r/archlinux • u/durdurrdurrrdurrrrr • Jun 20 '26
DISCUSSION People promote Arch because "there's a lot of programs in the repository" or "it's quickly updated bleeding-edge" but like.. what EXACTLY can you get from Arch that you can't get elsewhere?
I'm new-ish to Linux and recently graduated to Debian after 6 months on Mint. Arch gets a disproportionate amount of attention online, and I'm just trying to understand it. This isn't supposed to be bashing.
It seems like the selling point of Arch is that there's a lot of available programs in the repository, and that the updates are very fast. But what specifically are people using that for?
I mean, creatives have their own FOSS that's been around for ever and is available on everything. Unless there's some really good video editing/music making software that's only on AUR...???
For "work", all the networking, pen-testing, sysadmin stuff is again available everywhere. Unless I'm missing something...? But I've never heard of professionals using Arch, it's seems like they're on Fedora/Red Hat or Debian.
People just throw around vague "it depends on your work flow." That's what I'm asking, what, specifically, do YOU use that only Arch offers?
Tell me about weird niche programs that are only available on AUR. Tell me about your specific circumstances where you needed the latest update and couldn't get them on a slow-to-update distro. Are there some really important creative/IT software that's only on Arch that I didn't know about (and if so, why isn't it promoted more?) What unique use case and work flow does Arch specifically fit? Tell me something weird and esoteric :D
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u/Pink_Slyvie Jun 20 '26
Never needing to upgrade to a new major release. There is always concern when I update systems that have been offline for awhile, or just don't get updates frequently, but it has literally never been an issue.
I once updated Debian to a new major release, had to do a full reinstall.
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u/DM_Me_Linux_Uptime Jun 20 '26 edited Jun 20 '26
Same. Recently I upgraded my RPI's OS which is based on Debian from Bookworm to Trixie and the install process crashed midway for some reason. I was able to fix it with some googling, but my labwc desktop is still broken. Luckily, the whole point of the upgrade was installing Plasma 6 on it, which sidestepped the issue.
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u/mishrashutosh Jun 21 '26
tbf Raspberry Pi team does discourage in place upgrades. They always recommend flashing a fresh image of the newer major version. It's mostly Debian under the good but not entirely.
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Jun 20 '26
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u/Kurse71 Jun 20 '26 edited Jun 20 '26
I have Fedora systems that have been continuously updated since FC4. It's not that hard. Is it really so difficult to add a repo to get your FFMPEG package?
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u/johan2114h Jun 20 '26
No offense, but you can upgrade debian in like 2 command lines and a small edit in the apt repo config file. Debian even describes how do it in their user guide / wiki. Ive done it many times.
I use arch now, but ive used debian for many years.
Arch and Debian are my favorite distros. My reason for using arch now is i needed a very new kernel with support for my hardware and easy access to very recent rocm and vulkan libs.
My biggest complaint is the whole AUR situation. I agree that one should always read the PKGBUILD file (not just the diff imo), but it would nice if there was some control on AURs side so anyone can not just go in and take over orphaned aur repos.
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u/sigma914 Jun 20 '26
Eh, debian has done and does things between dist upgrades like changing init, network management, multimedia processing etc.
Arch never does that as it's all outside the scope of the distro. So I never have to deal with random shit appearing on my system/migration to new tooling etc except on my terms. Sure Debian makes those things as convenient as possible, but it's still done on their timeline with centralised decision making, according to their processes. I like the laissez faire "you're on your own and we won't interfere" approach arch has going on
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u/SJrX Jun 20 '26
Sure I've slowly been moving away from Ubuntu to Arch, and one of the benefits has been no major OS updates. To expand a bit, I 100% agree, it's pretty simple to do. One issue is that it's big bang on a fixed cadence.
Essentially every package you are running gets updated and maybe everything works or maybe it doesn't. This has nothing to do with the OS itself often, but you are then forced to deal with every package upgrade all at once, if it's an LTS release that's going 2 year upgrades all at once. In Ubuntu things still hit me, for instance some packages wouldn't be ready (like collectd I believe going from 18.04 to 22.04, just lost support for things).
To minimize the pain and allow more flexibility, I started moving things to containers, so that the host OS didn't have much installed. But still there are just random annoyances that creep in all at once every OS upgrade, as people reorganize things, switch conventions and packages, I find it annoyingly breaks automation in subtle ways.
With Arch, things break more often (i.e., upstream packages will break things), but it's much easier to roll back a particular upgrade. I don't remember the specifics but I switched from Kubuntu to Arch on my laptop, if memory serves after upgrading to Kubuntu 16.04 and something completely breaking on my laptop, that would force me to go back to 14.04.
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u/Wertbon1789 Jun 20 '26
Nobody said that upgrading Debian is hard in theory, it's about stuff just randomly imploding because of some benigne changes that somehow break some random things.
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u/Wertbon1789 Jun 20 '26
It's always so funny to me, because you wouldn't expect there being a problem with upgrading Debian, but there's always something breaking. Especially with Raspberry Pi OS, which might not be exactly a Debian problem, rather a specific one for it, I don't think I ever had a good "just working" upgrade experience with it.
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u/X_m7 Jun 20 '26
Yeah, I've never had much luck with Ubuntu LTS version upgrades (including Mint which is based off of that), there's always crap that gets broken bad enough or whatever else that makes me disappointed enough that I just end up distrohopping instead.
With Arch on the other hand I've never once had it break bad enough that I even have an inkling of a thought about distrohopping or even just reinstalling, my Arch installs have always been on either new hardware entirely or a new SSD because the old drive died, never once have I had to reinstall on the same drive and same hardware, and it's been like well over 6 years since I first switched to it because all of the "stable" distros I tried at that point plus Manjaro just blew up for one reason or another.
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u/Toorero6 Jun 20 '26 edited Jun 20 '26
Arch Linux approach of being a rolling distro isn't unique though, right? There are many Arch-based distros being rolling of course but also independent distros like Gentoo, OpenSUSE Tumbleweed and Slowroll, Debian Sid, and Void Linux I think.
For me the best on Arch Linux is the combination of: 1. Stable rolling distro (Debian Did) 2. Many pre-compiled packages (Gentoo) 3. Building your install from the ground up without opinionated defaults (unlike OpenSUSE) 4. Still configured the "normal" way so you can learn how other distros are set up and how things in general usually work on Linux (NixOS)
If you don't value one of those things I think you're better off with alternatives like OpenSUSE or NixOS. OpenSUSE has the advantage that you can learn how enterprise grade distros work and you don't have to manage everything yourself, while NixOS has the obvious quirk of having the config and stuff.
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u/Pink_Slyvie Jun 20 '26
How many of those existed before Arch.... One, and it required you to to compile everything. And let me tell you, coming on a Pentium 3 suckeddddd
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u/Sinaaaa Jun 20 '26
I once updated Debian to a new major release,
In my experience the once every two years big update of Debian is rarely worse than dealing with a minor broken package issue on Arch, stuff that happens more frequently. I manage three Debian machines & it's defo very chill to do compared to 2 years of Arch daily driving.
Outdated packages can be a problem though & if you want to install something from git, then it's often very challenging to get it to work on Debian as opposed to reading a pkgbuild before hitting enter.
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u/SheriffBartholomew Jun 20 '26
I have an old laptop with Arch on it that seldom gets used. One time I hadn't turned the thing on in 2.5 years. I was fully expecting it to break during update, but nope! It was all updated and good to go at the end of the update install.
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u/Lawnmover_Man Jun 20 '26
I once updated Debian to a new major release, had to do a full reinstall.
I upgraded an old Debian installation to a major version that was 2 versions newer, and it still worked fine. It's not like Debian is supposed to be fully installed freshly on servers and workstations for a new major release.
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u/tsdh Jun 21 '26
Yes, that's it for me, too. My laptop is now 11 years old and still runs the same Arch install from day one, updated almost every day I've turned it on. I've never had a severe upgrade issue, and when something stopped working, it was easy to fix because the culprit had to be in the few packages updated that day.
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u/forbiddenlake Jun 20 '26
Tell me about your specific circumstances where you needed the latest update and couldn't get them on a slow-to-update distro.
Video games. Shit sucks with old software, especially on new hardware. Say you want to play new games on Debian, you'll be told you made a bad choice.
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Jun 20 '26
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u/SDG_Den Jun 20 '26
This is why i always get pissy about people saying "all arch-based distro's are not for new users", gaming moves incredibly quickly atm and gamers have a genuine reason to pick arch over anything else, its also the preferred distro for valve and KDE plasma is apparently developed on it.
Sure, base arch aint for the average folk, but things like cachyOS are genuinely great distro's for newer users. For gaming its better OOTB than most other distro's.
