Arch Linux: Myth and Reality

 Arch Linux: Myth and Reality

Posted on November 1, 2015
Author catchlinux


One aspect of GNU/Linux, compared to other operating systems, is the simultaneous coexistence of multiple, equally supported versions, so-called ‘distributions’, based on the Linux kernel.

The advantages or disadvantages of each distribution and the question which one is the right for a specific user, is one of the most consistent discussions in Linux communities.
One distro, which kind of stands out in those discussions, is Arch Linux. It’s discussed and promoted in an enthusiastic way, something you don’t really see with other flavors of Linux.

The almost fanatical love for Arch Linux of some people and their urge to tell everybody about it on any possible (and impossible) occupation even created some insider jokes among Linux users like “How do you know somebody uses Arch? He’ll tell you.”
“First rule of the Arch Club: Tell everybody about the Arch Club!”.
If somebody asks if he should install Mint or Fedora you can count down the minutes until the first ‘Personally I use Arch, but….’ post.

Some sentences like ‘If you want to learn about Linux, install Arch’ or ‘The Arch wiki is the BEST Linux documentation EVER’ are basically a proved recipe for up-votes and approval, so it’s not surprising that they are repeated day in, day out.

This, together with the fact that Arch often is described as ‘the distro for advanced users’ or ‘hard to use’ and the famous Arch installation, which has to be done in the command line, must create an almost mythical image of Arch for the new Linux user. Some special distro for experts which is hard to use but brings a lot of advantages over other flavors of Linux?

I can imagine that the Linux newbie reads all that stuff which is written about Arch Linux and in his mind’s eye he sees a nerd sitting in front of his laptop with a black hoodie, typing in complicated algorithms to get Arch working. And that’s how some people act – as if this was the case. Probably because that’s the way they like to see themselves? I don’t know and I don’t really care.

As newbies are the main target audience of this blog, I will take a more critical or realistic look at the ‘advantages’ of Arch Linux and try to answer some questions you might have in a very rational, unbiased way.
What is Arch Linux? What -if anything- is so special about it? What will you learn or what would you gain with Arch? How hard is it really to use it?



 What is Arch? + The Installation

Installing most distributions is like renting a ready-furnished apartment. It’s basically a collection of software which was chosen by the developers and already configured in a certain way. The objective is to provide what’s called an out-of-the-box experience for the user. You install GNU/Linux in 15 minutes and start to use it right away. Everything is already done for you, the most important applications are on board, a desktop environment is installed and themed, sound is set up and important codecs are installed.

The advantages are obvious:
The new user can start to discover Linux without knowing anything about it. He doesn’t need to know which software is available for a certain task, he can start do use the pre-installed ones and look for alternatives later. The tech-savyness which is needed to install most modern distros is basically 0.
A lot of installers come with an option, which automatically detects installed operating systems and free space on the hard disc, sets up partitions in a default configuration, installs Linux and adds a boot loader. The installation process comes down to 5 mouse clicks.

On the other hand, for some people, that’s not exactly what they’re looking for. They already know which software they prefer and it’s not necessarily the one which comes pre-installed. Also, they might know exactly what they need on their system to fulfill their needs and don’t want to spend resources for anything else, neither CPU power nor memory nor storage. There definitely are a couple of reasons to look for a more minimalist approach.

When installing most distros is described as renting a ready-furnished apartment, installing Arch can be compared to renting an empty loft and refurnishing it yourself (but certainly not building you own house). It follows a minimalist approach: There aren’t any ‘default’ settings, you have to do everything manually and you only install the most basic components of a Linux system.

If you reboot after a successful Arch installation, you don’t even have the components installed which are responsible for displaying any graphical user interface, you boot into a command line interface and that’s it.
Then you go from there and install a x-server to display GUIs, you choose a desktop environment or single components of them, you install software to handle sound, your network connections and so on.
Thus, all those things also come without default configuration.

