You Should Not be Afraid of Arch Linux, Here's Why
I don't know why, but I always had this desire of installing new operating systems and discover by myself how they work, how software packages are installed, removed, updated, and how they differ from other OSes.
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Mixed feelings about archlinux
Having used it since 2006, I have mixed feelings about archlinux. First of all, I really like systemd and pacman is a really nice package manager. Second of all, there is no build server and each package maintainer builds on his or her computer.
My issues are with the package maintainers. A large part of them have zero programming knowledge and don't build packages in chroots but instead in their own installations. This caused broken dependencies and broken binaries because the maintainer often had modified packages.
The other issue I encountered was when the mariadb package maintainer decided to remove /usr/lib/libmysqlservices.a from the package because it was a static library even though there is no shared library alternative. I noticed the issue when someone was using my computer to write a mysql server plugin. The headers of the library where installed but the library was obviously missing.
So I complained to the ArchLinux maintainer who had no idea what I was talking about and just said "archlinux package still compile against mariadb. we don't want the static library". So I replied "if you are going to remove the library, you should remove its headers too...".
Then I complained to upstream mariadb developers and one of them thought "wow".
Eventually the library was reinstated.
Suffice to say, some of those Arch Linux maintainers have too little Linux knowledge...
Right now, I build all ArchLinux packages on my own computer to avoid broken packages(I will eventually switch to gentoo)
The community went downhill in the last 5 years too. It is mostly condescending early 20s people who brag about their "superiority" to what they refer to as inferior Ubuntu users.
And don't bother going to their IRC channel to ask a KDE or Gnome question because you will be yelled at and lectured about how those desktop environments are bloat and how we should all use ratpoison or blackbox even on Intel core i7 machines with 4 or 8GB ram.
Arch Linux
The last part explains how I view Arch Linux and why I'm not too interested in it.