https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=u01AbiCn_Nw mental outlaw video:
hi everyone, i was planning on getting a new laptop cheaply for about 500ish but then i stumbled upon this near-totally modular laptop rhat starts out at above 1000 bucks. do you think the cheaper laptop in the long run is just a false economy and i should go for the framework or what? if you want to ask questions go ahead but im mainly concerned about the longterm financials (and how well it will keep up over time)
whats so good about arch? is it faster?
due to the nature of arch and its rolling releases, it tends to get bleeding edge updates/features rather than having to wait for a major update to iron itself out then get rolled out. If you’re a gamer for example, if Valve fixes a bug in the gpu driver, then Arch would probably get it asap (especially given that Steam OS is arch based)
It’s just another distro that has gained a following more because of some perceived superiority than any truly practical reason. If you’re new to Linux I wouldn’t recommend it.
You have the freedom to customize it how you want. The downside is that you have to customize and install everything yourself. A happy compromise is to get an arch based distro which handles a lot of the main stuff, my current favorite is endevour os.
but cant you customise any distro yourself?
Yes, but with arch you have to because you have to set it up yourself. In all seriousness, arch is a great base but unless you have the patience and knowledge to set it up yourself, staying with arch based distros (like Manjaro) is much easier. And if you’re new to Linux in general but actually wanna try it, start with something like Mint. It’s fast, stable, easy to work with and this a good entry point
Yes, but that’s not the same thing as “all distros are really the same” just to be clear.
Some folks would have to spend so much time ripping things out of Ubuntu or Fedora etc that it’s much easier to build Arch with only what they want.
There are other benefits, but like everything else, not everyone cares about the same things.
If you feel like no distro does things the way you’d prefer, Arch may be for you. If you have no complaints about whatever distro you use, there’s probably not any reason to jump ship to Arch.
Here are a few articles.
https://www.systranbox.com/an-introduction-to-arch-linux-exploring-its-features-and-benefits/
https://linuxiac.com/archlinux/
https://www.howtogeek.com/872962/arch-linux-vs-ubuntu/
https://www.debugpoint.com/arch-linux-vs-other-distros/
The better way to say it is you need to build Arch youself. Other distros you can customize after installation, but you need to install Arch piece by piece by yourself. Hence the suggestion to go with EndeavorOS which makes installation easier.
What’s good about it is that if you know what you’re doing you can install only what you need and keep your system small and tidy. Also, since it’s a rolling distro, updates become available really quick and sometimes some of the updates introduce optimizations (meaning more performance) or better power consumption. And finally of course Arch has also an amazing wiki, they have hands down the best Linux documentation along with Gentoo, and they even have a page about Thinkpads: https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Laptop/Lenovo
No, not in any noticable way. It’s a rolling release, which means you don’t perform big, whole-system upgrade (unless you don’t run the updater often). It’s not the only rolling release distro, but it may be one of the biggest. Being a rolling release generally means getting newer versions of software faster.
The Arch wiki may be the single best source of information about Linux software, and Linux on different types of hardware, that exists today. It really is incredible - and while it’s often useful outside of Arch, the wiki assumes Arch is the distribution, with Arch’s filesystem layout, standard tools, and instructions about dependencies and configuration. It’s most useful for Arch users.
The list of software packaged for Arch is vast, if you include the non-core, community-maintained package DB AUR, second only to the much older Debian.
Like most big distros, Arch has derivatives. EndeavourOS is an Arch-based distro that provides a simplified installation; you boot into a usable DE after installation. Artix goes in the other direction, and replaces systemd with a user-selected init, and requires much more fiddling to get running - but is consequently more customized. There are probably others.