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I've been a Linux user since early Slackware. Arch is the only distro I will recommend, and, contrary to its image as a tinkerer's distro, it's the only Linux i

I've been a Linux user since early Slackware. Arch is the only distro I will recommend, and, contrary to its image as a tinkerer's distro, it's the only Linux install I've had that "just works" and works. Install once, and never again. Minimal, stable. Packages are updated promptly, and I never had a problem using user repo packages.

Latty 9y ago
The biggest "just works" thing for me with Arch is that, because you configure everything yourself and set it up, you know what is in your system and how it's slotted together. Less magic, when something goes wrong, you have an idea where to look. It's obviously not going to be true for some, but for power users, it's surprisingly great. I've been on Arch for many years myself with the same story.
- Majestic121 9y ago
  If you have to configure and set up everything yourself, it can not really be called 'just works'. I'm definitely a fan of setting things up and diving into config myself, but let's be honest : Arch is not a 'Just works' distribution. Ubuntu could be considered one, maybe elementary as well
  - erikbye 9y ago
    This "configure and set up everything yourself" bit is overstated. It's not like Ubuntu, or similar batteries-included distros, doesn't require configuration and tweaking to get it your personal liking, anyway. And it's not like you cannot make choices during installation that affect the final state of your system. The difference between the Arch manual installation process and Ubuntu's is simply that you use a CLI and start a few scripts instead of pointing and clicking. The amount of configuration necessary is exaggerated, probably by people that want to portray Arch as this expert-user distro. Once you've done e.g. "pacman -S gnome gnome-extra sddm && systemctl enable sddm", you can just boot into your graphical desktop and start using it just the same as Ubuntu, no extra configuration steps needed. And, like I've said, for the nth time, use Arch-Anywhere to get a similar installation to that of Ubuntu. I've been very impressed by Arch. Yes, it's a rolling release, so you have to update your system now and then, but this is a good thing--install once and run an up-to-date system for years on end. Unlike Ubuntu, which is outdated already on install, and if you want to upgrade, good luck with that process if you've installed a sundry of packages. Eventually, with an Ubuntu system, I've always started suffering from package-related problems, breakage, dependency issues, etc. I won't detail all the problems I've had with other distros, suffice to say I've had none of those using Arch. These supposed to "just work" distros haven't lived up to that in my experience.
    - KozmoNau7 9y ago
      "Yes, it's a rolling release, so you have to update your system now and then, but this is a good thing--install once and run an up-to-date system for years on end." In my experience, this also lets the system collect all kinds of cruft over time, which can definitely impact stability and predictability when it comes to updates, unless you're extremely vigilant about housekeeping.
      - skummetmaelk 9y ago
        A pacman -Syu a day keeps the doctor away. As long as you remember to check the website for manual intervention requirements....
        KozmoNau7 9y ago
        Which is exactly my point. Put off updating for a couple of weeks because you're got better things to do? You may end up borking your system unwittingly. Not subscribed to the Arch news feed and intimately familiar with the packages installed on your system? You may end up borking your system unwittingly. Arch is good for dedicated power users, who want to tinker around. But most of us just want to get stuff done, not mess with the OS.
        erikbye 9y ago
        Stop perpetuating this myth that you have to mess around and tinker to keep Arch in working condition. It's one update command, and it's not something you need to do daily. You can put it off for weeks, all that will happen is you'll have a bigger download. I use Arch exactly because I want to get shit done. My way.
        KozmoNau7 9y ago
        I ran Arch for ~9 years, and there were several cases of OS/boot-breaking updates, requiring me to boot from a USB stick and manually fix things when the updates decided to shit all over the system. Having to manually cross-reference an update list with a list of "oh damn, you need to do these manual steps or you'll break everything" errata from the Arch news feed is not my idea of a good time. The only reason the Arch forums are so informative, is because people run into stupid issues on a regular basis. Mint updates itself and gets out of my way. That makes it ideal for actually getting shit done.
  - Latty 9y ago
