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Shortly after I graduated from college, I switched from Arch to Ubuntu and it was a bigger step in growing up than getting my actual diploma

by dejawu 7y ago

bhaak 7y ago
And how often do you draw on skills you learned on Arch that you wouldn't have learned on Ubuntu?
- Tehchops 7y ago
  Arch Linux teaches skills like: - Knowing what happens if I have the audacity to update my computer without reading 3 different forum threads - Understanding how to fix hilariously bad font rendering issues in a terminal, a software paradigm that's almost as old as computers themselves - Tempering expectations that incredibly obscure apps like "Spotify" will "just work". I think to imply Arch teaches much beyond the skills needed to deal with Arch Linux is a tenuous premise at best.
  - dejawu 7y ago
    Contrary to the popular belief that Linux has no games, Arch includes many fun games such as "find out why the audio decided to stop working today for no reason"
  - glitchcrab 7y ago
    I use Spotify for hours every day and I've had absolutely zero issues with it since I moved to Arch 3 or so years ago. Agreed on the fonts, that has always been a pain. That being said, I recently installed Arch on a new laptop and the fonts weren't too bad out of the box - times change. I update at least twice a week and I've only had one breakage in 3 years - I didn't update a config file with some new settings. All in all, your response comes across a little FUDdy IMO.
    - mellett68 7y ago
      My experience of Arch is that it's fun as a home computer tinkering exercise but I don't trust it for my work computer since I can't resist a version number bump and the amount of time spent faffing around would be a nightmare.
      - glitchcrab 7y ago
        I think it can definitely differ between individual systems - the fact that Arch is so flexible also means that each system can have individual little foibles. Personally speaking, I've used Arch for work for the 3 years mentioned previously with no problems. At my previous job I used to be oncall for a week at a time and I wouldn't upgrade during those periods just in case, but that was the extent of my caution.
  - sullyj3 7y ago
    This is all way too close to home, but I legitimately think the time I spent on arch made me more productive on linux machines.
- jraph 7y ago
  I used a variety of GNU/Linux distros: Ubuntu, Debian, and Arch, Slackware, Frugalware, Fedora and more recently openSUSE Tumbleweed. Honestly, I don't understand what makes Arch so special. I have mostly learned things on Ubuntu and I can use Arch just fine, and I think I have a decent understanding how things work. Really, I think there is nothing fundamentally different across these distributions technically speaking. Their biggest differences lie in their package and release management and policies (and, agreed, this is huge). I'm not sure what skill you would learn on Arch and not on Ubuntu. It seems some vocal Arch users are lying to themselves and to the rest of the world about this. Gentoo (or LFS) might probably be more educational, but I haven't used Gentoo enough, and haven't tried LFS enough to say. (Kudos for Arch's documentation though, useful even when using another distro)
  - jplayer01 7y ago
    I'm not a zealot or anything, I just like Arch because of certain good aspects. Great documentation for everything I could want to do (though it used to be better). Rolling release. Upstream, latest packages. AUR. On that note, I tend to prefer Manjaro unstable nowadays because it works out of the box and still gets me the latest packages. I don't particularly care for the whole DIY aspect. I spend enough time tinkering with Emacs and other tools that I don't want to waste any time on configuring/tweaking the OS itself. The different Manjaro versions are pretty decent (currently using the Awesome WM one), and I really like the Manjaro CLI installer (manjaro-architect) if I want a bit more control over my installation.
thom 7y ago
I was initially very cynical about Arch, assuming that it was basically a form of role play for people who didn't actually need to get anything done with their machines but wanted to feel clever. And while that's 100% true, I did eventually realise that I could stop trying to install it on my laptop, and instead put it on a tiny meaningless server instead. Now I get all the hard-won lessons without actually having to think about X config again for the first time in 10 years. Now, don't put Arch on your servers either because there's no real security story for Arch, but in that time I have learned tons about systemd, and you can't put a price on that.
bengalister 7y ago
I have been using Arch from Windows/Ubuntu at home (I run Ubuntu in a VM at work) since the beginning of the year on 2 personal latpops Asus/Dell and didn't have any issue. On the Asus Nvidia updates broke my Windows manager on Ubuntu it not happen with Arch. The Arch install is a little bit more complex but you can do exactly what you want which was for me: use systemd boot instead of grub, and cipher only the home partition. Once the setup is done, I did not have any issue, fiddling to be done. For me where I lost time on Linux was when I tried to customize my desktop environment to my liking with i3/polybar/etc. Now I just run Gnome3 on Wayland, far from perfect but it is a good compromise TBH between setup ease/integrated UI components and features.
hsbaut76 7y ago
I went the opposite direction, Ubuntu to arch. I think that archlinuxs advantage is that it's minimalistic, the philosophy is simple, you know what is running on your computer and generally why. Tinkering with arch itself isn't that time consuming because the package management is so incredibly good, along with the AUR and wiki. These are invaluable. I really do think the difficulty is overhyped though, it's really not hard at all.