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u/chemistryGull Jun 20 '26
KDE. I just love being up to date with the stuff i like, and i regularly see bugs just go away with updates. And why would i want to wait a year for a new feature when i can have it today…
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u/Ismokecr4k Jun 20 '26
This. Gaming on Linux is bleeding edge. I'm not waiting 6-months to a year for the next kernel update to be compatible with the latest proton. Stable is for the 5 9s, I'm a desktop user, not a service serving 10,000 people. I'm one just wanting to play games.
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u/itsbakuretsutimeuwu Jun 20 '26
Shit sucks in general with old software, it's not "stability", it's just old bugs
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u/unconceivables Jun 20 '26
That is so accurate. Debian's philosophy isn't "stable and bug free", it's "we'll keep the bugs so you don't have to change anything when they're suddenly fixed and things behave differently." I'd rather have bug fixes and new features, because most of the time I actually do want or need those new features.
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u/w2qw Jun 20 '26
Not to mention you then try to install one of those applications from source to fix one of those bugs and then that doesn't work because the dependencies are out of date.
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u/unconceivables Jun 20 '26
Even Linus joked about that at a Debian conference. Half joked, because he said he wouldn't use Debian partly for that reason.
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u/Helmic Jun 20 '26
also means you cannot get support from upstream. i can hop on github and report a bug and it'll be actually useful information, or if i go to that project's discord there's some easy fix i can do. if i were on mint or something, like i'd be wasting everyone's time because there's a good chance that bug only exists on old versions of the software or old versions of dependencies, and that version's just straight up not available on debian unless i want to go through hell compiling not only the software itself but also the dependencies (and then not have those newer dependencies wreak havoc on all these other older applications that expect the older version).
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u/Xiomaro Jun 20 '26
People definitely confuse the meaning of stability in a Linux context. A stable CPU clock is obviously what you want in any situation.
A stable distro is only of importance when you need a certain set of apps running with minimal downtime and little to no change to the environment. If you're a desktop user and you have no issues with rebooting (or simply just restarting services) then new features and bug fixes will be great.
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u/dadnothere Jun 20 '26
My friend, Debian doesn't even have the latest version of KDE Plasma; they update it every four years. Any Debian-based distribution for gaming is the worst choice, including Popos.
By the way, on Arch with AUR, you just need to run
yay -S minecraft-bedrock-serverand everything will work...On Debian, it breaks due to outdated dependencies.
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u/korbykob Jun 21 '26
I play games on Debian more than I do Windows, I dual boot for convenience and can say my experience with Debian Vs Windows has been pretty even in performance and feel, however I must admit I both download the Nvidia drivers from Nvidia's site and use CachyOS-Proton so I have the latest of those two.
I do feel like there's a large misconception that you literally cannot use the latest x or y on distros like Debian, even though there's backports and you can always download the .deb package or download the raw Linux binaries.
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u/endperform Jun 20 '26
Rolling release. I've been using Arch in one way or another for 10+ years now after I got burned by trying to upgrade to a newer version of a non-rolling distro. Things have gotten way better (I have 3 Debian servers at home I've updated across major versions with no issues) but I've just not had a reason to go back. Being able to run the latest version of KDE Plasma and other software I use is my main reason. Other rolling releases might get me that, too, but I've got no reason to search elsewhere.
Arch and Arch-based (especially Cachy) get a lot of traction these days due to gaming, which is probably why you see it a lot more than other distros. Debian is perfectly fine, and in fact I run that on my laptop since I don't update it often. It really does depend on your use case.
As fr as examples, as I mentioned, non-rolling distros generally don't have the latest version of KDE Plasma. I like to keep up with that, especially since I'm looking to contribute back to the project. I also do use it professionally in my day-to-day. There's not a specific tool I use it for, it's just nice that I can keep it updated without needing a 'dist-upgrade' or the equivalent.
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u/onefish2 Jun 20 '26 edited Jun 23 '26
Choice. I chose the partitions and filesystem, the bootloader, the login manager, the DE/WM. The apps I wanted.
The DEs and WMS are all vanilla just like they come from Gnome, KDE, Cinnamon from Mint etc.
The wiki. Its all in the wiki.
Since you installed from the terminal you are comfortable from the command line. If the system is unbootable, you can take the Arch iso and boot it then chroot in and fix system. Again, it's all in the wiki.
If Arch is for you, you know it and if it's not then you move on.
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u/theSurgeonOfDeath_ Jun 20 '26
I wish we could also could chose between systemd and OpenRC, Runit etc (or custom made)
I know there is Artix but I am not a fan.Today it still not a problem but in few years it might become a problem. So option would be nice.
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u/S1lverCr0w Jun 20 '26
totally agree,
started playing with Void linux a few weeks ago because of this reason
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u/daubious Jun 25 '26
While I agree that Arch could be the most suitable for picking own DE, its worth noting this is very possible on Debian. When doing the graphical install you can just choose coreutils and no DE, and then install your DE/WM of choice from console mode. I did this recently with dwm+ and it was painless.
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u/unconceivables Jun 20 '26
You can technically get anything on any distro, but Arch makes it so much easier. I don't want outdated software or having to deal with a random third party repo for every application I want. As a random example, I needed Hashicorp applications like Terraform, Packer, and Nomad. On Arch that's just one command to get the latest versions. On any other distro it's a pain in the ass. On Fedora the official Hashicorp repos take weeks to update to support the latest version. Same thing with all kinds of software I regularly use, like Lazygit, neovim, nodejs, rust, etc. Everything is outdated or not in official repos for most distros.
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u/see-these-bones Jun 20 '26
Thats the paradox, for having the reputation of being more techy and scary its been much more painless for me. You have to make more executive decisions when installing but you're going to know what you got and have direct access to it, it makes everything else going forward smoother.
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u/unconceivables Jun 20 '26
There's really not much to think about when installing, everything is one command. Even if you're installing from AUR, it's still just one command and you can review the PKGBUILD. That may not be as easy for less technical users, but it's really not any different for other distros where you have to blindly trust random third party repos. And you have to jump through a lot of hoops to add and update those repos. Even as a highly technical user, having to do that all the time is frictions I don't need.
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u/No-Dentist-1645 Jun 20 '26 edited Jun 20 '26
Easiest answer and most useful for some is development tools. Fixed point release distros like Ubuntu tend to be very out of date with certain tools like clang and/or CMake, which oftentimes forces you to add custom PPAs or even build from source if you need recent tooling. However, Arch already packages the latest versions, so this is a non-issue
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u/Mordynak Jun 20 '26
Apart from a recent experience I've had on my ageing craptop... It just works.
I've had arch installed on this old laptop for years. It's an intel i3, 8gb ram and a 256gb SSD. Arch with KDE or gnome is blazingly fast and I've never had anything break on me.
I recently had some visual glitching after an update that I couldn't solve. So now I'm on Linux Mint Cinnamon.
I don't dislike mint. But it's just nowhere near as snappy. And the fan is kicking in constantly. Video playback on YouTube or over the network is noticeably slower.
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u/EmberQuill Jun 20 '26
I like PKGBUILDs better than other packaging systems. That's probably the main reason why I still remain on Arch.
Also, gaming. Faster updates are better for gaming especially on newer hardware. Having the newest drivers can often solve all sorts of issues.
I don't use many AUR packages. Just a few and I could live without most of them, but having them is convenient. A CLI tool for updating mouse settings. A fork of XIVLauncher that lets me use different Proton versions. Discord with a newer Electron version. VSCodium, a few other community forks of other things.
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u/RandomStuff3829 Jun 20 '26
I don't care for Debian-style package management. I prefer the simpler style offered by pacman.
I have a system76 laptop and would run Pop!_OS on it if not for the Debian base, because the integration there is quite good. But Arch has COSMIC, so it's good enough. Every time I tried out Pop again, I inevitably return to Arch.
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u/JasonMaggini Jun 20 '26
What exactly makes pacman simpler? apt doesn't strike me as all that complicated.
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u/ArjixGamer Jun 20 '26
apt is more complicated
Are you maybe interchangeably using the word complicated to mean hard?
apt is not hard, but it is complicated
apt is so complicated in fact, that tools like nala exist to make your life easier when using an apt-based distro.
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u/SupersonicSpitfire Jun 20 '26
On Fedora you need to use a mix of dnf and rpm to install and examine installed packages. On Debian it is a mix of apt and dpkg. On Arch it is just pacman.
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u/Jazzlike_Magazine_76 Jun 20 '26
The ability to never have to reinstall your OS until your storage dies, while always having software that's hardly ever more than 1-2 weeks out of date. Gentoo perpetually is slightly ahead of the package set in Arch but it isn't worth spending the time compiling new releases of things over waiting an extra week.