    As I said, it's a different definition of "just works" - obviously no non-technical person is going to run Arch - it's never going to be Ubuntu and it's not trying to be. I wasn't trying to make that claim. As a power-user, Arch "just works" for me far more than other distros have, because I know the system and it's simple, I've never had a problem where I didn't have a handle on it.
    - sevensor 9y ago
      I can affirm that. I don't understand how Arch gets this reputation for breaking during an upgrade. In the four years I've been using Arch on a variety of systems, I've never had anything break in a way that didn't have a trivial, obvious fix, and most of the time pacman points out potential problems during the upgrade. Arch has allowed me to spend way less time on system administration than I used to before I switched. Are people doing "sudo make install" or running binary driver installers as root? Or maybe it's because I switched right after the systemd transition and missed all the fun? Maybe I'm just lucky?
      - thesmallestcat 9y ago
        Do you understand the difference between Arch and distros like Debian? When GNOME ships a new version, it almost immediately hits the Pacman repos. Do that for every package and you're going to have integration issues. Your users also get to be the guinea pigs for new releases. Ship buggy packages and sooner or later your users' systems will install a critical package with bugs. This is why Arch gets "this reputation for breaking during an upgrade." And yes, you're just lucky. When I hear Arch users saying "it hasn't broken for me!" I hear "my girlfriend and I don't use protection, and she's never gotten pregnant!"
        sevensor 9y ago
        Right, this is what people always say about Arch. And yet, in practice, on a variety of hardware, I've had nary a problem in the four years I've been using it. Contrast this with big-release distros, where I've literally never had a successful upgrade between major versions. But maybe the key point is in your second sentence. I've never had a problem with Gnome breaking because I have no interest in running a DE, and even on those systems where I've got one installed, I boot to the console and start i3 or sway. If Gnome was broken, I'd never notice. And this might be the key point: if a package like Gnome is broken, I personally blame the package rather than the OS. I don't see a GUI desktop as integral to the operating system, so when I say that Arch has been trouble-free, I mean that I'm always able to boot to a usable system console and get my work done. So that's my disclaimer, and probably the big reason people shouldn't use Arch: if you rely on a DE, and see the system as broken without one, you're probably going to experience way more breakage than I've reported.
  - AsyncAwait 9y ago
    It's meant as in what packages go in, what DE you use, which mirrors do you pull in from etc. so that you know what is going on in your system, despite this, it still 'just works', that's the beauty of it.
  - grouchoboy 9y ago
    I would call it 'just works as you spected' contrary to 'just works as someone else spected'. Neither is good or bad, it depends of what are you looking for.
fmap 9y ago
Let me stress the "install once, and never again" part - this is why I'm using arch. It's the first (binary) distribution I tried that eight years down the line still works as well as the day I first installed it.
- thomastjeffery 9y ago
  Have you ever tried NixOS? Nix takes the clean install to an elegant extreme. You can totally break your install, and then boot the exact system you had before just by picking the GRUB entry. It's amazing.
Thaxll 9y ago
You're recommending a rolling distro? I remember some people at work using Arch they did it for couple of month and then switch back to Ubuntu because random things would break afters updates, dhcp, printing, X server ect ... Arch is great for home / hack stuff, for work you want something stable.
- breul99 9y ago
  In my experience this is no longer the case, anecdotal of course.
- pavanky 9y ago
  I have been using archlinux for close to a decade now. Updates were never a problem as much as people make it out to be. But even then I don't notice as many issues since I switched to an LTS kernel on my machines. If your hardware is old enough, I recommend using the LTS kernel and kernel modules.
  - rhinoceraptor 9y ago
    I'm running linux-lts on my kaby lake i7-7700k and it works fine. I haven't used linux-lts in the past, but I opted to do a ZFS on root install so I wanted it to be more stable.
AnonymousPlanet 9y ago
Seriously? Arch has always been "works now, breaks every couple of weeks in a spectacular and time consuming way" for me. It reminds me of my Gentoo days when I was a student and had time to burn on endless sessions of configurations and debugging. Every few years I let some avid fan convince me that it has gotten really better. Always ending in the same time consuming nightmare. When I was a freelancer, that time was precious, and I used Ubuntu on my laptop to have a modern and stable desktop. Sorry, but I can only shake my head in disbelief at the glowing praise I read here.
- chmln 9y ago
  What exactly breaks for you every couple of weeks?

