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I think the great thing about Arch is that, despite the hype, there is nothing special about it. In other words, Arch is mostly Linux From Scratch plus a binar
by nextos 5y ago
I think the great thing about Arch is that, despite the hype, there is nothing special about it.
In other words, Arch is mostly Linux From Scratch plus a binary package manager with dependencies and standard choices for everything (tooling written in C, standard kernel, GNU libc, SystemD, etc). Plus a great wiki.
Arch sits at a local maximum in terms of design, right next to Alpine and a few other distributions with similar design choices. In my opinion, the other interesting local maximum is where NixOS and GuixSD sit. It's almost the other extreme, declarative vs imperative.
- heikrana 5y ago"Nothing special" is what makes it special for me.
- JeremyNT 5y agoIndeed! Arch is really a great success story of the "KISS" principle. Just enough complexity, and nothing more. Non-rolling releases by necessity add a lot more complexity, and those distribution maintainers have to consider many trade-offs in managing the "waterfall" approach. Arch (mostly) assumes that 1) upstream knows what they're doing and 2) individual users are better able to make choices about which software to install and how to deviate from its default configuration. Sometimes, less is more.