Also why does everyone seem to hate on Ubuntu?
You must log in or register to comment.
There are a lot of different reasons that people hate Ubuntu. Most of them Not great reasons.
Ubuntu became popular by making desktop Linux approachable to normal people. Some of the abnormal people already using Linux hated this.
In November 2010, Ubuntu switched from GNOME as their default desktop to Unity. This made many users furious.
Then in 2017, Ubuntu switched from Unity to Gnome. This made many users furious.
There’s also a graveyard of products and services that infuriated users when canonical started them, then infuriated users when they discontinued them.
And the Amazon “scandal”.
And then there’s the telemetry stuff.
Meanwhile. Arch has always been the bad boy that dares you to love him… unapproachable and edgy.
because they used to be special. “I run linux”, matrix text on boot, typing shit in the terminal, “I’m in”, awe-inspiring shit to an onlooker…
but nowadays, anyone can run ubuntu or mint or whatevs and our hero ain’t special no more. so here comes the ultimate delimiter.
Anything really polarizing can end up with a cult following. Just look at Rust.
Rust introduces novel features and makes notable changes from its ancestors.
Arch was just blue Gentoo.
I don’t really understand either. Where are the Gentoo and LFS elitists? It seams like there should be more of those than arch elitests. Maybe it’s just because more people use arch.
For me, Ubuntu is ugly as all hell and comes with so much I dont need. It also ran slow on the first machine I ever installed it on. I like Arch because I got my feet wet there. It was my classroom.
No idea, but ArchWiki has some of the best linux documentation around.
It is the gold standard.
That is the main reason I use Arch. I am not a Linux expert but I am able to solve most of my problems reading the wiki. I used to use Ubuntu and Mint but those ended with me copy pasting stuff into the terminal and not really learning anything. When I switched back to Linux this time I went with Arch.
vocal peope on social media ≠ everyone
Ok, I think I can provide some insight into this that I think it’s missed on other replies.
I switched to Arch back when Arch had an installer, yup, that’s right, Arch used to have an installer, then they removed it and you had to do most of the process manually (yes, I know
pacstrapis technically an installer, but I’m talking about the original ncurses installer here).After Arch removed its installer it began to attract more purists, and with that the meme was born, people online would be discussing stuff and someone would explain something simple and the other would reply with “I use arch BTW”, which meant you didn’t need to explain trivial stuff because the person had a good idea on how their system works.
Then Arch started to suffer from being too good of a distro, see those of us that were using it consistently saw posts with people complaining about issues on their distros that never affected us, so a sort of “it doesn’t happen on my distro” effect started to grow, putting that together with the excellent wiki that people were linking left and right (even for non Arch users) and lots of people became interested.
This new wave of users was relatively new to Linux, they thought that by following a tutorial and running a couple of command lines when installing arch they had become complete experts in Linux, and they saw the “I use Arch btw” replies and thought they meant “I know more than you because I use Arch”, so they started to repeat that. And it became common to see posts with people being L337 H4ck3r5 with no clue whatsoever using “I use Arch btw”.
That’s when the sort of cult mentality formed, you had experienced people who liked Arch because it was a good distro that didn’t break on its own with good documentation to help when you screw up, these people suffered a bit from this and told newbies that they should use Arch. Together with that you had the other group who thought because they installed Arch they were hackers telling people Arch was waaaay too hard, and that only true Linux experts should use it. From the outside this must have felt that we were hiding something, you had several people telling you to come to our side or they couldn’t help you, or pointing at documentation that looked specific for their distro, and others saying you weren’t cool enough for it probably felt like a cult recruiting.
At the end of the day Arch is a very cool distro, I’ve tried lots of them but prefer Arch because it’s a breeze to maintain in the long run. And the installation process is not something you want to throw at a person who just wants to install Linux to check it out, but it’s also not complicated at all. There are experts using Ubuntu or other “noob” distros because at the end of the day it’s all the same under the hood, using Arch will not make you better at Linux, it will just force you to learn basic concepts to finish the installation that if you had been using Linux for a while you probably already know them (e.g. fstab or locale).
As for Ubuntu, part of it stems from the same “I use Arch btw” guys dumping on Ubuntu for being “noob”, other part is because Canonical has a history of not adoption community stuff and instead try to develop their own thing, also they sent your search queries to Amazon at some point which obviously went very badly for their image in the community.
