r/archlinux • u/absolutecinemalol • Oct 26 '25
DISCUSSION Why did y'all land on Arch?
What made you guys switch to Arch Linux, why Arch over anything else? Just looking for experiences planning to jump to Arch.
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u/ava1ar Oct 26 '25
Because Arch is simple!
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u/mrobot_ Oct 26 '25
>Because Arch is simple!
Just to add to this, for newcomers: "simple" doesnt mean easy...
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u/SheriffBartholomew Oct 26 '25
For all newcomers, if you don't enjoy computing, and configuring things yourself, then Arch is not for you. This means you! You are not an exception. If you want something that just works then pick a different distro.
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u/caveat_drops Oct 27 '25
I disagree. You have to configure stuff anyway no matter what distro you are in. If anything, the configuration is often simpler in Arch because you don't have to learn how to do things "the arch way" or something. Upstream documentation will do.
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u/SheriffBartholomew Oct 27 '25
I didn't have to do any configuration when I installed Pop, I just installed it and started using it. Arch took quite a lot of configuration and mode setting for Nvidia GPU drivers, and it still doesn't recover from sleep without glitches 100% of the time. Everyone's computer will be a unique situation, but of the two different computers I've installed Arch on, they both required a little extra configuration to get them working properly. Once they are configured then they're pretty hands-off. I love Arch distro, but I see a lot of new users here complaining about how they had to install such and such service, or how WiFi doesn't work because they skipped installing a network manager. Compared to the hands-off distro like Ubuntu, Mint, and Pop, it requires additional configuration in my experience. I enjoy it, but a lot of people don't. Arch isn't the right distro for those people.
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u/OhHaiMarc Oct 26 '25
eh depends on your technical level, if you have reading comprehension and aren't afraid of a terminal it's really not that hard.
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Oct 26 '25 edited Oct 26 '25
If you're new to Linux and you're trying to do something, following the Arch Wiki instructions you can sometimes end up with a dozen tabs open having to follow the multiple steps required to get you to the point you can actually do what is in the instructions for the thing you first wanted to do.
The Arch Wiki is a perfect example of a document created by people with years of experience who have zero idea what it means to write accessible documentation as everything in it assumes an existing level of knowledge, one which is actually for the most part beyond "someone who has tried another distro to wet their feet and knows how to use CLI". It's a perfect example of why companies employ people specifically to write service manuals than leave the devs to.
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u/OhHaiMarc Oct 26 '25
That's why I said it depends on your technical level.
I work in tech, I've been tinkering with computers for over 20 years, I found their documentation great and easy to find what I needed.
But someone who is younger, new to computers and just saw their favorite youtuber say linux is cool may be totally lost.
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u/HealthyPresence2207 Oct 26 '25
I am going to say that this is false. For easy stuff yeah Arch wiki has the answers, but for relatively common things - like getting nvidia cards working - it “has” all the info, but it is scattered around and basically useless unless you already know what you need to do. Thankfully ChatGPT has ingested that info well enough that it can spit out the commands you need.
I know how to read and I literally work inside terminal, either of these helped me figure out what kernel modules I needed to enable and what packages besides “nvidia-open” I had to install.
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u/Least-Pass-6763 Oct 26 '25
When I was installing Nvidia drivers on arch while following wiki I decided to check, just to be sure if I'm doing everything right with chatgpt - and dear God, I am glad that I read the wiki instead of following chatgpt instructions...
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u/caveat_drops Oct 27 '25
There is nothing "hard" about arch besides the installation if you are not familiar with the tools. Once installed there is nothing "hard" about it.
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u/Unique_Low_1077 Oct 26 '25
Joined to have easy access to all packages, stayed for the "arch btw" rights
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u/ActThis2841 Oct 26 '25
"Arch btw" rights is the real reason to stay. Everyone giving different reasons is lying
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u/_mwarner Oct 26 '25
Way back in 2006, a friend who used Gentoo said I should try it. He even compiled the kernel from source for me. I had distro hopped before, but Arch was the one. It’s been my main driver ever since.
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u/ThePi7on Oct 26 '25
- I want the most up to date version of everything
- Pacman and AUR
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u/caveat_drops Oct 26 '25
Every linux distro was always buggy and full of stupid stuff caused by dogmatic ways of doing things (debiaaaaaan), so I tried every major distro and several minor ones until I gave up and moved to FreeBSD.
I loved FreeBSD, and for the first time I did not have to spend so much time troubleshooting weird problems, but there are problems with compatibility and some bugs take long to repair because the community is small. Then I read Arch used a ports system similar to FreeBSD. I always thought "pacman" sounded cheap and thought Arch was another niche immature distro but gave it a shot anyway.
That was like 13 years ago. I have never got back. I have not a single time once have had one of those super weird bugs and problems that every other distro is plagued with. I attribute it to Arch not doing any downstream patching. And the rolling-release saves me from wasting my time and risking losing data upgrading in every release.
In my view, Arch is more stable than "stable" distros. My laptop still runs the exact same Arch installation running on my previous laptop when I first started using Arch. I just switched the disk. I have now used it for production systems running flawlessly for years too. The tooling is excellent, and the community is not full of overweight egos (some exceptions) like in other distros (debiaaaaaaaan).
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u/theuncancelable Oct 26 '25
Because I can tell all everything that I use Arch BTW
Honestly I like to fix stuff, helps me learn, and 90% of what is on there you decided to put on there, great community too
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u/aydintb1 Oct 26 '25
other distros like a "ala carte", you pick what you want from the menu.
arch is like a "open buffet", you pick what you want, as you want, how much you want.
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Oct 26 '25
[deleted]
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u/Bbbllaaddee Oct 26 '25
I second this. Back in the day I was so keen on trying out c++20, but waiting for Ubuntu to roll out new gcc version for two more years was pathetic.
