What is it that makes Arch Linux so popular amongst expert hackers and rocket scientists?
The docs are actually good.
the people you see in desktop threads are neither expert hackers nor rocket scientists.
>>53096312
This is exactly why I started using arch. I would have a problem with Debian, and I would find the solution on the arch wiki, or forums.
>>53096268
Engineers or other specialists that don't do anything with CS don't use Arch.
How retarded do you have to be to believe in something this stupid?
>>53096418
Who does use Arch then?
>>53096268
It's a female repellent and that gives them more time to focus on work.
>>53096528
Hobbyist, some sysadmins, some programmers and in general people who want to learn linux the hard way.
>>53096559
What is this meme about linux repelling women? Why should my woman even know my computer's os? And if they do, it usually opens up the gateway for then to realise I know more than them which they find attractive
I get just as much cunt as I did when I was using Windows like a child
>>53096528
NEETS
>>53096570
Why would sysadmins use arch? Better to use a distro they can use at work and get used to like debian/red hat or centos.
>>53096528
hobbyists, people who know some linux and want to dive in
>>53096528
neets, basically
>>53096599
I'm not a sysadmin, but I took most of his chores after he retired from the company I work for.
I use Arch on local machine and Debian on server and have no problems with it.
Arch is more suitable for desktop than Debian and because I can experience in both, I don't really need to "get used to" it. Also I prefer Arch from other desktop distros just because I like to fuck around with little things and learn more about the system I use.
Also the funny thing is that everyone I know who use Arch have job. *ubuntu, Mint, etc. usually are used by students or interns.
>>53096572
The fact that you call it cunt makes me believe Arch was effective on you.
Why use Arch Ganoo/Loonix when Windows 10 is a rolling release too
>>53096572
>>53096559
It's not OS that repels woman, but the user.
>>53096570
>want to learn linux the hard way.
You can learn Linux "the hard way" with any distro
>>53097234
True, but Arch forces you to do so.
I only used Xubuntu, debian and Arch so I don't know how it works for other distros, but setting up Arch and then fixing my own mistakes taught me a lot. Sure, you can learn all these things with other distros, but doing it with Arch seemed more organized/straightforward for me.
Arch is a distro for plebs who couldn't install Gentoo.
>>53096268
I don't know any expert hackers or rocket scientist but I'm pretty sure they don't use Arch.
>>53097306
That being said
>>53096312
This is true
>>53097302
This. So much this.
>>53098122
fuck off back to le reddit
>>53097302
There are quite a lot of Arch user sthat have installed and used Gentoo in the past.
They just got their ass kicked on irc of the forums and had to crawl back to where they were considered smart again.
>>53098179
Guess what? I can browse both places thanks to the based chrome "tabs" service so f*ck YOU pal!
EDIT: thanks for the gold kind stranger!! You sir are a scholar!
>>53096570
>sysadmining arch servers
are you attempting to ruse me senpai?
>>53096268
I happen to know a lot of people that use Arch that do vuln research. But... then again, 4chan lol.
>>53098314
Arch isn't suitable for servers.
However sysadmins need desktops as well.
>>53098336
>My dad works at Nintendo
>>53098422
as i said, 4chan lol.
>>53096821
Windows is not rolling release. Windows 10 is A release.
>>53096268
Because they like it.
I work in security and I use Arch on my macbook :^). Of course since its a device I use for work I need it to always be working, so there is also a very small Debian install that shares the home partition with my Arch install.. I haven't had to use it yet, since "XOrg breaking" actually means; "Re-apply your Xorg.conf" and any retard can do that.
But as for WHY I use it? 'cause it's what I got used to when I was still a hobbyist breaking into actually understanding computers and how they work on the software side. I'm familiar with all the flags of pacman and am intimate with how everything works on my machine.
So it's not so much, what draws one to Arch, but rather, what draws them away from it? If you're comfortable with linux there are no downsides from Arch.
