I also tweet about Linux: twitter.com/thelinuxcast (Trying to get to 2k followers by the end of the year)

The best feature of Arch is not the AUR, but the Arch Wiki. Nothing beats that. What makes it especially awesome is that even non-arch users can learn from it.

I am an Arch Linux user, but that doesn't mean I have no respect for other distributions and I don't consider myself a fangirl at all. Things aren't black and white. Most distributions are good.

I think Arch's killer feature is its documentation.

another dumb thing is how most people stress that arch is so hard you shouldnt mess with it if you are noob... its like the best learning distro

I switched to Arch 10 years ago because I had specific proprietary drivers for my Canon printer. At the time on all existing distributions these packages had compatibility issues at 10,11 or 12th level. It was the hell. The only way was to adapt the package according to the sources. 2 solutions came to me: Arch or Gentoo. Arch synthesized the best of 2 worlds (compilation and distro) At the time, I had more than 1500 Aur packages, today I only have 200 because ultra serious repositories have emerged. But compared to all my previous experiences and despite packages in the latest version, I've never had so little compatibility problem than with other distros. Yes Arch is not a professional distribution in the sense that there is not this integrity checkpoint like in Fedora or another distribution but that does not prevent it from being very very stable. Yet I did everything that shouldn't be made to wait long, long months before making the updates or only a few days. Incompatibility problems seem easy to solve to me: either by installing the new version of the conflicting package, or by uninstalling it (to re-install it afterwards), or by forcing the installation of the new package (very very rare) and I've never managed to crack a cast. It is all the more remarkable that I use an old graphics card which is no longer managed in the manufacturer drivers and also zfs (with caches and logs in files on SSDs) which is not grub compatible and which is not incorporated into the kernel but is vital for starting Arch To be honest, the real problem where I was tearing my hair out was the validation of package author keys which did not exist in the Arch world (although we can override them), but finally we can validate them with key validators from Ubuntu Even the internal technical changes of Arch (I am thinking of the change of services from SystemV to Systemd) did not cause any major problems. The documentation is outstanding and worth the 9/10 rating and that's why it's so stable. Fedora Oracle also have beautiful documentation but professional oriented and special cases are rarely mentioned in their wiki unlike the Arch wiki Arch is not complete, it lost x86 and only supports Arm and x86_64. it is not perfect, but it presents so few bad surprises You have to choose your distro according to your needs. But if you don't have a specific need related to a distribution, to try Arch is to adopt it and I don't miss Fedora, Debian or other at all.

Even without the AUR, Arch has by far the best package management system, and is the most well documented distro out there. The reason RTFM is actually good advice for Arch users is because the manuals are really freaking good, nothing else comes even close. When I was using it, I never ran into a situation where I couldn't find out how to do something. That said, I'm currently a Fedora user, and the more I use it, the more I feel like it's the best distro I have ever used.

I think the reason why Matt likes Fedora is the stability of the OS and by extent, stability of the apps. Debian and debian based distro will offer you the same. So you have plenty of choices don't worry. I don't think Fedora's testing ground will make a problem but who knows. I use pop!os by the way 😂 and for the longest time i was a mint fanboy.

I wonder in what distro is it the easiest to replace repo library packages with your own build so that dependencies still work correctly. Is makepkg the best option? Or do one of the other distros have something better? Also IMO the best thing about the AUR is that there are sometimes patched versions of other packages. For example, using system electron for everything, enabling a less stable pr, etc. Another benefit of aur vs ppa, etc. is that you see the build script instead of the binary so less likely to be malware. The biggest risk is the major breakages for sure. There was a broken kernel update recently that could break your monitor apparently.

I am an Arch boy. Yes, I've watched the entire video. No, I'm not butthurt. No, I didn't unsubscribe. Though, it is sad to see a real one like you go. I acknowledge that Arch has a lot of issues regarding reliability, which has often been the cause of users turning away from it. In contrast to that there's Fedora, which I've heard is as smooth as a baby's butt. I, however, can never stray from Arch. I find gratification in tackling and solving system issues when they occur. Now if you'll excuse me, I have my audio to fix and I may or may not have watched this entire video with just subtitles and no sound...

