Not because Arch is bad, not because KDE is unstable, but because I hit one of those situations where everything starts acting weird at the same time and your brain immediately goes to: “ok, the system is broken beyond repair”.

It started after a normal Arch update. Nothing fancy. Suddenly, VS Code started behaving oddly when working on my Qt/C++ projects. When I closed VS Code, a Chromium process stayed running. Not just running… it became impossible to kill. After that, Dolphin would refuse to launch. The system wasn’t frozen, CPU and memory were fine, but basic desktop apps were blocked. Very creepy kind of instability.

At first, it felt like a classic Arch problem. You update, something deep breaks, and you’re supposed to accept that this is the price of rolling release. I even went as far as installing Fedora KDE Plasma to escape the chaos.

That lasted maybe a couple of hours.

Fedora KDE is not bad at all, but when you come from a heavily customized Arch system, it feels like landing in a desert. Everything is clean, but empty. No muscle memory, no fine-tuning, no small things you built over years. I quickly realized I would spend weeks just to get back to where I already was. That alone pushed me back to Arch.

Luckily, I always keep full system snapshots using R-Drive Image. After every update, I create an image and keep around 8–10 historic ones. That habit saved me completely. I restored a clean snapshot from two weeks ago where everything worked perfectly.

Now here is the important part.

Instead of updating the system again blindly and breaking it again, I decided to apply a few strict rules that I’ve learned (and relearned) the hard way.

First rule: never panic and never assume the OS is broken.

Second rule: change one variable only, then test.

Third rule: trust evidence, not feelings.

I started reintroducing updates slowly. Pacman packages were fine. Desktop was fine. VS Code was fine. Qt projects were fine. Then I moved to AUR packages.

And I hit the root cause on the first attempt, almost by accident.

An AUR package called qt-sudo.

It’s a GUI sudo helper used by Octopi. Updating that single package instantly reproduced the issue: Chromium helpers stuck, Dolphin blocked, system feeling haunted again. Remove it? Everything works. Reinstall/update it? System breaks again. Perfect reproducibility.

At that moment, everything clicked.

This was never an Arch issue. It was never a KDE issue. It wasn’t VS Code, Chromium, or Qt either. It was a GUI privilege wrapper from AUR, sitting under the desktop stack, interfering with portals and polkit in subtle ways.

Once I removed Octopi and qt-sudo completely, the system went back to being rock solid. VS Code exits cleanly. Chromium processes die normally. Dolphin works. No instability at all.

The lesson here is not “AUR is bad”. The lesson is more nuanced.

Some AUR packages are not just “apps”. They are infrastructure. Anything that touches sudo, polkit, authentication, portals, or GUI privilege escalation should be treated like a kernel-adjacent component. Updating those blindly is asking for trouble.

Another lesson: Arch is not unstable by nature. Arch is honest. It doesn’t hide complexity. If something breaks, it breaks loudly, but it also gives you the tools to understand why.

And finally, snapshots change everything. When rollback is easy, debugging becomes calm. You stop distro-hopping out of frustration and start reasoning like an engineer again.

I was very close to leaving Arch. In the end, Arch didn’t fail me. One bad AUR dependency did.

And now my system is back, stable, predictable, and honestly… I trust it more than before.

Why isn't Gnome 46 in arch? How is this possible? It's only been -3 days since it was released. This is not what I was promised with ArchLinux!!!!. I think I'm going to open a ticket because this is happening all the time and it can't go on. We deserve GNOME 46 now!!!!

kay okay, I know this might sound a little weird — but am I the only one feeling like Arch is suddenly getting too much attention? Like don’t get me wrong, I love how active and thriving the community is, and it's great to see new people interested in learning the nuts and bolts of their system…

But at the same time, I don't want Arch to become the next joke OS like Ubuntu. 😅

Arch was kind of a meme before — “btw I use Arch” and all that — but at least people understood it was for those who wanted that level of control and learning. Lately though, I’ve been seeing a lot of folks seriously criticizing Arch for not being “ready to use out of the box” and comparing it to Ubuntu or Mint, like bro… that’s the whole point

Arch isn’t here to hold your hand while you sit back and sip tea during install. And that’s fine. That’s intentional. You don’t complain that a Lego set has too many pieces when that’s the fun of it.

