I’m a little bit underwhelmed, I thought that based off the fact so many people seem to make using this distro their personality I expected… well, more I guess?
Once the basic stuff is set-up, like wifi, a few basic packages, a desktop environment/window manager, and a bit of desktop environment and terminal customisation, then that’s it. Nothing special, just a Linux distribution with less default programs and occasionally having to look up how to install a hardware driver or something if you need to use bluetooth for the first time or something like that.
Am I missing something? How can I make using Arch Linux my personality when once it’s set up it’s just like any other computer?
What exactly is it that people obsess over? The desktop environment and terminal customisation? Setting up NetworkManager with nmcli? Using Vim to edit a .conf file?
Now actually use it for a couple of years. Then you’ll see whats special about it.
For me personally, Ubuntu was breaking on every dist upgrade, the software was always out of date or not available in the repos. Been running arch for 5 years, same install, even transplanted it over to newer computers without issues. When some package is missing, I can throw together a PKGBUILD with chatgpt and put it on the AUR for others to use. It fucking rocks and is extremely sturdy while allowing me to do with it whatever I want.
But yeah, besides that, it’s just a linux. The individual things it does well are not even exclusive to arch. Ideally, you should not think about your OS at all and it should be out of your way, while you do something on it.
Any major Linux distribution has a system for building packages, it’s not something special to Arch. In fact, Arch’s great advantage of the aur repository actually becomes a disadvantage by introducing instability and insecurity into your system when you add programs from that repository. It’s amazing that people criticize Windows security with .exe’s and then install packages from external repositories with the security of “trust in the repository”. How can you trust code with root access to the system just because it’s in the aur repository? That’s the main question I would ask Arch users.
It’s a choice. We know that it’s riskier to use stuff from AUR. Which is why it’s highly recommended to read the PKGBUILD before installing the package. The basic Arch install doesn’t even include an AUR helper. That said, AUR is typically very reliable for packages with a decent userbase. It’s mostly due to the community aspect. Bad actors are caught relatively easily as the PKGBUILD is available to look at.
Any major Linux distribution has a system for building packages
I have built packages for all the major ones. Non arch packages are a pain to build and I never want to do it again. In contrast arch PKGBUILDs are quite simple and straight forward.
How can you trust code with root access to the system just because it’s in the aur repository?
Because you can view the source that builds the packages before building them. A quick check to not see any weird commands in the builds script and that it is going to an upstream repo is normally good enough. Though I bet most people work on the if others trust it then so do I mentality. Overall due to its relative popularity it is not a big target for threats when compared to things like NPM - which loads of people trust blindly as well and typically on vastly more important machines and servers.
It’s amazing that people criticize Windows security with .exe’s and then install packages from external repositories with the security of “trust in the repository”.
As with almost every case of these sorts of comparisons, these are likely separate groups of people holding separate groups of opinions.
I don’t use Arch anymore, but when I did I found that the AUR was really useful to quickly install niche applications that would take ages to be approved on to an official repository. Often those would be made by the application developers themselves or members of the community. I would personally vet the packaging script myself, but I’m sure many wouldn’t - and that’s fine. As with most software, there’s some trust involved and often you assume that if you’re installing from a reputable repository it’s going to be fine. If people aren’t vetting the installation scripts and are installing from random repositories, that’s really their problem. I’m glad the possibility existed and it’s the one thing I’ve missed in distros I’ve used since then.
Well there is far less malware on Linux tbf so comparison is not completely accurate. But same caution applies, try to vet and understand what you install. That part is also easier with the AUR as it’s transparent in the packagebuild what it does unlike random exes with closed source. It’s also a large community with many eyes on the code so unless it’s a package with few users then it’s gonna get caught pretty quickly.
That is, you admit that most aur users delegate that function to other eyes instead of auditing the external code they are installing. A user repository outside of the official distribution repository is not a secure means of installing packages on the system, which may have root access to the system and the source code may change with each package update. Do you think that every time there is an update to a package that is not widely used, others will audit the source code for you? For that reason I stopped using Aur and by extension Arch, as their software catalog outside of aur is small.
there is far less malware on Linux
That’s a common misconception. Linux is the most popular OS for servers. There are a lot of malware for Linux, probably even more than for Windows.
Makes sense. Do you find that by having the same install for so long (including transplanting it) that you have accumulated a lot of bloat? One of the things I really enjoyed about a fresh install was that I knew there wasn’t a build-up of digital junk files, but with Arch fresh installing every once in a while just seems impractical.
Not in any bothersome way. But if you really want to reinstall often that is valid as well. You can very easily script the arch install process to get you back to the same state far easier than other distros as well. Or you can just mass install everything except base and some core packages and reinstall the things you care about again which almost gives you a fresh install minus any unmanaged files (which are mostly in home and likely want to keep anyway).
I’ve been using Arch for about 15 years or so, and yes, I build up cruft… in my home directory ;-). The system itself is remarkably good at keeping tidy. The one spot to keep an eye on is /var/cache/pacman, as that’s where it stores every package you download before installation and it won’t delete it without you asking it to.
Any new config file will be saved with a .pacsave extension, so you’ll want to keep an eye out for those, but that’s basically it
Most of the junk accumulates in /home and I did a cleaning once, where I got rid of a couple hundred GB there, from stuff that was either already uninstalled or still installed but unused for years.
In the other root directories, I didn’t find much tbh. My / (excluding home) takes up 40GB and I don’t think it was significantly lower years ago as the bulk of it comes from necessary program files.
Yup, Arch is by far the distro I have had the fewest amounts of technical issues with. Yes, you need to know what you are doing or be willing to read docs, but there’s no magical bullshit, maintainer capriciousness and lack of planning happening like I have unfortunately witnessed all too often while using other distros.
Linux distros are made for using, not teaching. That’s what LFS is for: https://www.linuxfromscratch.org/lfs/
How is this relevant? They were talking about how Arch has a great user experience
Most of the time it is achieved with the phrase: “I use Arch, btw”. 😉
Didn’t bother going through the hoops and installed EndeavourOS which is arch-based with some additional default applications.
For me, the best thing of Arch isn’t the distribution but the Arch wiki. An impressive piece of documentation.
Arch wiki is superb, couldn’t have installed or configured Arch without it.
And the Arch User Repository is really handy when you need some more users.
The Arch build system is just as impressive IMO. I’ve written Debian and redhat packages for at least two decades and Arch packaging is just so much easier to handle. The associated tooling for creating and managing build chroots is excellent as well.
Did you use arch-install or manual classic install
Nobody’s raving about the install, that’s just useful for people who don’t know what makes a Linux distro.
It becomes your personality after a few years because every update might break anything, and you need to regularly maintain random shit. Also if you forget to update regularly, the chance of everything crapping out rises exponentially.
I hope you’re using something like btrfs, because rollbacks are a must.
Sorry you’ve had such a rough go, just remember your experience isn’t everyone’s experience.
