5 Reasons Why Arch and Arch-Based Distros Are So Popular

hello and welcome back to the otb channel something a little bit different today you all know about arch linux and how popular it currently is why is that though well i'm going to look at five reasons why i think arch linux seems to be riding the crest of a wave at the moment okay welcome back so why is arc linux so popular well you know i'm an arch user and the likes of dt he's an arch user and a number of other uh youtube uh i won't call as celebrities youtube video producers also use arch esnicks of course we mustn't forget him and i think we use arch for our own reasons because i suppose ultimately we find it reliable it works it does what we need it to do um and success breeds success as arch has become more and more popular and people have realized just how flexible it is it's become almost the go-to distro for your linux enthusiast or for many linux enthusiasts i don't want to you know paint everyone with the same brush that has not always been the case when i started using linux back in 2004 my goodness 17 years ago that makes me feel even older than i am um arch was really nowhere to be seen um i don't even know if it existed in those days but the big division really was between um debian based systems and of course ubuntu came about in 2004 but there was plain debian as well i'm sure oh there was simply mepis and those sort of distros and then on the other side you had the rpm based distros so yeah uh red hat but that was already a commercial product by then you had open souza you had mandrake you had fedora core and the battle such as it was was was between the debs and the rpms but over the years that balance certainly seems to have shifted and what we see now is is debs are still really important i'd go as far as to say ubuntu which is a debian based system is probably still the most popular uh distro uh of all of them simply because it's been around so long and it's built up a great reputation but arch is starting to get there of course we don't have any stats to to prove any of this absolutely but i get the sense that arch is just going from strength to strength to strength it seems that you can go on endlessly looking at different arch distros and there must be some reason for this popularity so i've been thinking about that yesterday and today and i've come up with five reasons why i think arch linux is so popular okay package management before we start let me just say i noticed on those introductory clips that for some reason my audio seem to be just a millisecond out of sync so i've just made an adjustment and apologies for that hopefully it's all good now package management is definitely one of arch linux's strengths pac-man is absolutely brilliant it's easy to use it's really a command line program more than anything else but but so is apt um but comparing apt and pacman side by side which i've done quite a few times not by timing them or anything like that just watching them perform pac-man is super fast so in terms of package management arch has a really competent package manager in pac-man but package management goes far beyond the tools that are available for us to manage packages it's also about the number of packages that we have in repos and the arch repositories are are very large that's for sure but what really in my opinion sets arch apart is the aur the arch user repository some people love it some people hate it not all the packages in the aur will work because i don't think it has really any quality checking goes on but the vast majority do what this actually means uh for your linux user is if a package isn't in the standard arch repositories the chances are somebody has submitted it to the aur and that's a brilliant thing because back in the day if you didn't have the package in your repositories and you couldn't find a a ready roll deb or something like that well your only options were to download the source code and do a configure make make install which was all well and good but if you install a package manually like that you can't then control it with your package manager and upgrades and installations are not as straightforward what the aur allows us to do is it allows to take the source code of packages that aren't in the standard arch repos and it allows us to compile them and then manage them with a range of different package managers known as aur helpers this seems like a little bit of a jewel approach because i've just sung the praises of pac-man and you can't manage the aur with pac-man but you can manage the aur with things such as yay and a range of other packages per mac even and it makes the whole process really easy i don't know what the final number of packages are in both the aur and in the pac-man repos but i would guess that it's it's probably more than than is actually in debian to me that is such a big draw because if i want to install a particular window manager or a particular package that i've seen somewhere on a review chances are i can do it in arch even with the likes of ubuntu if i wanted to install something from uh their package repo repositories let's just take for example left wm the window manager that i use um i don't think it's in the standard ubuntu repos it is in the aur so no problem there now by pick your poison i mean i'm referring to choice and i think this is another big feature of arch linux and arch based uh distros because i'm not restricting this discussion to plain arch i'm talking about the whole ecosystem out there of arch and archbase distros and you get to choose what you want i mean you've obviously seen the sort of distros i review and i i've lost count of the number of arch distros that that i've had a look at and done a quick review of but it seems to me that the choice for arch and arch-based systems at the moment is just massive you can do a standard archway install no problem whatsoever people think it's hard but it's not hard you just follow the superb wiki that exists for the distro and it doesn't take as long as you think and it's not as difficult as i don't