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Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).
Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.
Community icon by Alpár-Etele Méder, licensed under CC BY 3.0
Arch has a very in-depth wiki that's the go-to resource for a lot of Linux users, and it offers a community-driven way to have access to literally anything that's ever landed on Linux ever through the AUR. It's also nice to have an OS that you never have to reinstall (assuming all things go well).
Why that turned into such a cult-meme is anyone's guess though.
I can't speak to Arch but I use Ubuntu every day. I hate on Ubuntu because I use it every day. They make terrible choices. They've got common, serious issues people have reported at least as far back as 2009 with no acknowledgement or plan to address. I'm on LTS and they push through multiple reboot requiring sets of updates a week, heedless of the impacts.
I don't feel like learning a totally new environment so I'll be switching my main computer to Mint whenever I get the time. So I can deal with someone else's annoying decisions for a while.
I was at this point until about 3 years ago. Switched to debian, wont look back.
I feel your pain with Ubuntu, though last time I used it was about a decade ago. As bad as it is (relative to some other distros), it's still miles ahead of Windows. So, you've got that going for you!
People making the things they consume their whole personality, not a rare thing tbh.
The Arch users being so vocal is more of a trope to me. Never fails to make me smile.
Ubuntu started as a great endeavour. They made Linux much more approachable to the less tech inclined user.
It is an achievement to get a distro capable of basically work out of the box that hides the hard/technical stuff under the hood and delivers a working machine, and they did it and popularized Linux in the process.
Unfortunately, they abused the good faith they garnered. The Amazon partnership, their desktop that nobody really enjoyed, the Snap push. These are the ones I was made aware of but I risk there were more issues.
I was a user of Ubuntu for less than six months. Strange as it may sound, after trying SUSE and Debian, when I actively searched for a more friendly distro, I rolled back to Debian exactly because Ubuntu felt awkward.
Ubuntu is still a strong contributor but unless they grow a spine and actually create a product people will want to pay for, with no unpopular or weird options on the direction the OS "must" take, they won't get much support from the wide user community.
Well, Ubuntu uses Snap, which is a rather poor packaging solution that basically no other distro has adopted. By default it's a little bloated, it's made some controversial decisions (rust coreutils), and other distros just do what Ubuntu does better (like Mint)
Maybe it's masochism, but I like Arch because it forces me to make mistakes and learn. No default DE, several network management choices, lots of configuration for non-defaults. These are all decisions I have to make, and if I try to cut corners I usually get punished for it.
However, I think the real reason I stick with arch is because this paradigm means that I always feel capable of fixing issues. As people solve the issues they face, forum posts and wiki articles (and sometimes big fixes) get pushed out, and knowledge is shared. That sense of community and building on something I feel like Arch promotes.
I feel like it isn't really specific to arch, every distro has a following, but some are more "passionate" about it than others. I think arch, NixOS, and gentoo are the most notable.
a reputation more than 10 years out of date
I just think its good.
The way I see it, you can have an OS that breaks less often and is hard to fix, or an OS that breaks a little more often that is easy to fix. I choose the latter. 99/100 times, when something breaks with an update, it's on the front page of archlinux.org with a fix.
The problems I've faced with other distros or windows is the solution is often "reinstall, lol", which is like a 3 hour session of nails on a chalkboard for me.
I use Arch because I don't know how to use Debian based distros, I got lost when trying to use Linux Mint or PopOS.
Because of all the programming socks adverts with Arch in the background.
Because Arch requires human sacrifice.
Because there are still people who have not yet seen the light. Once everyone has joined the fold they will not be able to remember why anyone resisted in the first place.
Because it's awesome. Join us... join us... join us...
Linux is supposed to be hard and for nerds. Arch is the hardest and most for nerds, and ubuntu is the least. At least that's what I've seen.
No, Gentoo is the hardest.
So I love Debian but it prides itself on stability so packages tend to be older. I think this is good for a server but probably not great for a desktop. Ubuntu came along and was like we'll be like Debian but newer packages. Everything was cool for a while but then they started doing shitty things. The first that I can think of was ads in the terminal. This was not great for an open source app. Then when you did apt install firefox it installed Firefox as a snap. WTF?!?!? (apt should install .deb files, not snaps). Because of this, lately I've decided to avoid Ubuntu.
I used Gentoo for a while and it was great but configuring and compiling everything took forever. I'm getting too old for that. Arch seems like a good alternative for people who want to mess with their system. So it's become a way for people to claim they know what they are doing without having to recompile everything. (Note: I haven't used Arch, this is just my perception)
Recently I got a new laptop and I had decided to put Linux on it and had to decide what distro. Arch was in consideration but I ended up going with OpenSUSE Tumbleweed because it's got the latest but I don't really have to configure anything. If I had more time, I might go with something like Arch but I don't really want to do that much fiddling right now.
How user friendly is the installation process? I've never tried, so I don't know. I'm curious now; just based on how people talk about it, I always perceived it as as distro that requires a lot of technical knowledge to use like Gentoo, which I unsuccessfully tried to install way back in 2010. I'm more knowledgeable and patient these days, so I may be able to work with arch.
People praising Arch, people hating on Ubuntu, meanwhile me on Debian satisifed with the minimalism.
I've started with ubuntu/mint and it was always a matter of time before something broke then i tried everything from then all the major distros and found that I loved being on a rolling release with openSUSE Tubleweed (gaming and most new software works better) and BTRFS on Fedora (BTRFS let's you have boot time snapshots you can go back to if anything breaks).
After some research I found I can get both with arch so installed arch as a learning process via the outstanding wiki and have never looked back. Nowadays I just install endevourOS because it's just an arch distro with easy BTRFS setup and easy gui installer was almost exactly like my custom arch cofigs and it uses official arch repos so you update just like arch (unlike manjaro). It's been more stable than windows 10 for me.
Tldr: arch let's you pick exactly what you want in a distro and is updated with the latest software something important if you game with nvidia GPU for example.
Ubuntu? Its a can't make up its mind what it is trying to be while always becoming a crashy mess. When it first came out I remember trying it and immediately broke it.
The last time I installed it recently it had issues out of the box.
I don't use either now. I have tried both. When I started with Ubuntu i was great; fast, light, all the good stuff. Then it started to get bloated and wouldn't run on my old machine... So I moved to Arch and it saved me and I used it for years.
I don't know about Arch itself on its own but I use CachyOS that is built off it and everything just works for me.
When I got fed up with windows 8.1 (and windows update bricked it), I first used ubuntu. How well or not it worked depended on the version. In version 19 it got some ugly white message boxes. I searched for how to change their color and found an angry dev saying no you cant change that. This was the final bullshit. Then I switched to arch, which lets me choose how my stuff looks and doesn't have the whole 3/4 versions are buggy thing. It works and ubuntu does not.