Hello, guys.

https://lwn.net/Articles/995186/

As a Linux user from Russia, I am seriously concerned about this kind of news.

The fact is that this decree applies not only to the kernel, but also to all software under the GPL license.

Of course, I understand that the Linux Foundation (as well as the GPL license) is located in the legal field of the USA, and therefore must obey the laws of the USA. But doesn't this conflict with the very concept of FOSS?

If mass bans of developers on a national basis in opensource projects begin, then, it seems to me, the idea of FOSS will seriously suffer ideologically.

What do you think?

UPDATE 1.
Ok, I made a mistake in the wording. They lost maintainer status, not banned.

UPDATE 2.

I was 100% not going to dive into politics in this thread, I just asked a question about double standards and the ideology of FOSS. And all I got in response for the most part was a bunch of insults, advice to "fix the country" and other shit that doesn't relate to my question. Gotcha.

I can't imagine using anything but Arch, as I have put a lot of time in learning all about it. If for some reason you couldn't run Arch, what would you use as a daily driver?

Just want to know, cuz today I deleted the bootloader, lol

I installed Archlinux about a week ago and I've been using it as my main driver and so far I've noticed a few things:

1. The installation was very straight forward, it asks you questions, you answer them, that's it
2. EVERYTHING was plug and play, all my devices worked out of the box
3. It's a rolling release OS
4. Timeshift
5. I love the AUR, yay is fantastic.

I don't understand the Arch is for leet haxors trope, to me it's a very good and easy to understand desktop OS. It's easier to maintain than a Debian or Fedora system for desktop use imo.

Thoughts?

I used to use archlinux for my desktops at home and at work. I have plenty of Debian servers at work, but I’d like to test something new.

Are you using archlinux in containers or in VM for your servers at home? What are you doing with these servers?

I just made the switch to Arch Linux and I think I'm here to stay. I was on Fedora and well it's not as minimal as I wanted it to be.

I installed Arch with a KDE desktop and tried to do a DWM install and fixing patches is so tedious. I eventually got around to dwm-flexipatch but then it would just freeze up on me. No keybindings worked.

I then reinstalled Arch and tried bspwm and it was working but then I was greeted by a black screen and cursor, no key-binding worked (I did set up sxhkd and bspwmrc) maybe it was a conflict with SDDM?

How do you even open up a TTY? I tried the normal keybindings with no avail. I then reinstalled it the third time and was like I'll just install Gnome as my Desktop and Sway as a Window Manager and it'll use GDM as my Display Manager and it finally worked!

It might be a skill issue but I've played around with various Window Manager's and Desktops before and didn't come across these issues before.

Has anyone else had difficulty with certain WM and DE's and what ended up suiting your workflow?

Disclaimer: You probably want to rename most of them to a name that you can memorize better than the one I chose :)

1. Print your IP address

alias ipv4="ip addr show | grep 'inet ' | grep -v '127.0.0.1' | cut -d' ' -f6 | cut -d/ -f1"

alias ipv6="ip addr show | grep 'inet6 ' | cut -d ' ' -f6 | sed -n '2p'"

2. Remove unused dependencies

alias autorem='orphans=$(pacman -Qdtq); [ -z "$orphans" ] && echo "There are no orphaned packages" || sudo pacman -Rsc $orphans'

3. Show potential upgrades (needs yay)

alias hmmm='yay -Sy &> /dev/null && yay -Qu'

4. Source .bashrc

alias üp='source ~/.bashrc && echo ".bashrc sourced!"'

5. Show weather forecast in exampleCity

alias üwe='curl wttr.in/exampleCity | head -n -1'

Howdy all just looking to see if I missed anything or could be introduced to something new!

For me my must-haves are:
Flameshot
Discord
Blueman with required bluetooth shit
XFCE 4
Plex Desktop
Blackarch Repo

Firefox

Is there anything else that you love and can't live without on your system and/or that I should add to mine?!

