Linux

The short answer is because I'm lazy. I might lose 30 min during the system setup instead of 20, and now I have a system that I don't have to worry about until the hardware gives up.

Arch is a rolling release distro, which means it's unstable, which doesn't mean what you think, instead it means that you can update your system indefinitely without worrying about "versions". For example, if you had Ubuntu 20.04 installed on your server, in may you had to update it to 24.04, and that's something that can cause issues. And in 2029 you'll need to go through that again. Arch is just constant updates without having that worry. Which means no library is safe from updates, ergo unstable.

Also the AUR is huge, and I'm a lazy ass who likes to just be able to install stuff without having to add PPAs or installing stuff by hand.

Also there's the whole customize the system, I use a very particular set of programs that just won't come pre installed anywhere, so any system that comes with their own stuff will leave me in a system with double the amount of programs for most stuff which is just wasteful.

Finally there's the wiki, while the vast majority of what's there serves you in other systems, if you're running Arch it's wonderful, it even lists the packages you need to install to solve specific errors.

Honestly, in the long term it has been less effort.

If you're an "out-od-the-box" comouter user (web browser, maybe one or two apps, and office suite, then stick with the more conventional distros. If you are very dynamic with your OS, especially 8f you play with a lot of different OSS applications, then Arch get's easier.

I use Arch via Manjaro distribution. Yes, there's some quirks coming from Ubuntu, but basically installing OSS/propreitary software using Pacman/Yay/Add/Remove Software is such a breeze, and it's main selling point to me of Arch so I stay with the distro and say good bye to Debian-based one.

Believe it or not, it's still less work than NixOS (at least for a daily-driver OS)

Some people are enthusiasts that want to take the training wheels off and challenge themselves. I use CachyOS, which is Arch-based, because it thrashes everything else almost every time in speed tests. Thus far, it hasn't proven to be more complicated than the Debian-based distros I've used. I also wasn't expecting better features in Arch with certain programs. Being able to get the absolute newest version of a package at all times has proven to be much more useful to me than detrimental.

I don't understand why Arch is associated with troubles. It was more complicated to fix my issues with Fedora and I don't like Ubuntu default choices. Having the desktop that I like is much easier with Arch and its derivatives.

More software I wanted was packaged for Arch than Ubuntu.

because it's less work. i don't have to strip out what a distro thinks i want. i don't have to worry about major distro releases that might have changes that need manual intervention. if there are updates that need manual intervention, they're small, easy to deal with and usually do not effect me. everything is well documented and standard. packages are installed with default settings/config (to my understanding), so i can easily read upstream documentation and not have to deal with weirdness. getting packages that are obscure is easier. i don't have to worry about upstream having a fix, or supporting something that i need but my distro not having the update in their repo. it's just simpler and easier to manage (for my use case)

I use Artix (fork of Arch with init freedom)—the main reason why I prefer an Arch base specifically is for the AUR. The reason why I prefer a minimalistic distro in general, is because I want to be able to choose what software I install and how I set up my system. For example I don't use a full DE so any distro that auto-installs a DE for me will install a bunch of software I won't use. You also usually get a lot more control over partitioning etc with minimalistic distros—lets me fuck around with more weird setups if I want to try something out.

To be clear I don't think there's anything wrong with using distros that have more things "pre-packaged". It's a matter of personal preference. The category of "poweruser" makes sense—some users want more fine-grained control over their systems, whilst some users don't care and want something that roughly works with minimal setup. Or perhaps you do care about fine-grained control over your system, but it just so happens that your ideal system is the same as what comes pre-installed with some distro. Do whatever works for you.

Because AUR.

haven't tried arch but afaik it's a distro that lets the user control everything, like gentoo or slackware. that's actually an easier system to manage if you know what you're doing and have something you want in mind.

~~or some people just enjoy tinkering and suffering~~

the distro I'm daily driving uses arch as base so I just ride along

I like the rolling updates, to be honest. Endeavour has been a wonderful and simple experience. Aside from some NVIDIA issues with Wayland it has been a blast.

Not a mean question at all. I haven't had more difficulty keeping a working system than I did on Debian, Ubuntu, Mint, Fedora, etc. I get everything I need in Arch and the packages are always fresh off the grill. I also like the emphasis on text config files and a ground-up install. That helped me better understand my system and how it works.

