What Linux distro do you use? What do you use it for?
Arch Linux, it’s the most maintainable way to run the last versions of the software on my machine, which is useful to me as a developer.
What is your experience with it?
Breakage is rare. When it does happen, though, I can easily unbreak it by downgrading whichever single package lead to the breakage and its dependencies, and adding them to a IgnorePkg directive in my /etc/pacman.conf.
Occasionally, I need to watch out for configuration files installed as .pacnew and upgrade my existing configuration to the new version (usually, it’s only comments that have changed between the current conf version and the .pacnew one, so nothing to do).
Besides that, it works pretty much flawlessly. Arch Linux doesn’t patronize you with a “Don’t worry about that, we’ll handle it for you” attitude like Ubuntu, Fedora, or macOS. And there is no lower-effort way than Arch Linux to run the latest version of all software you have installed.
Why did you switch to Linux?
As a developer, I needed a *nix environment, but my workplace only gave me Windows. Cygwin was a pain to configure, required converting between Windows paths and Cygwin paths every step of the way in order to interoperate with my Windows environment (this was before WSL), and Windows-style line endings made my terminal look weird with some frequency.
I didn’t start with Arch right away, I started with Antergos (a now discontinued Arch installer), which set things up initially and let me work with it from there. Importantly, it didn’t involve a completely separate package manager like Manjaro. If you want to use Arch, don’t start with Manjaro, because if you do, you will probably stay on Manjaro. A list of Arch-based distros is here, if you want to take this approach (Warning: Some people use an Arch installer, which is initially easy, accidentally break everything on an upgrade, and are unable to get it working again, so only do this if you’re committed to fixing your own problems).
Arch Linux, it’s the most maintainable way to run the last versions of the software on my machine, which is useful to me as a developer.
Breakage is rare. When it does happen, though, I can easily unbreak it by downgrading whichever single package lead to the breakage and its dependencies, and adding them to a
IgnorePkgdirective in my/etc/pacman.conf.Occasionally, I need to watch out for configuration files installed as
.pacnewand upgrade my existing configuration to the new version (usually, it’s only comments that have changed between the current conf version and the.pacnewone, so nothing to do).Besides that, it works pretty much flawlessly. Arch Linux doesn’t patronize you with a “Don’t worry about that, we’ll handle it for you” attitude like Ubuntu, Fedora, or macOS. And there is no lower-effort way than Arch Linux to run the latest version of all software you have installed.
As a developer, I needed a *nix environment, but my workplace only gave me Windows. Cygwin was a pain to configure, required converting between Windows paths and Cygwin paths every step of the way in order to interoperate with my Windows environment (this was before WSL), and Windows-style line endings made my terminal look weird with some frequency.
I didn’t start with Arch right away, I started with Antergos (a now discontinued Arch installer), which set things up initially and let me work with it from there. Importantly, it didn’t involve a completely separate package manager like Manjaro. If you want to use Arch, don’t start with Manjaro, because if you do, you will probably stay on Manjaro. A list of Arch-based distros is here, if you want to take this approach (Warning: Some people use an Arch installer, which is initially easy, accidentally break everything on an upgrade, and are unable to get it working again, so only do this if you’re committed to fixing your own problems).