The fact that the Arch installation has to be done in the command line often is stressed out as a characteristic of Arch but in my opinion, that’s not even that important. The command line may have a dissuasive effect on new users, but you neither need to ‘know’ any commands nor do anything complicated or different from GUI installations when installing Arch.

If you’re using a regular desktop environment like Gnome or KDE, you can do most tasks with a few mouse clicks, or you could do the same things in a terminal emulator. To add a new user in Gnome you go to settings -> Users, click on ‘unlock’ -> Create new user account. Now to do the same thing in the terminal, you simply look up which command/tool is responsible for adding new users.You could look it up in some reference or book or just google it. After you know that adding new users is done with useradd, you type in ‘useradd’ instead of clicking on a + sign and you use sudo instead of an ‘unlock’ button, that’s it.
It’s the same thing with installing Arch – you basically do, what you would do when installing Ubuntu, instead of clicking on buttons you type in the according commands.

There is one huge difference to our example though – you don’t even need to research any commands.
Arch offers an excellent installation guide which tells you exactly what you need to do, and what to type in to archive that, step by step, line by line. In my humble opinion, there is no reason why this can’t be done by anyone with average IQ of 100, who’s able to read and to use a computer keyboard.

The two other main characteristics which are typically used to describe Arch Linux are ‘bleeding edge’ and ‘rolling release’.

Bleeding edge is referring to the fact that Arch Linux always is extremely up to date.  Software packages and kernel constantly get updated only a short time after a new version for Linux was released. On Arch, you’re always using the newest software which is available. You’re the first to see new features but also the first to receive potential bugs. Bleeding edge distros have the reputation of being a little adventurous or maybe even unreliable but I’ll talk about Arch and stability later.

Rolling Release means that there are no ‘versions’ of Arch, which are periodically released at a certain date like Fedora 20, Fedora 21, Fedora 22 and have a fixed life cycle. Instead, it’s continually developed and updates are constantly rolled out. You don’t reinstall a new version of Arch, you install it once and then get updates as long as you want to use Arch. This model and its dis -/ advantages will be touched a couple of times in this post.


 Minimal installation, ‘lightweight’ and control over a system?

So is it the big advantage of Arch to ‘have control over what’s going on’, that you ‘can build your own system from scratch’? A lot of people complain about that modern distros come ‘with a lot of crap installed’, that they have to ‘figure out what’s going on first’ and don’t want to clean their system before they use it, therefore you should switch to Arch. Yes, Arch definitely is a very good choice if you prefer control and good knowledge of your own system and if you want to a basic install without unnecessary components pre-installed.

While I totally agree, I’d still like to point out two things to consider:

1) A lot of popular GNU/Linux distributions actually offer a minimal install. It’s not an exclusive feature of Arch. However, this option is hardly used, while a lot of people love Arch because of it. If you look at the appreciation for a minimal installation in discussions about Arch, you’d think that minimal installs of other distros also should be way more popular, but they are hardly discussed as an alternative at all. If somebody complains about that Ubuntu is too ‘bloated’, for me the obvious alternative would be to do a minimal Ubuntu installation, instead of switching distro (package manager, community, documentation, kernel, repositories ) just because of that. I don’t have an explanation for this discrepancy, though. Maybe it’s because minimal installations on other distros are often recommended or classified as server installations. But you don’t need to install a (L)AMP stack on top of a minimal Linux installation without x-server, you can as well build your desktop from there like you’d build your Arch desktop.

CentOS (and RHEL) can be installed ‘minimal’ which basically leaves you with exactly the same environment as Arch after rebooting. Ubuntu offers a minimal net install. Debian as well. Fedora too.
Obviously, most distributions or re-spins, which are strongly based upon another popular distro don’t offer that option – it wouldn’t make any sense since they are mostly just configurations of their base distro. Pre-installed software and its configuration is basically the entire point of those spins.

