Why would one unuse Arch btw?
Arch is only the larval stage. When a Linuxite consumes enough CLI, they metamorphose into one of two adult forms: a Void user, or a NixOS user. As these two adult forms are incompatible, this is a rare case of species divergence within a life cycle. Even more oddly, like the axolotl, many Arch users never leave the larval stage, and continue living comfortably in their ecological niche.
Wow, this is so well explained, I’m making it my personal copypasta!
Retired form of Linuxite is called Gentoo user
If NixOS and Void are the adult form then what is the form of FreeBSD and OpenBSD? Old form?
They are the alolan forms.
Different species. They’re not in the Linuxite clade.
The Linuxite taxa have far higher diversity due to faster mutation rates; the BSD genus has far fewer species, and can’t cross-breed with Linuxites.
Daamn, I’m a pupa (Arch -> Debian + Nix)
Yeah, that comment leaves out the “I learned a lot from Arch, but don’t have the time to manage evertything anymore” crowd, which goes Ubuntu -> Arch -> Debian/Mint/Fedora
I discovered that EndeavourOS satisfied that for me, without me having to give up Arch. And snapper+btrfs-grub has eliminated any interest in messing about with the new line of immutable systems. The only tempting distro I might spend time in is Chimera Linux (link, b/c of an unfortunate naming conflict) which (a little hilariously) is an attempt to make a Linux distro that’s purely Gnu-free. Chimera also runs dinit instead of systemd, and that’s interesting.
Anyway, there are a couple of options that let a user stay in Arch but make things less… fussy.
I gunked up my system with too much AUR, even with endeavourOS. NixOS might be a bit more suitable for my ADHD brain.
Switching to nixos?
As someone who switched to nixos - eh. So much hacking to make dev stuff work really kills the magic that nixos is supposed to be :|
Yeah, it is a lot of initial work, but once you got your shell.nix or flake.nix in place it is really nice, to not have to deal with different dependencies and versions in different projects.
But you can also archive the same on any distro with the nix package manager.
except i want my computer to function for my needs without “a lot of initial work”
It’s an investment for the next time you install on a new dev machine. After install, I will literally run a single command to return to the exact state of my dev environment.
Sure but how often do you need to actually change your machine?
Me personally, a lot. I work on 4 different rigs (inlcuding latops) and yes, for me, it does save time.
I’m actually building a new work station right now.
About weekly in my case.
Probably not often, but as a Debian user, it’s a PITA to get back to where I was before I fucked up my system. Nix(OS) sounds like a future investment to me, just in case I ever fuck up and need to get back to where I was ASAP. Been there once already and it was NOT fun.
That was from a professional standpoint BTW, privately I’m still a dirty Windows pleb, because that’s what I’m most familiar with.
PS: I’m already using a dotfiles repo, which already saves me a ton of time in settings things up.
Just use Fedora then 🤷.
It’s definetly a distro for tinkerers. But so is arch and it’s way more stable for my tinkering than arch.
Edit: nicer grammar
This is why I run Manjaro, which I never hear any love for here for some reason. It’s the rolling releases and cutting edge updates of Arch, but with the ease of use and reliability of Debian. Insert a bootable USB and have a fully functional system in a couple minutes.
Manjaro just works, from gaming to development, and I’ve never been forced to play games to install a hardware driver or newer library that isn’t part of the release like with Debian or Ubuntu.
Been using Linux for over 20 years and never seen a distro so trouble free.
The reason you don’t see a lot of love for Manjaro is because your experience isn’t quite typical. Manjaro is notorious for taking Arch and making it less stable. It’s mostly Arch with some defaults and software to make it easier to set up, but the few cases where it drifts from Arch tend to cause more issues than if you just used Arch directly.
Agreed, i had more issues on Manjaro than i ever did on raw Arch. The Manjaro team, at least during the time i used it, didnt seem very good at keeping things working. So many issues with bad packages, keys expiring, stuff like that.
Arch was a blessing.
However, NixOS has ascended me to heaven lol.
Interesting, I’ve installed it on quite a few machines now, all with widely varying hardware. Aside from my development/gaming rig I’ve got a shop laptop which is used by various goons to view shop drawings and look up parts, one the ex-wife still hasn’t managed to break, one is my 9 year old daughter’s and another is a potato that runs my 3d printer (to be fair this one is fossilized and doesn’t get updates).
All are working great with no setup effort and no maintenance so I guess it’s a classic case of YMMV. I wouldn’t have used Arch for any of those use cases except maybe the 3d printer.
There are good (usable) flake templates you can just
nix flake init, thoYou could always try Void 😁.
i dunno wanting an os that actually just works without a lot of setup?
The whole point is the setup 😒.
Look at the community where it was posted.
they have probably switched to gentoo
I don’t see the programmer socks in the picture, did I miss them?
Look at the subreddit. It’s implied they switched to void.
I think with inflation a picture is only worth 700 words.