Latty 9y ago

The biggest "just works" thing for me with Arch is that, because you configure everything yourself and set it up, you know what is in your system and how it's slotted together. Less magic, when something goes wrong, you have an idea where to look. It's obviously not going to be true for some, but for power users, it's surprisingly great. I've been on Arch for many years myself with the same story.

Majestic121 9y ago
If you have to configure and set up everything yourself, it can not really be called 'just works'. I'm definitely a fan of setting things up and diving into config myself, but let's be honest : Arch is not a 'Just works' distribution. Ubuntu could be considered one, maybe elementary as well
- erikbye 9y ago
  This "configure and set up everything yourself" bit is overstated. It's not like Ubuntu, or similar batteries-included distros, doesn't require configuration and tweaking to get it your personal liking, anyway. And it's not like you cannot make choices during installation that affect the final state of your system. The difference between the Arch manual installation process and Ubuntu's is simply that you use a CLI and start a few scripts instead of pointing and clicking. The amount of configuration necessary is exaggerated, probably by people that want to portray Arch as this expert-user distro. Once you've done e.g. "pacman -S gnome gnome-extra sddm && systemctl enable sddm", you can just boot into your graphical desktop and start using it just the same as Ubuntu, no extra configuration steps needed. And, like I've said, for the nth time, use Arch-Anywhere to get a similar installation to that of Ubuntu. I've been very impressed by Arch. Yes, it's a rolling release, so you have to update your system now and then, but this is a good thing--install once and run an up-to-date system for years on end. Unlike Ubuntu, which is outdated already on install, and if you want to upgrade, good luck with that process if you've installed a sundry of packages. Eventually, with an Ubuntu system, I've always started suffering from package-related problems, breakage, dependency issues, etc. I won't detail all the problems I've had with other distros, suffice to say I've had none of those using Arch. These supposed to "just work" distros haven't lived up to that in my experience.
  - KozmoNau7 9y ago
    "Yes, it's a rolling release, so you have to update your system now and then, but this is a good thing--install once and run an up-to-date system for years on end." In my experience, this also lets the system collect all kinds of cruft over time, which can definitely impact stability and predictability when it comes to updates, unless you're extremely vigilant about housekeeping.
    - skummetmaelk 9y ago
      A pacman -Syu a day keeps the doctor away. As long as you remember to check the website for manual intervention requirements....
      - KozmoNau7 9y ago
        Which is exactly my point. Put off updating for a couple of weeks because you're got better things to do? You may end up borking your system unwittingly. Not subscribed to the Arch news feed and intimately familiar with the packages installed on your system? You may end up borking your system unwittingly. Arch is good for dedicated power users, who want to tinker around. But most of us just want to get stuff done, not mess with the OS.
        erikbye 9y ago
        Stop perpetuating this myth that you have to mess around and tinker to keep Arch in working condition. It's one update command, and it's not something you need to do daily. You can put it off for weeks, all that will happen is you'll have a bigger download. I use Arch exactly because I want to get shit done. My way.
        KozmoNau7 9y ago
        I ran Arch for ~9 years, and there were several cases of OS/boot-breaking updates, requiring me to boot from a USB stick and manually fix things when the updates decided to shit all over the system. Having to manually cross-reference an update list with a list of "oh damn, you need to do these manual steps or you'll break everything" errata from the Arch news feed is not my idea of a good time. The only reason the Arch forums are so informative, is because people run into stupid issues on a regular basis. Mint updates itself and gets out of my way. That makes it ideal for actually getting shit done.
- Latty 9y ago
  As I said, it's a different definition of "just works" - obviously no non-technical person is going to run Arch - it's never going to be Ubuntu and it's not trying to be. I wasn't trying to make that claim. As a power-user, Arch "just works" for me far more than other distros have, because I know the system and it's simple, I've never had a problem where I didn't have a handle on it.
  - sevensor 9y ago
    I can affirm that. I don't understand how Arch gets this reputation for breaking during an upgrade. In the four years I've been using Arch on a variety of systems, I've never had anything break in a way that didn't have a trivial, obvious fix, and most of the time pacman points out potential problems during the upgrade. Arch has allowed me to spend way less time on system administration than I used to before I switched. Are people doing "sudo make install" or running binary driver installers as root? Or maybe it's because I switched right after the systemd transition and missed all the fun? Maybe I'm just lucky?
    - thesmallestcat 9y ago
      Do you understand the difference between Arch and distros like Debian? When GNOME ships a new version, it almost immediately hits the Pacman repos. Do that for every package and you're going to have integration issues. Your users also get to be the guinea pigs for new releases. Ship buggy packages and sooner or later your users' systems will install a critical package with bugs. This is why Arch gets "this reputation for breaking during an upgrade." And yes, you're just lucky. When I hear Arch users saying "it hasn't broken for me!" I hear "my girlfriend and I don't use protection, and she's never gotten pregnant!"
      - sevensor 9y ago
        Right, this is what people always say about Arch. And yet, in practice, on a variety of hardware, I've had nary a problem in the four years I've been using it. Contrast this with big-release distros, where I've literally never had a successful upgrade between major versions. But maybe the key point is in your second sentence. I've never had a problem with Gnome breaking because I have no interest in running a DE, and even on those systems where I've got one installed, I boot to the console and start i3 or sway. If Gnome was broken, I'd never notice. And this might be the key point: if a package like Gnome is broken, I personally blame the package rather than the OS. I don't see a GUI desktop as integral to the operating system, so when I say that Arch has been trouble-free, I mean that I'm always able to boot to a usable system console and get my work done. So that's my disclaimer, and probably the big reason people shouldn't use Arch: if you rely on a DE, and see the system as broken without one, you're probably going to experience way more breakage than I've reported.
- AsyncAwait 9y ago
  It's meant as in what packages go in, what DE you use, which mirrors do you pull in from etc. so that you know what is going on in your system, despite this, it still 'just works', that's the beauty of it.
- grouchoboy 9y ago
  I would call it 'just works as you spected' contrary to 'just works as someone else spected'. Neither is good or bad, it depends of what are you looking for.