2) It’s really not that hard to strip a GNU/Linux down.
I feel like people are extremely exaggerating with all those statements like ‘oh there are so many things running in the background’ or ‘I have to spend hours to clean up my Ubuntu after installation, NO THANKS, ARCH FOR THE WAY’ or ‘this is sooo bloated who needs all this stuff’.
In Linux, it’s typically one command to list all installed packages, one command followed by a list of their names to remove unwanted ones, it’s one word you need to type into the terminal to list all services which were started at boot up. Listing open ports and services, closing/disabling them is a matter of seconds.
Replacing your entire ‘bloated’ desktop environment with a slim window manager only takes a few minutes, download time inclusive. A lot of software’s preferences or desktop environment’s options can be set to ‘default’ with one click.

A typical Linux distro really isn’t that much of a big, confusing, nontransparent software cluster.

Also, a system is only as lightweight as you make it. If you don’t compile a custom kernel, the only big difference between two systems (in terms of being lightweight) is the software you install on top of GNU/Linux. To set up a lightweight Arch system, you need to actually know which applications have a small footprint and how to handle them. Well, if you know that, you don’t need to switch distro to use them. You can just replace everything which is too heavy for you with those apps.




 The learning experience

So, if you take on Arch Linux, what do you learn, what can you expect?
This probably is the topic where most empty or simply wrong phrases are spread, at least in my opinion.

“Ubuntu taught me Ubuntu but Arch taught me LINUX!”.
“If you really want to learn Linux, go for Arch”
“Arch really taught me how Linux works under the hood!”.

Well, no it certainly didn’t.
Those sentences sound good, but if you really think about it, they honestly don’t make a lot of sense.
You don’t learn about Linux if you use Arch, you learn about Linux if you learn about Linux.
If you do certain things on Arch or use certain software on Arch, you learn those things and that software. If I write it like this, it may sound idiotic, but somehow it can’t be that obvious, otherwise you would never have heard the quotes above, but I’m sure you have.

To understand how Linux works under the hood, you have to sit down and read a book about computer hardware, one about operating systems, another about the Linux kernel and maybe learn enough C to get an understanding of basic algorithms and data structures. To learn bash scripting you have to grab a book that teaches bash scripting and start to practice. To learn how to compile software, download the source code and follow instructions to compile it. In order to ‘learn the command line’, do you tasks in a terminal instead of using the GUI. That’s it, it’s as simple as that to learn Linux.

None of those things has anything to do with Arch or the distro overall.
It’s absolutely possible to learn basically everything you want on the distro which you’re using right now. You can go from complete noob to kernel developer on Ubuntu. You can install Arch but stay at noob level. What matters is what you do on your distro, not on which one.

The main thing you’ll learn from switching to another distribution, are some characteristics of this particular distro. The package manager may be a different one, the location of certain config files might be slightly different and so on, depending on how deep you dig.

So doesn’t Arch teach you anything? Is this recommendation totally made up?
Well, if you install Arch Linux, you’re forced to install different components of your Linux system manually, like we’ve already discussed. So in case you were using Windows, then you installed Ubuntu and you looked at Ubuntu as a complete OS, you don’t have any knowledge which software you’re actually using.

To give an example:
If your sound doesn’t work anymore, all you know is: My sound doesn’t work.
If you installed Arch on the other hand, you were forced to manually install the alsa and pulse-audio packages which handle audio under Linux. If your sound stops working, you -at least- know which applications you can fire up to check your settings and you have two keywords to do some google research on your problem. But apart from that? Executing a command once during the installation, after reading it on the installation guide really can’t be considered learning anything.

How much research you do about each task/component which you have to do/set up is completely up to you.
And that’s true for any distribution. If you research every word in the Arch installation guide which you don’t know or just visit google and search for things like ‘Linux graphic stack’ or ‘Linux sound architecture’ doesn’t matter.