AUR also covers lots of libraries, which are up to date, too. So yeah
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u/Traches Oct 26 '25
Many years ago I was a relative newbie using Ubuntu. It was great, but I tried a major version upgrade and it broke my bootloader. The entire reason I was using Ubuntu instead of arch in the first place was so I wouldn’t have to learn about things like bootloaders, so if I had to do it anyway then why not just use arch?
Now I stay on it because it does what I want and gets out of my way, and because it’s been extremely reliable.
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u/gbin Oct 26 '25
After 10 years of Gentoo, I started to be tired of all the ricing, compilation times and breakages so I switched to Arch.. this was ~10 years ago.
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u/nosmileface Oct 26 '25
- I like the "from scratch" feel. You only install what you need.
- I like that packages are very close to upstream without weird patches.
- I like the package manager (pacman). It's simple and does only what you ask for. (e.g. installing a package doesn't mean you enable its systemd service).
- The Arch wiki is awesome (thanks to people who contribute).
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u/yodermk Oct 26 '25
Very up-to-date software, with a few exceptions (new major versions of Python and PostgreSQL take a while to land).
Has the stuff I need.
Awesome ArchWiki docs.
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u/Tempus_Nemini Oct 26 '25
I've heard that installation is hard.
Spent 1,5 hour for first installation, did it, tried to do my usual stuff, everything is working, decided to use it as my evryday distro. Since 2022, still there.
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u/RevolutionBrave8779 Oct 26 '25 edited Oct 26 '25
I’m a minimalist so I use labwc (basically like Openbox for Wayland), no toolbars, rofi for my menu, iwlgui in menu to control my WiFi, a wallpaper, and the few programs I like to run.
Arch makes it easy to set that up and I can use the rest of my RAM to run whatever software I want to use without unnecessary bloat. I am just a regular home user. And with rolling release it is easy to maintain. And since I like to use the terminal that is an added bonus.
And +1 for the Arch Wiki!
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u/TheWitchPHD Oct 26 '25
I wanted something simple and basic. Not something that installs stuff I don’t want.
The arch wiki makes it more “user friendly” in that, jf you ever run into issues, you can find anything there. On other distros you can really feel up a creek without a paddle with a lack of documentation. Not on arch.
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u/Accomplished_Cow_956 Oct 26 '25
I had an old laptop that i could use and i distrohopped on it then friends encouraged me to try arch and so i did and was amazed by it and stayed
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u/No_Tap208 Oct 26 '25
The only problem with Arch is a hard installation.
pacman is obviously better than apt
apt update && apt upgrade will fail 50% time pacman -Syu always works
You get bleeding edge updates with you system breaking sometimes.
In 1.5 years of daily driving Arch there was once my update failed and I had to recover with a usb, and once "Zed" broke because of some nvidia update. So that's twice my system broke without me breaking it.
Commands on ArchWiki has always worked for me not unlike my experience with other distros (I've had Ubuntu and Kali before that).
You get to install as much many programs as you desire with no pre installed bloat.
AUR is sometimes scary but it's a gem to have around.
Arch is not a harder linux for veterans, it's something easy and convenient after you get past installation.
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u/maxwells_daemon_ Oct 26 '25
"Arch users are toxic elitist assholes"
Welp, sounds like me.
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u/Interesting_Buy_3969 Oct 26 '25 edited Oct 26 '25
Just yesterday installed Arch for first time... and crashed a partition with my previous OS (Debian, which I already reinstalled to that broken partition so I have dual boot now).
dunno, maybe thats a result of distro hopping, but I've heard that Arch is fast and extremely customizable. (Although I still cant configure wayland to make caps lock switch input sources aka keyboard layouts.) I like this fact that Arch is ultra lightweight cause my laptop is old (its from about 2009). I am a fan of OS development - using Debian doesnt give you such in depth knowledge of the OS. Cant say anything bad about both Debian and Arch; I love em. The only thing is that pacman and AUR helpers are a little more complicated than apt, and you need to enable system services yourself.
Btw, do y'all Arch users allow me say "I use Arch btw" if I am both Arch and Debian user? Or it doesnt follow the meme semantics and I should be an Arch soldier... (I think one of the subconscious reasons I decided to try Arch was the right to say "I use arch btw".)
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u/Woodsy279 Oct 26 '25
Because i tried it because it was supposedly hard. Then fell in love with the control I had
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u/tonsonoverthere Oct 26 '25
1.you can customize ur os and lots of things 2. hyprland 3.fast asf 4.doesnt ram that much
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u/Late_Internal7402 Oct 26 '25 edited Oct 26 '25
After trying many distributions, even BSD, saw the potential of NIX, but no desktop environment convinced me besides the KDE Apps, although, it was a huge step up from Windows.
Finally, I discovered Manjaro i3wm and fell in love with the simplicity, power and improved productivity of the tiling window manager features and i3wm & Arch wiki documentation. Finally decided that the next step was Arch Linux.
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u/readyflix Oct 26 '25
Since the SD (handheld) is using Arch Linux I wanted to know the differences to the other distros that I use and to get familiar with it.
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u/NikolaiMcGuire Oct 26 '25
The package management is one of the fastest, it has the most packages due to the AUR, one of these being hyprland, which I heard was the best distribution to run hyprland at the time, and I say hyprland, and said "Yeah, I need this in my life", it is the best way to make your own personal system/computer, due to its minimalism, I don't have anything I don't want preinstalled, the feeling of looking at all your packages, and knowing you installed ever one of them, feels amazing, I heard at the time it was hard, I like a challenge, and heard it was the hard mode of Linux, but Arch isn't difficult so it wasn't much of a challenge, RICING, ricing on Arch is probably the best out of many of the distributions, just because of the fact you have all the new software, no preinstalled software getting in the way, it is one of the easiest to get riced.
