As a long term Ubuntu and Debian user (not admin), I recently came across an advice to give Arch Linux a try. First, I was kind of skeptical, having tried out more complex distributions in the past like Gentoo which were difficult to install and to maintain.

It took me a couple of days (not full time) to install and configure the system the way I wanted and I must say I was very much surprised by the quality of the online documentation: not only is there a step-by-step guide on how to proceed, but also tons of wiki pages explaining further the different concepts for whoever wants to dig deeper.

In fact it was the first time I actually took the time to understand how the Linux system works and what the different parts were good for. I believe it is due to the minimalist aspects of the distribution itself. You get a system up and running with only a few processes on which you can then rely to install whatever libraries you need.
I love Debian based distributions and they served me well during the last 10+ years, but I am clearly curious to see what Arch Linux is like as a daily Driver.

For sure, installing Arch Linux is not for everyone and I wouldn’t recommend it for the users who simply want the simplest experience possible where a nice graphical installer does most of the choices for you (here you have to configure everything). Also, I installed the system on a 5 year old laptop which is known to work well with Linux distributions in general. My feedback may be different on a more recent equipment.

If I compare with my past Gentoo experience, it was kind of similar but also much simpler: sure, you have to partition your disks and chroot into your future system (and of course be comfortable with the command line and tools like vim), but at least you don’t have to compile everything from the sources.
Having a minimal distribution which installs itself using packages is kind of the best of both worlds!

Lastly, I look forward to test a distribution based on rolling upgrades rather than major releases. This may be one of the major changes I will have to get used coming from more traditional Linux distributions.

So, once again, amazing job on the documentation!