I am using Arco with i3 . It's a good distro , I came from mx linux and left after a grub problem and because I was curious about arch. The aur doesn't impress me that much. Debian has more than enough for most people. I am currently having a pulsseaudio problem, which I heard is not that uncommon. I have a 11yr old i5 Mac mini and am thinking about distro hoping again. Due to my limited hardware, any suggestions for a new one? Or should I return to debian with a window managers like bspwm? I've gotten pretty good at BASH and would like a tiling wm with that kind of syntax. Mac mini 5.1 2.3ghz i5 2415 16gb of ram.

Hello there! Could you share your experience about how the jump to fedora was in terms of documentation and support? Honestly want to try some Fedora or Debian but is a concern of mine that documentation is not as good as Arch wiki is, and won't be applicable on some cases depending on the version of packages other distros has at the time. Finally. Thank you! Your content is really good and enjoyable! Keep up the good work!

iḿ an arch fanboy because of the aur too... tried lately to use suse tumbleweed but wasn´t able to find any way to replace the aur with something similar in opensuse. How are you replacing the aur? I´d love to know...

Agreed, I enjoy arch and have enjoyed my time in Artix the past few weeks, But I am sticking with void. The best distro is the one that works for you.

I tried out Fedora for a few months myself. Very stable distro, but I was very disappointed by some issues, like Blender not having support for CUDA out of the box (Same goes for Rendering with the AMD Pro drivers). Had the same problem with a couple of other programs and I felt that when they choose to go so hard against closed source, it's not a distro for me. Another thing that made me miss the AUR was how copr was structured and how slow the website was..

Curious if you still have the same opinion of Fedora with the recent RHEL drama.

How dare you! Arch Linux is my safe place! lol

I use Arch based distro especially ARCO, tried Fedora but I am back on Arco after spending half a day on Fedora. Erik Dubois is a great teacher.

Hi Matt, I have watched your video about Arch with great interest. I've been using Linux since the 90's and have tried them all. First I started with Grub and then enjoyed my very first distro openSuse war and then it was the first real workable version of Linux distro. I have a helpdesk for Linux in my home city in Europe and it's completely free, I have many people who have come over from Microsoft or Apple and switched to Linux and honestly most of them choose Ubuntu based version, mainly because it is very stable and easy to use. I have some members who have opted for an Arch version, but meanwhile have a version of Ubuntu; I have to admit that for newbies Arch is a disaster and therefore usually have to put an Ubuntu-based version such as Mint, Zorin, Ubuntu, Pop OS or Feren OS, the stability and ease of use are the deciding factors. Arch is a step too high for many. I myself use Zorin 16.1 PRO as a daily OS because it is fast, very stable and easy to install. I am satisfied and all those who have come over too, they will not and do not want to change, no matter what others say! Antoine,greetings from Antwerp

I started with Arch, and I've been on Fedora for a while now and I have had a fantastic experience and don't really have any reason to hop rn. I might try AV Linux for audio stuff but tbh I'm not sure I actually need to do that. It helps that I really like the Gnome workflow and can't really justify spending the time it takes to maintain a tiling wm based desktop at the moment. Not that you can't do that in Fedora because you absolutely can but I just don't feel as driven as I was at first to frankenstein up my own DE, considering that using Fedora as it ships gives me pretty much everything I want from an OS. I will say that the latest Ubuntu actually looks pretty nice once you turn on the rounded floating dock thing for Gnome. I might try doing the Ubuntu thing for a while since my system is kinda messy and could use a refresh. And of course, someday I will get back to xmonad and all that but I just have too many other things in life to deal with and don't have the free time that I had when all I had to do was school and part time job. Now I have full time work and living on my own so I just don't have those seemingly endless hours to devote to tinkering unfortunately.

I use arch (btw) just because of the AUR and mainly because of the zen kernel. I don't know for any other alternative kernels or am i able to change my kernel on other distros to it so i just stick to arch (btw).

I think CentOS Stream is a good option now for daily driving since it has been placed between fedora and rhel. Still has pretty good update cycles and stability has been in my experience very good.

Do you have a video, or maybe create a video, where you build software/package from source. That will be awesome.

Did you used and tested RHEL?

