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I've been using Arch for about three years now and can't imagine using another distro. The install phase is a pain if you want to get a full-blown plug-and-pla

I've been using Arch for about three years now and can't imagine using another distro. The install phase is a pain if you want to get a full-blown plug-and-play ready-to-go desktop experience that rivals Ubuntu, OS X, or Windows. It's actually really easy if you just want a bare-bones system that boots into a shell and doesn't install any packages other than what it needs to do just that. Switch to Arch if you're a minimalist. My rig only runs Stumpwm on Xorg. I only use xterm, emacs, and the usual GNU toolchain. A couple of interpreters. I have installed GTK so I can use Firefox (and so I can hack on Firefox), but nothing else. I don't have a crap load of applications running in the background waiting to notify me of crap I don't care about or services that I never use. I know exactly what runs on my system and it does no more than that and no less. I think Arch fills a very nice niche and I'm so happy it exists.

oinksoft 15y ago
> The install phase is a pain if you want to get a full-blown plug-and-play ready-to-go desktop experience that rivals Ubuntu, OS X, or Windows. Just about every Linux distribution offers this, because the distro-makers create none of the window managers, etc. Which other distributions have you tried?
- agentultra 15y ago
  Mandrake, Redhat, Debian, Ubuntu, Mint, and a few others I'm sure.
astrodust 15y ago
Why would you want to be a minimalist? Even a Raspberry Pi system, which costs under $50 kitted out with storage, could handle a moderately full install. The only "minimalist" Linux install I've ever wanted was one so stripped down it would boot off of a 3.5" floppy. It's amazing what you can do with a kernel, a baked in read-only filesystem and a tiny loopback device for storing configuration files.
- pandeiro 15y ago
  Minimalism means faster boot time, less cruft in $HOME, generally knowing where stuff is, and more time to comb my enormous neckbeard...
  - acgourley 15y ago
    "generally knowing where stuff is" has been my favorite part of using Arch. I started out on redhat systems back in the day, and kinda figured out where the really important stuff was, but never wrapped my head around everything. Adding things piece by piece as I need them to Arch is much more instructive.
    - shaurz 15y ago
      Indeed. Arch is an education on the Linux software stack.
  - fam 15y ago
    IMO boot time isn't a big selling point anymore with SSDs in the market (albeit not exactly affordable). A MacBook Air can boot up within seconds and that's plenty fast for me.
  - astrodust 15y ago
    I guess that's slightly less expensive than just getting a crazy fast SSD drive.
    - ansgri 15y ago
      Not if you factor in the time investments.
- VMG 15y ago
  I am using Arch with gnome3 on 5 different machines and still think of arch being minimalist in the sense that you only need to know a handful of commands and config files and you are ready to go.
- 15y ago
MatthewPhillips 15y ago
I think you succinctly describe what most Arch users love about the distribution.
sliverstorm 15y ago
Then why Arch and not Slackware?
- archtaku 15y ago
  1) PKGBUILDs are dead simple to write 2) AUR (see #1)
- ff0066mote 15y ago
  It's not a big thing, but it was enough for me to stay with Arch: Slackware's package management tools doesn't do dependencies. In Arch you can easily remove a package and everything that is no longer required. pacman -Rsn package-to-remove
pimeys 15y ago
I've also used Arch for half a year now. I just installed it to boot me to the console, set a simple .xinitrc to open me a xmonad session, cloned my configs and I was ready to go. Fast, minimal and no distractions. That's what I want from my work computer.
SkyMarshal 15y ago
I appreciate the minimalist philosophy, and Arch is on my todo list (it's even got a vm allocated). However, I seemed to have evolved into a more dual-pronged strategy - Full featured Ubuntu desktop, with relatively stripped down Ubuntu/Cent/OpenSUSE servers running in VMs. For my desktop, I still value 'just works' over minimalism. Things like Spotify just work out of the box. And any software I may want to play with in the future that has to choose which distro to target will most likely target Ubuntu and Fedora first. Also, the Debian repo is extensive, and the Ubuntu PPA system almost always compensates for when the Debian package is too outdated. I also like where Ubuntu is going with the UI/UX. At first I hated the idea of the sidebar, but after trying it and realizing it autohides and stays out of your way most of the time, I switched my opinion. And I'm really looking forward to HUD in 12.04. I've been wanting an integrated Gnome-Do/Synapse for a long time now. Finally, I get my minimalism fix where it's most important - on the servers. I can set up a local dev environment using vm's that mirrors production - database server on one vm, app server on another vm, and Nginx running on the desktop and pointing to the app server vm. It does annoy me to start up htop on the desktop, and compare the plethora of stuff I see there with what htop on the servers displays. But I just accept it for now. Compared to that best-of-both-worlds setup, Arch seems like it would require more compromises than is worth the time and effort to deal with it. I still intend to learn it, just because I value things that will help me learn Linux (or any of my primary tools) better. But I don't see fully making the switch to Arch. Thoughts?
- im_dario 15y ago
  Some time ago I went to reverse way, from Arch to Mint Debian Edition. Just to try out other distro. Spotify doesn't work for me in Mint. In Arch worked flawlessly. Anyway, YMMV. Now I'm willing to have time to switch back to Arch and enjoy the minimalist (and speedy) desktop experience and the easy way to use bleeding-edge software in a (almost) safe way. But all isn't bad in Mint. I like the performance of its kernel with the 200-lines patch scheduler. For any archer: any idea of some AUR kernel with that? Or does it get in mainstream kernel already?
- re_todd 15y ago
  Yeah, that's kind of what I do. I run Mint or Ubunutu, then run lightweight distros via VirtualBox(Lubuntu, Crunchbang, etc.)