No idea about performance. My performance recommendation is "don't run Windows!" :)

• It's amazingly stable even though it's a rolling release.
• Up to date.
• Maintained by many many knowledgeable people.
• Arch Wiki
• 99% of software you need is packaged, and then there's AUR too.

That's about it, but its my daily driver on desktop and laptop.

because they haven't been privied to install gentoo yet😀

With Archinstall its really easy. You still need to be familiar with the Wiki, but its not hard. Tedious maybe. And running all vanilla software is nice. No distro modification.

As with many of these questions, it depends and it’s subjective. In my case I have a machine running Endevour to tinker with and dip my toes into Arch. The philosophy is different where you need to think more about where your packages come from and be able to validate them (especially the AUR). It’s fun to tinker and better understand the underpinnings and on this machine I have very little that I rely on working so am OK with the increased level of jank.

For work I need a system that I can rely on working like it did yesterday and last week as well as having wide support from vendors. For me that means Ubuntu LTS. In many cases there are tools and applications that I really don’t care about how they work internally, just that they can be easily installed and work in-depth.

I like learning and having control over my pc. But it's mainly the learning part for me, followed the wiki a second time installing arch on my Thinkpad last week and felt just as satisfied as the first time. But no shame in using archinstall.

Because it is less trouble.

I read comments here all the time. People say Linux does not work with the Wifi on their Macs. Works with mine I say. Wayland does not work and lacks this feature or this and this. What software versions are you using I wonder, it has been fixed for me for ages.

Or how about missing software. Am I downloading tarballs to compile myself? No. Am I finding some random PPA? No. Is that PPA conflicting with a PPA I installed last year? No. Am I fighting the sandboxing on Flatpak? No. M I install everything on my system through the package manager.

Am I trying to do development and discovering that I need newer libraries than my distro ships? No. Am I installing newer software and breaking my package manager? No.

Is my system an unstable house of cards because of all the ways I have had to work around the limitations of my distro? No.

When I read about new software with new features, am I trying it out on my system in a couple days. Yes.

After using Arch, everything else just seems so complicated, limited, and frankly unstable.

I have no idea why people think it is harder. To install maybe. If that is your issue, use EndeavourOS.

I don’t really understand the question. All you have to do is run archinstall and then add a desktop environment like KDE and that’s like 80% what other distros do.

I think arch used to be hard to get started but not anymore. That’s reserved for gentoo now

It's the IKEA effect. You tend to like something more if you built it yourself.

After trying Ubuntu for a few days I decided to jump in head first and install Arch on my daily driver, it's been a struggle but I learned so much about Linux I decided to work as a Sysadmin.

I wanted a rolling release distro, and Arch has an amazing wiki. That's why I chose it. Though I ultimately moved on to CachyOS (Arch based), because it's a lot more pre configured than Arch.

Isn't bazzite Arch based? I like it cause I can throw it on almost any laptop and it just works. I've been slowly converting my family, and it is just a nice of of the box experience.

My main reason is, it's not a dependengy hell. If I want to build software, I don't have to go through 5 iterations of being told something is missing, figuring out what that is (most annoying part), installing that and retrying. On Arch-based distros, it's 2 or less, if it even happens.

Also, AUR.

Other points include

• Small install (I use archinstall though, because more convenient.)
• rolling release.
• Arch wiki

My installs never broke either, so it doesn't feel unstable to me.

I like it more than ther distros because

• Debian is a dependency hell, otherwise fine. Older packages. I still use raspian though.
• Fedora has too much defaults that differ from my preferences. I don't want btrfs, I don't want a seperate home partition, dnf is the only package manager that selects No by default. dnf is also the slowest package manager I've seen. Always needs several seconds between steps for seemingly no reason at all. Feels like you can watch it thinking "Okay, so I've downloaded all these packages, so they are on the disk. That means - let's slow down here and get this right - that means, I should install what I downloaded, right. Okay that makes sense, so let's do that. Here we go installing after downloading". I also got into dependency hell when trying something once, which having to use dnf makes it even worse. - I guess you can tell I don't like Fedora.
• Love the concept of NixOS, don't like the lack of documentation

The more you want it to work your way, the less you want a prebuilt solution, and the more you want a rock solid package management system and repo setup. Debian derivatives work in a pinch, or for a server, not so great for a PC you want to do a lot of things on.

