Why Arch?

Mahmoud Hossam — Tue, 03 Oct 2017 08:52:38 +0000

People have been having problems with Ubuntu recently so I proposed Arch Linux as a replacement, but it'll require some changes to your behavior to get a similar experience.

Arch Linux is a rolling-release distro, that means you'll only ever need to upgrade packages since there are no formal releases.

That means you'll always have the latest versions of the packages you have installed.

Most people think this means Arch is less stable, but this isn't true at all, Arch has always been more stable for me than Ubuntu, Fedora or even SuSE ever was.

At the time of writing this post (September '17), I have the 4.12.10 kernel, and GNOME 3.24.2 and I've had no freezes, bugs, or instability with anything so far.

Another one of the reasons why I use Arch is the package manager, Pacman.

Pacman runs circles around apt, dnf, zypper or any package manager I've used so far, and it has package signing so you'll always have trusted updates (unless you turn that off, of course).

Someone might ask: "Okay, but what if the software I want isn't in the official repos?"

Arch has the AUR (Arch User Repositories) to solve this problem, it's basically a community-maintained repo with recipes to build basically any software you can think of, they're even more comprehensive than Ubuntu's PPAs!

All this comes at a price though.

The price is that you'll have to maintain your own system as Arch gives you very little by default.

The default installer is CLI based, so if you don't know the shell like the back of your hand, there will be a learning curve involved.

This is where the Arch docs really shine, I learned almost everything I know about Linux from the Arch Wiki.

It has a detailed installation guide and a dedicated beginner's guide for people completely new to Arch.

And in case you can't find a solution for your problem anywhere in the Wiki, you'll find one in the Arch forums.

Most people usually stay away from learning stuff like system maintenance, but I think all Linux users should learn how their system works.

This knowledge will come in handy when you come across a problem with your system, I promise.

And in case you don't want to go through all this hassle to have a stable system, there are Arch-based distributions that give you basically the same experience but with a much lower learning curve, the most popular of those is Manjaro Linux.

Hi, I'm Mahmoud Hossam

Mahmoud Hossam — Mon, 02 Jan 2017 00:54:13 +0000

I have been coding for 9 years.

You can find me on GitHub as mahmoudhossam

I live in Cairo, Egypt.

I work for Yaoota!

I mostly program in these languages: Python, Go, Java.

I am currently learning more about Math and Computer Science.

Nice to meet you.

DEV Community: Mahmoud Hossam

Why Arch?

Hi, I'm Mahmoud Hossam