I’ve been using Arch as a daily driver for years and love it’s customization level, then I realized I just want an OS that works. I need tips, advice, or even warnings before moving.
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I have Fedora Workstation (rpm) as my daily driver and use console ArchLinux on a sdcard for daily backups and rescue etc, so it’s in daily use too.
Expect:
- Much slower bug fixes and updates. Fedora has an organised new kernel testing weekend, not point updates, before they are released to stable. So the first release of a kernel is .3 or something. Arch releases the new kernel fairly quickly, but not as quickly as it used to!
- Bug reports are processed much slower. Same reasons.
- Reversing out problem packages is much easier in Fedora. Typically three kernels versions are kept. Arch is much more flimsy but it’s getting better over time. It’s still my go-to rescue distro because it’s ‘clean’ - there is not much downstream fiddling on the original source code ( like in Debian etc ) and excessive soft-dependency lists. Fedora does introduce some excess dependencies IMHO.
- Fedora is more user friendly. dnf options are well documented and the dash-dash long form options exist. dnf seem to be moving to subcommands too. Pacman really is mainly single letter options which are difficult to remember, and I’m always looking at the arch-wiki Rosetta webpage far more than I should.
- I haven’t installed ArchLinux from scratch for a couple of years, but there’s not been a grub2 layer that I can remember. Fedora is still depending on grub long after it was necessary or useful. Things are much slower to change in Fedora. The secure kernel isn’t really as advanced on Fedora compared to ArchLinux.
- I’m a rolling release fan because ‘updating’ 2000 packages at once, a la Fedora, seems a recipe for problems. That said, my fears aren’t justified: I’ve only really had one system-upgrade problem with Fedora, and I’ve been using it since FC4 - not always continuously.
- I’ve always installed Fedora (and other distros) from the base packages not using an installer. This time I’ve installed SELinux. The miriad complaints I’ve seen about it are not justified. I had an issue with a change to the Fedora SELinux policy tripping a fail; I was impressed and the solution was offered by the setroubleshooter. A user generated problem (ie me) trying to put a systems unit into the /etc/systemd/system directory puzzled me for a while until I realised what I was doing that it didn’t like. Again easily fixed and there are plenty of documents about.
You could probably summarise those as Fedora is corporate run and ArchLinux is user collective.
As I said Fedora is my daily driver and I have tried to operate with ArchLinux as my daily, but it was a while ago and too fragile then. ArchLinux is my thin Rescue distro. I wouldn’t be without either.
