---
layout: post
title: Reasons I use Arch Linux 
subtitle : It's a meme, but it's so good that it's allowed
tags: Linux
author: Rishabh Tewari
comments : True
---
# The Meme Aspect  
I've been using GNU/Linux exclusively for about a year, on the day of this writing. My distribution of choice(and what I'm writing on) is Arch Linux. I had dabbled with Linux back in 2014, and a few times before that, but stuck with Windows. From 2016-2019, I exclusively used MacOS, which gave me a good insight into the world of Unix-like Operating Systems, and I would have continued using it if the keyboard and trackpad didn't malfunction. It's been a year since that, and I still haven't been able to fix. What's surprising is that the hardware worked fine after I installed Linux on it.

I should also point out that I probably won't be using right now if not for the weirdly helpful yet trolling online community(shout outs to Luke Smith). And anyone subsrcibed to r/linux or any related communities are aware that Arch Linux has developed a certain reputation of being hard to install and use, and there's a lot of memes on this. I could talk about this, however most of my views on the subject are accurately captured in this [video](https://youtu.be/VO9R_WFs9Zc).

# Reasons now
1. Any software available on Linux, it's available on Arch. I realize this is a weird one since that's true for every distribution. However, everything is available on Arch easily. The AUR is magical and hard to give up, and I don't have to deal with all the compiling (as in I did with Gentoo, I love Gentoo! But Compile time is a mess)

That is pretty much, seems anti climatic, but that's all. Arch Linux is a simple (that doesn't mean easy) Linux Distribution, which doesn't really have anything special going for it, however it avoids a lot of pain, which is super enticing

# Afterthoughts?
Even though I love Arch Linux, I do agree with the criticisms of it taking a long time to set up, and it not being particularly easy for new users. Which is a fair criticism, if you aren't ready for that, I don't suggest taking up using Arch. My suggestion to not waste your time, while still get a functional set-up is to.... ***STEAL!***. There's a lot of configuration files avaialable online, that do most of what you want already, so why not take a gander? You can always modify it to your own liking!