S6E4 Game Changers dropped literally yesterday and you wasted no time recycling the joke
Well it’s a good thing this person mentioned it. I have never heard of whatever game changers is. I would have never heard it otherwise.
I waited for this comment to be relevant for the entirety of the episode. As I closed it, I heard the word “inflation” and I had to bring the video back up to finally understand what you meant by this lmao
Nah the pic is worth 2500 words and the worth of a word decreased to the point where everyone has pictures.
That’s a pretty detailed prompt.
Friendship ended with Arch. Now Void is my best friend!
Yeah, I don’t think everyone got that from the pic 😂.
That space where the arch sticker was
We get it, you used arch. You don’t need to write a thousand words telling us.
But the Wiki is soooo nice! And have you seen AUR!
/s
The AUR is legitimately the biggest thing keeping me on Endeavor
It’s just four words though.
I use arch btw
(Or maybe six, is btw three words?)
I used to run Arch, btw
I use mint, btw.
(…Not really but it fits the joke the best. I have used it and it’s an excellent distro whether you are a beginner or just want something stable and full featured. )
Mint is such a pragmatic distro. Honestly I admire people who are just happy with their Mint and don’t feel the need to distro hop to ever more esoteric package ecosystems just to feel alive
The only reason I stopped using mint is some of the programs didn’t exist or were outdated. I’m about to settle at NixOS.
Edit: I ended up going back to my intermediary between mint and nix: Arch Linux
You could use nix on mint btw.
I’m slowly learning Nix, and I’ve learned that Nix has more packages available than any single distro could ever deliver: https://repology.org/repositories/graphs.
It even has more than AUR (Arch User Repository, BTW)
I use Debian everywhere but if I need a Live Linux environment to recover files, clone a drive, wipe a drive, or really anything else I use ventoy and a Linux mint iso.
I work in a PC repair shop (mostly Windows stuff) and I do the same with Ventoy and Mint. I especially like it for gParted but have a variety of things I use on it.
Ugh ex Star Trek nerds, am I right guys? /s
https://lemmy.ca/pictrs/image/70aa7a8c-6237-405e-928c-ad28732967e2.png
I’m a Captain, BTW.
Good one. Took me second. Just a second though.
Hahahah 🤣🤣🤣… good one 🤣.
Yeah, it’s obvious a jealous Manjaro user stole that dude’s sticker…
Edit: almost forgot… I use arch btw…
I use NixOS btw
No no, that’s ours, find your own
Great, now the song is in my head.
STEALING is against THE LAW
I don’t see what the problem is with Arch Linux and why it gets so much flak. I am not a Linux expert by any measure, but I use EndeavourOS and find it really use to use (don’t ask me to install from scratch). Its extremely stable and I like the fact that it gets updated constantly.
The only other distro I really liked is MX Linux. My main gripe was that I don’t want to reinstall every so many years. I want to set up an OS and just use it without worrying about it being a temporary thing. But maybe I’ll change my mind in the future.
I’m not for or against any distro really, maybe except Ubuntu and its bloat. I just use what best suits me, which is the whole point of all the different distros.
Manjaro is truly the worst distro of all time and probably helps give arch a bad name
Oracle Linux exists
I use Manjaro, btw.
Samesies
I had like 2 issues that took literal minutes to fix over the years I ran Manjaro, I know there were some silly misconfigurations years ago but I never paid much attention then the hate and it ran all my stuff just fine. 🤷♂️
Built a new rig a few weeks ago and decided to check out EndeavorOS, but would have stuck with that Manjaro install for a while if I hadn’t.
if you want to know my problems with manjaro, see this discussion: https://lemmy.ml/comment/9214664
It’s a super problematic distro made by an insanely incompetent team, I promise you have been lucky, i’ve given it to many people and spent years using it, it’s garbage.
i think its just people taking the “i use arch btw” meme too seriously and thinking its bad to show or even use it all
Its extremely stable
This is why people make fun of arch users
Look at the sub in which this is posted 😉. That was the joke 😉.
I don’t think this is an “Arch is bad” post, but rather a “Void is good post”. I think the sticker is remove because it’s not relevant to them anymore.
Became straight
I’ve used arch on one machine now, am a total noob to it, and I really like it. I see what people are raving about and I see no reason to shit on it. I don’t really care if 6 years ago some people were annoying about it
Arch is good, no doubt 👍.
Void is better 😁.
How?
Faster, more stable, no systemd, supports musl and architectures not usually supported by most distros. It’s probably the most stable rolling release distro out there.
What is the benefit of no systemd?
It’s too popular and it works too well.
Not true, doesn’t work well at all. It’s bloated and full of bugs.
I literally haven’t run into a single one in the whole time Arch has been using it.
(I installed Arch shortly before it switched to systemd and have been using it since without pause)
The main benefit is that when people get tired of distro flame wars, they can move on to init system flame wars.
With the price of energy being what it is, people need the systemd flame wars to keep them warm!