 The customizability

Arch is extremely configurable? Yes, pretty much any GNU/Linux distribution is extremely configurable, the difference is, Arch forces you to configure a couple of things by yourself. At the end of the day there isn’t a lot you can ‘configure’ in Arch but couldn’t do in other distros. What stands behind this claim is probably this:
A lot of people start out with a distro which provides a ‘out-of-the-box’ experience. You install it with a few clicks and get a fully functional operating system. If everything just works, you might not even think about ‘configuring’ or ‘optimizing’ anything and you don’t even know what to configure. You aren’t forced to make decisions.

In Arch that’s a bit different: There isn’t any default setup configuration, you have to think about what you actually want, what options you have and then make it happen. What packages of a desktop environment should be installed, which file system do you want to use etc.
Once somebody begins to make those choices it can be a rabbit hole. He asks himself ‘What else can I do, what else can I optimize for my needs, which options do I have?’ and does some research. Stunned by the possibilities he discovers he might come to the conclusion ‘Wow Arch is so configurable’ and yes, that’s true.
But this is mostly the configurability of Linux which also -not exclusively- applies to Arch Linux, he just didn’t think about those options before.

However, if you already have the intention to learn about Linux you could discover and practice the same things with any distro out there. So “Arch is super configurable” definitely isn’t wrong but it’s not necessarily a huge advantage over other distros and it’s not necessarily a reason to switch to Arch Linux. On the other hand, if you want some suggestions and ideas what to do on your system, following the Arch installation guide and some post-installation recommendations definitely can be a good starting point.




 The performance of Arch Linux

That Arch somehow outperforms other flavors of Linux is another really stubborn rumor. Together with the cliche’ that Arch is for experts only or difficult to use, it probably creates the image of Arch as the racing car among Linux distros. It’s hard to handle but rewards you with high performance.

When you watch some ‘distro reviews’ on YouTube or blogs, sentences like ‘this is fast because it’s based on Arch’ or ‘I really wanted to have high performance so I went with Arch’ are quite common.

Now the truth is, there is no convincing technical basis whatsoever for this statement.
If we’re talking about a source based distro, it would still be questionable how much performance you gain on modern computers in real life, how much you can actually measure, but between distros with pre-compiled base and packages, it really doesn’t make sense. If anybody talks about how ‘fast’ Arch is, ask him why he thinks Arch is ‘faster’ and how he benchmarked it.

Maybe the origin of this thought is that lightweight systems outperform heavy systems, as less resources are assigned to keep the base system running or something like that. But that has nothing to do with the distro. Compare Ubuntu and Arch running on the same hardware, with the same packages installed, the same services running, the same configuration.  What do you think makes a huge difference? What magic was added to Arch and why wouldn’t other distros drink the same potion?

Of course, Arch always is very up to date and receives updates in the official repositories earlier by default than some other distros. So in some cases, if Arch receives an updated library or API, which is responsible for computer graphics related task like hardware accelerated rendering, and this update includes performance improvements, then this Arch system will get better results in one particular benchmarking, which measures exactly this rendering (for example).
At least for a few days or weeks until Fedora and Ubuntu receive the same update.
But in this case, the reason is the one updated package that’s different between two distros and results in one particular benefit for a short period of time . You could install (compile) it in Ubuntu as well with the same benefits and risks (less testing) if you want and the results would even out.

This isn’t the case with every update, it isn’t even the case with every update of components which have influence on performance, even if it happens, it isn’t very significant most of the time, it doesn’t influence any other task’s performance on the machine and it’s true for a short period of time.
That every update of the kernel automatically ‘improves performance’ or other BS is simply not a true statement.

So ‘Arch is faster than Ubuntu’ doesn’t even have a real basis if we talk about benchmarking of particular tasks. But if somebody clicks around on his desktop and says ‘look how fast this is because it’s Arch’ or ‘I switched to Arch because it feels much faster’ it’s simply ridiculous. Maybe there is some placebo effect but that’s it.





 AUR – The Arch User Repository

There are two main sources to install software on Arch Linux: The official repositories and the Arch User Repository. The former is administrated by the Arch Linux devs, the latter is community driven and open for anybody.

