Linux

My way of thinking and working is incompatible with most premade automatism, it utterly confuses me when a system is doing something on its own without me configuring it that way.

That's why I have issues with many of the "easy" distributions like Ubuntu. Those want to be to helpful for my taste. Don't take me wrong, I am not against automatism or helper tools/functions, not at all. I just want to have full knowledge and full control of them.

I used Gentoo for years and it was heaven for me, the possibility to turn every knob exactly like I wanted them to be was so great, but in the end was the time spend compiling everything not worth it.

That's why I changed to Arch Linux. The bare bone nature of the base install and the high flexibility of pacman and the AUR are ideal for me. I love that Arch is not easy, that it doesn't try to anticipate what I want to do. If something happens automatically it is because I configured the system do behave that way.

I wonder if it's just me or if other people who were around before Ubuntu feel the same way but the reason I hate Ubuntu is that it seemed to take over the Linux world.

A lot of the information about how to do something in Linux was drowned out by how to do it in Ubuntu. When searching for information you have to scroll down in the search results for something that sounds unrelated to Ubuntu.

Ubuntu material was often titled "how to do it in Linux" and you thought you had a good long tutorial until you read a few paragraphs in and realized it was for Ubuntu and wouldn't work for you for whatever reason.

Even some software that says it's available on Windows and Linux just means they have a Ubuntu package and if you're really good there's a chance you might be able to figure out how to use it on a non Ubuntu system.

It's like when Ubuntu came out, people just assumed that Linux was Ubuntu. I've never used Ubuntu so a lot of the information I've came across regarding it has just been in the way of me finding useful information.

I think Arch is so popular because its considered a middle of the road distro. Even if not exactly true, Ubuntu is seen as more of a pre-packaged distro. Arch would be more al a carte with what you are actually running. I started with Slackware back in the day when everything was a lot more complicated to get setup, and there was even then this notation that ease of access and customization were separate and you can't have both. Either the OS controls everything and its easy or you control everything and its hard. To some extent that's always going to be true, but there's no reason you can't or shouldn't try to strike a balance between the two. I think Arch fits nicely into that space.

I also wouldn't use the term "cultists" as much as "aholes". If you've ever been on the Arch forums you know what I'm talking about. There is a certain kind of dickish behavior that occurs there, but it somewhat is understandable. A lot of problems are vaguely posted (several times over) with no backing logs or info to determine anything. Just "Something just happened. Tell me how to fix it?". And on top of that, those asking for help refuse to read the wiki or participate in the problem solving. They just want an online PC repair shop basically.

I can't speak to Arch but I use Ubuntu every day. I hate on Ubuntu because I use it every day. They make terrible choices. They've got common, serious issues people have reported at least as far back as 2009 with no acknowledgement or plan to address. I'm on LTS and they push through multiple reboot requiring sets of updates a week, heedless of the impacts.

I don't feel like learning a totally new environment so I'll be switching my main computer to Mint whenever I get the time. So I can deal with someone else's annoying decisions for a while.

Because Arch requires human sacrifice.

I feel like it isn't really specific to arch, every distro has a following, but some are more "passionate" about it than others. I think arch, NixOS, and gentoo are the most notable.

I use Arch because I don't know how to use Debian based distros, I got lost when trying to use Linux Mint or PopOS.

Because of all the programming socks adverts with Arch in the background.

Because there are still people who have not yet seen the light. Once everyone has joined the fold they will not be able to remember why anyone resisted in the first place.

So I love Debian but it prides itself on stability so packages tend to be older. I think this is good for a server but probably not great for a desktop. Ubuntu came along and was like we'll be like Debian but newer packages. Everything was cool for a while but then they started doing shitty things. The first that I can think of was ads in the terminal. This was not great for an open source app. Then when you did apt install firefox it installed Firefox as a snap. WTF?!?!? (apt should install .deb files, not snaps). Because of this, lately I've decided to avoid Ubuntu.

I used Gentoo for a while and it was great but configuring and compiling everything took forever. I'm getting too old for that. Arch seems like a good alternative for people who want to mess with their system. So it's become a way for people to claim they know what they are doing without having to recompile everything. (Note: I haven't used Arch, this is just my perception)

Recently I got a new laptop and I had decided to put Linux on it and had to decide what distro. Arch was in consideration but I ended up going with OpenSUSE Tumbleweed because it's got the latest but I don't really have to configure anything. If I had more time, I might go with something like Arch but I don't really want to do that much fiddling right now.

Because it's awesome. Join us... join us... join us...

Because it just works. I used to love Debian . It had issues with drivers and stuff. Arch just does it for me.

I've started with ubuntu/mint and it was always a matter of time before something broke then i tried everything from then all the major distros and found that I loved being on a rolling release with openSUSE Tubleweed (gaming and most new software works better) and BTRFS on Fedora (BTRFS let's you have boot time snapshots you can go back to if anything breaks).

After some research I found I can get both with arch so installed arch as a learning process via the outstanding wiki and have never looked back. Nowadays I just install endevourOS because it's just an arch distro with easy BTRFS setup and easy gui installer was almost exactly like my custom arch cofigs and it uses official arch repos so you update just like arch (unlike manjaro). It's been more stable than windows 10 for me.

Tldr: arch let's you pick exactly what you want in a distro and is updated with the latest software something important if you game with nvidia GPU for example.

People praising Arch, people hating on Ubuntu, meanwhile me on Debian satisifed with the minimalism.

a reputation more than 10 years out of date

I don't know about Arch itself on its own but I use CachyOS that is built off it and everything just works for me.

Ubuntu? Its a can't make up its mind what it is trying to be while always becoming a crashy mess. When it first came out I remember trying it and immediately broke it.

The last time I installed it recently it had issues out of the box.

It's funny because I see the same cult behavior, but for Fedora. I've never understood the point of this distribution that has never worked well for me.

I'm on Manjaro by the way, because I love everything about Arch except the release style.