Arch is a rolling release, meaning everytime something changes in a package or dependency, there’s an update.
Mint is a stable release, and gets major updates every few months, with much more frequent security updates, but yeah, it’s not an everyday thing like with Arch
While I don’t like saying “this is better than that”, since Arch is a rolling release, it’s always up to date, and so you’re not going to end up in a situation like “my built-in laptop sound card isn’t getting picked up” (i mean, you might, but it’s rare. After all, Arch can break sometimes times, just like everything, really) like you sometimes can with Mint and other stable distros. Also, Arch–well, vanilla Arch and something like Endeavour–comes with just the basics and everything else, you gotta add. I personally like this because I like knowing exactly what I’m installing and having only what I’m going to use…and also not deal with messing with PPA’s. This isn’t a point against non-Arch distros or anything, it’s all just personal preference–but really, everything from “Should I do Arch with Cinnamon or something like Mint or Fedora’s Cinnamon Spin?” is all up to personal preference
Package base is always up to date since it’s rolling. The AUR is absolutely fantastic and gives me any obscure application I could ever need. You ever tried installing the marathon trilogy with alephone on fedora? The AUR makes it a single button install. I’m currently running endeavour OS plasma, such a smooth experience.
Well, Arch is not inherently better, it depends on your needs. If you want up-to-date packages and don’t mind the do it yourself approach you’ll love Arch. I’ve used Arch for a few years and learned a lot from it. I love the minimalism. Now I switched to a minimal install of Sway on Debian because I just want a tried and tested stable system. I am at a point of my life where I want a really boring install. Instead of tinkering with the system I use it as a base to learn more on the server side, and learn more coding, etc
Ironically my day to day experience was harder with Debian than Arch, it was a pain trying to find up-to-date packages for pretty much everything I needed
But why is up-to-date always good though?I get it if you actually need the new version but that’s rare though. There’s a reason that critical infrastructure relies on more stable, older and tested packages. In the industry and where the money actually is, older is generally seen as better and more mature. For example the whole drama of RedHat with Centos Stream happened because people don’t want to use upstream Centos Stream because it’s the testing ground for RHEL. I am at a stage where I prefer older packages. The new and shiny doesn’t mean it’s better.
Just try using any modern framework/language/library/tool/whatever with the packages that exist by default in the Debian repository, it’s impossible and a pain in the ass
What framework do you actually use ? Most programmers use Ubuntu or Debian and I don’t see how you need something so up to date and on the edge? Apart from some specific cases, most people do not need newer packages.
Moved over from Mint to Arch for gaming, which has some additional benefits:
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
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
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
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.
Arch doesn’t “break” you are doing shit you have no clue about which in turn creates problems, which you then have to fix. Still if you plainly install and update it, I doubt you will notice much difference from an Arch install compared to any other distro.
Probably already said here, but it’s going to just come down to your end goal to know what distro fits what you’re looking for.
I am personally a huge fan of Gentoo, another distro that’s all about “from the ground up” approach. It’s actually where I started with Linux and is how I became as proficient in it as I am today. In fact my internal server that does everything is running Gentoo as it’s OS… Has never had any problems in the last decade that would require a reinstall or anything crazy like that.
But even as much love as I have for Gentoo, I have Linux Mint installed on my laptop. Why? Because it’s just more convenient when I need my full focus on the 10 other personal projects I’m working on… Also amazing on the gaming front. Doesn’t have nearly as much bloat as some other Ubuntu-based distros on first install, has a huge community support, and is just great all around to have.
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-keyring before you install new updates.
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: wiki.archlinux.org/title/Apparmor
SELinux is an absolute pain to understand and setup, so it’s good that Fedora does it.
I don’t see any need for them! I like the defaults. I only change the keyboard shortcuts, and I usually don’t even autostart anything. I tend to still install GNOME Tweaks so I can turn on Focus on Hover, move the Close button to the left side of the window, but I don’t need an extension for any of that. I don’t know what I would even use an extension for!
I use about ten different extensions that all add useful functionality, but the absolute deal breakers are 1) indicators for apps that require a system tray, 2) GSConnect to transfer stuff between my computer and my phone, and 3) clipboard history. I can’t survive without those.
Just to chime in, I first tried arch because some youtuber I followed recommended it, but after 5 years I would say I’ve stayed with it for the AUR and the community. The AUR has almost every app I’ve ever needed, and whenever I have a problem there’s always a solution on one forum or another, to the point where I can usually just copy and paste it into the terminal and it’s solved!
AUR is kind of the worst feature Arch offers and I am not actively using Arch right now anyway. Because its used for the wrong purpose: “install any app you need/want”. Thats dangerous and creates problems by itself. I’d rather rely on flatpak/appimages, but open for counter arguments.
So much this! As a user of both Arch and Gentoo I say, don't use Arch as Gentoo! It's not Gentoo! AUR is not a standard repository and there's a reason they make you jump through hoops just to use the thing.
Also, it's a total pain when normal package management is quick and easy. The building alone is weird in Arch and somehow like 60% of the crap I try to build from AUR fails hard and I just can't be bothered to spend more than like twenty minutes tweaking on it. Gr. 😅
(Aaalllsooo, apparently lots of people break their Arch installs using the AUR like it's a normal repo and then wonder why Arch is so crap and leave.)
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.
One that stood out for me is the systemd article on Arch wiki is amazing! From basic operation to creating units, it has everything. It has helped me with my work more times than I care to admit (we use Debian & Ubuntu).
Other than that, mostly, that’d be more as a Gentoo user for me, since it requires more involved setup.
I just switched to Fedora from Ubuntu for my Plex server and I’m referencing the Arch wiki all the time, recently for looking up info about pam/Google Authenticator
Arch is always "latest and greatest" for every package, including the kernel. It lets you tinker, and it's always up to date. However, a rolling release introduces more ways to break your system - things start conflicting under the hood in ways that you weren't aware of, configurations that worked don't any longer, etc.
This is in contrast to everything built on Debian, which Mint is one example of - Mint adds a bunch of conveniences on top, but the underlying "how it all fits together" is still Debian. What Debian does is to set a target for stable releases and ship a complete set of known-stable packages. This makes it great for set and forget uses, servers that you want to just work and such. And it was very important back in the 90's when it was hard to get Internet connectivity. But it also means that it stays behind the curve with application software releases, by periods of months to a year+. And the original workaround to that is "just add this other package repository" which, like Arch, can eventually break your system by accident.
But neither disadvantage is as much of a problem now as it used to be. More of the software is relatively stable, and the stuff you need to have the absolute latest for, you can often find as a flatpak, snap, or appimage - formats that are more self-contained and don't rely on the dependencies that you have installed, just "download and run."
Most popular distros now are Arch or Debian flavored - same system, different veneer. Debian itself has become a better option for desktop in recent years just because of improvements to the installer.
I've been using Solus 4.4 lately, which has its own rolling-release package system. Less software, but the experience is tightly designed for desktop, and doesn't push me to open terminals to do things like the more classical Unix designs that guide Arch and Debian. The problem both of those face as desktops is that they assume up-front that you may only have a terminal, so the "correct way" of doing everything tends to start and end with the terminal, and the desktop is kind of glued on and works for some things but not others.
Had the same problem when I was on Mint. I had problems with not gettings the latest packages so I said f**k it and went for Artix. So for the benefits for me are the AUR and the choice of an init system. I use OpenRC.
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