Store based distros like NixOS and Guix are underrated

Love from India 🇮🇳 Matt! I have watched each and every video of yours that is why I have also shifted to fedora for a while now and I have no issues except the Nvidia drivers and they just suck in every distro so no complaints with fedora it's just best in my opinion. I have noticed that my laptop's battery life has increased drastically I have used many linux distros even Arch for some time but the battery and memory management is top notch in fedora. Love your videos and keep it Up 👍

i got Arch to successfully run on a VM in VirtualBox, does that count? (Just kidding, don't hit that Caps Lock just yet) In all seriousness, I'm a type of computer nerd that can't leave well enough alone will probably distrohop and explore other distros just to say that I did it. I started out with the Original Red Hat distro, so I'm familar with Red Hat stuff, so i can easily hop over to Fedora, OpenSuse, or Alma (I like the way it looks). i've been using Ubuntu for the past six months now, so I don't have a problem hopping over to another Debian based distro. Not joking, I installed Arch on a virtual machine, manually, because it is very new to me and i wanted to get practice installing it before I try putting it on hardware. Or I might head over to an Arch based distro like Garuda, or XeroLinux (I really like the look of this one). Why would i do any of this? Why not.

I wish I had better fedora experiences but everytime I install Nvidia drivers it get laggy AF on the login screen debian based operating system don't have that issue

You make good points. From a newer linux user arch is a bit much plus bleeding edge I think is more for people who actually understand what going on inside of linux. I started out with mint but wanted something more current so I've moved on to Fedora Cinnamon and really like it. Just wish I had the option to to use something other than dnfdragora but I'm sure I'll get used to it.

I've switched to Fedora for a few months now and it's a fine distro. I did have some issues with gaming though and tried the same games using a Distrobox install on Arch and they worked fine. I am thinking of switching back to Arch and just have a btrfs install to rollback if there's ever an issue

I went to Fedora when Nobara came out. I enjoyed it greatly and would recommend. But got bored, tried a couple things... then went back to Arch. Installed a couple things from the AUR and immediately felt like I was home.

I have always been of the mindset that "the best" distro is the one that allows you to get your work done the easiest. Since I got good at installing it, Arch is just easier for me to use than most anything else. I did briefly stray and use Fedora 36... I liked it! But I just always come back to Arch. I love tinkering, putting it together, trying new configurations, etc. Plus, I use an old laptop and to be honest, a lot of more modern distros just don't work...and if I am going to put that much effort into making a distro work, I might as well use Arch and configure it exactly the way I want. But again, that doesn't make it the best! It just makes it the best for me. There is an argument to be made AGAINST bleeding edge and FOR more stable packages, so there is that.

what i like about arch is the Docs ofc , the simple installaton with the archinstall script , and how lean it is after installing it , but one think is that even for for example unziping files , you don't get the package installed for the file manager u are using so ... i went back to fedora and debian(ubuntu,mint) where i install awesomewm with a simple config and that's all , i have my system configure din like 5 minutes now but i learned a lot from arch

Fedora is shit. My sound does not work and I haven't been able to fix it and I've tried everything. So frustrating

Soon after I reinvograted my old potato laptop a couple of years ago, I used Arch + XFCE for over a year and I loved it. A couple of months ago, I added more RAM and thought of trying out GNOME and chose Fedora Silverblue as my distro. I'm just loving it!

you can install distrobox , create archlinux:latest container,install yay , install anything you would like from the aur,export binaries and applaunchers into your host using distrobox-export, its so good …. man i use arch but i mount my root partition / and read only and uses distrobox

for the past two months, Ive been distro hopping. I've tried void linux, which I do like, but can't control my laptop fans automatically, because I cant seem to write my own runit service to run a shell script. Maybe I haven't tried hard enough, but I couldn't. I went to fedora 38, and I had a hard time with the nvidia drivers and wayland not getting along. I tried installing gentoo. After a half a day wasted trying to install it, I finally got into installing grub. I installed grub, rebooted into the system, and it wouldn't boot. I don't technically use the aur but for i8kutils, but while I'm searching for the right distro for me, I've been installing my software such as steam, and emulators off of flatpaks, so i can delete my root partition and jump to something different. So, as for now, I'm running Arch linux with the LTS kernel. I use Arch because configuring it to my laptop seems to be easier than fedora. I don't think that Arch is the best. It's just something that works for me. I can live without the AUR, because I got void linux running great on my laptop, just having my fans go full blast all the time is annoying. I don't see my self as an elitest because I use Arch. Like I said, Arch is what works for me.