Often the AUR is presented as one of the incredibly awesome features of using Arch, sometimes even as THE reason to use Arch. And in fact it is very tempting – about any software which is available for Linux can be found in the AUR, most of the time before it’s available on other distros, often in different versions and always up to date. Also, you don’t have to add any PPAs for every app which isn’t in the official repos anymore, you can go and download everything you want from the AUR. When using an AUR wrapper, this comes down to one single command.

But how does it work? What’s stored in the AUR, are so called ‘Package Builds’. A PKGBUILD is a little script, that gives your Arch system all the required information to automatically compile the software you want to install. It tells the Arch Build System where to get the source code from, which dependencies need to be installed and so on. With this information, a package is created on your hard disk and installed by pacman, Arch’s package manager.

So basically if you want to add software to the AUR, you can create an account right now. Then you add a script, insert a link to any source code on the web, give it a name and add some additional information. The next guy who wants to download this software searches the AUR for it, sees a package with the name you assigned to it and installs whatever you linked to in your PKGBUILD.

It should be painfully obvious that this comes with a ton of disadvantages and should be treated with caution.

First of all, the obvious security aspect. Something like the AUR basically throws away all the advantages of installing  software from official repositories, which we often promote as advantages of Linux over Windows.
At the same time we promote the AUR as something so awesome to switch to a certain Linux?
That’s inconsistent at the very least.

If you want to use the AUR, always take a look at the PKGBUILD scripts, follow the link to the source code and decide if you would download the code from there and compile it on your computer.
Because if you wouldn’t do that – the AUR doesn’t add any additional security layer.
In real life however, installing anything from the AUR has become so accepted for most people, that sometimes you can read something like ‘type in yaourt some_package’ as a solution for a problem in the official Arch forums. As soon as there is a script in the AUR, software is seen as ‘available in Arch’.

So personally I don’t say the AUR is something bad, but I think a lot of people should overthink how to deal with it, how to look at it and how to promote it. In my eyes it’s something like a little bonus at best, which should be used carefully and as seldom as possible. But certainly not THE reason to use Arch Linux or the greatest thing Linux offers.

Apart from the security aspect,  there is another problem:
If a package is available in the official repos, a package maintainer is assigned to take care of it.
You can expect this package to be available continuously, to regularly receive updates if they are available. If a package is available in the AUR, it means nothing more than ‘you can install it right now’.
Everything else is not guaranteed. The guy who uploaded the script might decide to not maintain it one day or just forget about it. This doesn’t mean that you notice that right away and can look for alternatives and it doesn’t mean there instantly is an alternative. That’s not only another possible security issue, it’s also likely to break something. If dependencies of this package got updated in between, or if packages which have this package as a dependency are about to get updated  you’re left out in the cold.

So if the computer is somehow used in production (not only servers), I honestly wouldn’t recommend installing anything from the AUR at all. Exceptions could be very popular package builds, maintained by a trusted user and used/observed by a lot of users (the AUR has an upvotes system). However, this is not a guarantee at all.

Of course, if you know and/or trust the developer of a certain software and the package build script links to his official github, check the link and feel free to install it.
But again – it should be used with caution, that’s my point here.




 Rolling release & Stability – a matter of perspective

How stable is Arch Linux? Bleeding edge distros are often described as the opposite of stable enterprise or server distros. Some Arch fans on the other hand, might swear on the bible that’s it the most stable distro they’ve ever used. Like so often, the truth is somewhere in the middle depending on what stable means for you.

I believe a lot of people think about system crashes and major issues when they hear ‘not so stable’ – similar to blue screens and crashes in Windows. You can relax, Arch definitely offers that kind of stability. You don’t have to expect serious crashes, unusable systems, loss data or any of that. Depending on the intended purpose, Arch definitely can be used as your daily used main OS. What can happen on a more regular basis though, are little issues which usually can be resolved within 5 minutes to one hour (just to throw in some order of magnitude) or which are resolved automatically with an update the next day.

