I’m curious about trying Arch Linux, but I want to know what’s difficult or impossible with it first, as that’s usually what stops me sticking with a distro.
I’m particularly interested in software/driver support. For example, NVIDIA doesn’t mention Arch in its CUDA download page.
UPDATE: OK it sounds like Arch is for bleeding edge. That sounds fun, but I like things simple and reliable, so I’ll still with Ubuntu. I might run Arch on my secondary drive, or toy with it in Docker.
the nvidia website doesn’t list the drivers because they should be downloaded from the arch repos instead
arch is generally easier for more complex stuff, can’t really think of anything that you can’t do with it
If Debian, Ubuntu and Fedora are S tier in terms of support, Arch is at least A+. There is virtually nothing you can’t do with it, albeit you might have to rely on community ports here and there.
The rolling release approach is great to get the latest features very quickly, good for games and new hardware. There is a reason OpenSUSE adopted the approach, SteamOS is build on Arch, and KDE Linux will be as well.
I would recommend to take a look at EndeavourOS, if you want a simplified graphical install.
What are your goals or requirements? What have you found limiting in other distros?
I’m not sure I can think of an example beyond lack of software/driver support
General difficulty of use (i.e. how many things do I have to read and do for something to happen the way I want)
And I want libraries to be officially supported, whatever that looks like, mainly so I don’t have to use workarounds or unverified sources (I don’t want to be using lots of Arch’s equivalent of PPAs, for example)
You don’t want Arch then. I’m sure other people will chime in with recommendations. I’m hesitant to make desktop recommendations because I mostly use Linux on the server, and I’ve never used an atomic distro or similar. But you probably want something mainstream, stable, and well-supported like Fedora.
The first time I setup Arch from scratch (no archinstall) it took me about 7 hours to get a working desktop environment. A lot of that was figuring what specifics I wanted, like boot loader and desktop environment. If you aren’t already familiar with Linux architecture, the kernel, and basic terminal commands, you will be spending a lot of time on the Arch wiki. If you do already have a decent understanding of these concepts, then you will also spend a lot of time on Arch wiki.
Honestly, based on this response from you, Arch isn’t this distro for you. It’s work to setup, it’s work to configure, and it’s work to maintain. I jumped straight in myself with basically no Linux experience but about a decade of experience as a sys admin and power user for Windows. It’s been a couple of years and I have no desire to even branch out because I enjoy the tinkering and resources.
I have an Nvidia GPU and the first 6 months I had issues, but there have significant improvements and now I almost never have any GPU related.
An example of needing to fiddle with things, I couldn’t get audio to pass through my HDMI the other day when hooking my laptop up to a TV. I had to install a couple missing packages and then I was able to see the HDMI option in my sound settings, so then I could sell that as my output. Arch won’t ever tell you what you need, it just won’t work, so you have to read and figure it out yourself. Fortunately, the community is huge and the Arch wiki is fantastic. There are some shitty neck beards that like to gate keep, but ignore them and your experience will be better.
how many things do I have to read
Well unfortunately, when using Arch, you will, at some point end up requiring to read a lot of something.
If that makes you hesitate, but you still feel like giving it a try, I’d say one good way is, install Arch using the Arch ISO method and go to https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Installation_guide and read that once before and then, while installing.
- it is very well simplified (simplified by explanation, not by omission)
- it has handy links for terminology you will find in there, so you won’t have to go around finding stuff all the time
- open the page on another device, that you like reading on
- read it like you are trying to understand it and not like instructions
- while reading/installing it, if you realise you can’t keep doing that, you have your answer
- if you managed to install it before getting frustrated at the Wiki, well, know that most Arch wiki pages you will look at, are as good or better than that and you can consider this as another distro you might use.
I use (atomic) fedora and I don’t have to deal with drivers or anything system related. Among other good distros, I can highly recommend that for a set it and forgrt it system.
There are cuda packages for arch. I can confirm they work.
https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/GPGPU
Edit- to add i haven’t found arch’s limit, it feels like i am bound only by my own limit in my time, ability, and willingness to tinker with my setup. arch itself is widely supported, it has many official packages through pacman, and then additional through the “arch user repository” (AUR) so chances are most of the things you want or need have a package that can be installed with an AUR helper (like yay/paru which install from both pacman and AUR). In other distros you get more of a one-size fits all and you lose some of that ability to change things whereas arch you’re giving a minimal setup and left to build the system to your liking. It does take more time and expertise than other distros but it does give you more control. For me the trade off was an easy decision, but it’s not something i blanket recommend to everyone.
Arch has been the least limiting experience I have had with Linux thus far.
You wanna delete system files, do it, I dare you. Oh, it broke your system? Okay, not a problem. I haven’t encountered a situation it wasn’t recoverable. You wanna test bleeding edge custom kernels with drivers that are the newest available? Done.
If you’re afraid of reading, troubleshooting, and trying new things to test your mettle? Yeah, go with something else.
There is very little I haven’t been able to do with my Arch setups. I ditched Windows, and can’t go back.
the first time I installed arch on my T420s, I was blown away! a minimalistic install, done in no time. no cruft of any kind, latest software versions, and the speed - the thing booted more than twice as fast as Fedora! I was ecstatic, how come everybody’s not using this!?
but then I needed a piece of software that wasn’t available and flatpak wouldn’t work in that scenario. rpm and deb available but nothing for arch. OK, so there’s this AUR thingy - cool, so like a repo, right? one copy/paste and I’m done…
not fucking so. what this does is fetch the source code and then compiles and builds it on your puny dual-core…I can’t imagine what a full system upgrade looks like, compiling tons of stuff for hours. that’s 1998 linux, I thought we were done with this.
not a week later, a normal system update with no errors made the thing unbootable. yeah, said one laconic reply, you really should keep up with breaking changes by way of the mailing list. do what now? the what now? dude, this just became a job.
so that was it for me. thanks to btrfs subvolumes, all my stuff was already there and ready to go for the new OS.