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In my opinion, the selling point is that arch requires you to take interest into how it works and some level of understanding of the major parts. To get a work
by zdkl 9y ago
In my opinion, the selling point is that arch requires you to take interest into how it works and some level of understanding of the major parts.
To get a working arch install you'll be taken through The Install Guide that summarises the steps necessary to have a base install with links to relevant specialised articles. Once you have a bootable system, they provide links for further customisation if your system.
The amazing thing is that by contrast to ubuntu et al. you're by default left with the strict minimal bootable linux system and anything else you want/need on your machine, it's explicitely your responsability to ensure proper operation (dependency versioning, program specific configuration and maintenance). It's fairly overwhelming initially, but the tools arch gives you to cope with the "it's your mess" are second to none (pacman/yaourt is amazing)
- ChrisSD 9y agoThis is both the great strength and great weakness of Arch. I did use it for awhile but in the end I got tired of playing sys admin on my home machine. The nature of the system is that updates can absolutely bork the system at any time so you have to keep up to date with potential issues before doing updates. Many other distros do this work for you so you only have to worry every couple of years (or six months if you want). Don't get me wrong, Arch is great if you're willing to keep up the effort but it does require more attention than more mainstream distros.
- rocqua 9y agoArch takes real care not to let the system bork at any time due to an update. There is a very clear caveat to that. Check the arch news site before you do a system update. About 4 times a year, they make a potentially braking change, and inform users of this via that site.
- pnutjam 9y agoOpenSUSE has the option for slim installs, has a rolling release version and a LTS kernel version. I'm a big fan. I have CentOS at work, with a couple Arch boxes that predate me. I do not agree with is statement, "updates never break anything". Ours have a history of breaking, which is why I assume they were abandoned, but we do run custom software.
- jrimbault 9y agoYou should quickly edit your comment s/yaourt/pacaur/g. No one has recommended yaourt for years, but thanks to SEO I guess it still comes up https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/AUR_helpers#Comparison_table https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/AUR_helpers#Comparison_...
- zdkl 9y agoReally? First time I hear of it being subpar. Fwiw, I've never had an issue with yaourt that wasn't pebkac