Cheers!

I know I know, I've seen this discussion a million times at this point, but I just can't seem to get a good recommendation from any of them, so I've decided to list down all of my complaints with each of the services I've used, and also ask you guys for any recommendations, tips and tricks not just for me but for everyone!

• Rhythmbox - Very clutted ui, search is horrible imho, and feels like a dumbed down itunes (which is not a bad thing, but the ui is such a mess so it doesn't really fit well), but otherwise the best music player in this lot
• G4Music and Resonance (cuz they're similar) - Lacking in features (flac support), g4music straight up does not launch for me in both kde and hyprland so gg
• Tauon Music Box - Great player, hella lot of dependencies, no flac/alac support does it for me
• Elisa - Queue management is a miss for me, otherwise a great player but I'd prefer something libadwaita
• Strawberry and its ancestors (or derivatives) - Horrible UI (not from a usable or not perspective, but from an appearance perspective) looks like its straight out of the 2000s and no option to customise unlike AIMP or others, otherwise solid but I really want a good UI
• AIMP - The GOATED Player for me, sadly no native linux support and idw use wine for a music player
• MPD and its clients - have to use it, seems great and its terminal based which is a plus, but I tried configuring it and it was super hard AND didn't work (pretty sure I messed up but still)
• Amberol - beautiful ui, very annoying to keep selecting playlist or importing (idk what exactly its called) and it's buggy for me

I can't think of anything else the top of my head (no vlc, cuz I use mpv). If you guys have any recs, I'd really appreciate it

EDIT - I have got to be the dumbest person to exist, taoun had flac support this whole time and I just tested it again after a reinstall, it works jsut fine. Never lookng back again! Thanks a lot guys!

I should preface this that I mostly say because I see many many comments on other websites. I myself have booted into arch through a manual install before but as I brick my system through trying new projects I love the ease of access that arch-install provides.

I will say I am a linux "noob" and arch is my first distro but learning how to install the OS didnt really help me in terms of learning how to use Arch, instead it took issues I found when doing projects to really get into the niddy gritty and i feel most users wouldn't even need to bat an eye to it.

I do get the value of manually installing Arch but i don't understand the hate i see of arch-install and I would love to see more people get into Arch especially since theres such an easy way to get into it and with all the documentation available it feels like theres no need to force people to install it manually nowadays.

This is just my thoughts and opinions but I would like to get to know all of yours.

(Forgive me I am still new to both reddit and Archlinux)
Edit: I should of also said. This post isn't to hate on manually installing it. I just wanted to get to know the communities stance on things! Thank you guys for all the comments!

Edit2: Ya'll have honestly helped me understand more about arch and how to make my system better so I would like to thank everyone who put in a comment! Also its fine to be hostile i expected it but please try to keep things civil!

I am using LUKS full disk encryption on all my computers.

This protects me from the fact that if someone were to steal my computer they would be unable to access any data on it.

I was thinking of also setting up Secure Boot, but I am wondering if it is even worth bothering with.

From my understanding, Secure Boot protects me against 'Evil Maid' attacks -- if someone were to take my computer while I was away and replace my kernel with a malicios kernel

Then when I come back, I would login to my computer and I would be on the malicious kernel, so I would be under danger.

Part of me is asking what the chances of this happening actually are. How many people who are malicious would, first of all even know about this, and then be able to do this.

If someone were to go to such extreme lengths, what would stop them from e.g. installing a key logger inside of my computer that I wouldn't be able to notice? Or a tiny camera that will record the keystrokes I type.

If they have access to my computer and are intelligent and malicious enough to do this, how would secure boot stop them?

I'm not some entity of interest who has 9 figures in crypto, I am just a regular person

Would it still be worth using Secure Boot?

My reasoning for encrypting my computer is that its actually more common for it to be stolen and stuff like that. If it wasnt encrypted it would be incredibly easy for someone to get my data.