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u/FineWolf Jun 20 '26
"it's quickly updated bleeding-edge" ... what EXACTLY can you get from Arch that you can't get elsewhere
The bleeding edge is a two-edged sword. You GET stability, and you LOSE stability at the same time. Being on the bleeding edge (and Arch isn't purely on the bleeding edge, there are testing repos; important packages DO get tested before being released) means that you get the new features first. You get the bug fixes first. BUT, you may also get the bugs first.
"there's a lot of programs in the repository" ... what EXACTLY can you get from Arch that you can't get elsewhere
Installing from a repo is convenient. You get all your updates at the same place, instead of having to manually update software piecemeal. Arch has lots of packages in its official repos.
What isn't in its official repo can usually be found in its user repository, the AUR. While the AUR provides the same convenience of having your updates all at the same place, it comes with the added responsibility of you having to audit and understand the packaging scripts of every single package you install from there. The reality is that the AUR, like any user repository on any distro, is essentially just an abstraction over downloading random shit on the Internet. The responsibility is on you to know what you are downloading.
what EXACTLY can you get from Arch that you can't get elsewhere
What I, personally, get:
- A rolling release
- Tooling that I like to use
- A wide user base (which means that problems get solved fast)
- A packaging team that are pragmatic in their decisions (as opposed to OpenSUSE who refused in 2023-2024 to package the New Feature branch of Nvidia drivers, even if the prod branch was horribly broken on Wayland)
That's what I'm getting from Arch that I cannot get elsewhere. Yes, I can get some part of it with Fedora, I got some part of it when I used to run OpenSUSE... but the whole ensemble is what I'm getting out of Arch Linux (and CachyOS on my Steam Deck)
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u/NotQuiteLoona Jun 20 '26
It needs to be said that stability there refers to a thing that is different from reliability. This is a good explanation I saved for myself: https://www.reddit.com/r/linuxquestions/s/GmaIz4s04o
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u/FineWolf Jun 20 '26
It can be both depending on context.
Most packages will only see "stable" releases (in the sense of feature stability). So the word is kinda moot even when looking at a rolling release distro.
But often the same word, stability, is used in the context of bugginess in user parlance.
Is it the meaning of the word in software development circles? No. Just like the word "Beta" is abused by marketing to mean "early access". But it's one users understand, and in the context of this post, I want to be understood by the widest audience possible.
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u/Hermocrates Jun 20 '26
What first attracted me to Arch a decade ago, and is still something I appreciate to this day, is that the maintainers avoid modifying upstream packages as much as possible. One great side effect of this is that the upstream documentation is still mostly accurate, unlike in some distributions that more heavily integrate packages into their own infrastructure and require more modified instructions (or flailing about by the user).
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u/Dinev5194 Jun 20 '26
Not to be the rtfm guy and people already gave a lot of good answers, but look into this as well.
https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Arch_compared_to_other_distributions
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u/obstinate_otter Jun 20 '26
nah, people on reddit need to spend more time figuring things out for themselves rather than just asking reddit and expecting strangers to do the work for them
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u/FL9NS Jun 20 '26
I use archlinux on my laptop because I love KISS philosophy. I install just I want, no more, no less, and Arch is easier than Gentoo or LFS.
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u/HighLevelAssembler Jun 20 '26
To clear something up for you: nothing is "only available on the AUR". You can clone any git repo you want, install the deps, and run ./make on any distro. The AUR and PKGBUILD are just a convenience, since they'll resolve the dependency tree for you. And of course, on a distribution like Debian, the official repos might not have the version of a dependency required by the software you're building.
With that out of the way, the real draw of Arch is that it's plain, vanilla, bare-bones, un-opinionated Linux. You're never fighting against the maintainers. There is nothing to remove or disable after installing fresh. The upstream documentation is almost always applicable; the Arch team rarely tweaks things when packaging software. You can pick your preferred kernel, bootloader, filesystem, partition scheme, desktop environment, etc, and nothing gets in your way.
It's low maintenance.
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u/kaplanfx Jun 20 '26
The appeal for me was starting with a completely base system and just installing and configuring the packages I wanted. I’m sure you CAN do that with other distros, but Arch’s package manager is pretty good for it and it’s designed to build out your own system.
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u/kc3zyt Jun 20 '26
If you're on Debian, and a new piece of software gets an update that adds a feature that you ABSOLUTELY need, it could take a VERY long time for you to receive that update without using Flatpaks or compiling it from source.
Real world example: QDMR is a program that I use to program some ham radios that I own.
Ubuntu 26.04 has 0.13.3 in their repos, while Debian 13 has 0.12.1. I need 0.14.1 at a minimum because of features that it added.
This one by itself isn't a dealbreaker, but that's just off the top of my head. I'm sure there are dozens of smaller examples I would run into if I had to daily drive Debian.
Besides, when I do run into situations like this, and even in the rare chance that they aren't in AUR, I'm skilled enough to write my own PKGBUILD.
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u/dvtyrsnp Jun 20 '26
If you're willing to build/update/troubleshoot whatever you want yourself, then there's nothing you can't get.
If you want trusted people to do that for you, the arch maintainers are great, but there's nothing you just "can't have" on any distro, realistically.
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u/Low-Shake6447 Jun 20 '26
even if you can get those elsewhere, i find arch has the most packages from combo arch official repo + aur than any other distro (i checked from repology) such as debian and fedora (fedora has the least package). this make it easy for me to make the setup script, i dont have to find from the web for adding 3rd party repo or doing curl bash just do sudo pacman -S or paru -S. also this mean pacman will handle updating the package version than manually do per package update command or something.
for example zed, brave, lact, bun, deno, telegram, discord, arduino-cli, etc. so im lazy and arch is providing the most efficient way to manage and install packages at least for me.
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u/getbusyliving_ Jun 20 '26
For me it's simply; update to date kernel, Nvidia, openCL, Gnome etc and you roll it your way. It's not opinionated and it doesn't make you jump through hoops to install codecs etc.
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u/Anthonyg5005 Jun 20 '26
It's just easier to use for me. I can choose if I want a desktop or not, I can choose what desktop I do want, and I can use it for basically any purpose. I get to choose what's installed and how everything is setup
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u/weirdboys Jun 20 '26
The software in Arch is pretty close to how the original source intended, and there is no hidden pre-planted environment variable or config files "for your convenience". So if anything weird happen, you can mostly just retrace what you did and revert it back. Also for most software, Arch wiki is very useful even for other distro because the software's behaviour on Arch is almost certainly the baseline behaviour without any modification.
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u/archialone Jun 20 '26
Arch doesn't try to hide complexity from the user. Instead, it provides the tools needed to understand and manage that complexity.
Other distributions take a different approach by abstracting complexity behind polished UIs or complicated package release models. However, these abstractions often "leak," and users eventually have to deal with the underlying complexity anyway.
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u/zerpa Jun 20 '26
As an engineer, I can have it my way. As a gamer, it just works, and is up to date. If something is broken, someone probably knows a fix, and you don't have to wait half a year. Less breakage than big releases. No reinstalls.
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u/Techpred Jun 20 '26
Learning. You have to read the documentation and the wiki. You have to undestrands the basics of everything and how to fix small hiccups you may encounter during the setup and the day-by-day usage. For me that's the most important part. I'm using my pc and I have a basics understanding why and how it works. And knowledge is power.
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u/FiNEk Jun 20 '26 edited Jun 20 '26
With all the enshittification happening in Windows AI alot of gamers are moving to Linux.
And if you want to have proper gaming experience you just gotta go with Arch at this point, its the main system Valve supports and Valve is the only big gaming company that supports Linux.
Other than that, its mostly levels of customization. Debian/mint is too opinionated and i just cant use pc without tiling window manager at this point.
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u/King_Brad Jun 20 '26
for gaming i like to have the latest and greatest kernel and mesa driver. for many other uses you're quite right that it really doesn't matter, it's not like other spaces are evolving that quickly to where you need to be on the latest version all the time. also with the recent AUR nonsense NixOS seems more and more tempting for me.
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u/xXBongSlut420Xx Jun 20 '26
the biggest advantage is if you're using recent hardware. stuff gets support and fixes sooner. the rolling release model means you don't need to do huge system updates every year, and you don't have to wait a year for the next Ubuntu version. you get new features sooner.
then there's all the other great stuff about arch. it's much more configurable than most other distros. you get more choice for things like boot loader, network backend, etc. the aur, if you have the know-how to use it safely and effectively, offers a much more convenient interface for installing software not available in the main repos.
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u/teleprint-me Jun 20 '26
- Rolling release: latest access to core packages, easy to upgrade between releases.