know the mystique that seems to surround it if you'd rather have an easy install there are a plethora of uh scripts out there that allow you to do a quick install with very little knowledge um be they good or bad they exist uh there are also a whole range of systems that use something like calamaris so it's just a click click click click and essentially you have an arch system i'm thinking here specifically of the likes of endeavour os and manjaro both of which are absolutely superb uh arch-based distros and together probably i'm guessing here probably have a larger user base than plain arch and the beauty about having this choice is even if you're relatively new to linux and you don't feel comfortable doing a command line install you can get up and running with an arch-based system pretty quickly and you can learn to manage and maintain that system which is a big thing of course i haven't even touched on you know you can probably pick a distro out there that has your window manager of choice your desktop environment of choice your color scheme and theme of choice i mean we have things like garuda now which is uh all singing all dancing with go faster stripes and that appeals to a certain user user group but whatever you want there seems to be a variant of it within the world of arch or archbase distros which means that if you like arch and you like the package management system you don't really need to look beyond that make a list of what your other choices are and you're pretty sure to be able to find something if you don't want to build it and customize it yourself which of course is always an option so pick your poison it is all about choice and it's a definite strength i was about to break into song there you know rolling rolling rolling but i cannot hold a note so i'm not going to subject you to that i think being a rolling release is a strength now this is perhaps one of those more debatable strengths it might not might not be something that you particularly like nevertheless a rolling release means you install once and then you maintain an upgrade and you're not having to look at a new installation every 6 months 12 months 18 months or whatever else this system that i'm on at the moment uh i've been running non-stop since installation about 18 months ago i think it is and uh it's as fresh and new as it was the day that i installed it because it's been kept constantly updated and there are real advantages to having auto installing a rolling release one i've already mentioned you don't need to keep installing point releases to upgrade although to be fair it's similar in in that sense to debian you can do a disk upgrade and you can move on to the next version but it's not quite as simple and straightforward secondly being a rolling release it means that you are banged up to date with the latest bleeding edge packages and that's good for a couple of reasons one it means that you can take advantages of new features as they're released on various applications and secondly if linux is going to support the latest and greatest hardware well the variance of linux you want is probably something like arch which is going to have the latest kernel um whereas if you're going to install something like debian stable the chances of it working with the latest and a lot less so there's some strengths there i appreciate that some people prefer stability and point releases over a rolling release and i'd agree it's horses for courses so on my website for instance that that's running on top of debbie and stable i would not dream of putting arch on a web server i just wouldn't uh it's far too much maintenance you want something that you're just going to install run updates once a month or so and it's just going to be solid as the day is long which is what debian is but for a desktop system i think a rolling release is the way to go i use arch by the way as if you didn't know and i mentioned that here because i think that expression sort of says a lot about how arch itself has become a meme there is something about the system that i don't know i don't believe it's true but but it also almost seems to have a mythical quality that arch is associated with linux users who know what they're doing who are not noobs um they are part of the elites an arch is a prestigious distro to run now i think all of that's rubbish because i think uh the whole concept of elitism in linux is is by the buy there are certainly much harder distros to maintain and install uh i'm thinking of gen 2 linux from scratch perhaps even slackware um arch is not in that class if you can do um an archway install even all you have to do is a copy and paste from the arch wiki and and it's done and dusted in no time and once you've got your system up up and running it does you know there's almost an anti-climax you start to say to yourself well that wasn't that hard was it nevertheless it does seem to have this this mystique surrounding it that uh you know if you're an arch user you must know what you're doing i think less and less so these days uh can we even say that anywhere near the truth especially with um all of the arch based distro such as endeavour and manjaro it's easy to install and learning to maintain it isn't that difficult nevertheless it still does have that that mystique that certain something and perhaps it's because if you're an arch user and you install arch or an arch arch based distro um it doesn't try to hide the fact that the terminal is there and the chances are that you will you know use it it is not trying to direct you down the road of only using gui tools i mean even if we take one of the uh what i think is the best um archbase distro endeavor os i mean that heralds itself as a terminal centric distro it does expect its user base to go to the command line for some of the maintenance and tasks that need to be done and i think that's you know the same can be said of any distro out there that that you you could name but sometimes you do get the impression with other user-friendly distros that uh they almost seem to suggest you'll never