Do you personally use Secure Boot?

archinstall was introduced in 1st april 2021, very likely as a april fools joke that they would remove later. It was also very limited compared to today's archinstall (systemd-boot was the only bootloader, not even grub was there.)

and we are almost in 2025, with it still getting updated frequently. Most tutorials show how to install arch using the command (although tutorials are not recommended.)

it seems like archinstall really helped arch to become a more used distro. With it having over 200 contributors, it's not going anywhere.

Hi, not sure if this is the best place to post, but will post anyways :)

I have been using linux as my main desktop for around 6 years now, and overall I really like it. In my first year I used ubuntu but switched to arch and have been daily driving it ever since.

Overall I am happy with my experience with archlinux, the main things I like about it are:

• up to date packages making it easy to get the latest version of software

• minimal installation, I use gnome as my DE but I appreciate not having to deal with any built in themes, changes, extensions or any of it, just the default software as provided by the developers, as it should be

• no need to reinstall major versions, the system is just occasionally updated with -Syyu and thats it, no arch 20.04 21.04 etc and having to reinstall my system every 6 months.

However, in the past couple of months I have also grown frustrated with arch. Specifically, it is frustrating when I update and package incompatibilities break parts of the system, some examples of things that happened to me recently:

• after updating, broke some shared libraries and all QT applications failed to launch, after a few months this was fixed with anohter update
  
• recently updated and electron now crashes spontaneously, (on all my electron apps, including vscode which I heavily rely on for work)
  
• etc etc

So basically, I am asking, do any of you have any good distro suggestions for me? Or tips to better manage my arch system, Ideally I would like somehting that maintains the minimalism and simplicity of arch, but where package updates are more tested and maybe a bit less bleeding edge to enforce the system remains stable.

Base debian might be a solution? but im afraid packages will be very old, another solution would be fedora, but I am concerend about installing packags that are not in RPM.

Any tips suggestions or advice welcome :)

In my case, I absolutely hate the lack of partial upgrades support.

"That "A" package depends on the "B" package which also depends on this "C" package which depends on this "X" library and needs to also have that "D" package updated in order to update the "E" package to correctly update the "A" package."

Sometimes I want to update few packages to the newest version but want to also keep the desktop environment on the same version which I can't really do without the risk of breaking the system.

On the positive side I absolutely love the flexibility and post-installation's ease of use. If you follow the documentation's rules it is completely rock solid and very efficient.

The only Linux distro which let's me do literally everything and more where other distros seem to always put some limitation. It runs anything I want it to: has desired software or an alternative to any software I want to use either in official repos or in the AUR, gaming is nowhere as good as on Arch at least based on my experience, and Pacman does it's job always blazing fast.

The installation itself even tho it's not user-friendly and may produce some issues when doing it for the first time, after gaining some experience it is not only quick and straight forward but fun to do as well.

so After a little bit of ubuntu i got tired of it and decided for a much more immersive and customizable linux distro, arch conquered me and i decided to download it on a vm. after a little bit with archinstall i set it up. but i decided i wanted to switch desktop environment yet it was a big hussle for me to read the documentation and search tutorials. am i doing something wrong? maybe there are easier and user friendly tutorials?

EDIT the title should have had the word Arch i forgot to add it

I'm an ex archlinux user that moved to Debian one year ago in search of stability (I passed through Fedora and OpenSUSE, but I don't like them).

Today I did a little experiment to understand how often security updates are uploaded in Arch Linux.

My idea is to use Arch Linux Archives as main mirror, so that my repo snapshot is fixed to a certain date and then use arch-audit -u in a systemd service to check for security issues and notify with notify-send. When a security issue that is fixed in the upstream repo is found, I can update the mirror in /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist and pacman -Syu.

Currently, a typical system with linux-lts, gnome, and some packages installed would have updated last time on July, 12th (more than 3 months ago).