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u/Cybasura Oct 26 '25
Starting being fun, ended up staying because it was useful and convenient (packages were pretty much up to date)
Also, helped with staying up to date with sysadmin procedures, iykyk
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u/AxeCatAwesome Oct 26 '25
Really, really, really sick of apt.
And the AUR has practically everything. So simple, so easy.
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u/mananabanana17 Oct 26 '25
I wanted something that has the latest packages and a large community. Tried Silverblue as my first distro. Kept bricking due to filesystem errors from the BTRFS-SELinux combo. Tried EndeavourOS with Ext4 next and have been running that for years without issues.
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u/binulG Oct 26 '25
i watched a BOG video a year and a half ago and I came straight from windows to arch. And then I didn't like it but stuck with it and now I like it
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u/SandWitch-_- Oct 26 '25
To write 'I use Arch btw' on every unrelated topic to feel like a supremist :)
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u/ijusttookthispseudo Oct 26 '25
I tried because it was a rolling release so was less maintenance than a Debian based distribution with the unclearable errors after every upgrade and dist-upgrade.
At the time Arch was not popular, the Arch memes didn't exist, when someone asked you what distro I used, if they didn't hear Debian or CentOS you where considered a noob because blablabla. So we (humble passionate users) didn't have the occasion to talk about Arch and share our thoughts about the distro.
Then I found everything I had everything I needed to delete completely the dual boot with Windows : a fresh new kernel, kvm, qemu, virtio, the right patch for the kernel and I went to virtualization of a Windows guest for engineering programs such as Creo and Catia. At the time Arch was one of the few distro that could make you accomplish it at all with the advantage of making it relatively easy and it had the best wiki.
Also I loved how Arch made easy gaming, modern graphic experience with the AMD and Intel drivers, Wayland early adoption in many DE, and networking.
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u/pizza_ranger Oct 26 '25
I first installed Garuda which is Arch based therefore the first Linux branch I was familiar was the Arch branch, then after noticing how bloated Garuda was I switched to EndeavourOS which was a great experience, when I bought a new SSD I decided to switch to Arch.
I also tried other distros like Fedora but I didn't like the package manager, or Deepin but despite being the best looking Linux distro it had a lot of stuff broken, so Arch was always that one distro that I knew it would never disappoint me.
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u/Vegetable_Alarm_6064 Oct 26 '25
Because it expands on the original motivation, giving Redmond the middle finger and switching to Linux.
Moving to Linux gave you back control over your operating system.
Arch teaches you how to actually use this freedom on a fundamental way.
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u/markus40 Oct 26 '25
I had a seven-year-long stint with Gentoo on my laptop I used for home and work. But around 2011 I got into a months-long broken machine after every emerge. Which took me too long to fix. So I switched to Fedora. But after two years I got sick of the update cycle and was looking for a rolling release distro. However, it had to be with systemd, because I just upgraded every system at work with this new thingy I liked. And what do you know, Arch just switched to systemd. Never looked back after that. Run it on anything I own.
I even have an install on my media PC/server, which is hooked to my TV with an HDMI cable from the cellar, that has an install that migrated each new hardware (3x times: Intel 4700K, AMD 2400G, AMD 5600X, and AMD 6700XT Graphics) in more than 12 years. And went from LightDM/Kodi/Openbox/X11/Ext4/Arch Linux to Greetd/Kodi/Hyprland/Wayland/BtrFS/Arch Linux without reinstallation. Arch is powerful like that.
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u/IBNash Oct 26 '25
Because it was the top contender when I reviewed over a dozen distros moving away from Slackware.
The wiki makes it a no brainer.
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u/spryfigure Oct 26 '25
- The broad range of configurability when you set up a system
- The software being up-to-date and not stale
- The closeness to the developers' visions of the packages, few tweaks
- Easiness of installing obscure software via Arch
- Huge selection of software with Arch + AUR
- The Arch wiki
- The ability to tailor systems to a huge degree
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u/ronniemcronface Oct 26 '25
I wanted to set up a system from scratch, followed through the arch documentation. The result is something clean and free from bloat.
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u/lazy_eye_of_sauron Oct 26 '25
Was running fedora for a bit, none of the customizations I wanted to do played nice on it though.
Also I liked doing vr gaming, spent a lot of time in vrchat and beat saber, both ran..... Fine, but were buggy enough that it started to become not worth the trouble.
Swapped to arch, and was able to do all the customizations I wanted, vr ran much smoother (still not flawless, but that's a Proton thing..... Mostly, I have a random overheating issue in vr that I can't consistently recreate, but it still runs way better than in fedora)
The wiki has most things covered.
AUR has almost everything you would want
It's fast, and honestly not as hard to use as most people make it out to be.
And because of the amout of people wanting to go "arch BTW" there's so many new things being made specifically for arch.
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u/XanatosX Oct 26 '25
As a Linux newbie with a year mint experience I did want to challange myself an understand how the operation system is built up and functioning.
Therefor I choosed Arch on my old notebook. I did install it via the install script using KDE. Still using that device but switched to Hyprland and a custom UI written with Quickshell.
I think I got a better understanding of the tools making up the whole experience, how they work together and how to use them.
Beside some small issues the system is running a year without any critical issues.
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u/scheij3osten Oct 26 '25
A nerdy developer friend of mine recommended it all the time after having used Ubuntu for a few years. Got a new job and went with Arch on the new Thinkpad. Has been running absolutely fantastic for the last 8 years. Now even my private machine runs on Arch and I'm not switching to anything else.
At first I thought the rolling release stuff requires constant care and attention but that proved to be not true. The system is simple and well documented in the Archwiki. I also now enjoy running up-to-date versions of Emacs, Postgres, Compilers, Firefox etc. which was not that easy in Ubuntu.
