new to this linux stuff sorry
There’s nothing inherently superior, just what people like more. If you want to use Mint that’s totally fine and valid.
Moved over from Mint to Arch for gaming, which has some additional benefits:
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more up-to-date kernel and more up-to-date Mesa, which brings very noticeable improvements in frame rates - in Elden Ring for example, 45 fps outside in Mint to 60 fps outside on Arch
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my desktop soundcard isn’t recognised properly by PulseAudio but is by PipeWire. It’s hard to be sure that PulseAudio is completely gone when you uninstall it then reinstall something else. Arch, I just installed what I wanted in the first place
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some utility programmes, like CoreCtrl for graphics card fan and power tweaking, and emulators like RPCS3, are the Arch repositories but not the Mint ones. Much easier to keep them up-to-date
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for a gaming machine, no more ‘mystery services’ that I don’t know what they are. I quite like having everything quite stripped back for a gaming machine. On Arch, I know what everything does because I installed it. That’s not the case on Mint.
Obviously, I installed the Cinnamon desktop as my GUI choice - there’s certain things about Mint that are tremendous and worth sticking to.
For me, it’s:
- All software is shipped with as few changes as possible from upstream, so I’m getting the software as intended. If there’s an issue, it’s likely due to the software, not my distribution’s unicorn configuration.
- Pacman. This includes PKGBUILDs, syntax, and speed.
- Good support. For all that this distribution isn’t “the standard”, you find install instructions in places you wouldn’t expect, and more difficult things tend to work on Arch more easily than on other distributions.
- Easy to set new things up. Because Arch doesn’t ship with much configuration, there’s no existing configuration you need to investigate in order to wrangle it to work with something new. This is also a downside, but we’ll get to that…
- Inertia. I installed it a few years ago, and I kind of want to move to openSUSE or Fedora, but I’m too comfortable here.
Downsides:
- You need to configure everything. That includes the security stuff like AppArmor and SELinux you don’t understand.
- Occasional breakages. Arch doesn’t break that often, but it’s annoying when it does. Usually visiting bbs.archlinux.org is enough to set you on the right path.
- Some software is packaged more slowly than other rolling distributions. Notably, GNOME is usually packaged a few months after openSUSE and Fedora ship it.
- Constant updates! And HUGE updates, at that! Not great for computers you don’t use often. If you do, make sure to
pacman -Sy archlinux-keyringbefore you install new updates.
You don’t have to do the keyring thing manually anymore, pacman takes care of it. :)
Oh, cool! Since when? I always thought that was something the user shouldn’t need to remember and that Pacman should automatically prioritize it.
This is exactly why I love making these kinds of comments. Someone always comes along to teach me something new!
Not great for computers you don’t use often. If you do, make sure to
pacman -Sy archlinux-keyringbefore you install new updates.
Pro tip there!
Thankfully, it appears this is no longer necessary in most cases since 2022: https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Pacman/Package_signing#Upgrade_system_regularly
Though, it’s still worthwhile doing it for computers you don’t power on for most of the year, as the service likely hasn’t had a chance to run.
Notably, GNOME is usually packaged a few months after openSUSE and Fedora ship it.
In this case, it’s actually a plus IMO. Giving Gnome extension devs a month or so to ensure that any compatibility issues are fixed is ideal.
I use GNOME without any extensions, so there’s no benefit for me 🙃
I mean, technically I use AppIndicators, but I tend to just turn off system trays for all software I can. Steam is probably the only exception.
Inertia. I installed it a few years ago, and I kind of want to move to openSUSE or Fedora, but I’m too comfortable here.
Everytime I see something about nixos
You need to configure everything. That includes the security stuff like AppArmor and SELinux you don’t understand.
Are those really important thing I should have configured? The only safety thing I have is LUKS encription.
I also wonder about Nix and Guix. But I never seriously consider Gentoo.
Are those really important thing I should have configured? The only safety thing I have is LUKS encription.