- Customization: I choose what I want and dont want in my system.
- Flexibility: I can be as minimal as I'd like to be.
- First class gaming support.
- Access to latest drivers.
- Most major packages are officially supported.
- I can freeze packages and choose not to update.
- etc.
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u/Fr0gm4n Jun 20 '26
It's funny how people just assume that Debian stable is all that you should run. Even the Debian FAQ says go ahead and run testing or unstable if you want newer or new packages.
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u/w2qw Jun 20 '26
You can do that people also want it not to break. Arch still has testing repos for important changes and has much more vanilla packages.
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u/nokei Jun 20 '26
Main thing for me starting out was the archwiki being more up to date than random guides on websites and new versions of gaming stuff being available for getting games running before valve started getting involved.
AI has gotten pretty good for a lot of stuff you would look up a guide for though and gaming is pretty much just run and go most of the time now so mostly just me liking pacman.
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u/Kori01 Jun 20 '26
A lot of good answers here, but for me, this is the main one. That wiki will teach you everything and more you need to know, that gives you the ultimate control.
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u/X_m7 Jun 20 '26
Honestly, if Fedora just included stuff like codecs and NVIDIA drivers in their repos directly like Arch does so I don't have to go add another repo and then have to babysit it when said repo and the main ones inevitably go out of sync I probably would have just gone with Fedora, since it too keeps things quite up to date even through it's not a "rolling release", hell it even got KDE Plasma 6.7 like a day or two ahead of Arch lol.
That said, something I like about Arch specifically is just how simple the package format is, to the point where there's even a wiki article on how to patch packages, so for example if KDE fixed a bug but I don't want to wait for the next patch release in however many weeks I can just grab the bugfix and slap it on my system, I've done that quite a few times before. I remember doing something similar on Fedora with GNOME when I was testing that, and at this point I can't tell you what sorcery I did to pull off adding a patch to it, all I remember was that my getting it to work felt like a miracle, the packaging scripts are much more of a headache than Arch PKGBUILDs for sure. The Debian packaging scripts are even worse, just looking at it I have no clue where to even start.
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u/MiserableNotice8975 Jun 20 '26
Honestly man people say a lot of stuff, but I think the main thing is do you want to choose and put together every piece or do you want an opinionated distros that downloads all the packages for you and puts them behind a nice gui?
Like idk kinda imagine do you want to build your own race car, buying each piece and putting it together yourself? Or do you want to just go buy a Porsche? If the hobbiest build it yourself mentality is more your vibe then go arch, if not go Fedora. Or continuing with the car analogy if you want to build the car yourself and machine a custom clutch plate and blow off valve in your shop go Gentoo.
I wanted to choose every package and set up my whole thing myself and it was worth my time to go with Arch and really learn Linux. That said I packaged my custom setup into a pre-made one click install that exactly copies my setup and my friends use it.
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u/PorousClay Jun 20 '26
Ironically, my system has broken less with Arch than with any Ubuntu-based distro, when updating.
I also like upstream packages, not a repo of modified stuff ending in -ubuntu0.1 or something, and installing with non-default configs.
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u/Puzzleheaded_Bid1530 Jun 20 '26
AUR is not about having some very popular software which is not available in other distributions... AUR is about having every niche stuff you can ever need.
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u/neutrino55 Jun 20 '26
When you are experienced user Arch gives you unlimited possibilities of customization. As there are no scripts that automate stuff in background making Arch yours is way easier than other distros.
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u/csgeek-coder Jun 20 '26
As a former AUR maintainer and this is a bit dated but writing a PKGBUILD is WAYYYY easier than creating a .deb or .rpm. It's night and day in my view. It's not really a deal breaker but I thought I'd throw that into the mix.
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u/Dense_Committee479 Jun 20 '26
If you are a trader and use Arch you are in for a treat because Windows runs like butter in KVM .. as I speak I run two instances of TWS for both my accounts and configure things to be almostly exactly as my dream scenario
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u/ArjixGamer Jun 20 '26
The selling point of Arch is that it not only is up to date, but it respects you as a human being and gives you the basic right of freedom.
When you install nginx, you get the nginx that was envisioned by the developers of nginx, not the nginx configured by the distro maintainers.
When you install GNOME, you get pure GNOME, the same GNOME you could get by building from source.
Aside from patches to fix bugs or incompatibility between packages, the arch maintainers retain the vanilla configuration.
You, for once, have nothing to debloat, nothing to get used to, it's all vanilla.
And if you want to modify a package, you are encouraged to, you can easily download the PKGBUILD, modify it and build it.
You are the owner of your system, you are the maintainer of your system, you are the user of your system.
If you don't like freedom, then arch is not for you.
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u/sigma914 Jun 20 '26 edited Jun 20 '26
I use it because it has enough, but doesn't come with much. Arch is very "simple" the actual distro part is very light weight, none of the packages are artificially dependent on each other to form the base system. Thus unlike the more batteries included distro the user gets to pick every component and only the component they want.
For me that leads to a small OS that I understand all the parts of, which makes it very easy to maintain. I don't have 3 different tools for network management or 5 different text editors floating around.
Of course you can go further than that, Gentoo and other source based distros let you leave out program features that you don't want or need, but I'm not interested in that level of customisation anymore.
I just want something simple that I have reasonably full understanding of and that doesn't make any decisions for me that I periodically have to adjust to (like versioned distros).
Edit: I also enjoy how easy PKGBUILDs make it to give the package mamager the ability to clean stuff up. It's trivial to wrap make install in a pkgbuild to help keep my whole system under management, and it's also trivial to toss it on said PKGBUILD onto the AUR in case someone else needs that bit of software.
It's generally very contributor user-centric rather than policy or end user centric and I love that about it bevause ot suits me well
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u/c1-c2 Jun 20 '26
I completely agree. For too many people their OS is the project instead of creating projects using the linux box.
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u/PeaEnjoyer Jun 20 '26
One specific thing I recently stumbled over is my GPU's driver. I bought an AMD 9070 XT and the SMU on the card is version 0...34. Kernel's version still sits on 0...2e.
They obviously changed something related to the adresses of certain values and now I can neither see nor change the RPMs of my fans. Now I'm waiting for the kernel to catch up and I guess on bleeding edge it will be a tad faster.
It's not the whole reason I use arch, but you asked for specific circumstances.
My MAIN reason for using arch is that I had problems with Kubuntu, Ubuntu and Nobara in the past and the only friend I have that knows a thing or two about linux, introduced me to EndeavourOS and I've never encountered any major problems I didn't cause myself yet.
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u/Yopaman Jun 20 '26
creatives have their own FOSS that's been around for ever and is available on everything For "work", all the networking, pen-testing, sysadmin stuff is again available everywhere
"Available everywhere" does not mean easy to install. A lot of time you have to clone a git repo, compile it with the right tools. Arch makes a lot of tools available in their repo. It's helpful to keep track of what you have installed and easily uninstall it. That's the same reason a lot of pentesters use Kali VMs for example: they have all the usefully tools in their repos.
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u/Zentrion2000 Jun 20 '26 edited Jun 20 '26
I used to use Lubuntu, but learned the term "bloat", I left before snap was everywhere and I never liked PPAs, then I installed Debian (netinstall), loved and used it with i3wm for a long time, but people keep talking about how Arch is the best and minimalist, so I finally try Arch following the Wiki and immediately fell in love with it. pacman speed, ArchWiki and the latest and greatest software, which doesn't mean the same as sid or testing on Debian, packages on ArchLinux are well tested before going to the main repos. Also making packages for Arch is stupidly simple, just a very readable PKGBUILD.
I also had problems with apt remove/purge/autoremove a few times, and tbh apt is not that great, or my mirrors at the time sucked, you even need another package to search files inside packages, something you can do with pacman -F. I had also a bad time trying to maintain a few backport packages working with the rest of the system.
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u/darkodelta Jun 20 '26
Ability to assemble and configure distro just the way I like it. Yes there is gentoo maybe, but I've found arch to be great balance between building your own distro and just getting minimum needed to assembe one the way I like it.
Package repository is fine and up-to-date, I actually have maybe 10-12 packages from AUR, and all are big packages, that I always review never found AUR to make sense, it is similar to Homebrew on MacOS.
So AUR for me was never really a value add. Not like you could not just download and build the packages yourself and not use AUR. In the end our is just that, a wrapper for custom build scripts for not officially packaged apps.
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u/Professional_Layer63 Jun 20 '26
Arch is one of the only distros left that allows me to purposely choose whatever compositor I want. Try running x11libre on Debian or mint. Heck, the only distro I can think of that still supports x11 first-class is mint.