I used Ubuntu as my first distro out of curiosity sometime around 2006. I’ve tried others (Mint, Pop OS, Debian, Fedora) but mostly settled with Ubuntu because it was just kind of ok for me and as another user said, there was a lot of articles that helped with getting things working because it became popular.
I had heard of Arch and to your point the it’s complicated thing very much kept me away from it even though I have been using computers for around 30 years and was comfortable using a terminal.
The other thing is gaming, I consistently had problems with the nvidia cards that I’ve had over the years and never really cared to dig into trying to get things to work so Linux was kind of my testing ground for other things and just general learning about how things work.
Then I finally just had enough of Windows a couple of years ago, and with gaming support getting better I went back to Ubuntu and it just didn’t feel good, I wanted something different that was setup how I wanted it so I looked into Arch.
I tried a couple of times to manually install it but my attention span (ADHD) kept me from focusing on the documentation enough to actually learn what I was doing. In comes the archinstall script, it was basic enough for me to follow and understand to get my system up and running.
I went through roughly 3-4 installs using it and testing stuff after I had it running and breaking stuff and just doing a fresh install since the script made it very easy. Since then I have learned a good bit more, and honestly don’t think I will ever use another distro for my desktop. Just the ability to make it exactly what you want and things just work. Not to mention the documentation is massive and the AUR is awesome.
I do use Pop OS on my wife’s laptop since it decided to automatically upgrade to W11 which crippled it and I just wanted something that I could just drop on there that would work with no real configuration since the only thing it needs is Citrix which works ootb and she can use all her office tools through that and has libre office if she wants to do something locally.
I do have a separate drive with W11 on my desktop, its used for one thing, SolidWorks. Which I use enough to merit having windows.
Arch was and still kind of is seen as the “I use Arch BTW” crowd, but it really shouldn’t be that way. The install script isn’t fancy, but it works. I think that would be one of the biggest barriers to break that mindset and open it to more people that are still fresh to Linux. I think that having even the most basic “GUI” for installing Arch would do wonders.
I left Ubuntu for Arch because I got sick of Arch having everything I wanted and Ubuntu taking ages to finally get it. I was tired of compiling shit all the time just to keep up to date.
Honestly glad I made the change, too. Arch has been so much better all around. Less bloat and far fewer problems.
arch is slop for normies pretending to be chads, real chads use gentoo and openbsd
I think Arch is so popular because its considered a middle of the road distro. Even if not exactly true, Ubuntu is seen as more of a pre-packaged distro. Arch would be more al a carte with what you are actually running. I started with Slackware back in the day when everything was a lot more complicated to get setup, and there was even then this notation that ease of access and customization were separate and you can’t have both. Either the OS controls everything and its easy or you control everything and its hard. To some extent that’s always going to be true, but there’s no reason you can’t or shouldn’t try to strike a balance between the two. I think Arch fits nicely into that space.
I also wouldn’t use the term “cultists” as much as “aholes”. If you’ve ever been on the Arch forums you know what I’m talking about. There is a certain kind of dickish behavior that occurs there, but it somewhat is understandable. A lot of problems are vaguely posted (several times over) with no backing logs or info to determine anything. Just “Something just happened. Tell me how to fix it?”. And on top of that, those asking for help refuse to read the wiki or participate in the problem solving. They just want an online PC repair shop basically.
I don’t know about Arch itself on its own but I use CachyOS that is built off it and everything just works for me.
I’ve been enjoying CachyOS as well. I haven’t gone digging into documentation too much but when I search I typically end up on Arch related forums. Chatgpt helps a lot too.
Yeah, most of my questions all lead to Arch related stuff, which oftentimes the wiki has answers for.
Maybe it’s masochism, but I like Arch because it forces me to make mistakes and learn. No default DE, several network management choices, lots of configuration for non-defaults. These are all decisions I have to make, and if I try to cut corners I usually get punished for it.
However, I think the real reason I stick with arch is because this paradigm means that I always feel capable of fixing issues. As people solve the issues they face, forum posts and wiki articles (and sometimes big fixes) get pushed out, and knowledge is shared. That sense of community and building on something I feel like Arch promotes.
Arch Hits the great spot
It has:
- a great wiki
- many packages, enough for anything you want to do
- its the only distros that is beetween everything done for you and gentoo-like fuck you.
- and the Memes.
deleted by creator
I use Arch because I don’t know how to use Debian based distros, I got lost when trying to use Linux Mint or PopOS.
