To Arch or not to Arch? That is the question.

Dedoimedo's take on this is expressed here:

http://www.dedoimedo.com/computers/w...rch-linux.html

Is he someone important?

Yawnnnnnnn ....

I have Arch on x86-64, Raspberry pi, soon an old GoFlex Home.
Pontificating misses the point.

He makes only one good point that I can find. That being that you can tinker and fiddle with anything on any distro, not just Arch like many people proclaim or believe. Other than that it's irrelevant. He doesn't like Arch. Fine for him.

Some people like doing all of the setup and customizing and don't want something configured for them out of the box. I think he also misses the mark in that Arch (as far as I understand it) uses packages that are relatively untouched, that is to say they are as clean and pure as they can be from upstream. Most other distros patch tons of stuff to make it their own. Arch doesn't unless absolutely necessary. I rather like seeing software the way it was designed, not patched to hell and back.

I know I'm also not alone in that I like a clean slate. I don't want to take my time cleaning out some other DE and it's associated bloat just to get down to my simple and easy WM setup. I'm not an advanced user by any means but I find it quite hard to get rid of Gnome Shell without hitting a dependency circle so inevitably some of it is left behind.

Funny, I switched to Arch because I got tired of tinkering unnecessarily. One man's meat is another's poison.

I see why he posted it since he said he's always getting asked why he doesn't review it, but unless you follow him, I agree with most of the other posters, "who cares"? He doesn't like arch, oh well. It's not everyone's cup of tea. He admits it openly, so to me it's not really worth reading (I don't follow him and could care less).

He seems to be saying "I don't want anything to do with Arch because it doesn't provide what I want." Fair enough. He's perfectly right, and those who like Arch because it provides what they want are equally so. Horses for courses.

I don't like Arch because it's bleeding edge and I prefer stable. Surely the whole point of Linux is that it provides everyone with some distro or other that suits them.

That is something only you can decide and you won't know until you try it.

for me, going through the process of installing archlinux, has ended all my distro hopping.
learn to do one thing, and do it well. KISS.

have never had a more stable & up-to-date distro.

I appreciate their documentation. I use it to tweak my AntiX installs to my liking. They are very considerate documenting and updating their wiki. It is one of my bookmarks. No matter what gnu/linux install I am running.

Their Forums? Meh. Not unless you are a masochist or at the least. Have thick sunburnt skin like I do.

I never got into Arch because of the i386 thing. Maybe, but probably not. I might play with a i686 iso install. Now that I have newer gear. But. I think my head is almost full of command line syntax. Because I am having trouble remembering BSD style command line syntax. I find myself thinking maybe I should quit trying to learn BSD.

I wish sometimes there was 2 of me. Because? I need to cut back on this indoor workout, concentrate on my outdoor workout more.

On Dedoimedo. I have read some of their stuff over the years. Some I agree with. Some I don't.
At least the dude made the effort to type out what he thought. It does not mean I have listen blindly. Just listen.

I think he makes a valid point. If your goal is to learn every step of the process then Arch might be your thing. Otherwise what's the point when their are much easier routes to take to get to pretty much the same end?

Obviously, Arch isn't for everyone, and I think he put that into words quite well. It's definitely not for the average Joe and if it was the only choice for Linux there would be a whole lot less Linux users out there.

I enjoyed the article.

For the record, I use Fedora 23 on my Laptop and CentOS 7 on my Desktop. To each his/her own. That's what's so great about Linux, choice.

1 members found this post helpful.

i think this aura is created mostly(*) by people who do not use archlinux.

(*) of course there's a few self-important hackers (i wouldn't even know how to write that in 'leet) who think they have mastered the tool that will bring them world domination, but thanks to mr robot they're all using kali linux now.

ps:
it has been mentioned that the arch forums are not a fun place to be.
i wholeheartedly agree with that.
but then, it has taught me that in 95% of all cases there's no need to start a new thread for your problem. just search better.

1 members found this post helpful.

Exactly why I don't use Arch and use Netrunner Rolling instead, downstream tends to be more stable. It is good for people who don't mind an unstable environment and is essentially a DIY'er, I am myself but prefer stability like with Debian or FreeBSD.