I could use any OS for work though, since I mostly just need remote tools. Just SSH into routers/switches/servers, shitpost on 4chan and watch some dota, thats my 9-5 and I can do all of it on arch.
Dunno, I use Debian
>>53096268
it isnt' at all.
DEB/RPM distros have won years ago and only hobbyist with too much time at hand go for the obscure ones.
just check which distros Chromes officially supports:
>For Linux (Debian/Ubuntu/Fedora/openSUSE)
or go to any floss conference and see for yourself.
tho beware like half the people won't even use Linux at all, but OS X.
>>53099008
>I work in security
what kind of shit show allows byod?
>>53096268
It isn't. Rocket scientists'll use Scientific Linux, or RHEL. If not windows. Hackers are distro agnostic, but true hackers may tend to FreeBSD as it's closer to UNIX.
>>53099132
Security is a loose term in this instance, it's what I was originally hired for but it turned into mostly sysadmin/network engineer stuff.
Byod is allowed for me because I'm supposed to be the, uh.. Guardian of the network, for lack of a better term right now.
But really I doubt the boss really gave it that much thought, its my job to keep the systems working so its my arse if it all turns to shit.
The aerospace engineer I knew used windows at work, windows at home, and android phone. He used MATLAB a lot in college, various CAD at work and Solid Works on his phone. Linux was on his "tolearn" list.
>>53099374
>The aerospace engineer
>Linux was on his "tolearn" list.
man that guy is going to be disappointed if he learns linux.
Shit aint going to compare to being a fucking aerospace engineer.
>>53096358
that's because Arch is the most broken distro in the history of ever. Other distros don't have massive wikis because THEY DON'T BREAK,
>>53099463
I feel like that's why he hasn't done it yet. He's the go-to for Excel macros even that was of more practical use for that line of work.
>>53099521
/bread
>>53099521
>having good documentation is bad
So following your logic, shit/meme distros like Hanna Montanna linux are the most reliable because they don't have wikis?
>>53099008
there are some things that it does very retardedly.
for example, the fact that you have to reapply all your custom configs when you update because the package manager overwrites them without prompting.
it's one of my favorite things about Slackware's package management tools- when it finds conflicting conf files, it gives you the option of going through each one, choosing whether to keep the old one, use the new one, or merge them, and it always saves .new and .old in case you need them and shows you the diff output.
>>53099875
Pacman saves old configs too, however its only ever been an issue for me with Xorg, albeit not a major issue.
Nothing else ever actually has its configs changed for me, just Xorg
There is several things I like about arch.
The docs are good.
The packages are up to date.
The naming of the packages are predictable.
The package manager is simple, it provides readable output and over is easy to use.
The packages are not modified, you get what the developers put together, meaning the bugs are not part of some distro fix.
This means it is a lot more predictable and more generic.
The bad part is that it has less security, less support (as people usually build for ubuntu) and you usually have to spend more time on getting things to work.
I mainly use arch because it is easier.
I cringe when I hear some arch faggot talk about how ubuntu is baby tier and arch is somehow superior. So I might switch just because the stigma of running it is too not worth it.
>>53099895
I've had configs overwritten, not just for X. Also X is practically conf-free now. It's not like 10 years ago when you actually had edit your XFree86 by hand in order to get your fucking monitor to work.
I use Slackware on everything and have for many years except for my netbook which is arch because muh minimalist binary packages.
>>53099794
He's right. It could be heavily documented because it has a larger userbase made of people who can/are willing to put help out there for the community. ..If that was even a deductive argument and opinion with a dash of jest.
The thing about Linux to me is..at what point do you admit that a single interest has entirely consumed your life? Are any of the hobbyist-zealots going to look back at 30+ years of (probably?) secure or efficient OS use and consider it a life well spent? Is an epitaph that reads "fastest kernel in the west" what zealots are going for?
>>53099950
Thats unfortunate but I can only return with the age old ebin "works for me :^)"
Should I take a peak at Slackware? Baring in mind I'm the guy who said I use Arch just cause theres no reason to switch to anything else.