oinksoft 15y ago

> The install phase is a pain if you want to get a full-blown plug-and-play ready-to-go desktop experience that rivals Ubuntu, OS X, or Windows. Just about every Linux distribution offers this, because the distro-makers create none of the window managers, etc. Which other distributions have you tried?

agentultra 15y ago
Mandrake, Redhat, Debian, Ubuntu, Mint, and a few others I'm sure.

astrodust 15y ago

Why would you want to be a minimalist? Even a Raspberry Pi system, which costs under $50 kitted out with storage, could handle a moderately full install. The only "minimalist" Linux install I've ever wanted was one so stripped down it would boot off of a 3.5" floppy. It's amazing what you can do with a kernel, a baked in read-only filesystem and a tiny loopback device for storing configuration files.

pandeiro 15y ago
Minimalism means faster boot time, less cruft in $HOME, generally knowing where stuff is, and more time to comb my enormous neckbeard...
- acgourley 15y ago
  "generally knowing where stuff is" has been my favorite part of using Arch. I started out on redhat systems back in the day, and kinda figured out where the really important stuff was, but never wrapped my head around everything. Adding things piece by piece as I need them to Arch is much more instructive.
  - shaurz 15y ago
    Indeed. Arch is an education on the Linux software stack.
- fam 15y ago
  IMO boot time isn't a big selling point anymore with SSDs in the market (albeit not exactly affordable). A MacBook Air can boot up within seconds and that's plenty fast for me.
- astrodust 15y ago
  I guess that's slightly less expensive than just getting a crazy fast SSD drive.
  - ansgri 15y ago
    Not if you factor in the time investments.
VMG 15y ago
I am using Arch with gnome3 on 5 different machines and still think of arch being minimalist in the sense that you only need to know a handful of commands and config files and you are ready to go.
15y ago

MatthewPhillips 15y ago

I think you succinctly describe what most Arch users love about the distribution.

sliverstorm 15y ago

Then why Arch and not Slackware?

archtaku 15y ago
1) PKGBUILDs are dead simple to write 2) AUR (see #1)
ff0066mote 15y ago
It's not a big thing, but it was enough for me to stay with Arch: Slackware's package management tools doesn't do dependencies. In Arch you can easily remove a package and everything that is no longer required. pacman -Rsn package-to-remove

pimeys 15y ago

I've also used Arch for half a year now. I just installed it to boot me to the console, set a simple .xinitrc to open me a xmonad session, cloned my configs and I was ready to go. Fast, minimal and no distractions. That's what I want from my work computer.

SkyMarshal 15y ago

I appreciate the minimalist philosophy, and Arch is on my todo list (it's even got a vm allocated). However, I seemed to have evolved into a more dual-pronged strategy - Full featured Ubuntu desktop, with relatively stripped down Ubuntu/Cent/OpenSUSE servers running in VMs. For my desktop, I still value 'just works' over minimalism. Things like Spotify just work out of the box. And any software I may want to play with in the future that has to choose which distro to target will most likely target Ubuntu and Fedora first. Also, the Debian repo is extensive, and the Ubuntu PPA system almost always compensates for when the Debian package is too outdated. I also like where Ubuntu is going with the UI/UX. At first I hated the idea of the sidebar, but after trying it and realizing it autohides and stays out of your way most of the time, I switched my opinion. And I'm really looking forward to HUD in 12.04. I've been wanting an integrated Gnome-Do/Synapse for a long time now. Finally, I get my minimalism fix where it's most important - on the servers. I can set up a local dev environment using vm's that mirrors production - database server on one vm, app server on another vm, and Nginx running on the desktop and pointing to the app server vm. It does annoy me to start up htop on the desktop, and compare the plethora of stuff I see there with what htop on the servers displays. But I just accept it for now. Compared to that best-of-both-worlds setup, Arch seems like it would require more compromises than is worth the time and effort to deal with it. I still intend to learn it, just because I value things that will help me learn Linux (or any of my primary tools) better. But I don't see fully making the switch to Arch. Thoughts?

im_dario 15y ago
Some time ago I went to reverse way, from Arch to Mint Debian Edition. Just to try out other distro. Spotify doesn't work for me in Mint. In Arch worked flawlessly. Anyway, YMMV. Now I'm willing to have time to switch back to Arch and enjoy the minimalist (and speedy) desktop experience and the easy way to use bleeding-edge software in a (almost) safe way. But all isn't bad in Mint. I like the performance of its kernel with the 200-lines patch scheduler. For any archer: any idea of some AUR kernel with that? Or does it get in mainstream kernel already?
re_todd 15y ago
Yeah, that's kind of what I do. I run Mint or Ubunutu, then run lightweight distros via VirtualBox(Lubuntu, Crunchbang, etc.)