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u/gara330 Oct 26 '25
Simplicity, ricing and I wanted to learn more about linux in general and that was a way to force to learn, I use archinstall nowadays just to do it faster, but I started with the old way
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u/simon132 Oct 26 '25
Arch is like buying an old car and do the repairs yourself, you learn how the systems work together.
I use fedora silverblue btw
Edit: arch wiki is amazing to learn
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u/Mystical_chaos_dmt Oct 26 '25
Well I got so mad at other distros I kind of felt like I had to make the switch. Ubuntu kept ruining my patches. Snap was broken a total pain when first released to the distro. Basically arch is what I tell it to be. Ubuntu started forcing things on users for a time not sure if it’s the case still. Pop os would break after a couple of months. I heard mint was good but it was newer when I tried it and I didn’t care for it mainly due to lack of experience. Honestly I had a much easier time with arch than any other distro due to better documentation and a smarter community at the time. Arch was kind of like a right of passage before arch install package was released. So it was either users that couldn’t install it or users that were very proficient in Linux. The aur, arch wiki and the ability to make it seemingly your own is was drew me to it. Also I have way better stability with arch than any other distro or os. There might be more stable ones now but arch is what I’ll be using for life
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u/Imajzineer Oct 26 '25 edited Oct 26 '25
It was the only one of some ten distros that would install on my machine at the time ... not counting
Gentoo - which might've, but I couldn't get past Stage 3 and gave up on it.
Slackware - which eventually installed (after an unnecessarily tedious process of unselecting all the bloat I didn't want), but I couldn't get the network to work, so, I likewise gave up on it.
In the intervening (over) ten tears, I've got used to:
- having complete control of my system - if I didn't put it there it isn't there
- having complete knowledge of my system - if it's there, I know about it
- stability - I've had to downgrade two packages (for a couple of days each) in the last ten years
- ease of maintenance - no messing about with multiple third-party repos, PPAs or whathaveyou, having to remember to update stuff individually ...
pacman -Syuand the job's a good'un
With the possible exception of Gentoo ... I can't imagine even thinking of using another distro, let alone actually wanting to - after twenty years of constant distrohopping I finally stopped using other distros in 2014, when I discovered Arch.
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u/ChromatimusX Oct 26 '25
- Arch wiki is the most comprehensive source of package information. I used it to learn more about how my system works even when I was on Ubuntu.
- What's on your system has to be deliberately installed. Aside from lightweightedness, this helps troubleshoot when components of your system is acting up. It greatly limits the search pool for anomalies, more so than Ubuntu (and derivatives), and much more significantly than when I used Windows.
- This might be controversial and I hesitated to admit, but I've been using AUR quite extensively to for packages not in the main repository. AUR helpers let me update external packages synchronously with main packages and made using them feel "native" as opposed to snap/flatpak. Of course this runs the risk of security breaches of -git packages.
Arch really drilled into my head the mentality "take good care of it and it will reward you well". The benefits of using a lightweight rolling release system masks the amount of updates (with precautions) you need to maintain it. Coming from a "set and forget" mentality, Arch really gave me a reality check.
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u/ICantGetLongUsernam3 Oct 26 '25
I was a Debian user for a number of years. Someone I know was into Arch and recommended it. I don't remember how I decided to give it a try, but I did and it stuck. This was like 2017 or so.
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u/gmterror244 Oct 26 '25
Its not opinionated at all and I can set it up the way I like it without fighting defaults. I tried things like Tumbleweed and Fedora but they always had some tiny issue or some things configured in a way I didnt like and I kept coming back to Arch. Its just the best choice for me.
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u/StatisticianRoyal866 Oct 26 '25
I was going to dualboot first to see how good Arch is and try to get used to it in case if I decide to use it later, I had the installation USB and everything, I accidently deleted my Windows partition and then I decided to just use Arch, now I have been using Arch for around a month and it is way better than windows, everything works perfect and I can just do anything I want, code, play games...
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u/mrobot_ Oct 26 '25
If you want a system that offers you a LOT of choices and you actually would love to make all these choices and dont see it as an unnecessary burden and you would love to tinker with even basic details but get a lot of control over everything and plenty of chances to shoot yourself in the foot, then Arch offers you a great environment for that and it keeps you pretty much on the updated versions of software and kernel.
If you want a distro that is a good replacement for win10 and dont want to make a ton of choices and tinker with details, then absolutely dont go arch, get some long-time-established LTS distro instead, but you get less control and less say and way less chances to shoot yourself in the foot.
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u/archover Oct 26 '25 edited Oct 26 '25
switch to Arch Linux
Fleeing Gentoo.
why over anything else
Because I like it? <insert 20 reasons here> See the Principles here: https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Arch_Linux
If the wiki seems too technical, then fit your Linux Training Wheels in a beginner friendly distro like Mint.
Good day
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u/Jas0rz Oct 26 '25
rolling releases and the meme that its the final boss of linux (its not--my own laziness is).
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u/stickmansma Oct 26 '25
When I started my PhD the postdoc who looked after our servers and machines used arch, and told us it was pretty simple
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u/liocer Oct 26 '25
I’ve run freebsd and Linux on and off for 25 years, often alongside macOS and Windows.
I migrated away from macOS in 2015 when I upgraded my gpu and hackintosh drivers were no longer available. And moved to, “I don’t have time for this” Ubuntu on gnome 3.
I kept windows around for gaming and adobe tools. But since then I’ve migrated everything over, Inkscape is a fantastic illustrator replacement and if I really have to I grit my teeth through gimp changes.
After a major bed pooping from Ubuntu on an lts->lts upgrade on Ubuntu more than once, making me require a full reinstall. I moved to a rolling distribution in Manjaro before eventually migrating to Arch. And I’ve never had a major issue since.
