What does everyone think about Arch Linux over Ubuntu Mate?
Arch has excellent wiki section and for the most part can apply to ubuntu.
Just not a very user friendly distro if you know what I mean. If you don’t know, just ask the same question in their forum and I bet you will get some clues 
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I really like Arch and am always playing around with it on either my notepad or a VM. But, if you want stability, reliability and ease of use for a newcomer (especially in terms of the forums, as alluded to by v3xx), then it falls well short of Ubuntu Mate.
Like @anon42388993 said . Arch is not for begginers but Ubuntu is . I am currently using Manjaro linux (Arch Based) becouse I love bleeding edge software . It is easier to search for software in aur then adding repositories in Ubuntu , but in arch you have to configure everything . So for new users who like very stable software I would suggest Ubuntu . If you wan’t to tweak everything and have bleeding edge software you should choose Arch . It is a matter of choise
And if somebody asks : I like Ubuntu Mate and I like helping people and the community . This is why I stay on this forum.
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It’s a cool distro. Too cool for school and if you like to always have new shiny software it’s one of the best. For those who want to thinker with their system it’s just great.
I think this forum post should rather read Manjaro Linux vs Ubuntu MATE or Arch Linux vs Ubuntu (Unity). But aside from this, I have a question: how does the security of PPAs compare to AURs?
I think the security of the aur is the same as PPAs.
I don’t like the Arch Linux community. They are a bunch of elitists.
In 3rd party ppas you can’t tell exactly wath is in those packages . To view the package you have to get it , extract it . And then see wath is inside . In Arch’es AUR you can view how the packages are gonna be created and you can edit them in the installation process . Becouse in aur there are no packages . Only pkgfiles witch make the package and additional fixes if the software isn’t arch ready .
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Its so hard to cross compile stuff for arm on arch.
I had installed “apricity OS” based on arch wich is a very nice gnome distro.
But I went to an arch forum to ask a question … Then I EXACTLY found out what you meant …
They are a bunch of elitist that would not move a finger to help if you’re using a modified arch or asking a question already on the forum.
That explain why I’m back on ubuntu-gnome and ubuntu-mate. Ubuntu at large is a friendly community and one doesn’t feel like a piece of sh…t for asking a “stupid” question. There is no stupid question. Only stupid answers.
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I’m not in sync with the criticism of the Arch Linux community. There’s so many people in there, that tagging the whole community as elitist is the type of generalization that just can’t be true.
I know those folks well, having been a member for a few years and until last year. I make occasional visits now, but only as a lurker, as my Arch Linux computer is starting to break (it’s a really old piece of hardware) and I’m thinking putting Arch Linux behind.
The Arch community must adhere to the Arch Way. A set of rules/guidelines that help define the principles behind the distribution, but also to guide new users in understanding if they should or not use it. It’s a contract. And you are expected to accept it.
What’s most notorious about the Arch Way (although skipped by many) is the fact that being Arch a DIY distro that relies heavily on the user computer literacy and technical prowess, it is completely impossible to maintain a community of newbies to the Linux land. The amount of noise in the forums or the IRC channel would be tremendous, when you think that even something as simple as an NTP server needs to be manually installed and configured from scratch.
Likewise, given the extreme density of the information required to successfully install and maintain an Arch Linux machine, there’s absolutely no room for derivatives in the official forums. Users are expected to understand that they are on their own if they choose to steer away from the supported path.
And this is where the hostility towards the Arch community begins when it makes an active effort to reduce that noise. Being “on your own” is a compliment on the Arch Way. That’s what every Arch user is from the very first day. Users aren’t expected to grok Linux (although that would be better), but they are expected to know it well enough not to depend on other Arch users to solve their problems. And most definitely, newcomers to Linux-land and maintainers of non-supported Arch versions are quickly refused help.
This rejection is sometimes put in not so kind ways, helping furthering the notion of elitism among the group. But it is necessary. When you choose Arch, you choose a way of computing and that is the way.
I’ve been through hell and back with Arch Linux. You should know that I actually started learning Linux on a VM with Arch. That distro was my teacher. So you can imagine what I went through on the forums. But I went through it only until I finally understood what it represented to be an Arch user. There’s no ideology here, no new religious way about the Arch community. It’s all simply an act of necessity, because that distro was never created to cater for our needs, but to present expert Linux users with a blank slate from which they can build their Linux machines. (Or newbies who are technical-oriented and like to get all dirty when learning a new tech.)
And it was when I gained that realization that I finally came to understand that community and appreciate it for its worth, since it accumulates some of the brightest and most knowledgeable users in Linux-land. It was when I realized and fully appreciated the monumental work that is the Arch Wiki, which was made exactly to reduce the noise and steer users with more functional questions away from the forums.
There’s no elitism in there. You may witness some pride for sure. But not elitism. When your question fits in the Arch Way, you can bet you will get a barrage of good answers like few other places in the Linux world.
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They won’t even help architect users. Architect is a terminal based installer for arch, which leaves you with pure arch at the end. Anyways I have to agree with everything you just said. Thats why I don’t like to use arch or talk to there community.
I don’t think there is an arch over ubuntu-mate. I there are arch and ubuntu-mate.