Ubuntu configures AppArmor by default, Fedora sets up SELinux, openSUSE also sets up SELinux to some extent—most major distributions except Arch do it, because you’re installing it yourself. I recommend looking into it. AppArmor and SELinux are essentially about preventing privilege escalation. Here’s a good place to start: https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Apparmor
SELinux is an absolute pain to understand and setup, so it’s good that Fedora does it.
Arch and Gentoo have IMO the best documentation ever and you learn a lot when you try using either of those distributions as you have to do everything from scratch starting from a minimal system. Since you’re saying you’re new to Linux though, I’d say you should start with something more user-friendly like Mint or Ubuntu (or even Manjaro if you want a rolling release distro) and stay away from Arch and Gentoo in the beginning.
I will say that while some things in the Arch wiki are for arch only, a whole lot of it applicable to any distro. Or at least to Mint, which I’ve been on for like a decade but have used AW (it’s a common DuckDuckGo bang I use, !aw) for many a trouble shooting and configuring
That’s essentially an extremely subjective question. Arch is well-liked but not for everyone.
When you boot up the ArchLinux ISO to install it, what you get on the screen is:
root@archiso ~ #
That’s it. It doesn’t ask you what language you want to speak or which keyboard layout you want to use. You get a zsh shell, and that’s it. Go figure out what you want to install, how you want to install it, where you want to install it to. That’s how basically all of Arch works: if you install something, it comes barebones with sometimes the default starting configuration shipped by whoever made the software and nothing else.
To me, that’s what makes Arch so good compared to something like Linux Mint: I’m an advanced user, I don’t want training wheels, and I want to build my system entirely from scratch, with only what I want on it installed and running. And it comes with excellent documentation, is a rolling release (meaning, you get the latest version of everything fairly quickly). Since Arch pretty much only ships packages for you to install, it’s not nearly as important to make sure that they work and there isn’t any incompatibility with other packages. Oh the newer version of X doesn’t work with Y anymore? Too bad, go figure out how to downgrade it or figure out a workaround.
Is this useful to you, a beginner? It depends. If you want to go into the deep ends and learn everything about how a Linux system is built and works, sure, it’s going to be great for that. Lots of people do that and love it! If you’re coming from Windows, all you’re used to is clicking next next finish, and you like things to just work out of the box, eehh, probably not great for you.
Distributions like Linux Mint does a lot of the work for you: first of all, it has a graphical installer. It boots up and asks you about your language, your keyboard, where you want to install it. And it installs a system that’s ready to be used out of the box. When you install Linux Mint, you get a desktop, a web browser, you get drivers configured for you. It detects what’s the best graphics drivers and prompts you to install them automatically.
Most distributions, especially Debian/Ubuntu derived ones, are all about providing a curated experience. It comes with a whole bunch of stuff installed and configured to reasonable defaults. Need to print something? Yeah it comes with printer support by default, just plug in your printer and it’ll configure it for you. Some distributions even comes with Steam and Discord and everything needed to game ready to go right out of the box. Log in and play.
To provide such a reliable and out of the box experience, these distributions typically work with a release cycle, or delay updates to have time to properly test them out and make sure they work correctly before they ship it out to users. This means you may be a few versions behind on your desktop environment, but you also get the assurance you won’t update and your desktop doesn’t work anymore.
I personally picked Arch a long time ago because I’m fundamentally a tinkerer, I want the newest version of everything even if it means breaking things temporarily, and I do kind of whacky things overall. One day my laptop is there for working and browsing the web, another day it’s an iPXE server to install 20 other computers, another day it’s a temporary router/WiFi access point, another day it’s a media center/TV box, another day it’s an Android tablet. Arch gives me the freedom to make my computer do whatever I need my computer to do at the moment, and because it doesn’t make any assumptions about what I want to do with my computer, I can easily make it do all of those things on a whim. On Linux Mint, I’d be fighting an uphill battle to tear down everything the developers spent so much time building for me and my convenience.