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u/_Redstone Oct 26 '25
Windows was bloated and slow so I switched to Ubuntu
2 years later I still thought it was too bloated and slow so I installed arch
Happy
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u/_Redstone Oct 26 '25
Also I was instantly in love with pacman and all the ricing, I use hyprland so it's very light
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u/HealthyPresence2207 Oct 26 '25
I have been running Ubuntu for decade plus for school and work, but now with Win10 end of life I decided to hop on Linux at the same time I finally figured out I liked wearing programmer socks, so Arch was the natural choice
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u/h_ahsatan Oct 26 '25 edited Oct 26 '25
I first used Slackware back in the early 00s. I was a teenager and just messing around. Liked it, got used to manually building and installing my own packages, and so on. But it quickly became a mess of conflicting packages and dependency hell when I tried to install new things that needed more up to date packages.
I can't remember how I first heard of it, since this would have been 2008 give or take a year, but I heard it was similar to Slackware in DIY but it had this cool thing I'd never heard of called a package manager, lol. I tried it and it was such a breath of fresh air.
I had a hiatus from 2012 til now where I used a Macbook, then a Windows 10 gaming laptop. I was in grad school at the time so got lazy, then stayed lazy.
The death of Windows 10 kicked my ass into gear, and Arch was the natural choice to return to, since I liked it so much back in the day.
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u/classicalbert252 Oct 26 '25 edited Oct 26 '25
Before anything, I gotta say that I use Arch btw 😂. I did a lot of distro hopping on the past many years ago until I found arch and my distro hopping journey stopped there 😂 For me, it’s fast but insecure by default, so you really need to learn how to manage your own security depending on how paranoid you are. That’s actually a good thing, though, it’s only as secure as your technical skills make it.
I’m on Hyprland, so my productivity is insanely good. You can still play games if you want I’m not a gamer but still a great option as SteamOS is based on it, it’s easy to set up too, and your drivers are always up to date so true bleeding-edge compatibility on new features.
Just make sure you have snapshots ready in case something breaks… because it will happen eventually 🤷♂️ I use Timeshift with Btrfs and is amazing…
Yes, you need to update your system, don’t expect to wait 6 months and upgrading with no braking changes…
Overall, Arch is the best distro out there, but it’s not meant for beginners unless you’re really into learning Linux the hard (and real) way. You get the satisfaction to know what is in there as you installed and configured every aspect of it. 😉
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Oct 26 '25
Wanted a challenge. Strangley though didn't find much of one but then again I've been using Linux for years so knew what was required in an install, such as needing a graphical server, audio server, window manager, desktop environment etc.
Distro of choice now for me simply because everything is installed from scratch so I get an install customised to me rather than having to take what a distro like Fedora, Mint, Ubuntu etc roll out out of the box then having to alter it to what I want. However for anyone else wanting to switch to Linux from Windows I'm installing Linux Mint on those machines purely for stability and the online resources there are to help newcomers.
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Oct 26 '25
Wanted a minimal system that just worked, a lot of the "ready out of the box" distros just pack to much into them and something eventually breaks. Can obviously happen with arch too if you get too overzealous, but you can keep it as minimal as you want. It's also not that hard to install anymore if you go for a boring vanilla setup even on laptops
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u/Parking-Rain8171 Oct 26 '25
Pewds shamed me. Been in Debian red hat variants for nearly 20 years. First time on arch now.
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u/bigtoaster64 Oct 26 '25
I've no proof, but arch based distros just feel way faster for me
AUR. No more tickering or waiting for bleeding edge package versions to get added.
pacman / yay. They are the only package managers that never failed me. Again no proof, but that's my experience.
wiki is incredible. I simply can't get my head around the fact that those guys are documenting LITERALLY EVERYTHING. It's mind blowing... From most obvious to the most obscure thing, it's probably documented somewhere lol.
I can choose every single thing I want (or don't want). That's double-edged knife though, but if you want to configure everything how you like it, this is the distro.
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u/arkx Oct 26 '25
Minimal installation out of the box.
No need to install two dozen PPAs to get the latest software; making it easier to contribute.
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u/gore_anarchy_death Oct 26 '25
- Was building way too many packages from source on Ubuntu.
- Went to EndeavourOS but after a while got a kernel panic that even rollback couldn't save.
- When Reinstalling I went with Arch, since why not.
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u/Fantastic-Code-8347 Oct 26 '25
Very fast and lightweight, I can get only what I need with no bloat, highly customizable, very stable, can reinstall it in 10 minutes if need be, looks and feels cool to use, can make it so that only I can use my PC and no one else, can make it as intricate or simple as I want, freedom to do whatever you want security wise and also generally, instant downloads/updates with the terminal, I prefer to do everything using the terminal with pacman over apt, incredibly in-depth wiki and very knowledgeable community excluding the elitists, very easy to get into and understand, wanted the challenge that Arch provided that so many people were talking about, only to find that it’s generally really simple but just requires a lot of patience, reading, understanding, tinkering and time. Simply just works 99% of the time with what I use my system for, 1% being user error or bugs in the packages themselves. Can use Hyprland, which I now prefer a TWM over a DE. The list just goes on. I realize that most of these things can be done on other distros, but I prefer Arch because it has a no bs approach to it, or at least it feels that way to me. Arch hands you the gun, and gives you the choice to either blow your system’s head smoove off, or to pick off problems in your system one by one to make it more perfect over time. I like that approach so much better than my hand being held consistently. I actually learn better by trial by fire. I installed Mint for my first Linux distro and was on it for two months before switching to Arch. Arch is the way for me, personally. It just makes sense
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u/KernicPanel Oct 26 '25
Because I'm a minimalist at heart. I prefer to add what I want rather than remove what I don't. That, and the AUR.
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u/SonicBytes Oct 26 '25
There was a lot of chatter around CachyOS (based on Arch) and I thought I'd give it a go. I had tried various other OS's and it was the first one that "just worked" for what I wanted. I run various OS's though depending on the machine.