After using Debian, mint and Ubuntu off and on for years. I am so much happier running endeavoros. I’ve had no issues with it. It’s stable. I don’t feel like I’m dealing with dependencies and random config battles that I did on mint. It’s been great.

Ease of use.

I’ve run the same CachyOS partition for 2 (3?) years, and I don’t do a freaking thing to it anymore. No fixes, no tweaking. It just works.

…Because the tweaks and rapid updates are constantly coming down the pipe for me. I pay attention to them and any errors, but it’s all just done for me! Whenever I run into an issue, a system update fixes it 90% of the time, and if it doesn’t it’s either coming or my own stupid mistake.

On Ubuntu and some other “slow” distros I was constantly:

• Fighting bugs in old packages

• Fighting and maintaining all the manual fixes for them

• Fighting the system which does not like me rolling packages forward.

• And breaking all that for a major system update, instead of incremental ones where breakage is (as it turns out) more manageable.

• I’d often be consulting the Arch wiki, but it wasn’t really applicable to my system.

I could go on and on, but it was miserable and high maintenance.

I avoided Fedora because of the 3rd party Nvidia support, given how much trouble I already had with Nvidia.

…It seems like a misconception that it’s always “a la carte” too. The big distros like Endeavor and Cachy and such pick the subsystems for you. And there are big application groups like KDE that install a bunch of stuff at once.

Funnily enough, I thought like you and was rocking Debian and various derivatives for years. Then one day, for some stupid reason (an out-of-date library for a side project in the Debian repo) and out of curiosity I tried arch.

Honestly have not looked back since for a bunch of reasons.

First, the package manager (pacman) is just awesome and extremely fast. I remember quickly ditching fedora in the past because, in part, of how goddamn slow dnf was.

Then, it's actually much lower maintenance than I'd initially believed. I maybe had to repair something once after an update broke, and that was expected and documented so no problem there. Plus the rolling release model just makes it easier to update without having version jumps.

Talking of documentation, the wiki is really solid. It was a reference for me even before using arch anyways, so now it's even better.

People also tend to value the customisability (it is indeed easier in a sense), the lack of bloat (like apps installed by default that you never use), and the AUR.

And, to be fair, a good share of people are probably also just memeing to death.

So I don't know whether you're missing something, it depends what you think Arch is like. If you believe it to be this monster of difficulty to install, where you essentially build your own system entirely etc etc.. then yeah, you're missing that it's become much simpler than this. Otherwise if having more up-to-date software, easier ways to configure things and a rather minimal base install so you can choose exactly what you want on your system does not appeal to you, then likely arch is not going to be your thing.

What trouble? archinstall makes it dead simple to get on your computer, then at that point it's not much different from any other distro?

I'd sooner ask why people choose shit like Ubuntu where you're stuck dealing with snaps out-of-date packages, and bloat.

I used Debian and Ubuntu for like 20 years and just got sick of packages being forever out of date, and the Archwiki always having exactly what I needed.

Is it shown that there are significant performance benefits to installing daemons and utilities à la carte?

No, not really.

Is it because arch users are enthusiasts that enjoy trying to optimize their system?

This is IMHO the most important aspect. The thing they're trying to optimize isn't performance, though, it's more "usability", i.e. making the system work for you. When you get down to it and understand all the components of the OS, and all the moving parts within, you can set it up however you prefer and then combine them in novel ways to solve your tasks more quickly.

It isn't any trouble. Rarely an upgraded service requires user intervention. This is usually documented and if not it is easy to search for a fix. I find arch faithfully follows upstream packages and provides a very pure linux experience. As much as I love the Debian community, their maintainers tend to add lots of patches, sometimes exposing huge security flaws. Most other distros are too small to be worthwhile or corporate controlled or change the experience too much.

So you can tell people you use Arch btw

I never found using endeavour any more trouble than using Ubuntu or fedora, and I've used both in school or work so, my question back to you, why do people choose corporate coded distros like fedora or Ubuntu when easy to use, up to date and free as in freedom distros like endeavour exist?

I'm going extra silly: why do you wear bikinis when swimsuits exist? Dunno, preferences. People have them.