This usually isn’t a problem on your home computer and problems which make your machine unusable are really, really rare. However if you have a laptop which you use exclusively for work, or you need to set up a small server for your business, Arch may not be your first choice.
There are distros where stability doesn’t mean ‘no system crashes’ but rather ‘work 24/7 without any hang-up at all’. They use an older kernel and older, extremely well tested packages.

Sometimes, if distros are promoted as extremely stable, stability means consistency.
The distro’s devs try to keep the interfaces, file system hierarchy, location and layout of distro-specific config files etc consistent within one release and also for multiple releases if possible. This, together with a long support cycle for each release, is supposed to archive the effect that you can learn how to use a distro once and you’re still able to use it years later, with a minimum of relearning.
This also is something which you shouldn’t necessarily expect from a distro which follows a rolling release model and bleeding edge character like Arch Linux.





 Committing sacrilege – A critical view on the Arch wiki

The Arch wiki definitely is the Holy grail of the Arch evangelists. There isn’t a safer way to get up-votes, approval  and applause in any Linux community than praising the Arch wiki.  In a way that’s beautiful because the Linux community actually isn’t in agreement about something very often.
Let me say that I think the Arch wiki is a very useful Linux wiki, I have a ton of respect for anybody who contributes to it (and other wikis) and I would lie if I said I hadn’t found an useful hint or tweak in the Arch wiki myself from time to time.

I still think it has its disadvantages (like anything created by humans) and compared to most other Linux users I’m not that much of an Arch wiki fan. I definitely also refuse to call Arch the best documented Linux.
My point isn’t that the Arch wiki is bad or even ‘not good’ though, just that there is more than one view on things. I believe exchanging different opinions is more productive than joining a mutual admiration society and repeating what everybody else says to get some props.

First, I think it’s important to bring up that the Arch wiki isn’t really a ‘documentation or manual of Arch Linux’ it’s rather a ‘how to use Linux, and everything that runs on top of or underneath it’ wiki. It documents components of Arch Linux but it also tries to document every available desktop environment, tons of software you can use on Linux like web browsers, media players, chat clients etc, upstream components of Linux, recommendation on Linux usage etc.

There isn’t any horizontal boundary for content in the Arch wiki at all. Everything that has to do with Linux can be included (and pretty much is). This is actually a point why it is so admired – whatever you’re looking for, you’ll probably find something about it in the Arch wiki.

But together with the rolling release and bleeding edge character, this can cause a problem: It’s almost impossible to keep all those articles as up to date as Arch and every software which is documented in the wiki itself. And that’s what happens regularly, the Arch wiki often is outdated.

This is something I see rather critical: Why documenting anything and everything, if it can’t be kept up to date? There is so many software documented in the Arch wiki which is perfectly documented by the software vendors themselves – more detailed and always up to date.

The developers of the i3 window manager offer one of the best and most comprehensible documentations ever on their website. So why do we need a random excerpt of this manual in the Arch wiki? Using and configuring i3 is not Arch-specific. A few sentences on how to install and start it on Arch, followed by a link to the official documentation would ensure that every Arch user finds his answer and basically wouldn’t need any maintenance at all.

Does a Linux distro’s wiki really have the purpose to be as comprehensive as possible and to provide answers to anything a Linux user might ask?

Personally, I think a distro’s wiki should focus on explaining how to use the distro and components or software whose usage differs from distro to distro.
Firefox can be documented by Mozilla and it is, KVM can be documented by RedHat and it is, and so on.
Own documentation on software can definitely make sense, though, if the upstream one is too extensive for most users, if you have to follow additional steps for this specific distro, if there isn’t any high-quality documentation etc.

If you read my article about systemd you’ll remember one ‘rule’ of the UNIX philosophy:
‘Do one thing and do it well’.
I believe the Arch wiki could use some of that.