Idk, maybe I’m just being dramatic lol. I just hope Arch doesn’t lose its spirit or get memed into irrelevance by people expecting it to be something it’s not.

Anyone else feel the same or am I just spiraling?

A feature I would like to bring to light is [systemd-gpt-auto-generator] (https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Systemd#GPT_partition_automounting)

This feature allows systemd to discover partitions on a single GPT hard disk and automatically mount them. It will mount root /boot /efi /home /var /var/tmp and swap when systemd-boot is used on a single physical drive with the correct partition Guid’s. This means for my laptop I literally don’t have an fstab. From boot it will read the extended boot partition, mount root, swap, and my home directory and boot with no issues. I did need an fstab on my actual tower but that was only because my home partition is on a separate drive, and that's all my fstab has defined.

So really is there any need to use fstab on a systemd-boot install anymore?

I am considering Arch Linux alongside Windows 11. I'm primarily a Windows user with limited Linux experience (mainly Raspberry Pi projects). However, I'm proficient at following instructions and have coding skills. I'm interested in dual-booting Arch Linux for several reasons:

• To gain a deeper understanding of Linux.

• To learn about server setup and administration.

• To use it as my primary coding environment. Is Arch suitable for my goals, considering my background? Any specific advice or recommendations for a smooth transition? .

A few months ago it was the entire toolchain fiasco (major packages half a year out of date)
This time it's a grub issue, but the entire situation was completely avoidable

• Arch maintainers are packaging an unstable version of grub - not the latest release, but a straight-up development version

• They could have easily done a bit of testing - if they just put the package into testing repos, installed it on a VM and rebooted they would see it's broken

• They could have just waited a few days to see if it breaks - instead they push an update to a bootloader without any testing

• There's still nothing about it on the website, affected users may not be aware of what happened and I think the website should inform them

It was 1 a.m. I was reading the Calibre docs, thinking about how to tweak the Calibre reader to make it look prettier. I figured I'd finish up and then drift off into a peaceful sleep.

Then, my computer suddenly crashed. Nothing new — I just hit the restart button.

Wait… where’s my system? My Arch Linux boot entry was gone!

At first, I thought, “Maybe the GRUB file got corrupted from all the reboots. No big deal.” As long as I could boot into a live environment with my USB stick — but why couldn’t the motherboard detect the USB drive?!

At that moment, only one thought was running through my head: Please don’t let it be a dead motherboard. I’d rather the USB stick be dead than the mobo.

Then it hit me — could it be static buildup from restarting too many times?

So I unplugged the power cord, drained the static, and powered it back on. Finally, it booted into the live environment! Now I could actually repair GRUB.

Thankfully, this part went pretty smoothly. Step by step, I booted into the system, fixed the bootloader, updated the config, and rebooted.Thanks the archwiki

And just like that, GRUB was back. I finally got into my system. I glanced at the clock — 4 a.m.

That was way too thrilling and a huge learning experience. But honestly? I don’t need this kind of "learning" ever again. It cost me an entire night.

I've been using Arch on my laptop since November, and so far it has been amazing. Pacman is wicked fast, I've never had an issue I didn't cause myself, and everything I could ever want is either in the repos, AUR, or flatpak.

But, there's a few reasons I want to move away. First, the only reason I tried Arch in the first place was because I wanted to see what it was like - if it was worth the fuss of doing the manual installation. Yes, 100% it was. That was actually really fun, and I would do it again, even just if I was bored and wanted something to kill time. Now that I've tried it though, it's kind of like "cool, neat" and now nothing special. Not that it has to be special - but I still don't see a point of using it over other distros.

Also, I really don't need a rolling release distro. I'm by no means a power user (I spend some time in the terminal but I have never used bash scripts, and I just use KDE plasma, not a wm that I configured myself.) And I don't need the newest software. I'd rather have stability.

I don't really know why I'm posting this, other than the fact that it's the middle of the night, I can't sleep, and I wanted to say goodbye to this fantastic community. Arch has been wonderful the past 3 months, but it's not for me. :)

I want to try Arch Linux, but I'm scared by how difficult everyone says it is. Is it really that hard?

