Arch Linux User Retention Rate

[aaaantoine]

The poll is for anyone who has ever tried Arch. Are you still using it?

If not, please explain:
1. Why not?
2. What distro are you currently using instead?

If you have not used Arch Linux at all, please do not submit a poll response. Thank you.

[miggols99]

I used to love Arch, but now I don't like it because of the instability. I got hard lockups with it which are completely unacceptable. Whether I'm running KDE or Openbox, they just always seemed to happen. Right now I leaning towards Ubuntu/Debian.

[cookieofdoom]

The poll is for anyone who has ever tried Arch. Are you still using it?

If not, please explain:
1. Why not?
2. What distro are you currently using instead?

If you have not used Arch Linux at all, please do not submit a poll response. Thank you.

I've used Arch, and I love it. Unfortunately there are a couple of things that keep me from using it. One is the size of the repositories, there are quite a few apps that I use frequently that are not in the repos. I'm really entirely too lazy to compile them myself. The other is that Standby support seems a bit broken on my laptop, I fiddled with it for a bit. I think it was an ACPI thing.

I went back to Ubuntu because it's almost impossible to find a piece of software that is not already in the Ubuntu repos (except really, really new stuff... and even then you can probably find a repo that will add it), and because everything just works.

I find I miss how fast Arch was/is, and I will likely continue to try it every once and a while when I get bored with Ubuntu.

[Alasdair]

I used Arch for a while, but it was too unstable. I got kernel panics at least once a day. I think it was caused by the hwdetect script choosing really buggy drivers.

If it was more stable I would use it over Ubuntu though.

[Dr Small]

I have used Arch for a few months, and love it. I only ever had one problem when upgrading, but that wasn't enough to make me switch! I find Arch very stable, and I have all the latest software right at my fingertips

[ukripper]

Was trying Arch but went sidux!

[kevinmchapman]

Just to give the other side, I still love Arch after 6 months. For me it has been utterly stable. I have had only two real problems with updates - one because I did not follow the instructions properly, and the other a dependency problem, solved by reverting to a previous version.

I have just updated one machine after 6 months of not being connected to the internet, running XFCE, Openbox and E17. 400MB, 319 packages (including a kernel and all the WMs/DEs) and 6 .conf.new config files to change. After the update replaced almost everything, I only needed to reset one volume channel, reapply the Entrance theme and make sure the RT73USB wireless module was loaded.

I don't count that as unstable. Wait until Intrepid comes out and keep an eye on the forums....

[mips]

Been using it for nine months now and have not used another distro since.

[will1911a1]

Been using Arch for quite a while now and I love it. It's weird for me to read about people have stability problems with it. Ubuntu was locking up once or twice a day on me which was a big part of the reason that I switched to Arch in the first place.

Arch has only ever locked up on me once and it's because I did something stupid.

[Barrucadu]

I've been using it exclusively since February and don't expect to change, ever. For me it's been completely stable, with the only problems that have occurred caused by me.