Shortly after I graduated from college, I switched from Arch to Ubuntu and it was a bigger step in growing up than getting my actual diploma

by dejawu 7y ago

Shortly after I graduated from college, I switched from Arch to Ubuntu and it was a bigger step in growing up than getting my actual diploma

bhaak 7y ago

And how often do you draw on skills you learned on Arch that you wouldn't have learned on Ubuntu?

Tehchops 7y ago
Arch Linux teaches skills like: - Knowing what happens if I have the audacity to update my computer without reading 3 different forum threads - Understanding how to fix hilariously bad font rendering issues in a terminal, a software paradigm that's almost as old as computers themselves - Tempering expectations that incredibly obscure apps like "Spotify" will "just work". I think to imply Arch teaches much beyond the skills needed to deal with Arch Linux is a tenuous premise at best.
- dejawu 7y ago
  Contrary to the popular belief that Linux has no games, Arch includes many fun games such as "find out why the audio decided to stop working today for no reason"
- glitchcrab 7y ago
  I use Spotify for hours every day and I've had absolutely zero issues with it since I moved to Arch 3 or so years ago. Agreed on the fonts, that has always been a pain. That being said, I recently installed Arch on a new laptop and the fonts weren't too bad out of the box - times change. I update at least twice a week and I've only had one breakage in 3 years - I didn't update a config file with some new settings. All in all, your response comes across a little FUDdy IMO.
  - mellett68 7y ago
    My experience of Arch is that it's fun as a home computer tinkering exercise but I don't trust it for my work computer since I can't resist a version number bump and the amount of time spent faffing around would be a nightmare.
    - glitchcrab 7y ago
      I think it can definitely differ between individual systems - the fact that Arch is so flexible also means that each system can have individual little foibles. Personally speaking, I've used Arch for work for the 3 years mentioned previously with no problems. At my previous job I used to be oncall for a week at a time and I wouldn't upgrade during those periods just in case, but that was the extent of my caution.
- sullyj3 7y ago
  This is all way too close to home, but I legitimately think the time I spent on arch made me more productive on linux machines.
jraph 7y ago
I used a variety of GNU/Linux distros: Ubuntu, Debian, and Arch, Slackware, Frugalware, Fedora and more recently openSUSE Tumbleweed. Honestly, I don't understand what makes Arch so special. I have mostly learned things on Ubuntu and I can use Arch just fine, and I think I have a decent understanding how things work. Really, I think there is nothing fundamentally different across these distributions technically speaking. Their biggest differences lie in their package and release management and policies (and, agreed, this is huge). I'm not sure what skill you would learn on Arch and not on Ubuntu. It seems some vocal Arch users are lying to themselves and to the rest of the world about this. Gentoo (or LFS) might probably be more educational, but I haven't used Gentoo enough, and haven't tried LFS enough to say. (Kudos for Arch's documentation though, useful even when using another distro)
- jplayer01 7y ago
  I'm not a zealot or anything, I just like Arch because of certain good aspects. Great documentation for everything I could want to do (though it used to be better). Rolling release. Upstream, latest packages. AUR. On that note, I tend to prefer Manjaro unstable nowadays because it works out of the box and still gets me the latest packages. I don't particularly care for the whole DIY aspect. I spend enough time tinkering with Emacs and other tools that I don't want to waste any time on configuring/tweaking the OS itself. The different Manjaro versions are pretty decent (currently using the Awesome WM one), and I really like the Manjaro CLI installer (manjaro-architect) if I want a bit more control over my installation.

thom 7y ago

I was initially very cynical about Arch, assuming that it was basically a form of role play for people who didn't actually need to get anything done with their machines but wanted to feel clever. And while that's 100% true, I did eventually realise that I could stop trying to install it on my laptop, and instead put it on a tiny meaningless server instead. Now I get all the hard-won lessons without actually having to think about X config again for the first time in 10 years. Now, don't put Arch on your servers either because there's no real security story for Arch, but in that time I have learned tons about systemd, and you can't put a price on that.

bengalister 7y ago

I have been using Arch from Windows/Ubuntu at home (I run Ubuntu in a VM at work) since the beginning of the year on 2 personal latpops Asus/Dell and didn't have any issue. On the Asus Nvidia updates broke my Windows manager on Ubuntu it not happen with Arch. The Arch install is a little bit more complex but you can do exactly what you want which was for me: use systemd boot instead of grub, and cipher only the home partition. Once the setup is done, I did not have any issue, fiddling to be done. For me where I lost time on Linux was when I tried to customize my desktop environment to my liking with i3/polybar/etc. Now I just run Gnome3 on Wayland, far from perfect but it is a good compromise TBH between setup ease/integrated UI components and features.

hsbaut76 7y ago

I went the opposite direction, Ubuntu to arch. I think that archlinuxs advantage is that it's minimalistic, the philosophy is simple, you know what is running on your computer and generally why. Tinkering with arch itself isn't that time consuming because the package management is so incredibly good, along with the AUR and wiki. These are invaluable. I really do think the difficulty is overhyped though, it's really not hard at all.