It depends what you want out of your system. If you just want a “plug and play” machine that will do most things reasonably well, by all means stick with Ubuntu.
If you want complete knowledge of exactly what you’ve got installed (and just as importantly what’s not been installed) and how it’s been set up, and tuned and tweaked to your ideal requirements, Arch is a great choice.
You learn more about the components of your system, and therefore learn more about fixing things or debugging what could be wrong. Arch is only difficult once.
I wanted to say exactly this.
I started out on Ubuntu and it was this scary thing that just worked. If something broke id run to google and see what I did wrong and blindly follow answers that added a lot of crap to my system. I was so afraid of poking anything that lay outside my /home.
Eventually I hopped around a bit and landed on Arch after a few other systems that never really seemed right.
3 years later If I break something I can actually understand why most of the time and if I cant, the Arch forums explain what I need.
Using arch made me slow down trying to fix stuff because there was less to break. And if something broke, it was something that I installed myself and thus knew about. (Apart from some really horrible python and js that refused to be purged back to the fires of hell)
All in all Id never go back to a hand- holdy system, Its my system, yes its wonky as hell sometimes, but I know whats going on there and on tge off chance something vreaks on a deadline, ive got an arch stick with all my important scripts to reinstall my system if needs be.
I think there’s benefits with more recent packages, the package manager (pacman) and the AUR. But if you’re new or don’t have much experience then something like Ubuntu or Mint is a more sensible distro to begin with. At least they start with some applications and such so you know what’s out there and how some things work.
Archwiki is probably the best Linux documentation in existance. It greatly lowers the barrier of entry.
I started using Arch a few months ago. Before I would always go for Ubuntu or Fedora, then saw a video of a guy on YouTube installing Arch using archinstall and setting up his HyprLand setup. It was super thorough so I gave it a shot, and came to the conclusion that even though distros like Ubuntu and Fedora are easier to install and get going, once you get to a program or utility that doesn’t have a maintained package for your distro, you’re no better off than anyone else, maybe even worse off as you’ll probably be using an old guide or trying to follow some post that isn’t 100% relevant to their case. The AUR is incredible and there’s something truly awesome about installing that fresh git version with no fuss.
Arch is a rolling release that gets the newest software once it’s available. Ubuntus is Debian-based and it’s also following the principle of stability over modernity so there’s a big difference between how recent software you’re gonna run on those two types of distros. But if you want to try the rolling approach you doesn’t have to go directly for arch, you can use some Arch-based distro like M*****o (not recommended due to justified controversy). I know there are also Arco, Artix and Garuda that are arch based but I didn’t test them. You could use them, experience pacman and aur but without struggle of setting up arch and once you get comfortable you may want to give arch a try
No recommending manjarno :(
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DDOSed the aur: 2 times
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Let their SSL certificate expire: 3 time
I might have got my numbers wrong
Stuff that actually affect users:
Manjaro holds back regular packages by one day but not aur packages, leading to dependency
Good call out I’ll update the comments. From my reading it also seems like they take a lot from arch sources but don’t really contribute so another downside here
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I want to point out that stable in this context doesn’t necessarily mean less buggy but means that the system changes less.
Right, from my experience it means that you just have to wait much longer for the bug fix to reach your device. From PC perspective I like the rolling approach much more as I feel much more up to date with the software that I’m using especially when it’s mostly foss where I browse the open issues and release notes on a regular basis
Seems like you answered your own question. Arch is not for people who want something that works out of box. If you want a GUI, suspend on lid close, sleep on idle, etc. by default, don’t do Arch. You have to be prepared to debug issues, configure lower level OS features, and read a lot through the wiki and web searches of you are going to use Arch.
If you just want to fire up your system with arguably sane defaults and use it, no there really isn’t. Where Arch shines is in providing a mostly blank slate for people with opinions about how their system should be set up. It provides the tools and documentation then mostly stays out of the admin’s way.