Arch is great for new software and of cause there is the great AUR. But I would never install arch in an office.
Arch must be installed from nothing. No one would do this for business. There are great distros like manjaro or antegros, witch are based on arch. But the have all some quirks. I.e. font rendering by default or both of them are came without the gutenprint printer drivers. For a linux enthusiast at home it’s easy to install or fix. But in an office it is a showstopper when the printer is not working.
And this is why I like ubuntu-mate. The mate team does a great job by packing the distro. Most printers and scanner are working out of the box.
And never forget: We are here a few people how are interested in linux. The most people out there are interested in to get the daily tasks done with the computer. And that’s what ubuntu-mate is for.
OK here comes my long winded take on Arch vs Ubuntu.
I’ve been messing around with computers since 1992. Back then the internet didn’t amount to much. A night on line consisted of hitting a few sites or a couple of slip streams. I went through a nasty divorce that left me working, paying child support and scrounging computer stores and Goodwills for used parts or systems to build stuff out of. I didn’t know any other users so what I learned was from documentation that came with operating systems, library books, and occasional book from a store, and magazines. At that time I ran all DOS based programs from a prompt or I used and old program called Power Menu as a front end for them. The key at that time was the magazines. I was low on funds all of the time trying to make ends meet. On payday I would put gas in my car for my one outing for that pay period and drive 40 miles and sell my plasma for $30.00 and buy used computer parts, a hamburger, and a couple of computer magazines. I would hit the library look for books and head home with my treasures and entertainment for the next 2 week. I like to tinker. I have taken stuff apart to see how it works my entire life. So computers were a natural path for me to take. They kept my time and mind occupied. During this time in my life the computer magazines were key. I was very selective in the ones I bought, They had to have something in them about the tech side of things. I have never been a gamer to speak of. I just wanted to know what made them tick and how to do things in them. I started reading about some guy named Linus Torvalds that wrote a kernel while in college and put it out there free of charge for anyone to use. I also read about a project call GNU was using that kernel to run with their programs to make a free operating system. When you are selling your plasma to buy computer parts, magazines, and a hamburger a free operating system sounds like a pretty good deal.
So we will fast forward to 1994. My finances were a little better by now. Not much, but a little. Windows 3 and 3.1 had come and gone and Windows 95 was on the scene. I really didn’t see much use for them. To me they were just a really fancy front end sitting on top of dos running for the most part dos programs dressed up a little to match the environment. My mom bought me a new computer. It was a Gateway with a Pentium 266 MMX slot 1 in it and was running Windows 95. I thought it was great. I actually owned a new computer. After owning it about 6 months my tinkering got the best of me. I was messing around inside the tower and static shocked the motherboard killing the system. I wanted to puke. Times were a little better though and I was getting some extra hours at work. So I saved my money and bought a new Abit motherboard and new ram to go with it. Luckily I hadn’t killed the processor. So after no computer for a month I was back up and running. The lesson learned was to ground myself before messing around inside the system. I was still reading about this Linux thing and read about this company called Red Hat. I had a little extra money one day when I was in the city so I stopped at the Comp USA there and picked up a copy of Red Hat. My choices were that and Suse. I had read plenty about Red Hat but nothing much about Suse. I went home all excited with a box with two book in it and a bunch of 1.44 disks. I was ready to conquer the world. This is when I found out that GNU/Linux was not Microsoft compatible. I would have to replace part of my hardware to get the system to work. The best I was going to be able to do at this point was install the system, but I wouldn’t have Internet access until I bought a new modem because the modem in my system was a win modem and it actually didn’t modulate or demodulate. It was just an interface that Windows used to modulate and demodulate through the processor. I got a crash coarse in formating a hard drive because back then there was no / system /home /swap going on. It was a full partition with a partition for everything. The whole process to actually get a functioning system minus the modem took me a week. It was pretty much sit and read then try and fail. Read some more and try again until one little piece after another started to come together. So after a week I had a functioning system. Two weeks later I bought a US Robotics modem and was able to get internet access.
So what is my whole point to all of this you might ask. Simply this before there was an Arch Linux I did it the Arch way. For those of us back then that didn’t want to run Windows and wanted to run GNU/Linux that is the way we had to do things. Read and learn, trial and error, That is how you ended up with a functioning GNU/Linux system. Once up and running experimenting with it would lead to a bricked system from time to time and you would start over and do it again hoping you didn’t make the same mistakes the next time around.
All of that above leads to this. For those wanting a bleeding edge system that you personally set up from the absolute bottom to the top, run Arch. You will have an understanding about how your system works that the average user won’t. For those that are new to the GNU/Linux world I would highly suggest you start with Ubuntu Mate. Start with familiar ground and get use to that, and then dive off into the deep water when you are a little more sure of yourself. My personal preference these days is a little polish and ease of use never hurt anyone. I don’t need to start at ground zero anymore and work through the process.
A caveman found a rock and by striking it against another created a spark and eventually he figured out how to make a fire. These days I can grab a lighter or match and accomplish the same thing in a few seconds that took the cave man a considerable amount of time to accomplish. The end result is the same. You have a fire you can warm yourself by, or cook a meal.
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