People talk about the AUR but the real deal id the ABS (Arch Build System). You can easily integrate anything from custom kernels to GUI apps into it. I use Ubuntu as my server, I wish it had a smarter way of handling secure boot. I used to go with Gentoo in the past because it empovered me to make (make, get it?) the system I use, but I got tired of the coompilation, that is why I went with vanillia Arch at the end of the day. I used Systemd on both, I think that matters more than the package manager even. In the future I am looking to build my own Fedora desktop up from the server install, kind of like Arch. I just feel like I am more locked in in Fedora (more preinstalled stuff, so I have zo manually tear down and rebuild, even on the server edition), but we'll see.

Been on Manjaro for years, mainly because of lazyness, just not been bothered installing something new. Even tho it's gotten a bit sluggish over time. I am however considering going Nobara next.

I am an arch and bsd user since forever and I wholeheartedly agree with you. The best and worst thing about the arch is the community and arch wiki. I use pop os at work because sometimes its more work on arch to not mess up things.

I used Ubuntu for 11 years. But I loved the thought of a "rolling release" eversince. I now finally tried out some other distros, like manjaro, endeavour, vanilla arch, artix, openSuse tumbleweed and fedora, because I wanted to be more close to the development of pipewire. That is because I also make some music on Linux. And Ubuntu/Debian based distros don't offer this advantage of newest versions. I don't think that the AUR is a point to stay on an arch based distro. Because it is great on arch doesn't mean it is necessary outside of arch. For me there are other points that I look for. I like a distro, that I can setup very quick, when I have to. But also I like a fast system and a good package-management. What I love on manjaro is, it is almost set up out of the box, and it is easy to maintain. What I really love on arch is, it is very fast and I can get a highly debloated system. Although I use KDE. But I can easily install only the most needed packages of it. What I really love on fedora, dnf is more clear than pacman, although it is very slow. But I see very clear from which repositories I get updates. For that I have to use pamac on arch. And I don't have this much updates to download but still have the newest versions of the important software (kernel, firefox, pipewire). And for a Fedora install I use the fedora-everything-installer, to install it without graphical environment and then too only install the very needed packages on top of it. But still it isn't as fast as arch is, especially on bootup. For the last couple of month I also tried a lot in making my own custom isos, and for that purpose artix was the easiest for me until now. This way I have a system that really works out of the box. And making a new iso only takes about 10 minutes on artix, so I could make it very easy any couple of weeks. On openSuse I miss the option of an autoremove/clean/-Sc in the package manager. And it does things very different than other distros. So I don't like it very much, although it looks very nice, with its boot splash and got the highest lynis-score of all distros I tried (79 - Fedora got 67 on the second place - on arch I can reach 65). Alpine Linux and NixOs have very interesting approaches too, but they are tooo different of what I'm used to. But the thought of having a quick reconfigurable system like NixOS is interresting. I still don't have chose the one distro I relay on. On my main PC I run manjaro-testing for several month now, without any problems. On my laptop I run Fedora as a first system, to see how the upgrade process to fedora 37 will run. And the second system on my laptop now is artix. These 4 (manjaro/fedora/artix/arch) are my favourites for now. But I liked Ubuntu also very much. But now they're forcing the switch to snaps I am happy to use some other distros. I think Mint is also a good choice, although I didn't took it very serious all these years, because I heard they sometimes are putting user-experience and usability over security aspects.

Over the past 10 years or so I have tried them all, Arch, Ubuntu, Fedora, Suse, bla bla bla. I ended up on Mint Cinammon. I wanted to love Arch but had too many issues with Hybrid Intel/Nvidia graphics. I've tried it on AMD desktops as well and updates have broken my system to the point I had to reinstall. This happens too often for my liking. I don't dislike Arch. In fact someday I plan to install it again but I have to get work done on my computers. I can't be wondering if the next update will break something. So for now I'm a Linux Mint fan boy. I don't buy that Mint is only for newb's. I believe that Mint is for anyone that wants a stable system that just works.