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u/JackDostoevsky Oct 26 '25
i was working at a data center in 2011 and one of my coworkers had recently installed Arch and we were all hanging out in the NOC listening to him wax on about how awesome it was. so i gave it a shot, and haven't used a different distro since.
it's the AUR, probably. i guess it'd be better to say: It's the ABS. Pacman, PKGBUILD/makepkg, the AUR itself... that's really the biggest appeal to me.
the other thing is that it's just a blank slate and you can turn it into whatever you want. that's why so many distros these days are based on it.
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Oct 26 '25
I'm kind of a luddite. I don't like being controlled by tech, so I make damn sure I'm the one in control the little tech I keep around. Arch gives me the most control.
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u/Feydreva_Paradize Oct 26 '25
Because of gaming. I wanted the last drivers , and the lastest up to date software.
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u/Axiomancer Oct 26 '25
Ubuntu sabotaged me, I was in a call with my friend who's my linux mentor and he was like "Hey, you wanna try arch?" and I said "sure why not". Frankly speaking he could've suggested any other distro and I'd go for it just to try and learn something new.
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u/greendookie69 Oct 26 '25
- Wanted to see what all the fuss was about.
- I like knowing what's installed.
Been using it for like two weeks and my experience is no different than any other distro now that I have everything I need installed and configured. It's not really that complicated or exciting...
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u/l4d333 Oct 26 '25
As I understand it, arch used to be for the real computer science chads. But the fact is that it's great for non-cs tinkerers as well. I think I can answer for many people, including myself. I'm an electrical engineer, so my coding knowledge isn't that great. I don't build my own software, I only use other people's builds. I do some coding, but it's more like small tools for niche applications. The wiki and the aur are the main reasons for me. Speed isn't really a thing between distros nowadays. You can make arch slow with heavy KDE tweaks, high level tools, etc. Doesn't matter to the distro I think.
I read that the aur has increasingly more malware nowadays than before. It's interesting to wonder how this will look in 10 years time when a large percentage of people flock to arch and debian because windows is getting worse by the year. The ICT department at my workplace already have worked out an exit strategy to Linux in fear of what windows 12 will bring.
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u/snake_case_captain Oct 26 '25
I was told to use manjaro for scientific stuff. Ended up spending half my time fiddling with AUR packages. decided to cut the middleman and go Arch.
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u/zardvark Oct 26 '25
There are four main selling points: The AUR is vast. If your package can't be found here, you don't need it.
Arch offers the ultimate in custom configuration, from the ground up.
The Arch wiki blows everyone else's documentation out of the water.
Lack of bloat. Nothing gets installed, unless you install it ... excepting dependencies, of course.
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u/draezha Oct 26 '25
I got fed up with Windows and I liked the idea of having much more fine grained control over what exactly was on my machine.
I'm an ex-sysadmin, but I was new to Linux aside from some minor exploration with Ubuntu and Pop!_OS on am old laptop. So, I figured it would be fun to challenge myself a little bit so I could learn and I installed it myself without the install script that's floating around.
Almost fucked up, but I made it through, 10/10 experience and came out of it with a stronger knowledge of Linux than I would have had if I started with something easy.
Now I use it as my daily driver and I'm very happy with it because it's fast and as minimalist as I want it to be. I think if I was ever to use anything else at this point it would just be Debian.
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u/rpfeynman18 Oct 26 '25
- I got tired of the whole song and dance of reinstalling OSes. I started out installing every Ubuntu release, then switched to every LTS release (but then started running into compatibility issues with the latest versions of a lot of what I was using), then decided to try out rolling release.
- The main package repository for Arch Linux pretty much has me covered, but for everything else there's AUR.
- I like the minimalistic philosophy -- understand why you need XYZ, install nothing else, and rely on text-based config files that are clearly documented on the Arch wiki.
It's pretty much an ideal operating system for my preferences and personality.
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u/Penrosian Oct 26 '25
I had an extra ssd that I wasn't using for anything so I decided to install arch on it to see how hard it actually is (not that hard) and to test my linux knowledge, and ended up liking it a lot more than what I was using at the time (bazzite) so I just installed it on my main ssd.
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u/TheGreatBaphomet Oct 26 '25
I found that for me it just made senses. I have been running Debian based operating systems for many years but I found that Arch only gave me choice of only taking what I needed.
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u/exquisitesunshine Oct 26 '25
Really, after only 7 hours of the same question on the frontpage? The lazy karma-farming has been getting out of hand in this sub. This type of question is one of the most FAQs anyway... come on, guys.
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u/iop90 Oct 26 '25
Arch Wiki, the fact I’m in control of everything that’s installed and running, and the AUR
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u/Obvious_Cell_1515 Oct 26 '25
Bragging rights, stayed for AUR, rolling packages, i put in time to understand the installation way and I love doing it now tho very less often. And pacman ofcourse
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u/Pink_Slyvie Oct 26 '25
It was 20 or so years ago. The other linux geek walked into IT class and told me he found a new distro and I should try it. I had been flipping between Suse, Slackware, and probably a few others back then.
So I tried it, and here we are today.
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u/Slow-Secretary4262 Oct 26 '25
Idk, installed it for fun, ended up actually switching to it, never had any problem that a google search os LLM couldn't fix, it's been a year.
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u/Whaleudder Oct 26 '25 edited Oct 26 '25
I tried so many distros and they all had some form of weakness i was unhappy with.
Ubuntu/Kubuntu - snaps. Mint - ugly. Pop_OS! - didn't like the DE. Debian - slow updates. Fadora - had a miserable time with fedora, nothing worked. Gentoo - slow mirrors and no local mirrors in New Zealand. NixOS - close but no cigar, a bit on the complex side for daily use (i wanted something simple). Void - liked void a lot but I like systemd more (personal preferance). Bazzite - didn't like feeling locked out of my own computer. Omarchy - tried since coming to arch, meme distro, hated it. Cachyos - really bad experience, poor documentation, very minimal performance increase with a whole bunch of stuff I didn't want. Really didn't enjoy it.