No, I just don’t like systemd. It’s bloated and full of bugs. Just because almost every distro out there uses it, doesn’t mean it’s good.
I’m feeling warmer already, thanks!
Boasting, mainly.
I have no horse in this race, I don’t have strong feelings about it either way as long as it works. But I can’t help but notice that OP skipped replying to me.
OP said “bloated and full of bugs”.
I’ve been using Arch since shortly before they started using systemd and literally never ran into a systemd bug.
I have no clue at this point what “bloated” means. Maybe if everything works and you don’t have to hack up your own solution all the time, that’s “bloat”?
Oh great so now i have to unlearn systemd again?
Runit is even easier than doing things in systemd.
It really is that easy. Runit is probably the simplest init/service manager there is out there.
Does it support glibc while it supports musl?
Yes. From their website:
C library diversity
Void Linux supports both the musl and GNU libc implementations, patching incompatible software when necessary and working with upstream developers to improve the correctness and portability of their projects.
“Patching incompatible software”
What does that mean? If glibc is supported why there is a portability issueand requirement of patches?
Presumably so it can work with either libc implementation.
They are likely referring to musl. Patches might be needed for some programs to work with musl.
Yes, there are basically 2 builds for every architecture. One is glibc, the other is musl. I haven’t used the musl builds that much, just toyed with them a few times (mainly because of lack of software), but if you only use open source software that doesn’t specifically depend on the GNU toolchain, yes, you can daily drive it, no doubt there. And yes, it is faster than the glibc builds.
Yeah different builds. Not what i expected
Many programs aren’t packaged for Void though
Repackaging is easy though with xbps-src.
Tell me more about it. Let’s say I have an Arch (AUR) package that I want to repackage for Void, how do I do it?
The syntax is a bit different, but everything else, more or less the same. In fact, if you just wanna repackage a deb or an rpm, it’s even easier than in Arch, xbps-src can handle deb and rpm automatically, it detects dependencies and does repackaging on it’s own. You basically just have to feed it the deb/rpm file in a one liner, that’s it.
I should probably give an example. Here is the template file (they’re called templates in Void) for Viber. You basically just feed it the deb, do a
vcopy(copy operation specific to xbps-src) and that’s it, everything else regarding the repackaging is done automatically by xbps-src.
Gonna give it a try one day
Interesting. I will have to try it some time. I just know on my raspberry pi 5, out of the few OSes I could get to run on it, Arch was the fastest and smoothest running, and gets updates all the time. All this, even though rpi5 is not even officially supported yet!
Void runs even faster, I’ve tried (on an older RPi, but still).
How is it faster? You mean every program runs faster or what?
No, just bootup and general responsivness of the system. Software is still compiled by the ssme compilers used in other distros. Everything is not magically faster.
Though on the musl build, yeah, it is faster. Trouble is, you can’t run glibc software on it. Through chroot, yeah, but natively, no.
- The package manager is extremely fast
- The lack of systemd reduces startup time
- The musl libc marginally speeds up programs
It’s a bit tounge in cheek, nobody actually got mad at the arch namedropping. More like “I’m a platinum level player in LoL”. Lol.
I always got the impression that it was more of an “Oh god one of THESE insufferable people”. I’m just saying from my experience – they have a point. Arch is pretty nice.
Damn you’re calling me out. It’s emerald now.
Lel
What’s so good about it?
The existence of ArchWiki and the Arch User Respository (AUR). And rolling releases, if that’s your thing.
Basically just the fact that it’s very lightweight, I was able to install it on an rpi5 (not officially supported), install only what I needed, and was able to resolve all the issues I had for my niche use-case.
There is a quite noticeable difference in how snappy it feels versus the official rpi OS. Arch runs way zippier on it. Those devices are a little limited hardware-wise so it makes a big difference in what it feels like to use that system.
I also like knowing that the updates flowing in so quickly, I get the latest fixes and new features before I would on any of the other distros I’ve used. I have always been a little scared of rolling releases but over the last couple months I haven’t seen any breakages yet so fingers crossed! A lot of people have tried to tell me rolling release can be solid, but I was skeptical.
snappy it feels versus the official rpi OS
I blame the desktop manager. Once I ditched the default von on the pi, and replaced it with standard gnome, the pi became almost as snappy as my regular notebook.
in general: standard debian should be exactly as light-weight as arch.
Oh I misread what you wrote in the first paragraph. Yeah I actually did try that route too, installing Gnome on PI OS lite. I used this guide: https://forums.raspberrypi.com/viewtopic.php?t=276512
It actually was pretty slow for me for some reason. I had some weird crashes and things too, so I abandoned that.
for me it was on a pi5. maybe the amd64 was what made it work for me? idk.
Good to know. Yeah, I actually did try to install debian iirc but I didn’t have any luck.
It fits me
Tips Fedora.
m’lady!
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I don’t use Arch, btw
No longer* xD
I was asked what I think of the distro “Arch btw” since everyone recommends it. Gold.
