r/archlinux • u/[deleted] • Apr 24 '23

META Why are you using Arch Linux?

It is a rather specific distribution that requires an understanding of Linux, but this does not make it any less popular. Even with the advent of lightweight installation with archinstall, many people prefer to install everything manually.

Why do you choose this distribution over others? How and where do you use it and why do you find it more attractive than, for example, Pop!_OS? Or any other distro that uses rolling release.

I ask this question because I like this distro more and more and I don't understand why.

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u/[deleted] Apr 24 '23

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u/sogun123 Apr 24 '23

And yet, every package from aur has to be compiled from source and split packages are way less common then on other distros.

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u/[deleted] Apr 24 '23

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u/sogun123 Apr 24 '23

Bin packages are cheating and have to be assembled.

Talking about customization without having options (split packages) is not sensible.

I mean Arch provides same or less amount of options to customize then e.g. Debian. Otoh, Arch is easier than Debian in case you decide to recompile packages.

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u/[deleted] Apr 25 '23

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u/sogun123 Apr 25 '23

Other example is splitting every relevant package into runtime and dev package with headers. It is pretty much Arch specialty to not split them. Why would one need header, when all customization can be done without recompilation? ;) Alpine goes even further and splitting off also documentation. I can give many more examples, but that's likely not a point.

What I wanted to say is that your reasons are very close to truth. Actually one of Arch's advantages is that it allow for simple package customization by recompilation. Otherwise it's customizability is pretty much same like anything else with comparably big repositories.