whip up a new package and let the package manager take care of conflicts, etc. for me.

Zancarius 9y ago

> Why not just run Slack or Debian if you want a barebones full distro? Slack and BSD's are closer to old school UNIX. Arch is after my time, am I missing something? I can't speak for other Arch users but to me, selecting it as my primary OS has been a natural evolution. I first cut my teeth on OpenBSD. Probably not the best choice, but it was the late 90s when I was first exposed to Unix-like OSes, and a friend of mine was something of an OpenBSD evangelist at the time. I then migrated to FreeBSD, and later (around 2005?) to Gentoo. I tried numerous other distros around that period and never really found one I liked (one that felt, well, BSD-ish) more than Gentoo. I admit I only dabbled in Slackware, but Gentoo made more sense to my BSD-addled mind--perhaps because portage was at least passingly analogous to the ports collection, which I still very much admire. Of course, having to rebuild literally everything on the system or use unofficial binary overlays just for binary packages grew increasingly more frustrating, particularly for desktop use, and I lamented about this on Slashdot many years ago. A kind soul suggested Arch and persuaded me to try it, suggesting that it was close enough to Gentoo that I may enjoy it. I did, and I've been using it ever since--probably for about 5-6 years. I suspect its relative similarity to Gentoo has probably changed with systemd--for better and worse--but one of the things that's simultaneously both very exciting and frustrating is Arch's constant evolution. I can honestly say that's definitely for the better. It is still possible to build a minimal system in Arch fairly easily, so I'm not quite sure I follow why this may not qualify as "barebones." I'll grant that the absolute minimal base image "out of the box" will still weigh in around 330-360 megs, but I have had limited success reducing that footprint for abusing containers via custom builds (I seem to recall it was necessary to remove the Perl dependency in OpenSSL to shave off a fairly sizable chunk--that may not be true anymore). The other side of the coin is that it's similar enough to Gentoo (with PKGBUILDs) that you can very quickly build your own custom packages, but it's also a binary rolling release system which gives you access to fairly new things relatively quickly. I'm aware there's also Aptosid, but I'm not a huge fan of Debian-based distros for my own personal use (preference, mostly). If I had to wager a bet, I think a good chunk of Arch users post 2012 are in the same boat as me. They're recovering Gentoo users. Therein may perhaps be a better answer. > As an outside observer it seems needlessly complicated and most of the complexity being specific to Arch. Ostensibly, that may seem true until you scratch the surface. One of the things that's important to understand about Arch is that its maintainers ship upstream packages with minimal changes. Everything you receive is more or less packaged as the developer intended. This can lead to some inconveniences if you want things mostly preconfigured (or configured through an ncurses GUI), but I'd submit that the Arch wiki is absolutely fantastic answer to this. It is this design choice that follows, at least spiritually, with the BSDs and Gentoo, and is also one of the reasons why Debian/Ubuntu's default decision to start services immediately after installation (MySQL, etc) without providing the option to configure first befuddles me. The other side of the coin is that at least some of that complexity isn't strictly due to Arch-specific choices as much as it is these defaults I mentioned. The init system is entirely systemd with no overlays and no compatibility layers outside what systemd itself provides. Once you learn pacman and how to use PKGBUILDs there really isn't anything that deviates substantially from any other systemd-based distro. I'll agree there are some sharp corners here and there, sometimes due to choices made during upgrades/migrations (OpenSSL's recent update comes to mind), but I suspect at least some of your observations may simply be due to what you're familiar with versus what Arch provides. Out of curiosity, what is it that you feel is "needlessly complicated?"

executesorder66 9y ago

The reason I like it is because I can build my OS from the ground up. And Arch makes this super easy with pre-built packages and an awesome package manager. Most other distros you download a pre-built OS, and then you remove all the stuff you don't want. And add stuff you do want. With Arch you just add all the things you want. You know exactly what is installed, and where/how it is configured because you did it yourself. It's also much easier to switch between DE and/or WM with Arch than most distros.

majewsky 9y ago

It's funny how you complain about Arch being "needlessly complicated", then suggesting to use Debian instead. I'm building packages for Arch all the time (mostly for personal use). The one time I tried to build a Debian package, I gave up after spending multiple hours of going through all the ceremony that's involved in that. I'm not saying that Debian is hopelessly overengineered. All the complexity is there for a reason, because Debian strives to cover 100% of what everyone needs. Arch is content with achieving 95%, if it means that you can avoid a huge part of the complexity that comes from catching the last 5%. For example, some Debian packages use a dialog system to set themselves up during installation. Arch avoids that complexity and instead expects the user to read the wiki on how to configure the application in question.

btschaegg 9y ago
This. Plus, makepkg is awesome. If, say, I need a specific font installed, I have no trouble with whipping out a short PKGBUILD that downlads, checks, and installs the files - providing me with the option to manage it using Pacman. Its simplicity seems so essential to me that I can't imagine why there are so few distros providing tools like it.

anotherevan 9y ago

I love Arch, personally. Have been using it for quite a few years now as my desktop and love the rolling release paradigm. That said, when setting up machines for others I pick the current LTS release of Kubuntu and install unattended-upgrades to ensure security updates get maintained. It provides a much better ongoing maintenance story for machines that are less "pets" and more "tools". § Due to a disk crash, I recently had to reinstall Arch for the first time in quite a few years. IMO the install process has become more opaque. I seem to remember the wiki use to have a newbie install guide which was really helpful and explained a lot of things as you go, or at least what the common practices were or the pros and cons of different options. That seems to be gone and anything that may be an opinion seems to be excised from any install instructions, and you're left to stumble around different pages a lot more, which is a bit of a shame.

onestone 9y ago

The truth is almost exactly the opposite of what you say actually. Yes, Arch is more difficult to install and configure the first time because it requires you to actually understand the steps it takes. But the top quality documentation really makes that not so difficult. Arch is actually much _easier_ to maintain afterwards (once installed and configured) than almost anything else. This is because it does not add layers of useless abstraction, very much unlike DEB and RPM based distros. Packages are very close to upstream, with only minimal patches when really necessary, unlike RPM/DEB distros which heavily customize and patch most packages. Packages are also very easy to create, you can learn to do that in minutes, again very much unlike DEB and RPM which are needlessly overengineered and have whole ecosystems of helper scripts aiming to help with that complexity, but you have to spend a lot of time to actually learn them as well.