have to open one of those scary black boxes and type stuff that you don't understand so yeah it's it's a linux users distro it's uh it encourages you to get down and dirty and to apply your own customizations and whether or not arch linux users do have more linux knowledge than the average user using another system i've absolutely no idea it might have been the case once before but i don't necessarily think it's the case now nevertheless we still have got this meme going on you know running arch still does have a certain status uh they used to say that uh nobody ever got sacked by buying from companies like ibm and with arch i suppose you can also say nobody's really going to take the mickey out of you if you're running arch not something that can be said of some of the other perhaps more user-friendly distros if that's the appropriate phrase which i'm not sure it is but anyway let's move on and at number five i really couldn't finish a video like this without mentioning the sources of support that are available if you are an arch or an archbase distro user i'm not talking here just about forums i'm mainly talking about the superb archwiki which is a resource as far as i'm concerned like no other it's not just a resource for arch users i know users of other distros refer to the archwiki to resolve particular problems but it's my go-to every time i'm stuck i go to the archwiki to see if there's a solution now combine that with the fact that there are some friendly forums out there especially forums like manjaro and the endeavour forum and uh i'll grant you the the standard arch forum hasn't got a particularly good reputation for for new users i'm not qualified to say because i don't use it but but that's my general impression but nevertheless you there are sources of support out there anyway and i suppose because success began success and because arch has become so popular you can usually find advice and help anywhere really i mean let's face it you can find umpteen youtube videos about arch i i noticed this morning that uh esnix had released a video talking about the uh the little issue that's cropped up with uh the latest version of uh pac-man six and how it stopped per mac working and talking about you know how we should be reacting and what we can actually do so you can always find answers always being able to find answers somehow helps to create a sense of adventure that you're perhaps prepared to do things that you wouldn't normally experiment with and for me it's that sense of experimentation that i think arch allows and through its infrastructure really promotes if i want to install some obscure package or window manager chances are i can do it really easily if i want to get down and dirty in the terminal same thing if i want to experiment with themes and different colors and different types of terminals it is all there now none of this is unavailable in other distros it just seems that that sense of experimentation seems to be more upfront with arch or at least that's my impression ultimately the support that's there and the sources of reference that you can draw upon are are just amazing so a bit of an arch love fest here and i make no apologies for that uh if it's good it's good there are downsides though and let's have a chat about those so there's always a downside isn't there um and this section is probably for someone who is an arch user and uh i like the system initially there's no downsides as far as i'm concerned but there are of course there are the main one being uh as a rolling release you're gonna get lots of updates coming down the line and that has two implications really uh one it's gonna break the system at some point it will it's just the nature of the beast and you're gonna need to fix it most of the fixes are straightforward the support is usually out there but you are going to get little bits and pieces that that just need to be tweaked to get your system up and running secondly because there are so many updates coming down the line you are going to need a fast internet connection if you have a really slow internet connection i can imagine it being a real pain to run so it needs the internet it really does and last but not least um i think this downside or disadvantage if you like is almost a result of arches success and the fact that we have so many user-friendly arch distros out there at the moment i don't ultimately feel that art should be a first user system i think people coming to art should probably have already spent six months or so using a different perhaps stable release of some distro and then move on to arch when they have a better idea of what linux is all about otherwise they run the risk with an easy click click click click install of uh finding a breakage happens perhaps a minor breakage they don't know how to fix it and it puts them off for life so i do think you do need a certain degree of knowledge to run an arch system effectively not masses i think it'll be a good second distro but i wouldn't recommend it to somebody brand new to linux but that's it really i can't think of any other downsides worth mentioning so guys that's the end of this video uh come and join me on the facebook group or library and i'd like to say thank you to my patrons thank you guys uh your support has been absolutely wonderful the last 12 months or so and i'll see you next week because it's a lovely day and i'm about to go out on my bike again so thanks very much have a great weekend

Channel: OldTechBloke

Views: 4,571

Keywords: oldtechbloke, otb, linux, oldtechbloke youtube, old tech bloke youtube, arch linux, arch-based linux distros, linux popularity, arch linux popularity, reassons why arch linux is popular, top 5 reasons why arch linux is popular, rolling release, best linux distro, btw i use arch, arch linux review, best linux distro 2021, rolling release vs point release, i use arch btw meme, arch linux installation 2021, endeavouros, manjaro, eznix, linux desktop environments, linux operating system

Id: iOzL8qshK_U

Length: 24min 1sec (1441 seconds)

Published: Sat Jun 05 2021