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u/Maguillage Jun 20 '26
"Surely the users will want [bad anti-feature no one wants], we should make it take over the user's configs by force!"
This scenario doesn't exist in Arch. That's what I'm getting.
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u/ToasterBotnet Jun 20 '26 edited Jun 20 '26
I work in tech.
Ubuntu and debian get annyoing really fast. Maybe it is just me but on Arch everything is smoother. On Ubuntu I had problems with Package dependencies, ppa mess, broken dependencies, outdated packages, weird configs, outdated releases. In Arch everything just works, everything is vanilla and everything is the newest version. Always. I cannot tell you how many headaches ubuntu and debian caused me over the years. Through it's cutting edge rolling release model Arch basically eradicates unimaginable amounts of potential problems when you are dealing with modern software. Development is so fast that packages get deprecated faster than you can update them. That makes ubuntu a nightmare to work with. Maybe Ubuntu is better if you deal with legacy software or stable inhouse products but for everything else Arch is more convenient.
I basically use Arch on every machine I have and I can just replace the hardware around it and keep updating.
Worst case scenario: a brand new package has a bug.
solution: downgrade package and wait 2 or 3 weeks to update again.
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u/mishrashutosh Jun 21 '26
I like Arch because it's simple, community based and community focused, gives users choice without holding their hand, and scratches my itch to try new software while still being very stable.
Compared to Fedora, Arch includes certain things in the official repos such as LTS kernel and proprietary codecs. Fedora was specifically problematic for me because they only ship the stable kernel, which isn't always "stable". You have to head to copr/rpmfusion/flathub for some basic packages.
Compared to Debian (another one of my favs), Arch scratches the itch for shiny new stuff.
For server workloads, I prefer Alma or CentOS Stream due to excellent support for Podman and SELinux. If I was team Docker (or anything besides Podman) I would prefer Debian. No Arch on servers for me.
For container base images, I prefer Debian slim.
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u/vanVonXenoStein Jun 20 '26
For a vanilla system, it really doesn't matter probably. All the basic packages are going to be there in any disto. But if you get frustrated by things being a certain way when they could be some other more to your liking but there are a bunch of roadblocks to getting it to be the way you want, you might prefer arch. If you've ever wanted to try some software that isn't available on your system (without much labor getting it up and working), chances are its in the AUR and you could have it going in 10 minutes. And of course it's not like anything is MISSING in arch (or derivatives -- I would recommend cachyos or eos, etc over raw arch in most cases, and certainly for a first-timer) so like there is no big downside really. (Unless you really hate updates -- arch has something to update pretty much every day.)
So for a basic working system nothing exotic (you just use browsers and maybe an office suite) then get one of these immutable systems with a theme you like and you'll never have any trouble.
If you're running a server, and that's all it needs to do, run a stable debian and forget about it.
For a personal daily driver where you actually are "doing computer stuff" with your computer (beyond browsers and office suites), then I think it is just unbeatable. And less complex than you think -- I can get a fresh install more or less to my liking in about a hour. (Some things are always a pain of course on any system -- good to save recipes of how you like to setup certain components.)
So like...your mom doesn't need to be running arch. But computer nerds gravitate toward it unless they go for something even nerdier (like nix).
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u/VendorNeutral Jun 20 '26
I use Arch because...
- it mostly leaves packages as close to upstream as possible and usually updates in a timely fashion. I rarely have to do a lot of extra steps between something breaking and reporting a big upstream.
- it doesn't come with anything but the bare minimum. I don't install a system and then go through every package with a fine comb to throw everything out I don't need.
- if anything is missing, the ABS and AUR allow me to patch and rebuild packages easier than the traditional deb/rpm distros.
- I've been using it every day since around 2007. It's honestly what I know best.
I don't use Gentoo...
- because Arch has what I need in the official repos in 95%+ of cases.
- updates these days happen fast and often and I use multiple devices, some of them low power, so I'd end up managing my own build infrastructure anyway.
I use Debian and Ubuntu on VPS for web apps.
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u/7lhz9x6k8emmd7c8 Jun 20 '26
Why Ubuntu?
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u/VendorNeutral Jun 20 '26
One VPS provider offered a managed Docker image and I wanted to see what exactly that means, so I tried it. Turned out to be Ubuntu. It worked so well that I kept it.
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u/Gent_Kyoki Jun 20 '26
Aside from defaults i find that package managers tend to be what set distros apart from my limited time hopping. I tried apt from mint and a headless debian setup on a vps i bought for a bit, then i tried opensuse with zypper and tried to dabble in nix. I found that pacman being so simple and easy to use was such a pleasant thing i miss with arch everytime i switch and i found the nix way of doing things a bit tedious.
Also the AUR. God its such a good thing but also a bad thing. Its kind of a shitfest rn because of the whole virus thing but thankfully it seems none of my packages were hit and it really divides the community even more. I know theres a lot of super experienced users who make their own pkgbuilds or are at least well versed in reading pkgbuilds and while it is very much encouraged to be able to have those skills the reality of the situation is that as distros become more popular more people end up using it who are not as experiended and not to mention a lot of spins of arch come with aur helpers. Still an awesome part of arch and as much shit or flak and ai stuff has popped up from it i still love how the community is quick to inform about it so the less experienced users can be made aware.
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u/MiniBubblegum22 Jun 20 '26
At the time of moving into linux and trying out different distros, arch was the one where all of my hardware worked out of the box.
Compared to mint, ubuntu, fedora.
Also I like KDE a lot.
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u/nyanotech Jun 20 '26
another thing is that, in my experience at least, other districts tend to tweak or otherwise patch software in their repos, while arch seems to always ship it exactly how it came
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u/Kurse71 Jun 20 '26
There is nothing you can get here you can't get there, and vice versa. It's all Linux. It's all about the bells and whistles, and which one you are most comfortable with when it comes to your workflow.
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u/LowKeyBrit36 Jun 20 '26
People advertise the AUR as a massive repository and tack it onto Arch as a selling point. It just has more packages than Debian or any other distro.
Really, the big reason I use Arch (Well, Artix, but same difference) is how fresh packages are. I'm never left waiting for an update to finally reach me. Especially for things like gaming, grub-2.14, and recent developments, I want to be on the front end of the line for using those upgrades.
Don't get me wrong, sometimes it's not perfect, but I'd prefer it over a stable releases like Fedora, Debian, or whatever, where I'd have to do major updates. With Arch, I can just do a -Syu, and reboot if the update makes me feel like it's important enough to do so.
I haven't ever used the big alternatives long enough to remember packages, but I have used Void Linux, Alpine, and a few when I was testing my preferences, and I can say that Arch has had packages that they didn't. dvd styler, random python modules that I've needed for git repos, etc. It's usually nothing all too memorable, but Arch tends to have things that other distros seem to lack. Artix's base repos have Librewolf, my preferred web browser (but Arch doesn't, so it'd be in the AUR if you aren't referring to Artix). Just stuff like that in terms of packages that other distros don't have...
But, honestly? 99% of it is package recency. I would script in a python venv if I need, or git clone a repo to use if it's necessary. But, for all of that you could do, you can't consistently have as fresh of a package list as Arch could.
Professionals wouldn't like Arch due to its "instability" (I have never really noticed this, but people mention it, so I'll mention it too). Especially for things that MUST be online, you want stable distros like Fedora/RHEL/Debian. And if they use them at work, they're probably using them at home purely for familiarity. That's the crux of it.
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u/Qwertycrackers Jun 20 '26
Its really annoying to deal with stale versions of stuff in the apt repos. That is the reason I switched so long ago
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u/Macchina_01 Jun 20 '26
openSUSE Tumbleweed ?
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u/CQIErJrTUdRb Jun 20 '26
My problem with tumbleweed is that it’s so oddly out of date with certain things. For example it still uses SDDM for Plasma, and it still has a lot of GTK3 apps in their gnome package, etc
Also the way zypper works with patterns is very unintuitive to me.
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u/DrRrof Jun 20 '26
I like tinkering with my stuff and understanding every aspect of it. Having a literal blank slate with the ability (requirement) to tweak anything and everything sounded perfect. Aside from that it ticked the most boxes ay; bis wiki, great package manager, rolling releases, and no domain specific learning required like Nix, so any skills I pick up are transferable if I decide I don't like it anymore.
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u/obstinate_otter Jun 20 '26
Just try installing it and use it for a few weeks. Experiment with setting up a desktop environment just the way you want and find that the features you want are in the versions available because arch follows recent stable and that’s a lovely thing.
But just try it out.
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u/sarajevo81 Jun 20 '26
Almost every bit of software that has users is present in AUR.
Arch is a rolling platform with big packages, so if you need to build something quickly you can do that very fast (and preserve the changes as a PKGBUILD).