The second point I wanna raise also has to do with missing limitations of content, but this time vertically.
There doesn’t seem to be any common denominator among authors at all, on how deep the articles should dig, how detailed or how technical they are supposed to be.
Some are basically short check lists, others almost start to explain concepts of computer science.
This makes it a bit hard for me to  decide when I want to check the arch wiki on a certain topic. When I don’t understand something and want an explanation? When I want a short how-to but don’t bother about details? As a first dive into a new topic or a more detailed, advanced look at things?

What’s not an exclusive ‘problem’ of the Arch wiki but a fact for any distro which isn’t developed or backed  by a professional company is the lack of any priority list. A wiki like this is formed by a variety of people who write about some topic which they are familiar with. Some things which have an impact on security  and/or are distro-specific might lack proper documentation, other things which are ‘just-for-fun’ if you want and independent from Arch itself might be perfectly documented.

Other distros which follow a non-rolling release model, aren’t as bleeding edge and are either backed by a company or are related to an enterprise Linux have much better starting conditions.
They can write a documentation for one release, and as long as this release is supported, this manual is up to date. Also, the user often can access documentation written by professional developers who get paid to do so.  Tons of documentation for RHEL is freely available for everybody and also applies to CentOS.
Also, the user often can access documentation written by professional developers who get paid to do so.  Tons of documentation for RHEL is freely available for everybody and also applies to CentOS.

Those manuals have a clear focus, are written at a consistent level and can be used until a new release comes up. They mostly focus on how to use the distro instead of random software and tweaks. You can  read it like a book from A to Z and you get a manual on how to use your operating system.
For everything else you can search for additional how-tos or help from the community.

So if Arch Linux is the best documented Linux depends on what you’d like to have documented and which style of documentation you prefer. It may be the most comprehensive collection of information a Linux user might ask for. That doesn’t make Arch Linux the best documented OS.





 Arch and Gentoo

So far I kind of refuted a couple of statements about Arch from my perspective.
Maybe you believe me or you’re thinking ‘OK what he said makes sense’ but you’re kind of disappointed?
You wanted to use Arch to have a great learning experience, absolute control, high performance etc?

Here is what I think: In my opinion, a lot of the time when people talk about Arch, what they are really describing is another Linux distro called Gentoo.

Most of the statements about Arch where I didn’t agree on, are much more true for Gentoo Linux.
Gentoo is a so-called source based distro, which means that everything you want to use first has to be compiled instead of installing pre-compiled binaries like in Arch, Ubuntu, Debian, Mint, Fedora, openSUSE, RHEL etc.
This results in a control and configurability you don’t have in other distros.

Gentoo really forces you to learn some new things just by using it, much more than Arch does. So if you heard people talk about Arch and you got super excited, maybe consider giving Gentoo a try instead or afterwards.





 The distro for experts? Elitism and Arch

Ok, that’s something I don’t wanna talk about for too long because it’s just too stupid. For some Linux users telling everybody about Arch has become something like a status symbol. Probably believing all the stuff about ‘Arch is for advanced users’, ‘Arch has the best performance’ and other crap, they think using Arch makes somebody a Linux expert or whatever. They use ‘I’m on Arch’ like ‘I know what I’m talking about, believe me’.

So is Arch the distro of experts?

In one sentence I would answer this question like that:
A real ‘expert’ will probably use the distro he helps to develop or one which is similar to the distro he has to deal with at work.

If that’s Linux Mint or Gentoo doesn’t make somebody more or less of an expert. Using a certain distro is nothing to be proud of.
I’d love to hear about what interesting things people do on Linux rather than what distro they use.





 Conclusion

Even though my post may come across critical or nagging, I think Arch is a great distro.
If you want up to date software and kernel but a stable OS which you can use for everyday tasks with a huge community and good documentation, go for it.
I think any big Linux distro is a great operating system in 2015, I love Arch as well as SUSE, Fedora or CentOS. I just don’t see it as much salient contrasts to other distributions as other people might see.

And I’m a vehement opponent of any form of circle jerking.
I hate when phrases and sentences are repeated over and over again without thinking about it, that’s why I focused on some cliches, not because I hate Arch users.