Linux

I wanted my computer to be secure but headless. Suse, fedora both had supposed instructions but in classic Linux style they had a bunch of out of date commands and software and it didn't work. Fedora always required a human to enter a password on boot, suse just bricked.

Endeavarch had instructions (a maze of unclear gibberish, to be honest) that actually worked and did what I wanted with minimal fuss and it's been operating well for 2 years.

I initially started using it because I needed the newest drivers and back ports on Mint was taking to long, since then I've stuck with rolling release so I don't have to deal with driver hell. I stick with Arch over say Debian Tumbleweed at this point mostly from momentum.

It's a good question and years ago I might have asked the same thing. I'm a minimalist and I really dislike all the extra crap that comes with all-in-one distros these days. Not just installed programs, but also daemons and services that start by default. I hate the idea that I have to go in and manually turn them all off on new installs. I used Ubuntu for a long time but slowly got more and more annoyed at the bloat. The snap situation was the final straw that pushed me to explore other distros. I landed on Arch and really liked it. A new Arch install can be incredibly clean, basically providing nothing more than a command prompt from which you can install what you need. The only stuff running on your machine is what you explicitly put on it. There are a couple things I get annoyed with in Arch, like some baked-in drivers for hardware I don't have, however it's minor enough that I can let it go. I also played with Gentoo but couldn't get comfortable enough to make it my daily driver. Arch is my personal best-balance between cleanliness and effort.

Arch is honestly pretty simple compared to what it was like to install Linux in the 90s...

That said, I mostly run Debian, and have a little smattering of arch. Much like running testing & unstable Debian on two of my machines, I have it there to check out new things and for testing purposes. Same goes for arch, I'm using it to test out new things.

Rolling releases, great docs, great amount of software available with the package manager, especially with the AUR.

I went through the manual installation a few times and while the general process is annoying and error-prone, after setting up the basics many things worked great out of the box, even the printer I once had. I'm on Endeavour now which mostly does exactly what I want.

It's actually less trouble. Back when i used ubuntu based distros I ended up using the arch wiki anyway, and I never successfully upgraded from one ubuntu LTS to the next without problems anyway, so I figured why not try the distro that doesn't have upgrades and has amazing docs. It's much more stable.

A rolling release means you get new versions of software almost as soon as þey're released, instead of waiting for 6 mos for þe distribution to package and release it.

Even Arch's LTS kernel is updated more frequently þan Debian's. Þe trade-off is rebooting more frequently. I have personally also experienced less breakage upgrading software frequently þan big, all-in-one-shot upgrades. I won't claim þis is þe common experience, but "dependency hell" for me was always Redhat, and þen Debian.

I currently use bazzite, but I learned more about Linux by installing arch from scratch than anything else I've ever done with my PC. It was a beautiful experience and I will never forget it.

I recently got a new laptop, and I'm considering installing arch again on the old one again to have a system available that is less restrictive. I'd probably use an installer this time around...but maybe not.

It works well for me.

Actually, I am a long-term Debian user (for 15 years) and use it in parallel with Arch, since about ten years, and I had less trouble with Arch: When upgrading from Debian 10 to 12, GNOME broke for me so that I could not log in any more. I spent a day or so to search for the cause - it is related to the user configuration but I could not figure out what it was and I had to time-box the effort, and switched to StumpWM (a tiling window manager, which I had been using before). I had no such problem with Arch, and on top of that I could just install GNOME's PaperWM extension just to give it a try.

You could argue that my failure to upgrade was GNOME's fault, not Debians, and in a way this is true. Especially, GNOME should not hide configuration in inscrutinable unreadable files, and of course it should parse for errors coming from backwards-compatible breaking changes.

But the thing is, for software making many small changes is very often much easier than a few big changes. For example because it is far easier to narrow down the source of a problem. So, it is likely that GNOME on Arch had the same problem between minor upgrades, and fixed it without much fuss.

But you also need to see that Arch is primarily a Desktop/end user system, while Debian is, for example, also a server system. Debian is designed for a far larger range of applications and purposes, and having many small breaking upgrades would likely not work well for these.

learning.

It's not really trouble. I use it since 2012 with a few intermediate installs of Debian and Fedora, but I really don't have many issues I can't solve in a few minutes. Rolling release means I never have to do huge upgrades.

Then again, I'm a studied CS expert with 20 years of Linux experience. Wouldn't recommend Arch to people who don't want to exactly know how their system works.

rolling release is a big plus for me, also the modularity and choice of what packages i want on my machine

it's also not really any harder to use than any debian/ubuntu based distro i've used

in ~3 years since i've switched to arch i've only broken it once and it took 15 minutes to fix

I use Garuda. Yes, it's Arch based, but it's also all set up for gaming and newbie friendly. I started on Bazzite, then switched to Garuda, it's just as easy.

I saw a gif about some cool hyprland dotfiles and i fell in love.

Instructions said it was designed for arch.

There are many more other reasons i stayed. Its great to actually feel in charge of my system.

Debian/ubuntu has its uses in server reliability but its missing snap for daily use.

Fedora is to close to corporate for my personal interest.

I've tried Arch - it allows you to make a system that is exactly what you want. So no bloat installing stuff you never need or use. It also gives you absolute control.

On other distros like Fedora, you get a pre configured system set up for a wide range of users. You can reduce down the packages somewhat but you will often have core stuff installed that is more than you'll need as it caters to everyone.

Arch allows you to build it yourself, and only install exactly the things you actually want, and configure then exactly how you want.

Also you learn an awful lot about Linux building your system in this way.

I liked building an arch system in a virtual machine, but I don't think I could commit to maintaining an arch install on my host. I'm happy to trade bloat for a "standard" experience that means I can get generic support. The more unique your system the more unique your problems can be I think. But I can see the appeal of arch - "I made this" is a powerful feeling.

You need a complex system to do something simple. To simply press the gas pedal and fucking go you need an internal combustion engine that is nasty to look at, this confangled monstrosity, harder to manufacture than the batteries that will replace it. When you just drive your car you never have an inkling of the whole mechanism