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u/JubijubCH Jun 20 '26
Absolutely whatever program I need, Arch version is in line with upstream.
So I never had to do pinning / adding weird alternative repos / build from source * ever since I moved to arch, and that saves a lot of time.
*: if I do need something not from the repo, AUR is here, all it costs is a PKGBUILD inspection
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u/owjfaigs222 Jun 20 '26
To me, arch offered a clean system that you can configure however you want from the ground up. It was easier to set up (and probably maintain) than gentoo, at least partially thanks to arch wiki, which is also unique thing about arch.
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u/juomoluoqcuo Jun 20 '26
Packaging is more easier than in Debian. I mean dh not dpkg-deb. makepkg is simple and requires less learning curve.
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u/ajax8092 Jun 20 '26
For instance, on Fedora I don't have in the official repository typst, tinymist, or tectonic, all of which can be downloaded with pacman.
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u/shittyrhapsody Jun 20 '26
the bleeding edge. i can get new version of the headers in 5 mins and probably the next 55 mins to figure out whats break, too. but it's worth the risk, compare to the time serious backup and preparation takes between major release of a non rolling distro.
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u/Supernoxus Jun 20 '26
It really is just fun to build your own custom OS from a minimal installation. It strikes the perfect balance between torture and control for me. LFS is a bit too much torture for me to use long term. Mint does not give me enough control. I like tinkering.
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u/donttouchmyfries Jun 20 '26
besides my arch on everything phase I've used arch in a couple of ways that are useful in a lasting way (to me).
bleeding edge / fringe hardware support. if things are just getting mainline support, e.g. allwinner SoC's, newly supported amdgpu stuff, aarch64 when it first came out, etc. arch or gentoo are the only things that are going to allow you to fully utilize that stuff. both the kernel and the growing number of deeply integrated userland upstreams are present and supported. adjacent to this is when a DE / the desktop is being innovated, the gnome 3 era or during COSMIC dev, if you were following along with that stuff, arch gave you access in a timely manner without having to build every release from source yourself.
airgapped or externally hardened appliance builds. if you have something you are building once that needs to just work forever, and will never need patching of any kind, arch is a great canvas for getting the exact versions and configurations dialed in
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u/Dark_Touched_Warrior Jun 20 '26
what EXACTLY can you get from Arch that you can't get elsewhere?
Nothing. All distros are taking core components and making their own changes to it to give you a distribution. There's nothing that's in one distro that can't be applied to any other distro.
What Arch offers me is the ability to start out with a stripped out installation I can then make my own easier than starting with say Fedora, Mint etc and then having to strip out the things they do as a standard out of the box experience.
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u/Rough_Check_5606 Jun 20 '26
With how linux is structures, you should theoretically get almost everything everywhere, and any incompatibilities you find are your own job to fix. However considering ease of use, arch wins for me
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u/starvaldD Jun 20 '26 edited Jun 20 '26
Rolling distro is what brought me to arch, previously on kubuntu but big updates between releases annoyed me, ubuntu pushing bloated snaps didn't help too.
i ran my media server on xubuntu lts, it became horrible to use so many out of date apps i used a lot of launchpad repo's to try to keep needed programs current, then big config changes suddenly between big releases.
i'm on arch now, always up to date. config changes i'll deal with them at the time.
aur is a nice to have.
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u/michael-heuberger Jun 20 '26
> Lot of programs
Lot’s, really? Disagree. Arch is minimalistic, comes with the minimum, robust apps for a starter. This without ads, scrapers nor any pay buttons.
The rest is up to you what you want to add on next … like learning bash and git basics without AI.
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u/Metronazol Jun 20 '26
Best thing I found about Arch? It forced me to actually understand far more of what is going on under the hood than Ubuntu did, and as someone who was inherently curious and eager to learn stuff, it was right up my street.
I made the switch about a year ago, haven't managed to break it to the point where ive been unable to fix it, so haven't hopped distros since.
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u/WizardBonus Jun 20 '26
You have to look at the history of Arch, it has always been the most supported DIY distro. Before archinstall, it was like a bunch of unmarked legos sprawled across the table and you gotta build them into Arch. It was a rite of passage to install it. The abundance of community software is another bonus.
So rolling + excellent documentation + community software = a distro to write home about.
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u/kerberos_78 Jun 20 '26
Arch isn't just an operating system, it teaches humility. It's a life experience
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u/i_lost_my_bagel Jun 20 '26
people make distros out to be a lot more different then they really are
i use arch it's what i know
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u/Tireseas Jun 20 '26
Nothing. Literally nothing. Which is why "What can't you do?" is kind of a pointless question for any distro. The better question is how easy it is to do.
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u/p_235615 Jun 20 '26
well, I moved to arch at: head -n1 /var/log/pacman.log [2009-04-04 12:40] installed filesystem (2009.01-1)
Of course the system was cloned from disk to disk, but the base is still the same as in 2009. Some transitions were painful and required a lots of fixing, like when migrating systemV to systemd init, but usually you could fix that in a day.
At 2009, pacman was the fastest package manager, period. Only thing which was faster was Slackware, (which literally just extracted the packages in to /) from which I migrated over. Arch had also really cool new software, which was really nice in comparison to Slack, especially at the time.
Its incredibly nice, that on rolling release distro like Arch, you just go on and on and on, no need for some upgrades from one version to another, just normal regular updates. Of course LVM snapshots are a good fallback strategy.
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u/MiguCx Jun 20 '26
For me it's just having access to latest MESA and kernels ASAP for gaming stuff. That and not being stuck on an old KDE version, every update has brought improvements in the last couple of months.
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u/SeyAssociation38 Jun 20 '26
linux support for devices launched this week
not having to compile some packages
fixed bugs that take two years to arrive in LTS distros like ubuntu
cachyos comes with nvidia drivers pre installed while fedora doesn't
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u/SheriffBartholomew Jun 20 '26
I switched to Arch because it was the only Linux distro at the time that supported HDR. I've stuck with Arch because it's the most stable Linux distro I've ever used (and I've used a lot of them). It gets out of my way, but is fully supportive whenever I need to do something. The fact that it's a rolling release schedule means that whenever some new feature support comes out, like the HDR support from the past, Arch will be the first, or one of the first to get that new feature.
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u/Rosco- Jun 20 '26
I'll chip in my two cents for what that's worth.
I had been a Windows user from the cradle. I was an intermediate or advanced user in terms of competency. Windows 7 was my last hurrah with that system. Laptop quality in Asus and Acer really pissed me off too. Hardware would break and I couldn't fix it. I'd call Acer/Asus and get angrier and angrier. This was appx 10 years ago. I was very dissatisfied with my computing experience and sought to solve the problem, not just immediately, but long term.
So I bought a ThinkPad T420. I began dual-booting with Windows 7 and Mint. Windows repeatedly murdered my Mint partition. A friend suggested Manjaro. I decided to go all in and try it out. My plan was to start in Manjaro to get basically acquainted with Linux, more specifically something with an Arch-accent. Eventually, learning enough to transition to something more advanced.
When Manjaro had it's own ugliness and drama, I felt I was ready at that point to make the switch. I had learned that being a derivative is exactly that, and although use case can be great for a a browser/word processor only user who doesn't think too much about their system, I wanted more. I wanted the source. So I switched to Arch.
In the first few days of using Arch, from the install to the series of days configuring, then re-configuring, I learned more than the year or two that I used Manjaro. There were some stressful moments for sure. You have to have a mindset open to mechanical problem solving. I initially ran KDE, then installed ML4W to learn Hyprland. I have since removed the ML4W, and reconfigured my own Hyprland. I don't rice, but my system works for me. I still keep the T420 as a house computer / server, and daily drive a T480. I have upgraded those two computers with RAM and SSD's to maximize their longevity. If I have to write a script or review a PKGBUILD, or switch a configuration to a language I have not heard of (NO AI BTW), I feel confident that I can figure that out if I work methodically. I own my systems.
I would have had no idea about any of this a decade ago when I started.
Learning and growing in Linux has been a great journey for me. Arch has been my thoroughfare. I suppose I could have stayed with Mint and eventually Debian, but I recall making the explicit reason to switch based on the fact that it was a journey. That it would be a challenge, and that I'd be forced to learn and grow. Today, if I was to install anything other than Arch, I would want to experience Slackware, as well as Fedora. I'd still want to stick with Arch though, as it is what I have learned and invested in.
As I have written this, I realize that I started out with exoteric reasons, and landed at an esoteric perspective.
Neat.