I got into Linux back in late 2018, back when the gates of Arch were still kept by the difficulty of installing it. The gatekeeper has since been deposed, and I've found that running Arch Linux really isn't any more difficult than running Debian Sid. Don't get me wrong, I love my Arch installation, but that's only because it has been more motivating for me to learn new things, because I came into it expecting that I would HAVE to. I was only partially correct in that assumption. I have learned significantly more than I needed to to simply run Arch, and I've just been riding that wave. But the truth is that I could just as easily go back to Debian and continue to ride the wave. Arch has been significantly easier than I thought it would be. There isn't a whole lot that's special about it. It's just...Linux. Which as far as I can tell was really kinda the whole point of Arch to begin with anyway - to be a simple, minimal, lightweight Linux experience, to just BE Linux. Btw, I still haven't managed to successfully install Arch the manual way. I've only ever used archinstall, and I think archinstall is great (even though it seems to be broken right now). My point is this. Your title, while somewhat inflammatory, is true. Arch really is overrated, and elitism is stupid. The only thing difficult about Arch is installing it, which hasn't been difficult for a while.

real talk is important. Good that you're clear on the fanboydom. Love the content!

OpenSuse Tumbleweed gets you 90% of the benefits of Arch without the problems. Way better stability and QA.

I like pure arch and I don't feel like I need to change. I was trying to break it and force myself to distro hop, but it's just works. I having more problems with debian in the past, plenty problems with popos on my kids laptops. IDK, I just know it enough to use it without any problems. Probably that will translate to whatever disto I will change, if I will spend enough time.

I occasionally try other things, and I find some of them very good, but I always end up back on Fedora when I need a stable work platform for serious use.

I’m going to arch fanboy a bit and explain why I will probably never switch away from arch. To address your points about the AUR, I’d say the biggest advantage obviously of this over manual builds is how easy it is to keep everything up to date with one of the AUR helpers like paru. My second reason is that I don’t like my operating system making too many choices for me. With arch, there are very few defaults and I choose what to use it when to switch. Maybe Fedora knows better than me when it comes to switch to wayland but idc. I want to make that switch when I choose it.

For my specific use case I can’t switch from arch allot of the things I want work don’t work well on the other distros I tried also the arch wiki is super helpful and the package manager is actually really performant

Used to like Arch in the beginning, but it faded in time. I invested more time in Debian and am very pleased with it.

There will always be some in any community that will be toxic toward others or newcomers. I remember trying arch once and got roasted when I asked for help for a total newbie issue, and got booted out of a Fedora channel in a chat network after asking for help with an issue too, no reason given, and the mod refused to talk to me when I DM'd asking why lol. I'm always polite, never aggressive and always try to help others if I can, no matter how obvious the issue seems to me, because it won't be obvious to others.

I've used arch for years and at no point would I claim it's the best. Arch is arch. Some people should use arch. Most people shouldn't. This isn't a competition, distros are meant for different use cases. Trying to rank them on a linear scale is useless and a waste of time.

I disagree. I switched to Fedora on my work computer and I have dearly missed the AUR. For example, dealing with drivers for my display link device has been a pain on Fedora. I think it really depends on what your use case is. I have only been able to survive on Fedora because of the limited use case of my work machine (mostly just browsing and coding).

Matt, a distro is just a distro. use what works and do what you do. I chose arch a few years ago because it comes very light-weight by default. When you know which apps you want installed on your system, arch is great because it has no bloat. I still run an eee pc which has 2gb ram and an atom processor. It runs great because the OS is so light weight. With careful app selection, you can make an amazingly responsive system even with very old hardware. regarding the aur, I use it very sparingly and not using a helper. Generally I'd rather install via a flatpak due to it's containerized nature - especially with apps written in a language like python where they can break due to an upgrade. maybe one day I'll try fedora again, but the way I have my system installed at the moment, for my needs is rock solid.

You get the lastest version of most packages in Fedora but definitely not every package. I've been using it for months now, and to this day the latest available version of imagemagick is 6.9, and I have written a few scripts that require 7.x to work. One of such scripts is several years old, written on Windows 7 (I used Cygwin at the time). You can pretty easily use imagemagick 7.x on Fedora by getting the nix package (or the AppImage version, but it's slow), but that's not very obvious as most people are unaware of the nix package manager. Trying to install the official RPM packages also doesn't work (it installs fine, but some magick commands fail with an inscrutable error message). The fact that Fedora is still stuck on 6.9 in the official repos even though the first 7.x release was all the way back in 2015 is insane. I wouldn't be surprised if you can already get imagemagick 7 on freaking Debian Stable at this point.

great insights mate! Linux is about freedom. That includes freedom to change your mind and heart about distros. i have run a flavour of everything at this point. Fedora is definitely a great experience for now. I do however, worry about the choices that RHEL or IBM make

Self reflection is a great skill.Thanks for sharing your thoughts Matt 💪

Even if arch is rolling release you won't get the kernel updates day one. I think that's one flaw I'm starting to see about arch. I came for up to date everything even though it might be buggy but I'm not getting the latest versions of the linux kernel or even mesa drivers.