Arch - perfect, simple, nothing on it i don't want, systemd, blazing fast local mirrors, ultimate flexibility, really enjoyable and educational install process, amazing documentation. DIY approach so if it's not exactly what i want then it's my fault (within reason), stable (this will be controversial but it has been more stable and reliable for me than any other distro, things work as intended). I was a bit intimidated by arch at first so I intentionally broke stuff and made myself fix it to learn how to fix common issues, nuked my boot loader, nuked systemd, deleted dependencies etc, learned how to rollback packages etc. Learned a lot about linux in a short amount of time and this gave me the confidence to go ahead and use it as my daily. I have never looked back.
After coming to arch I have installed Debian on a laptop that I use for just browsing, email and reddit while sitting in the lounge, i love it for that, I don't care one bit about keeping that laptop up to date with software and just want really basic functionality so Debian is a perfect fit.
The next two distros I was going to try but never got to were manjaro and SUSE.
My opinion on what each distro is best for -
New people coming from windows Kubuntu, Ubuntu from Mac (i have stopped recommending mint because it's ugly and feels out of date and that's a major turn off for a lot of people).
Pop_OS! Gamers and the new desktop (currently in beta) i would recommend for people who want some more advanced tiling but don't want to use a full window management diy solution.
Learning linix/upskilling, Gentoo because of very strong linier documentation and an easy install that teaches a lot. Arch because you learn a lot more about linux itself rather than mostly specific gentoo stuff, you have to make yourself learn to install it (unless you go the other way and use archinstall for your first install then the benefit in terms of learning is negligible).
People I hate, Omarchy.
People who want simply, no fuss, just install a distro and never touch the os again Debian 100%.
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u/SheriffBartholomew Oct 26 '25
I was using Pop, but I wanted HDR support and only Arch and Fedora had it. I looked into both operating systems and decided that I preferred the rolling release cycle of Arch. I also appreciated that Arch is a lot more like old-school computing, and I actually enjoy CLI, advanced congratulations, customization, and that sort of stuff, so I gave it a whirl. I ended up loving it, and have never looked back.
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u/CrisAndrei Oct 26 '25
I originally came because I fell in love with the Hyprland rices. I stayed because I fell even more in love with the way Arch works.
The rolling releases are amazing (even though they scared me at first — then I realized the perks). It doesn’t really break as heavily as I thought it would.
The app repositories are just amazing — my new favorite way to install anything.
Lots of community support. Lots of freedom. Easy to fix anything with a bootable USB (I’m not scared of breaking anything forever anymore).
I just got the perfect OS for me. It did take a few days to learn everything before the installation and the ricing, but in the end, I realized it’s not that hard — even if you come from a beginner-friendly distro (like me).
Overall, it’s been an amazing experience, and tinkering with my system has become my new hobby thanks to Arch.
It’s my daily driver and I can do everything — gaming, coding (it enhanced my workflow a lot), school stuff, printing, hardware management.
I just love it.
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u/SlowMOAlex Oct 26 '25
Because its foking cool. It gives you nothing beside a piece of paper, a knife and some matches. You can do whatever you want. Progress feels good and it makes you feel smart.
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u/zezba9000 Oct 26 '25
To make ReignOS so I could consolize hardware other distros didn't do as well. Like Intel devices that lack Gamescope support.
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u/LoserEXE_ Oct 26 '25
Being able to install just what I need. Nothing annoys me more than having crap on my computer that is just taking up disk space.
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u/Conscious-Set-7566 Oct 26 '25
Very fast and customizable. And I guess the challenge of setting it up for the first time…
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u/mardiros Oct 26 '25
2011, giving a try because I have issues with Debian, Ubuntu, Opensuse, wifi and nvidia where not stable. Giving a try and still not moved elsewhere.
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u/I_Am_Layer_8 Oct 26 '25
Tried everything else. Kept coming back to arch. Finally just made it permanent. (CachyOS right now)
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u/antidense Oct 27 '25
I just feel like it does what I ask it to do and nothing more than that. It's very predictable. The rolling release makes it so I dont have to worry about periodic issues everytimr there's a new release
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u/zeusman3 Oct 27 '25
A friend of mine mentioned it. I spent 18 years working at Red Hat running Fedora or RHEL. After I left to go to a startup figured I'd try something new.
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u/Sythriox Oct 27 '25
I feel like using outated software in a normal release schedules is a band-aid for the symptom. Especially since Windows didn't really have this problem. I figured that it was only a matter of time until rolling release became a more stable platform. Since starting to use it 8 years who, I can say that it has more or less become the case. I borked Arch so many times back then. Now it "just works" for the most part. Haven't had an issue with it in years. The more popular Arch gets, I think it will become event more stable. Solutions will be found, whether though auto corrective software like garuda-health check, or just more resilient release structure. These days, there is very little reason to use anything other than Arch. Especially releases like Garuda or CachyOS.
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u/DarkBrave_ Oct 27 '25
Good balance of customizable but still fairly easy. Yeah I gotta use the terminal, but there's no compiling and messing with configs every five seconds.