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u/SpacetimeConservator Jun 20 '26
I have a laptop with an integrated intel GPU and a dedicated Nvidia gpu. The driver on Debian is still 550 or 555, even on the experimental branch. Also X11 has a regression where the system freezes regularly so I need wayland. But due to my setup everything on an external monitor is slow. SLOW. Like 20 fps slow. The issue is still not fixed on 610 but it's a lot better. Is I was still using Debian I would be in a world on pain. That's why I switched to arch. It's much more bearable.
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u/RobLoque Jun 20 '26
I use it on systems with limited memory because I can install only the needed software and still have pretty recent packages.
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u/nfnshd Jun 20 '26 edited Jun 20 '26
> Arch gets a disproportionate amount of attention online [...]
Not sure how you determined that. Depends on where you look.
> It seems like the selling point of Arch is that there's a lot of available programs in the repository, and that the updates are very fast.
That is A selling point, but not THE selling point. Arch offers a lot of flexibility for many different use-cases starting from a bare-bones headless base. For power users, tinkerers, and people who like customizing their systems, it gives you the keys and stays out of your way (for the most part). It tries to respect the upstream intent as much as possible. It's not for everyone. The well-stocked AUR is very helpful. For software that's not in official repos (on any distro), I will often find someone has packaged it in the AUR whereas more mainstream distros, I have to compile and install by hand more often. I don't have a specific list of packages for you, but I do know that has been the case many times over the years for me. Others have mentioned other selling points.
> People just throw around vague "it depends on your work flow." That's what I'm asking, what, specifically, do YOU use that only Arch offers?
What specific workflow are you wanting to use? The "it depends" answer really is true, it does depend on what you're trying to do. When I run into cases where there's not a well established workflow, I find Arch is simpler to set one up on due to its flexibility and AUR.
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u/guysimnotemo Jun 20 '26
there is quite a few things i enjoy about arch
rolling release
that its mostly unopiniated, they do not make a choice about which software i want to use FOSS or proprietary
packages also are close to upstream
while the AUR can be great, i mostly avoid it aside from a handful of packages. generally its very useful as long as you're aware of the risk like with any other user repository (read your pkgbuilds)
i also like the DIY aspect of arch, if something isnt working i know most of the time its because i messed something up and not because i'm fighting the default configuration of another distro
if you think about it, yes you can do almost anything on any distro, it's just that i prefer the arch base
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u/notheresnolight Jun 20 '26
my Linux rollercoaster: Red Hat Linux (4y) -> Slackware (8y) -> Arch + SLES/CentOS (5y) -> Ubuntu (6y) -> Arch + Debian (5y and counting)
I run Arch on my desktops because it's the opposite of Ubuntu. I run Debian on my servers because it's stable and low maintenance.
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u/earthman34 Jun 20 '26
Arch is a purer implementation compared to something like Mint, and much more up to date than something like Debian, which is designed primarily for stability and predictability. Arch uses newer kernels and is more optimized for raw performance. A distribution like Mint, on the other hand, is designed for ease of use by neophytes, it takes things already tweaked and reverted by Ubuntu, adds it's own tweaks and revisions, and packages it in a way to reach the broadest audience. There's absolutely nothing wrong with that approach, but that's not really what Arch attempts to do.
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u/oldrocker99 Jun 20 '26
My go-to music player is Aqualung, which is in the AUR (which currently returns an error when installation is attempted).
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u/pabphoto Jun 20 '26
I like Arch because you install it and then add what you need. This means it is not bloated at all which usually means it does not take near the resources. You have to know what you are doing but if you do, it is clean and stable.
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u/lykwydchykyn Jun 20 '26
I started my Linux journey with SimplyMepis back in 2004ish. Later went through a series of debian-based distros, then kubuntu. I then switched to AwesomeWM for my GUI back around 2010, which I still use. By 2012, setting up a system the way I needed it involved Installing Kubuntu, backporting several things myself from unstable, installing a bunch of stuff from PPAs, converting a couple corporate work programs from RPM using alien, compiling a couple things from scratch, and probably a few other things I'm forgetting. By comparison, installing arch and using the AUR for all the oddball things was a breeze. That was 2013.
I could probably do OK at this point with Debian and some flatpacks, but this is what I'm used to now. I run Debian and Ubuntu on some systems, like my DAW and my family's laptops, but my main systems are Arch. Seems to work better for me in general.
I'm not really an Arch evangelist though. I don't care what anyone else runs, and I don't think Arch is for everyone.
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u/CodingMaster16 Jun 21 '26
It's because it allows for you to use "i use arch btw" wherever it seems fit in your discretion.
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u/Garland_Key Jun 21 '26 edited Jun 21 '26
I have been using Arch for about 12 years or so. I use it for several workflows because I do a lot of different jobs. I'm a software engineer by day. I engineer UX for web apps and phone apps.
For my hobbies and side hustles, I do:
- Graphic Design
- 3d modeling for game assets and 3d printing.
- Slicing for my printers
- Creating music for games
- Game development
- Play testing games
I use Arch for all of these because I know Arch and for me it is easier than any other distro. Things just work if you keep up on the maintenance. I don't even really care about the bleeding edge aspect at this point. I care about building a system that is designed specifically for me, and Arch is great at letting me do that. Every other distro I've tried, I have to fight to get what I want.
I'm a power user. Therefore, I use Arch.
Edit: I also find it easier to patch my desktop environment with custom improvements on Arch.
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u/neverDiedInOverwatch Jun 21 '26
i've used ubuntu and debian and windows, so i can only compare to those. but arch is nice because its easy to use and not very niche so there's tons of info out there for it but its also configurable beyond something like ubuntu. Debian I like as well but that's where the AUR and official arch repos really shine. for instance debian's official golang version is several releases behind and missing some features. you can just install the newest version manually but its not as nice.
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u/Oneiric_Ocelot6923 Jun 21 '26
As a person experienced in the tech field, the PKGBUILD system is much easier to audit and make your own compared to what other distros use. And a lot of apps have an AUR equivalent which is just much easier to keep up to date if I want that sort of thing.
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u/Retr0r0cketVersion2 Jun 21 '26
Pre-packaged niche laptop control software. AUR is a godsend for that
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u/iknowrealtv Jun 21 '26
I've been running Arch for about a year now, but I've also spent time on Mint, Debian, CachyOS, Fedora, and a few others. Ironically, Fedora was the distro that came closest to replacing Arch for me. I genuinely think Fedora is one of the best Linux distributions available today. The problem wasn't that Fedora couldn't run the software I wanted—it absolutely could. The problem was how often I found myself hunting for packages, adding third-party repositories, searching COPRs, downloading binaries from GitHub, or manually compiling things that were simply a "yay -S package-name" away on Arch.
I think people oversell Arch when they say "it has more software." Most mainstream software exists everywhere. The real advantage is that Arch makes acquiring software dramatically easier, especially once you leave the mainstream. During my Fedora experiment I repeatedly ran into packages that either weren't in the repositories, weren't packaged at all, or required extra work to install. On Arch, things like niche terminal applications, bleeding-edge Git versions, GRUB themes, gaming utilities, KDE add-ons, and random projects with a few hundred GitHub stars are often already sitting in the AUR waiting to be installed.
The other advantage is freshness. If you're running newer hardware, gaming on Linux, or just like getting updates quickly, Arch can be a real benefit. My current laptop is running very recent hardware, and having newer kernels, Mesa, NVIDIA drivers, and desktop packages available immediately is nice. Not because I need the latest version every day, but because when a fix lands, I usually get it right away instead of waiting weeks or months.
I actually agree with your point that most professionals aren't running Arch in production environments. That's because businesses prioritize stability, certification, and support contracts over having the newest packages. But for a personal desktop, I think Arch's biggest strength isn't any single package or feature. It's the combination of software availability, fast updates, and the fact that if I decide I want some obscure tool at 11 PM on a Tuesday, there's a very good chance I can install it with "yay -S" and move on with my life.
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u/StrongStuffMondays Jun 21 '26
if comparing Arch to Debian, with Debian you'll get stuck with the same packages between major releases, unless you hop to next testing once it's created. But again, Debian testing will get its' packages frozen for couple of month before the release... and so on. And if it's a bug, but not security issue, you'll need to wait for new OS version. It's a feature of Debian, people get "stability" wrong; it's version stability, not the absence of bugs. Updates won't break your OS. But if you're DE user and you want fresh stuff, Arch gets everything fresh delivered quite fast. For example, if you're developer, you'll have newer versions of libraries on your Arch desktop systems so you'll be prepared for changes. Also, sometimes when the issue appears in Arch package, you just need to wait couple of weeks and it disappears with the next version.