But yeah. You are right... I swear by Fedora but after watching this, I feel it is only right that I try Arch for a bit on a second system. Probably not the result you expected but that's how much you are right. I've only worn Deb and Fedora glasses so maybe I'll try some Arch, Void and Gentoo ones in that order. Maybe NixOS. You have inspired me to challenge my own bias.

Great vid, Matt. The state of public discourse unfortunately doesn't bring out the best in some. How people can get so uptight about an OS baffles me, but each one his own. Out of the 4 years since I came back to Linux I've used Arch for more than 2 of that, using all DE's and trying many WM's as well. I am, and will be a forever-ArchLabs fan-boy, for the good and great community, and the way it got me started in Arch with its TUI. Honorable mention to Eznix and ezarcher! Having said that I am (for KDE) an enormous OpenSuse fanboy as well, Tumbleweed is amazing in it's tweakability and I don't care about slow mirrors. And right now I am in a more it-just-has-to-work-kinda-mood so I netinstalled Debian Testing with KDE. So clean, so relaxing, yet still advanced enough for me. The phases we go through. That's why we should enjoy Linux, share our experience with others and move to something else if you feel like it. Keep on rockin'!

Flatpak has broken packages, snap has broken packages. Debian if it has broken packages you have to wait until new build for a fix. Ubuntu breaks often on kernel upgrades. Fedora breaks on upgrades. The only aur problems I've had is I have to rebuild a package, or a package is not maintained and is missing dependencies, which I've been able to work around. Every other distro I literally would not be able to boot the gui and manually have to fix from terminal by Uninstall whatever is breaking.

personally i am using Garuda Linux, whenever i try to switch to something other than arch based distros i find myself returning to one of them hehe. But yes i believe it is all about preferences, in my case i am used to pacman and the AUR

I am by no means an Arch die hard, but since I started using Arch distros, I do tend to lean on the AUR a LOT and its much easier to install software on an Arch distro than a non Arch because of that. I currently split time between a few distros as a daily driver and only one is not an Arch distro (RisiOS 37 Beta) and I find myself missing the AUR when I need something. Not that its impossible or difficult, it just takes longer, its less convenient. I do agree with you. Personally, any time I run into "snarkiness" its usually in the Arch world. Its unfortunate.

I switched to Fedora from my first few attempts at debian and ubuntu installs I could live with as I wanted 'stability' lol... I have Stability and RPM... Fedora is the angry big brother to RHEL

arch is needed to test when something goes wrong before it hits the better distros....... like kernel, grub ETC

I got the whole "You should just use arch" thing when I first started using linux. But I settled on Zorin. I've been playing with Kubuntu on a second laptop..and then the whole GRUB thing happened. I just didn't see a reason to keep it on the second laptop after trying an arch distros.

I have run lots of different distros to include Arch. I have asked lots of stupid questions. I have seen alot of people get roasted in forums for all distros. Arch communities will scare you out of asking a "stupid question" more than any other distro I have tried.

Pacman is what I'm used to. Fedora package management isn't bad but I like building my systems from the ground up. I don't use helpers for my AUR packages other than Kalu to notify me when something is out of date. Arch is excellent but not what I recommend to people who aren't inclined to maintain their systems. And I certainly wouldn't deploy it for a commercial use. My big complaint about fedora is no support of non free software. I tried it in virtual and it was good but then tried to install it on a laptop using wireless and it wasn't happening. Plus I don't like Gnome. I'm not into using a wired connection then jumping through hoops to get wireless to work straight away. All for a DE I plan on changing. So I just used good old Arch for my laptop.

so centos stream is first now for new updates then fedora they changed it from fedora first then centos at the end.

I'm an Arch user, it's best feature for me is the build it yourself, without the Gentoo or LFS compile times. But if I was to move off it, I would go to Artix. Amazingly light and still in the Arch family. I have seen elitism on many distro support pages. I love to help other Arch newbies, I enjoy helping people on their Linux journey, but agree that the memes comes from somewhere.

