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So why exactly is Arch a better Linux distro compared with the rest ? There's no "sellingpoint" in the article except this "dig" at the other distros : "apt-get dist-upgrade or something similar every 6 months or so (and risk breaking everything)"
So why exactly is Arch a better Linux distro compared with the rest ? There's no "sellingpoint" in the article except this "dig" at the other distros : "apt-get dist-upgrade or something similar every 6 months or so (and risk breaking everything)"
So why exactly is Arch a better Linux distro compared with the rest ? There's no "sellingpoint" in the article except this "dig" at the other distros : "apt-get dist-upgrade or something similar every 6 months or so (and risk breaking everything)"
-Pacman (their package manager) is amazing - and if you want to install community packages from the AUR[0], you can use yaourt (if they've got dependencies on other AUR packages), or just git clone the package and run makepkg -si
I've never had any problems with it, and I've messed around a lot with my system.
-No bloat at all, you'll learn a whole lot from setting up your own system
-No choices are made for you, it's yours and yours alone.
-It's actually surprisingly stable, though you should be careful before you upgrade.
-It's always bleeding edge (maybe not always a good thing, hence you have to think before upgrading packages)
I have to read the article now though.
So why exactly is Arch a better Linux distro compared with the rest ? There's no "sellingpoint" in the article except this "dig" at the other distros : "apt-get dist-upgrade or something similar every 6 months or so (and risk breaking everything)"
I'm a former Arch user, and I can't honestly think of any concrete reason that would matter to most people. In my case it was first and foremost a tinkering project, as Arch provides an easy and thoroughly documented way to assemble a bespoke Linux environment.
A more glib answer would be "because Arch gives you street cred without the hassle of Gentoo"
So why exactly is Arch a better Linux distro compared with the rest ? There's no "sellingpoint" in the article except this "dig" at the other distros : "apt-get dist-upgrade or something similar every 6 months or so (and risk breaking everything)"
To get a working arch install you'll be taken through The Install Guide that summarises the steps necessary to have a base install with links to relevant specialised articles. Once you have a bootable system, they provide links for further customisation if your system.
The amazing thing is that by contrast to ubuntu et al. you're by default left with the strict minimal bootable linux system and anything else you want/need on your machine, it's explicitely your responsability to ensure proper operation (dependency versioning, program specific configuration and maintenance). It's fairly overwhelming initially, but the tools arch gives you to cope with the "it's your mess" are second to none (pacman/yaourt is amazing)
So why exactly is Arch a better Linux distro compared with the rest ? There's no "sellingpoint" in the article except this "dig" at the other distros : "apt-get dist-upgrade or something similar every 6 months or so (and risk breaking everything)"
And he didn't mention that in Arch a routine upgrade can break everything which rather doesn't happen in the release-based distros. It has happened to me more that once over the last 8 years. I still use it nevertheless, but it's definitely not for everyone.
What is this rolling release fiasco? Even Ubuntu, which I use now has a "release" (technically an pt-get upgrade), almost every other day. But I've never had it break my system. If you keep your Ubuntu updated a dist-upgrade works just fine.
I might try Arch again, but for now I'm sticking to Ubuntu.
So why exactly is Arch a better Linux distro compared with the rest ? There's no "sellingpoint" in the article except this "dig" at the other distros : "apt-get dist-upgrade or something similar every 6 months or so (and risk breaking everything)"
- a very mature community of users. The arch docs and forums are really good. If you ever have a problem, you'll find a solution in no more than a few clicks
- an extremely tidy package manager. The choice of packages is huge and - more importantly - creating and maintaining a package is extremely easy. Way easier than making .debs or .rpms
- it just works. I've used arch for more than a decade on all my machines, including servers. I never had major issues. Annoyances coming from upstream are unavoidable of course, but the distro is well organised that identify the problem and rolling back is super easy.
It's that flexibility which allows people to create arch installs with a very low memory footprint, or crazy-fast boot times, or bleeding-edge software.
Another part of Arch's allure is its overall simplicity: it is possible to learn how to administer the entire system within a day or two. The wiki makes it easy to read up and learn about how to configure a portion of your system should you want to, and the installation covers of your system covers most of the fundamentals anyway!
Pacman (and pacaur!) are great, and having the latest packages is also great (I've only needed to reinstall my Arch setup once in the 5+ years I've used it, by the way), but these days we have Docker and VMs which are fast and usable enough on commodity hardware that they can be used to safely compile and run custom packages if you really need them, so it's not quite as cool as it was back then, but having it integrated into your package management system (and getting updates from AUR maintainers on packages based on git clones!) is still very useful.
So why exactly is Arch a better Linux distro compared with the rest ? There's no "sellingpoint" in the article except this "dig" at the other distros : "apt-get dist-upgrade or something similar every 6 months or so (and risk breaking everything)"
And he didn't mention that in Arch a routine upgrade can break everything which rather doesn't happen in the release-based distros. It has happened to me more that once over the last 8 years. I still use it nevertheless, but it's definitely not for everyone.
So why exactly is Arch a better Linux distro compared with the rest ? There's no "sellingpoint" in the article except this "dig" at the other distros : "apt-get dist-upgrade or something similar every 6 months or so (and risk breaking everything)"
In my opinion, the selling point is that arch requires you to take interest into how it works and some level of understanding of the major parts. To get a working arch install you'll be taken through The Install Guide that summarises the steps necessary to have a base install with links to relevant specialised articles. Once you have a bootable system, they provide links for further customisation if your system. The…
The nature of the system is that updates can absolutely bork the system at any time so you have to keep up to date with potential issues before doing updates. Many other distros do this work for you so you only have to worry every couple of years (or six months if you want).
Don't get me wrong, Arch is great if you're willing to keep up the effort but it does require more attention than more mainstream distros.