Is Arch Linux for you?

**kevinmchapman** · November 29th, 2012

Originally Posted by Bart_D

Yeah, but with that comes a hefty price in terms of more-frequent breakage. If you are a hobbyist and like fixing things all the time, then the extra control is worth it. If not, then I'm sorry but it just isn't.....and you know it.

This is, quite frankly, what a lot of* Arch users don't get when they say that the high degree of customizability is what makes Arch so great.......it might, for them, but not for the vast majority. Such a shame that this gets lost in the discussion, almost always.

* though not all

I shall merely point out that the thread title is "Is Arch Linux for you?", not "Is Arch Linux for everyone?"

**KdotJ** · November 29th, 2012

Just to add in my experiences...

I installed Arch around 3 years a go and used it exclusively for year or so. Their documentation is absolutely amazing, and you can find the answers and fixes for most of the problems that you run into. It was blazingly fast and pacman, in my opinion, is a fantastic package manager.

I had my breakages, as I had fully expected to get. Sometimes got frustrated with trying to fix things that broke as a knock on effects from other breaks, but the whole ride made me understand linux a lot more.

In the end I moved away from using Arch, purely because I wanted to try something different and not because it forced me out. I now use Crunchbang and have been for a while. Maybe I am becoming lazy now, but it's nice to just have a system that works and I don't have to fix things that I didn't break.

I still fire Arch up in a VM though every know and then to have a little play.

As said by many, it's not for everyone, but I do think that if you have an interest in Linux and some spare time, it is very beneficial to play with, and also very rewarding when you get it all set up.

**Rumor** · November 29th, 2012

Originally Posted by Pogeymanz

So, there you have it. My insanely long-winded Arch post. I spent way too much time on this, so I hope somebody reads it.

That was a very good summary of the major talking points I see in different discussions about the various aspects of Arch.

I've been an Arch user for over five years and have used it both as a home desktop distribution and on production systems and servers. In that time I have had one system breakage, and only one. And that was due more to my own short-cutting attempts than to any shortcomings on the part of Arch.

Arch is what you make it, nothing more. It's a great distro for tweakers and it is also well suited to someone like myself who wants their OS to stay out of their way so they can go on about their work.

So yes, Arch is for me. But, every user's needs and expectations are different.

**Aaron Christianson** · December 2nd, 2012

While Arch is a bit more time consuming to install and maintenance requires a bit more intervention, you only have to install it once, and the amount of maintenance definitely amounts to less than what you'd be doing if you reinstall Ubuntu every six months. Of course, there are things that can be trying on Arch, so my strategy is to put Ubuntu LTS on a 5GB partition and use it when something doesn't work properly on Arch (though I must say that I have an easier time doing most things on Arch than Ubuntu, and I could probably overcome almost anything If I used a desktop environment with Arch; something else I've opted to avoid).

**viper250** · December 3rd, 2012

i installed cinnarch on my test machine successfully and its the first version i have had any luck with as far as installation issues
its a lovely os and does everything but dvd playback.
i will investigate it later to get the proper codec info

**ratcheer** · December 3rd, 2012

Originally Posted by viper250

its a lovely os and does everything but dvd playback.
i will investigate it later to get the proper codec info

Most likely, you just need to find and install libdvdcss2.

Tim

**mamamia88** · December 3rd, 2012

well the arch wiki is so good that you don't really have to do any investigating. just google whatever you need followed by arch wiki and there's a good chance it will show up. for the guy above very simple dvd playback install a few packages and add yourself to optical group. source https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/DVD_Playing

**viper250** · December 4th, 2012

thank you for the info guys
i will install it when i get the chance to
between work and moderating other forums i usually don't have a lot of time left
damn spammers! grrrr.

**VooDooSyxx** · December 4th, 2012

I'm just going to say it's definitely not for me these days. My desire to tweak minute system details and run the latest and greatest Linux apps as soon as they hit sourceforge was taken care of back in the late 90's and early 00's. Nowadays I need a stable system to get stuff done and just don't have the time for all that any more.

That said, one of my roommates has been using it for years and loves it. About once a month or so, it breaks in new and exciting ways and I get to hear a stream of profanities for a couple hours while he fixes it up, but the next day he's right back to lovin it.