If you have some Linux knowledge but are unsure which Linux distribution might be the right one for your personal PC or laptop: I’ve recently held a talk that might interest you. It’s titled “Arch Linux: why you want to use it” and was held as evening talk for the FH Linux user group (short: fhlug) and the Austrian National Students’ Union (short: ÖH) at the University of Applied Sciences Upper Austria, Hagenberg Campus.
The official event page for the talk (hosts slides, etc) is here.
The event’s description for the talk: “Arch Linux is perceived as a powerful Linux distribution “for professionals”. This open evening talk by Rainhard Findling points out why Arch Linux is neither difficult to learn nor difficult to handle in daily usage. It covers core concepts of Arch, including differences and advantages/disadvantages of Arch over other distributions, as well as requirements Arch has towards its users. It also highlights why you might want to use Arch yourself, and in which situations Arch might be a good choice for your Linux distribution.”
The main points I strive for in the talk are:
- Understand when and why you might want to use Arch yourself
- Stop fearing the “complexity” of Arch
- Have an idea of the core concepts of Arch
The talk covers the following core concepts of Arch. It stays pretty top level to keep it simple:
- Installation+configuration of Arch – in a nutshell
- The idea of a rolling release system + its system maintenance in Arch
- pacman: the Arch package manager
- Software repositories in Arch
- The Arch user repository (AUR)
So, should you already have some knowledge about Linux (e.g. have been using another distribution for a while) and are asking yourself: are you ready for Arch? Then my recommendation is: yes, try it, give it a shot! Go through the installation and spend some time learning those details that you don’t yet know about. It’s all in the Arch manual – and it’s in plain English and easily readable, so learning is truly a pleasure in this case! You will profit so much for your future and save yourself lots of time and nerves in the long run. Maybe you too afterwards wish “you would have used Arch yesterday already” – just as I did when I tried it myself 