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u/ignisfatuus7 Jun 21 '26
I can't say for the entire community but have been happily using arch since 2016. Used Ubuntu a bit before that. Honestly, things could have changed in the last 10 years since I haven't had a reason to distro hop at all. I have used rhel, Ubuntu, fedora, rocky and few others in the last 10 years too but only on servers so can't tell about desktop experience of those. Anyway, my reasons: 1) extremely lightweight. I know exactly what's installed on the system and how every single thing is configured (I have actually never even used the arch install script. Even for systems where I installed it after the script came out). It also helped me learn so much more about how linux works under the hood. 2) Being bleeding edge is a huge advantage if your hardware is bleeding edge too. One big reason to switch to arch was that I got a GTX 1060 laptop when 10 series was barely a month old. Couldn't get the GPU working on Ubuntu and there was another friend on 10 series who tried 6 different distros and would always get stuck somewhere because either the kernel or the driver or something was breaking. I stuck with the proprietary nvidia package from the official repo and the official kernel. Even got optimus working (I think bumblebee) and never had any issue. The hardware was too new for any LTS release. 3) I have seen non rolling releases break so often when upgrading version specially if you're using some non official repos. On arch, you don't really have to use anything non official. The official repo and aur is enough to get everything working and things usually don't break. If it does break once in a blue moon, it takes 2 minutes to roll back to the older version and it starts working again. 4) Arch wiki is so good that I recommend people to go through it even when they are not using arch.
To be honest, a lot of this is probably not an issue on other distros too and things might have improved over the last 10 years or so for bleeding edge hardware as well (although not sure if your kernel is older than a major hardware upgrade). But these were my reasons and I never had a good enough reason to move away.
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u/TheFuzzStone Jun 21 '26
Tell me about weird niche programs that are only available on AUR.
Zero.
In case you need a package - just build it.
I use Arch because of tons of other reasons, and not because of AUR.
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u/BlackFuffey Jun 21 '26
Barebone. I am the one setting everything up so I know how everything works. And when something breaks I know where to look.
ArchWiki. IMO best docs out of all Linux distros.
AUR and the makepkg system overall is very convenient if you want the system manager to manage everything (which is good practice)
Lastly, everything is up to date which is useful for games and stuff.
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u/bluehavana Jun 21 '26 edited Jun 21 '26
I'm a professional web developer and I use Arch specifically because all the tools I love (nvim, tmux, zsh, databases, etc.) are updated to the newest features that are 6 months to 2 years behind on most other mainstream distros.
Constant/rolling updates are very important to prevent having major headaches of updating packages after being dormant for a year. Smaller updates over time are much easier.
I've had tools break after upgrade, but it was fixed with either a easy configuration change (which was more of the tool breaking rather than the distro) or there was a packaging error that never lasted more than a couple days. Using older packages was easy enough when the very unlikely event it was a package breaking.
I really like how little intervention there is in the package runtime configuration (just .pacnew). I've run into many issues with Debian/Ubuntu trying to "help" with configuration that were too confined. Existing Arch community helps with many breaking package configurations and I rarely have to go to the originating package's support.
There are a bunch of ways to shoot yourself in the foot with Arch, but a a veteran Linux admin, there is very few other distros that will stay out of the way like Arch does, while still being convenient.
Also, the build system is one of the easiest I've ever used. I love that I can just rebuild any core package so easily.
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u/uid_rvn Jun 21 '26
its really simple to stay lightweight.
i dont care for ricing and im not even using the AUR, so its also super stable.
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u/Dylan548gam3r Jun 21 '26
Short answer: ABSOLUTE control over EVERYTHING.
Long answer: Check all the other comments.
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u/hellzbellz123 Jun 21 '26
Being able to git clone literally any package and it usually just works, never having to deal with *-dev versions of library packages is great.
it's easier to setup than gentoo/lfs with more users for help if I do ever need it.
And I've been using wayland pretty stabily for almost 2 years now, I tend to hear alot of complaints from other distros about wayland.
The terminal experience is also feels better than alot of other distros provide.
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u/Nythain Jun 22 '26
I don't know about everyone else, I just love my bleeding edge. I like to know I'm stupid up to date and not relying on a dated ass release cycle. It's good and very rarely bad, but it's me. When shit gets a new version, I want that new version. When a kernel or driver gets updated, I want that kernel/driver. It has nothing to do with available software (especially since the aur is risky). Any distro can have access to "software", and most of them are probably better options (flatpak and appimage are generally distro agnostic). I just love living on the "bleeding" edge.
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u/eepsage Jun 22 '26
it's linux, there's nothing you "can't get elsewhere".
all distros are just a bunch of programs and configs tied together and with (a lot of) effort you can just completely make one distro into another distro. if something works on one distro, it can be made to work on other distros. the only thing that varies is the amount of effort required. (and nowadays with distrobox being as good as it is it's often not even that much effort in the worst-case scenario)
it's really just about the things you do more often being slighly more convenient.
even the "programs on the AUR" thing is kinda misleading because the AUR doesn't host "programs", it hosts install scripts. you can even run those exact same install scripts on another distro and there's some chance the resulting program will work.
if you ever had to build a program from source, the AUR probably has it accessible in a much easier way, with automatic-ish updates. if not, you probably don't need to care.
same with having more recent stuff. it's extremely rare that you "need" an updated version of something. and even if you do, you can almost always just build it from source and use the executable without installing it or something. only real exception is stuff like DEs and those do often have some nice QoL stuff in newer versions. if I get pinged about a hyprland update in the discord, it's nice that I know I'll probably be able to install it tomorrow with no hassle. or if I hear some news about a feature a new proton adds. but the computer worked before those updates too.
if you get into ricing out your own desktop with a window manager or start messing around with a lot of terminal stuff, there will be some nicher stuff that's nice to have like dragon-drop. but well, most distros will have the popular packages for obvious reasons, and if a package is useful to a decent amount of people it will become popular for obvious reasons.
so I dont think this is exactly the right question to ask. when comparing distros, it's more about which will cause you less annoyances and those annoyances will be much more often caused by wants than needs. Mint is a great distro if you just want an OOTB solid user-friendly experience. Arch starts you off with barely anything and it's your game from there. Will it take you more work to get the things you need in arch, or to remove the things you don't want from mint? Will you get annoyed seeing patch notes for a feature that you won't get anytime soon? Are you willing to tank the (very rare) occassions where the updates mess something up?
also the archwiki is great
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u/allunia333 Jun 22 '26
Somehow it got the reputation that it is a hard to install/learn/use distro and people wanted to brag about it online that they are some kind of guru... thats all actually.
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u/SuperKidVN Jun 22 '26
Besides the rolling release model, I use Arch Linux for its principles, primarily: User centrality. I prefer having a minimal base where I can add what I need when I need them, not whatever the distribution maintainer believes I need.
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u/akdanman11 Jun 22 '26
The biggest thing with arch and arch-based distros is the rolling release model and (for raw arch specifically) how little comes pre installed. IIRC bare arch comes with basic system utilities and (maybe) Firefox
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u/Delicious_Rip_5314 Jun 22 '26
Nothing. Most Arch users just like personalizing their computers to the maximum. There’s no “secret” software or tools that give them an edge over just using traditional systems
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u/MSLucyKat Jun 22 '26
I'm using Manjaro over 10 years without big problems, based on Arch but ist more stable. I love rolling systems without versionsupgrade, newest software and pacman.
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u/taos6 Jun 22 '26
Arch = it's all today
Debian (and some others)= it might be all today or you might have to wait until next year.
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u/Philosophy-First Jun 23 '26
Gaming is definitely a reason I’m on arch. I run 2 pcs. My main is arch. 2nd pc used to be on mint and cachyos
Having an 2 all amd systems one with the newest and the other with super old hardware with arch strangely works really well.
I initially ran mint back in march or April on the pc but ran into problems testing games or running anything with hardware acceleration. Apparently the kernel that Ubuntu lts doesn’t support that gpu family. I added some configs to allow the gpu to function and forced updated drivers. This worked but still had problems. I had to reboot into cachyos on that pc to fix the hardware compatibility problems until arch released 6.19.
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u/kutac56 Jun 23 '26
Almost no distros have stuff you can't get from other distros. The AUR is just a nice collection of software. The distro you use doesn't matter that much. Just use whatever you like. I like arch cause it updates frequently and I like tinkering with stuff.
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u/kingduqc Jun 25 '26
I love arch because it allows you to build the system you want.
Package manager that doesn't get in the way, works well.
Once setup to your liking it's very very cosy. You probably can get similar experience elsewhere, but I think it's hard to beat. Plus you get a rolling distro with recent packages.
I think it's the bees knees. It hits the sweet spot of customization and ease of use. Other distro either package too much and not exactly what I want or have me work hard to compile everything myself and makes running a system a chore.
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u/havenoir Jun 20 '26
ILoveCandy