Arch is my main distro but I have Fedora installed on one of my laptops and MX on another. I think they're all great but I prefer Arch because it's so easy to install (with the archinstall script) and to find the applications that I need (thnks to the AUR). I can get the same experience on Fedora or Debian, it just takes me longer to get it working the way I want. (I use Arch, Fedora & Debian btw!)

Like many Linux users I've started with Ubuntu = Debian based Distros, and even though I prefer Distros with a stable release cycle to rolling release distros (and use them for setting up other peoples PCs) I honestly can't see myself ever switching back away to a distro without the AUR. Yes, you can figure out how to build software not in your distro's repo yourself, but it's a hassle. And yes, there is stuff like flatpak and snap and so on, but I hate the inefficency of every piece of software acompanied by another statically linked copy of all it's dependencies. So I'm limiting myself to distros with AUR support.

I am on macOS, due to my work-laptop, but. I love in Arch that I may install everything from scratch and understand the minimal requirements to the OS, control the packages I install, but without long compilings like in Gentoo - so this not overwhelmes me and helps to gain new knowledge

I have never used linux but a couple of years ago software has matured since then with all the different ways to install software.....

Excellent video as always Matt. It is great to hear honest opinions about all the distros you use. Most arch fanboys just fawn over arch and crap all over every other distribution. I obviously have my own bias with Debian, but I try not to do the same thing. Debian isn't perfect but its flaws are acceptable to me... Keep up the awesome work buddy.

Arch? Flaws??? "whatchu talkin bout willis?" hehe. Access to more software? Is it a significant difference? Access to the software you need? Levels the field, imo. Me? Biased? Absolutely. And subject to "bias confirmation", and selecting my own "bubble" to maintain it. Unsub because of a perceived neg... perfect example. By definition, no one is objective. :) Being able to discuss with an open mind... that is how we learn.

I don't like anything else about Arch other than you can build custom Kernel. There is some unstable code in default Kernel. ConditionKernelCommandLine=rd.driver.blacklist=nouveau

Installing packages manually is not only about ease. It's more dangerous since you can make mistakes, and you don't know that someone effectively vetted the installation process; and also it would not be updated. AUR (or something like it) is not just convenience; but it's safer.

This is the problem with the idea that one distro is the absolute best. We overlook its flaws. We attempt to push our personal tastes and preferences on everyone else. Now, there is nothing wrong with having a distro you love. However, someone else probably has a different distro she loves. We are all different people with different tastes, preferences, and needs. I can say that my current favorite distro is Slackware while still respecting someone else favoring a Distro I don’t like, personally, Gentoo. The fanboy mentality leads to endless arguments, fights, and divisiveness IMO.

Why was arch called great? 1) The AUR was a wonderful innovation compared to the way distros traditionally just had repos that are only maintained by a handful of distro maintainers. If they did not think a package was worth maintaining it would not be available. With the AUR, having all users in the community now able to create and maintain packages in the repo was a fantastic new idea vs the way distros were done in the past and created a massive vast amount of software that was not previously available anywhere else. The AUR is not about software that is available in other distros or flatpaks, its about having software that is obscure and not available anywhere else just as long as there are a few users that want to maintain an install package for it. Basically, If your software is in flatpack, you are not an AUR user. 2) The ARCH wiki is a fantastic set of documentation and resources used even by non-arch users. 3) Its the most up to date distro. NONE OF these things have changed, they are still the reasons why Arch is a great distro.

I am an arch Linux user and I have never once in my life heard or seen a toxic arch Linux user I would really like to know were that came from

I'd easily hop on NixOS, but it's not as good in terms of software as the AUR. There's so much software that I got working and I don't have to manage on my own, it's crazy

Goodness I hopped about from distro to distro back when I first came across Linux. I seem to recall I started out on a bunch of distros, but then initially settled on Mandriva, then segued along to Magiea (I think because it was pretty), then they had some kind of internal war (I think it was about systemd, but can't exactly remember), then I discovered Ubuntu. I assumed I'd try it for a week and then move on to something else like before, but every device in my machine just worked - which was new. Couple of days dicking with the UI to get something I could work with, and I'm still with it a decade later.

Just waiting for big blue to stomp on fedora. There is already some kind of subscription test every time you do an update.