>>53099521
the wiki is not about how to fix a broken system.
It is about how to do things.
Being in wiki form, it is usually specific to an application rather than doing a task but it is still good information.
An alternative would be the digital ocean tutorials, which is great for stuff like setting up a service or something, but they are static.
Written once and then maybe updated.
The wiki is a good resource, adding and updating information is easy and this means it gets done.
>>53099995
I'm using arch for few months now and the only time it broke(3 times) was when I fucked up while messing around with things. It always took me hour or less to fix it anyway.
Arch wiki isn't this large because it breaks, it's large because there is so much things you can do/customize. It's also good knowledge base for people with different distros.
If you think any OS can actually be "life-time consuming hobby", then well, I don't know how can someone thing that. It took me max few dozens hours to configure Arch and it surely was well spent time. Otherwise I would probably watch anime or play games and don't learn anything.
>>53096358
Same story here. I was using Ubuntu for a while, but realized I was using Arch's documentation for everything.
>>53096528
Here's a list of people I know personally who use Arch: a sysadmin, a neurosurgeon, an embedded systems engineer, a set designer (like for plays and shit), and a handful of computer science students.
>rolling distro
>latest software packages
>godly wiki
On my university on Computer's Architecture and Operating Systems classes, one of the tasks on first day was to install Arch.
I loved this course.
>>53100005
Slackware is a pleasure to install. If you remember what the Arch installer was like back when it still had an installer, it was basically copied from Slackware. It comes with a relatively large collection of software, including KDE, Xfce, and fluxbox, Firefox and Chrome (Google Chrome, not Chromium) as well as several different audio/video players, document/text editing packages, drivers for everything under the sun (except your proprietary vidya cards), and support for lots of different programming languages. It has far less in it's "official repository" than Arch but it's designed so that you can just full-install 7-8 GB of software and not worry about what else you need in addition.
It has a third-party build system that is essentially the same thing as AUR but with a very comfy menu-driven bash script build manager. It also has a plugin for it's official package manager that lets you install binary packages from several major second and third-party repositories. Its package manager does not have as many functions for querying and such, but the "package database" is just a directory (/var/log/packages) with a text file for each installed package that lists metadata and a file listing, so you can just use basic unix utilities to query it.
It doesn't "automatically" resolve dependencies, but the build manager has a utility to automatically generate build queues based on dependency trees.
It has a notoriously slow release cycle (14.1 was released three years ago) but it's -current tree is updated regularly.
It doesn't use systemd. And never will.
Slackware has a reputation for being the Linux closest to "Unix-philosophy". If you are comfortable setting everything up and find Arch easy to use, you might find Slackware very nice. AlienBOB has a live CD of what is essentially the 14.2 beta release with his additional KDE and MATE packages that you can check out.
http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/Switchable_Graphics
"ThinkPads with NVidia Optimus graphics, have been well known to have significantly better battery-life in Windows than in Linux, even when Linux only uses the internal graphics. The reason is that the NVidia GPU is not automatically powered off when it is not used. So to get optimal battery-life in Linux on ThinkPad with Optimus, you need to switch it off manually (or by a script)."
This is one example of a caveat that keeps me away from Linux. These little hitches just kept adding up for me until I had to question what I was getting for what I was trading away and stop. Linux makes beautiful sense for some users, and not others.
>>53096418
This. Linux does not work for these users.
>>53096528
Users who weigh the pros and cons in favor of Arch. Sometimes, one of the pros is "I'm really interested in this OS". Sometimes, that person posts on 4chan in all caps. But, sometimes not.
>>53096705
Actual sysadmin here. I support a mixed datacenter, Unix (aix, hpux, solaris), Linux (red hat, centos, Ubuntu), Windows.
My desktop is Windows 7. Although I do have a bunch of minimal Linux vms.
What's on your desktop doesn't matter.