Just a simple question, it's annoying to chroot into it but srsly this thing is a blessing.

i see the last post of someone asking if they should use arch as their main distro, and people saying like "oh, but arch is not that hard actually lol!" and that makes me head nod a bit.

i totally get that arch is not *as* hard as people paint it, but it is NOT a good option for new users in linux systems - they will be terrified when their encounter problems, or have to manually do stuff

i use arch in all my computers and wouldn't use anything else, and i start using it as almost my second distro, but please don't encourage new users to use it as their first distro... or do whatever you want, but that's just a lie

where is the good old "arch is so difficult bro you will not be able to install it" that actually encouraged them? i would be a TERRORIST if i encouraged a friend or family member to install arch as their first linux experience

Yes we had this topic a few thousand times already, but let me give you my opinion.

First of, I love diversity and forks and I embrace this philosophy! It made me realize of how much potential there is in any idea.

There is a Linux Distribution for everything: Normal user, power user, system administrator, penetration tester, media fanatic, gamer, internet addict, disabled people and more.

So this post is not about me saying that Antergos shouldn't exist or alike. I just want to point out why I believe it's important for everybody to understand why Antergos is not Arch and why we (as Arch Community) do not need to support it.

This also is NOT about elitism at all. I just want to point out the trouble I've come to see when helping Antergos installs and I want to make it more clear how things are today.

Of course, it is totally up to you whether you want to support it or not. But please take care of the following points.

TOPIC A: Antergos is NOT Arch!

1.) Antergos does not only use Arch packages, but also their own. You can find them here: https://github.com/Antergos/antergos-packages
2.) Antergos uses different commands for installing and configurating packages.
Antergos: https://github.com/Antergos/antergos-packages/blob/master/zfs/PKGBUILD#L56-L66
Arch: https://aur.archlinux.org/cgit/aur.git/tree/PKGBUILD?h=zfs-linux-git#n33
This means that Antergos and Arch do not have identical builds! Installing a package on both system does not result in the same installation.
3.) Antergos has a different target than Arch Linux.
Antergos: "Antergos includes everything you need. Its default configuration provides you with a ready-to-use system." https://antergos.com/
Arch: "and accept that Arch is designed as a DIY (Do-It-Yourself) distribution" https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Frequently_asked_questions#I_am_a_complete_GNU.2FLinux_beginner._Should_I_use_Arch.3F
4.) Antergos has their own bug trackers, which indicates that they are indeed seperate products with possibly seperate issues. https://github.com/antergos
5.) Quality Assurance is different.
Antergos: There is not a single evidence after installing Antergos that it's correctly setup and installed. I've myself encountered a broken installation that was marked as "successful" in Chnchi but wouldn't boot at all.
Arch: After all commands I run I get a feedback from the system whether something was successful or not. After the install I can check the configs to make sure they are what I want.
6.) The Community is different.
Antergos: "Cnchi Installer Welcome Screen" http://antergos.info/index.html "No additional steps are required after installation." https://antergos.com/about/
Arch: "it is the user who assembles the system. " https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Frequently_asked_questions && "Read The Fucking (or Fine) Manual" https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Arch_terminology#RTFM

TOPIC B: Antergos support should be done by the Antergos Community

1.) Antergos already has it's own forum http://forum.antergos.com/ , it's own wiki https://antergos.com/wiki and it's own IRC channel https://antergos.com/wiki/wiki/getting-help-in-the-antergos-irc-channel.
2.) There is no need for spreading the issues from Antergos to the Arch Community. If you report bugs and questions to the Arch Community, they may never be seen on the Antergos Community, thus they will not be fixed or be even known at all!
3.) A community needs to thrive. Going to the Arch Community just because your issue isn't answered within one hour is not going to help here. It's the opposite,- it makes the Antergos Support team not needed and their users disatisfied.