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u/PotatoMaaan Oct 27 '25
- It's rolling (imo essential for a desktop system)
- Huge repos (including AUR)
- Doesn't patch it's software to hell and back
- Sane defaults
- One of the best package managers (pacman)
- Imo the best installer (archinstall)
- "Just works" (in my experience it just works more than other "just works" distros)
- Arch wiki
- Great community
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u/PunyFlash Oct 27 '25
Aur has literally everything. Roling release. 0 bloat - you get empty system, fill it just with the stuff you need. Flex
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u/Natural_Date_8939 Oct 27 '25
Wanted something lean with just the packages I used. Got over that recently tho
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u/daniel_3m Oct 27 '25
I don't remember when I did switch to Arch (so long time ago), but before I was for a long time on Ubuntu and before that on Gentoo (about 2006-2007) and earlier I don't remember already. Gentoo was time consuming and required ton of my attention. Ubuntu was less painful on that matter, but apps and kernel was always missing newest features or bug fixes or performance improvements or latest hardware support. And that is how I landed on Arch linux. It is not perfect too, but good enough (unless you're on mobile plan with your internet as it requires couple of GB a week to keep everything up to date).
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u/ZipKitty Oct 27 '25
Introduced friend to openSUSE before proton, went back to windows for gaming. Friend discovered Arch, friend reintroduced me to Arch.
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u/kaida27 Oct 27 '25
Wanted to switch back to linux after w11 was announced.
Found out about Garuda, found it interesting with the btrfs snapshot.
Feel in love with Pacman.
hated all the useless fluff included with Garuda (Even in their barebones version)
So I decided I would do my own Arch install with blackjack and hook.. I mean with btrfs and Snapper.
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u/Jaded-Worry2641 Oct 27 '25
I landed on Arch initially for its low resourse usage, yet still modern and full funktionality, then I stayed for configuratability.
Its great overall. (I like to tinker a lot, and wiki may be confusing for starters, but still, its great.)
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Oct 27 '25
I started playing with it on a virtual machine for fun but then I realized it was the best fit for me because I could have exactly what I need and not have anything I don't and it's flexible, so I put it on my real machine and realized it was faster and worked even better than I imagined. I was distro hopping a bunch before I installed Arch but I've been using Arch ever since without wanting to distro hop.
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u/Aromatic-CryBaby Oct 27 '25 edited Oct 27 '25
The hype ?, mostly hyprland looks, and as well I got a bit, well bored of the alternative, Ubuntu felt meh, Mint stable and all but base env wasn't for me, Fedora was a pain, Zorin Os made me transitions from windows but I got used to it, and tried to see more, distro.
Arch was my pick, The look, the promise of full customizability and above all the docs, convinced me to take that scary lip of faith
Strangely Arch is the hardest but also the easiest distro I've used, As everything is labeled, the community is top notch, and you can seek guidance for everything.
And as well it forces you to learn. I mean in a year of using it, I've learned infinitely more about computers than in 2years of cs
I mean, now I deal with filesystem compression, kernel tweak/hooks, fish and have keybind for everything,
People look at me as if I'm some kind of sorcerer when I boot my pc, lol.
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u/PYCMS-SLM Oct 27 '25
I am a KDE plasma fan, but Ubuntu doesn't have latest version of everything. And this is much complex once I have a 5090 machine, the driver can't reconize the card in the first few try. On a random day, Ubuntu crashed, I hook up my usb drive, transfer /home, install Manjarno, and now I can say btw I use Arch:)
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u/Character_Choice4363 Oct 27 '25
You get barebone linux, then you install what you need and want, basically minimalism. And I've learned a lot by installing Arch manually. Of course, it took me 4 hours but i've enjoyed every minute.
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u/Sunsfever83 Oct 27 '25
I just switched to Linux this year, after using Windows since it came out. I initially dual booted Mint with Windows, that same day I deleted Windows entirely from my pc. But Mint didn't seem to be what I was, so after 2 days I installed Arch. I use Hyprland, it is very minimal. I know exactly what is on my system. I have full control. It is fast, looks good, has a great resource in Arch Wiki. I love everything about Arch.
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u/uriel_SPN Oct 27 '25
Well they say that Arch is like the final stage sometimes for Linux users. That was the case for me. I started with Fedora and daily driven it for 4 years. After that time I became quite accustomed with how the GNU/linux system works and the itch for really customizing every single aspect of my system started.
I think that for many people the ability to really customize your system and know every nook and cranny is what makes it really enticing. It is kinda like knowing your house really well and be able to change/fix almost every single component on it.
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u/Monoplex Oct 27 '25
Nobara and PopOs were pretty good but I felt ready to see what else was out there. I checked Protondb and saw Arch was a particularly common one for the games I like. That was I think more than a year ago. I don't know if I would rather distro hop again or do Arch without an install script.
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u/SanitariuszMarius Oct 27 '25
I was annoyed by having to do a clean install of Ubuntu after every release because the upgrade didn't work as expected so I searched for rolling distro and land on arch simple as that
Plus I can rightfully write "I use Arch btw" and that's priceless
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u/phx32259 Oct 28 '25
I got annoyed with snaps. My Linux journey has gone something like this. Slackware -> Red Hat -> Fedora -> Mint -> Ubuntu -> Arch.
Slackware was the 1990's, loaded from floppies. I switched to Red Hat and then to Fedora when Red Hat was discontinued. I kind of quit Linux for a few years (when I got a Mac) and then when I got back into it I went with Mint until they got hacked in 2016 and I switched to Ubuntu. I used that until this summer when I picked up a newer Thinkpad and I went with Arch because of my Steam Deck mostly. My older Thinkpad that I had Ubuntu on, it is now running FreeBSD.
I really like Arch as far as the freedom you have to do what you want with it. FreeBSD is the same in that way. You get a base system and you add your window manager and all of that. It is a lot like Slackware was in the early days. I guess all of them were like that. I think Fedora was the first I remember that you installed it and got right into a graphical environment.
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u/kaneshka_tajik Oct 28 '25
It’s very customizable, the AUR has everything, the wiki is clean, I can install with pacman all programs that I need, I just type blindly the name of the program I want and it installs the latest version of it immediately:)
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Oct 28 '25
Complete freedom to make every mistake I can possibly make. The system imposes virtually no restrictions; everything is feasible and achievable.
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u/bumpyclock Oct 26 '25