Is Arch REALLY worth installing?

[PsychoDevon]

I am considering switching from Mint/Ubuntu to Arch.

Today, I tried out openSUSE, and realize for the final time that KDE is NOT for me. I've considered Arch for a couple of days now, and here are the reasons why:

*When including the AUR, a MASSIVE collection of repository packages that are easy to install.

*A rolling release system, which in my opinion seems very appealing

*I only install what I WANT. Not what comes with it.



But, with all of this in my mind, I would really like to see those who switched to Arch and see what they say.


So, here is what I want you to say in your reply:


1) What OS you used before Arch.

2) What were your initial impressions.

3) After installation, is using it easy-to-use day-to-day?

4) Are you happy using it.


Those questions are of course for Arch users only. If you don't use Arch, feel free to say what you think of Arch.

[tjwoosta]

1. Ive used ALL of the major distros and many obscure ones as well.
2. Immediately fell in love.
3. Sure is, just as easy as any other distro but no reinstalling every few months.
4. Definitely, its been over two years and Ive completely lost the urge to distro hop.

[PsychoDevon]

1. Ive used ALL of the major distros and many obscure ones as well.
2. Immediately fell in love.
3. Sure is, just as easy as any other distro but no reinstalling every few months.
4. Definitely, its been over two years and Ive completely lost the urge to distro hop.

Are the repositories in Arch comparable to those in Debian/Ubuntu/etc.?

[Shazzam6999]

1: I distro hopped a lot before Arch. Now I just try out the new Ubuntu every now and then and hop between dwm and openbox a lot, which takes all of five seconds.
2: I was intimidated before installing Arch but after installing it everything was great. It took me a little while to get used to everything but it's great. Being able to install only the packages you want is wonderful; I have use one program for what I need (ie: one mail client, one irc client, etc.) and it's the program I love the most.
3: Sure, I've never had anything break (well without me breaking it like an idiot), I use it for college.
4:<3 Arch

It's intimidating at first but after a few installs it becomes extremely simple, the documentation is excellent and makes the transition really easy.

re the repositories in Arch comparable to those in Debian/Ubuntu/etc.?

My experience with Debian is pretty limited but in my limited experience the repos in Arch are more extensive than the repos. Pacman is an excellent package manager as well.

Of course, I'm biased though.

[wilee-nilee]

Since arch takes a little more hands on installation I tried it out in a virtual just to see if I could get it to run. Had no problems the arch wiki's are very detailed, especially the beginners one. When I have more time this summer I'm going to do a regular install on the HD.

[handy]

OP, it sounds like you are a good candidate for Arch.

Try it in a VM if you can?

The only way to know if you like it is to install it & use it. Like everything else the more you do it the better you understand & the more your understanding expands.

Don't take the easy way out with one of the auto install forks as you'll miss out on the vital education that comes with the process of installation. The easier installs are best for those who already know how Arch works.

I distro hopped until I found Arch, about 2.4 years ago. Since then I sometimes have a look at another system out of interest, on my test machine, thus far none but Haiku could take the place for at least some of what I do on Arch.

I find Arch to be the easiest system I've ever used to maintain. I love the rolling release system, & how easy it is to get out of trouble if you ever upgrade into it (3->4 times since I've been using it).

Here are some how-tos I wrote, on critical topics. You may never need to downgrade a kernel, (I had to once) though the other 2 how-to you will need to do. I wish I had of read these how-tos when I first started using Arch.

Look for the titles starting with [Arch] there are only 3 of them:

http://spiralinear.org/index.php?board=9.0

[Cuddles McKitten]

Arch is good and fun to play with, but you WILL end up breaking it after a while (probably by just updating it). sudo pacman -Syu isn't always your friend. The best way to describe it is a used, old, or custom car. If you like figuring out what's wrong with it and don't mind replacing the alternator yourself, then it'll be fun.

If you're using the box for work, servers, etc. don't get Arch. If you want something to learn with, that's eminently customizable, and doesn't treat you like a child with everything carefully bubble wrapped, then go for it.

[tjwoosta]

Are the repositories in Arch comparable to those in Debian/Ubuntu/etc.?

If you include AUR then definately. The actual supported arch repos really aren't very extensive, but AUR more then makes up for it.

[handy]

Arch is good and fun to play with, but you WILL end up breaking it after a while (probably by just updating it). sudo pacman -Syu isn't always your friend.

If you're using the box for work, servers, etc. don't get Arch. If you want something to learn with, that's eminently customizable, and doesn't treat you like a child with everything carefully bubble wrapped, then go for it.

If you upgrade into trouble, you can be back where you were beforehand after about 5 minutes of easy work downgrading the offending package(s). Provided you have them in your cache.

One of the how-tos I linked to previously goes into this.

Arch is the quickest to fix system I have ever used due to the ease of downgrading a troublesome package. Which by the way from my experience is something that rarely ever has to happen anyway.

[Bachstelze]

No.

Also recurring.