TOPIC C: General problems with Antergos (opinionated)

1.) Antergos gives the fake impression that one does not need to understand the system in order to use it. The installer hides away all potential issues and thus all potential things you could need to know about your system.
2.) It seems to be suggested to people a lot,- as an Arch Linux replacement. They suggest a Blackbox as fast way how to get into a totally user-based configuration. I suggest going pure Arch on a VM instead. And reading the ArchWiki. This is how I did it. This is how I learned how my system actually works.

Conclusion

I could add more points (Listing examples of bugs that occur in Antergos but not in Arch, for example) but I think it's getting clear enough already.

So in conclusion, "Antergos is 100% Arch" is a fairytale and please help the Antergos Community by posting issues in the right place.
We are not helping them by keep telling the Antergos users to get help from the Arch Community.

TL;DR:
I wish we could accept that Antergos != Arch and understand that it's better for the Antergos Community if people would post and get directed into the right place.

Edit:
Changes the example from broadcom-wl to zfs.

I just installed Arch a few days ago following a simple tutorial on YouTube (not using arch install or any installation scripts). And it was actually easy. After that I installed a lot of apps and packages and nothing broke. My experience on Arch is actually better than it was on Ubuntu. I don't understand why people call it "the most complicated distro" except that it doesn't have a GUI installer, which isn't a big deal as long as you follow a guide.

Edit: I think the good side of this is that it adds to the weight of writing "I use Arch BTW" in my bio lmao

I made this script because new users might be confused when setting up arch after installing with archinstall and breaking their system.

(This is my first coding project so i might have made mistakes)

If you have any questions don't feel afraid of asking me ;)

Github (If you want to look at the code yourself): https://github.com/magikarq/fishscripts

Run and install:

1. Clone the repository:

git clone https://github.com/magikarq/fishscripts.git
cd fishscripts

2. Run the main setup script:
chmod +x setup.sh
sudo ./setup.sh

Hello newbie here wanting to get into arch, I wanted to know if there's any documentation i need to read before i install Linux since I've heard I could break my system and in which case I would want to know how i broke it in the first place without surfing through millions of forums and finding a specific fix and go on about my day without knowing what exactly went wrong. Basically I don't wanna be in the dark while using Linux and wanted to know if there's any place i can understand Linux and everything there is to know about it before i run Linux so that if a problem arises i can atleast understand and try to fix it on my own or atleast if I'm looking through forums i know what I'm talking about and looking for if that makes sense. Thank you for reading

I don't think i have any snaps or flatpaks at all. I do however have 2 appimages

I have the beta version of OCCT in order to test out their new ram stability test but that's kinda useless when it doesn't find any errors (might have something to do with my ram being stable).

I have 1 appimage for openshot because openshot moved to the AUR and i was never able to get a proper native version of openshot actually working.

With the neofetch repo being set to archive status on GitHub. What's everyone's go to alternative?

I have been using Linux since the mid 1990s. Back then it was pretty common to buy books with Linux CDs in them at Waldenbooks or Barnes and Noble. This is, assuming one were inclined to do so and one were able to download the ISO images over long enough period of time over dial-up AND you had access to a fast as hell (2x then) CD-RW drive.

I bought "Linux Unleashed" third edition by Tim Parker (I know all these things because I'm looking at the book right now). It came with Redhat Linux 5-something I'm not exactly sure because the CD is gone and the actual cover doesn't mention the version inside.

Anyway, the point of this story is to say - I've been around this thing a long, long time. I started on Open Caldera which neither the company nor the distro exist anymore. Moved to Slackware then Redhat then Mandrake then Debian and ...well here we are.

Back then, it was uncommon to hear politics, religion or social issues from distros. No one knew what Ian Murdock from Debian thought about God, Poverty or racism. No one knew, no one cared. Today, every single distro is filled to the brim with political, social and social justice issues.

I think Brian Lunduke is the Alex Jones of Linux - but he has a fair point with regard to this one issue. Because a broken clock is right twice a day.

EVERY. SINGLE. DISTRO is infested with this garbage. Except for Arch. I'm glad these people care about George Floyd, whateverism and this-ism and that-ism. That's terrific. I might even agree. I'm just not here to join a cult or a religion or a social movement. I want to use a goddamn computer with the O/S I want.