I made it to the end yay -S the thing i dont like about arch is when an update comes along it can break packages, but i like arch but also i like fedora, fedora as never broken on me it seems solid .

I only like arch because its named after the hollowdeck computer from TNG, very similar to the reason I don't use fedora, not a fan of that particular style of hat.

Many AUR packages didn't install on my machine. It should be better to use Nix/Guix packages.

As an Arch User, the only reason for me to stay is convenience. Installation might makes you ends up into elitism rabbit hole, but the convenience to works almost all i need quickly after all the initial setup is what i need. Sometime it got some hiccup out of the bleeding edge, but trying all the new stuff is what i want and i expect some hiccup with the bleeding edge nature of arch. Because i expect those hiccups, and the convenience of all the documentation and aur ( I understand why you call it overrated) makes all my works much faster compared when i'm on my ubuntu and fedora days (not because arch is faster, but arch "flexibility" provide me with the possibility to setup all what i want according to my workflow).

7:30 It's the same with arch. Every time a new things is implemented you have a possibility it will not work. I don't worry about that very much because patched, sometimes, come in the same day.

I like GNU/Linux in general... but yes I love Arch lol... i find fedora and opensuse are good systems too... its really down to a perosnal pref. nice video dude!

Agree. I used to be an Arch user until a couple of months ago. Now I don't care what distro I'm using. Yeah, it was good to have the AUR cause I could install everything from a single place with an AUR helper, but honestly I don't even reinstall that often anymore.

Only reason I'm using Arch is because it works and runs more stable than other distro's I've tried (as funny as that may seem). I'm a new Linux user and over the past month pretty much every distro I've tried had different kind's of stability issues except for Arch for some reason. I do prefer the Fedora's package manager over any other, Arch's Pacman has some funky command arguments. Maybe if Arch ever fails on me I'll try Fedora again.

To be frank, most of the stuff on AUR, you are actually build the package locally and install it later. I also like how relatively easy it is to build any package on Arch if you understand PKGBUILDS. I said the same things about Arch Linux on my channel. Arch is okay, it is very good for a few things, but in general, it is... fine, and is definitely not really for the "every day" user.

I did like fedora or redhat WAY back when you could select everything to be installed and that's not possible now as far as I know and today's fedora is "too bloated" for my very old laptop and makes it so slow I can't use it but with Arch I install only the things I need and it's now more than usable so for me Arch is not overrated.

You are absolutely correct in the context of status Arch Linux versus Fedora, Suse Tumbleweed either Debian Bookworm . It's a matter of personal preferences.

I use Manjaro atm and it's falling apart more and more with every update they do. Fedora is looking very good but the grass is always greener on the other side.

I think, the difference between the distros is very marginal. I have a double-boot machine and I have both Ubuntu and Arch on it, and even though I mainly use Arch for my personal coding and use, I always keep Ubuntu for the client-facing work: demos, Teams calls etc. as it is supposedly more stable and less prone to the sudden update-driven issues. Even though I did face issues with Ubuntu, and probably had them more often on Ubuntu than on Arch, I still believe keeping several distros handy is important. As for the personal comfort, I think the desktop manager (DM) is more important than the distro itself. And I didn't notice much of a difference between Arch and Arch-based distros and Debian 12 and Debian-based distros when compared with the same DM. Package managers, bars etc. are not that important in my mind. So, I don't quite get the point of being a fan boy of one Distro over another, but I do think that the DM matters a lot, and being a fan of i3 or GNOME or KDE may and should take place, and that makes sense as they are very different.

I have been using Arch Linux for the past 5 years and despite what you have commented about the aur which it seems to be your main mandra I have never and I mean never had a problem installing drivers and applications, unlike your RPM operating system, however I will agree that Arch is not for the faint of heart so use what you will and us Arch users will continue to use Arch

As a long time arch user I can say it's release model is it's main problem, at least for me. For a while the aur and the excellent website (wiki, bug tracker etc.) outweighed the cons until I'm no longer in position to tolerate any rolling related problems. Fedora manages to have recent enough packages while being very stable, and rpm fusion has most enthusiast grade apps I need so I agree, fedora is great.

For a developer the AUR is the best thing. For other people that spend most of their time in browser it does not matter what you use. All distros are basically the same and constantly talking about them is POINTLESS