this post was submitted on 08 Jul 2025
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Linux
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From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).
Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.
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Arch requires reading the manual to install it, so installing it successfully is an accomplishment.
It's rolling release with a large repo which fits perfectly for regularly used systems which require up-to-date drivers. In that sense it's quite unique as e.g. OpenSUSE Tumbleweed has less packages.
It has basically any desktop available without any preference or customisations by default.
They have a great short name and solid logo.
Arch is community-based and is quite pragmatic when it comes to packaging. E.g. they don't remove proprietary codecs like e.g. Fedora.
Ubuntu is made by a company and Canonical wants to shape their OS and user experience as they think is best. This makes them develop things like snap to work for them (as it's their project) instead of using e.g. flatpak (which is only an alternative for a subset of snaps features). This corporate mindset clashes with the terminally online Linux desktop community.
Also, they seem to focus more on their enterprise server experience, as that is where their income stream comes from.
But like always, people with strong opinions are those voicing them loudly. Most Linux users don't care and use what works best for them. For that crowd Ubuntu is a good default without any major downsides.
Edit: A major advantage of Ubuntu are their extended security updates not found on any other distro (others simply do not patch them). Those are locked behind a subscription for companies and a free account for a few devices for personal use.
Not really with archiinstall, but indeed as you say reading the manual is an expectation. Their philosophy is "creating an environment that is straightforward and relatively easy for the user to understand directly, rather than providing polished point-and-click style management tools", as well-summarized by Wikipedia.
tbh that goes for every distro. It's just that Canonical is more hands-on with its approach. The major complaint with Snap besides performance issues is Canonical making it so that only the Snap versions of popular apps (most famously, the bundled Firefox) are available by default.