So I was installing archlinux using archinstall (as per usual) and I went to select my mirrors, but it took suspiciously long, afterwards I got an error and after that I couldn't either access archlinux.org nor use reflector in archinstall. Pinging archlinux.org using the terminal works.

archlinux.org does work if I use Tor Browser.

'Amelia' is an Arch Linux installer script, that i made for my own convenience, and i'd love to share with the community.

You'll find it here: Amelia Installer

Please, make sure to read the detailed README.

Feedback will be appreciated.

Cheers !

EDIT: The script is made to run on bare-metal.

Never been tested on VMs.

touch offer pause run exultant bells elderly full tap work

This post was mass deleted and anonymized with Redact

This caught me completely by surprise today. I wasn't aware that they were re-writing the UI and switching to Qt. Imagine my face when I ran my daily system update and saw 255MB of dependencies asking to be installed. I get that GTK4 was a pain to work with and you could tell that it was, the interface was working but felt kludgy. However, dumping 255MB of dependencies for all the non KDE users and especially for those that run lightweight DEs, onto a 7.8MB app, is a hard pill to swallow. Especially considering there isn't another program that is as easy to use and feature rich as EasyEffects. Sure, you could build all your effects chains with LSP-plugins and Carla or something else but EasyEffects holds true to its name. It's easy.

I'm gonna hold off on updating for now but eventually I'll either have to go through the hassle of setting up an alternative or bite the bullet. Any Hyprland, XFCE or Sway or other lightweight DE users here that have any opinions on this? Did you just bite the bullet and install all the deps or have you built an alternative setup?

Edit: Guys, it's not about the storage space. It's about having to install a whole ecosystem for one app. Bloat isn't just an expression of used storage space.

Edit2: Just to clarify further. KDE is not a dependency of Qt. EasyEffects is using kirigami and all that brings along. KDE widgets, breeze-icons etc. You can build an app using Qt6 without all of those things. I may not have made that clear enough initially but I already have all the Qt libraries installed. The 255MB are all KDE stuff, none of it is Qt. That is the core of my complaint. Why all the KDE stuff?

Edit3: Many assume it's about the MB count but that's not it. I'm also surprised they're all missing the point. They chose Arch as their distro. If they're not at least annoyed by this, why didn't they go with any of the other distros that are pre-built? Arch is a DIY distro, having to install stuff you don't want kinda goes against the spirit of Arch. If you don't care about what deps a program pulls in and you're not bothered by having thousands of packages on your system, why did you go with Arch? Why go through all of the hassle of installing Arch if in the end, you don't care? Wouldn't have Manjaro or one of the Ubuntu based distros been more appropriate?

I usually steer clear of the AUR, since I prefer having a system that only runs on packages maintained in the official repository (just makes it a lot easier for me, to sleep at night). My gut-feeling is saying that they are fine to install and use, but if someone could help me out, I would be very thankful.

Problem is, that I now need a package, that is found either on the official website (seemingly only in .rpm and .deb fileformats, sadly - seems like the process of converting a package from .rpm or .deb to .pacman is quite the hurdle) or on the AUR. I would honestly prefer just downloading it from the official website, and install it "Windows-style" (although I'm quite certain it could potentially cause trouble with pacman), but AFAIK that isn't possible, since Arch doesn't support either .deb or .rpm - if I am mistaken, please let me know, so I can possibly avoid the AUR.

I have been reading about the PKGBUILD and makepkg on the Wiki, but since I usually don't use files from AUR, I'm not too sure about how to proceed, so if someone on this Reddit could help me out, I would appreciate it greatly.

The packages I need, point to an upstream that matches the official website, so I assume that adds to the security, but can someone obfuscate the upstream URL on the AUR, so that when compiling the packages in question from the AUR, it's actually pulling dependencies from a, to me, unknown URL? I'm sure reading the PKGBUILD would show me what is happening, but the recent trouble with obfuscated and hex-coded URL's in a malicious PKGBUILD has me concerned, and it doesn't help that the packages aren't the most popular ones (since they are related to engineering, I guess that makes sense).

If someone could give me their thoughts on the security of both of these packages, I would be very appreciative.

1: https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/digilent.waveforms
2: https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/digilent.adept.runtime