fmap 9y ago

Let me stress the "install once, and never again" part - this is why I'm using arch. It's the first (binary) distribution I tried that eight years down the line still works as well as the day I first installed it.

thomastjeffery 9y ago
Have you ever tried NixOS? Nix takes the clean install to an elegant extreme. You can totally break your install, and then boot the exact system you had before just by picking the GRUB entry. It's amazing.

Thaxll 9y ago

You're recommending a rolling distro? I remember some people at work using Arch they did it for couple of month and then switch back to Ubuntu because random things would break afters updates, dhcp, printing, X server ect ... Arch is great for home / hack stuff, for work you want something stable.

breul99 9y ago
In my experience this is no longer the case, anecdotal of course.
pavanky 9y ago
I have been using archlinux for close to a decade now. Updates were never a problem as much as people make it out to be. But even then I don't notice as many issues since I switched to an LTS kernel on my machines. If your hardware is old enough, I recommend using the LTS kernel and kernel modules.
- rhinoceraptor 9y ago
  I'm running linux-lts on my kaby lake i7-7700k and it works fine. I haven't used linux-lts in the past, but I opted to do a ZFS on root install so I wanted it to be more stable.

AnonymousPlanet 9y ago

Seriously? Arch has always been "works now, breaks every couple of weeks in a spectacular and time consuming way" for me. It reminds me of my Gentoo days when I was a student and had time to burn on endless sessions of configurations and debugging. Every few years I let some avid fan convince me that it has gotten really better. Always ending in the same time consuming nightmare. When I was a freelancer, that time was precious, and I used Ubuntu on my laptop to have a modern and stable desktop. Sorry, but I can only shake my head in disbelief at the glowing praise I read here.

chmln 9y ago
What exactly breaks for you every couple of weeks?