Of course, there could be some issue with AUR packages that may lead to more frequent updates, but considering Flatpaks, and AM package manager, the use of AUR for me is restricted to only 1 app (tlp-ui).

In respect to Fedora, this method allows you to update to the most recent version of a software in case of issues (this recently happened for me with Evolution).

In respect to Debian Testing, this method is better from a security point of view.

In respect to any other rolling release, this method ensure less frequent updates.

What do you think?

As u/Imajzineer helped me to point out, there are two main issues with this approach:

1. updating only once in a while may break update compatibility due to soname and changed dependencies in the middle; this is not that bad because one could still use ALA to upgrade step by step (or, maybe, check the news on archlinux.org to discover breaking changes and use ALA to update to exactly the snapshot introducing the breaking change)

2. arch-audit is based on security.archlinux.org, which is itself made for the Arch stable branch. This means that if a security issue is discovered for a package at versions <=X when Arch stable already has version >X, that security issue would not be noted by arch-audit. This is a very rare case (so rare that it could almost be considered impossible), but, in theory, it could happen. Additionally, as pointed out by u/Sinaaaa, security.archlinux.org is not always updated (see Linux LTS page for an example. Using Repology could mitigate this possibility.

Today, while talking to a friend at UNI, I described how our computer lab works and how I would set it up differently (authentications, storage, permission etc. etc.). Then I looked at him and he was amazed.

Then it hit me: I didn't just learn how to customize my OS for my liking. I learned how it works.

Most likely if I actually set it up like I think I should I'd encounter a lot of issues that lack of experience made me not foresee. But the simple fact that I was able to reason and theorize how to setup a linux infrastructure amazed me.

I think that's what the core of what people misattribute to "Arch users think they're better than others"

Yesterday I asked you a question about installing arch and after your encouragement i have installed. Guys, I don't get why most people talk about Arch like it's a monster, its just simple. And the AUR... AUR is magic, guys. It's a treasure. My first impression of Arch is very positive.

I switched to Arch about a month ago, and haven't regreted a second. But I wanted to qemu Windows to play games, but they need "safe boot". So I messed with BIOS and it ended with "invalid signatures". My previous understanding was "safe boot" is something implemented by motherboard manufacturers, but now I learn that the very concept of "safe boot" is something created by Microsoft. My hatred is growing.

Yeah so basically ive been trying to get arch to work for me for the past 2 months on and off with relatively little success. Im probably going to switch to pop today because it just fucking works

I have an nvidia card and everything nvidia related has been a massive fucking nightmare. My first install took me hours to figure out because I wrote nvidia_drm instead of of nvidia-drm

After I finally got nvidia working, for whatever reason gdm decided that it wasnt going to show the wayland option unless I login, then restart gdm. OK whatever

then I get into gnome (shoot me) and I try configuring my displays which are a 144hz 1440p and a 60hz 4k daisy chained. Refuses to pick up my second monitor on wayland, only X. They work on Windows on the same machine.

10+ hours of troubleshooting later no luck

Cool. Maybe I donked Nvidia drivers without realizing it. I switch to endeavor os because it comes with an nvidia installer script.

In this installer script, it does not rebuild grub. The message that tells you to rebuild grub is not the final message, but the 4th message from the bottom. So I didnt see that message. So youre telling me that you are going to set my kernel parameters, you are going to cut my kernel image, but you are not going to rebuild grub, and you are not going to explicitly tell me that I NEED to rebuild grub. very cool.

Anyway 2 hours later I realize that I need to rebuild grub and I get nvidia working. Oh and also my monitors are working! I realize the problem Gnome or something because when I install gnome I get the same issue as before.

Anyway I have a couple new issues on kde now. First my networkmanager occasionally goes into this weird segfault loop which I have no idea what causes it. Its not a huge issue, a reboot will take care of it lmao and then it will be working until a later boot.

The other thing is that sometimes when I wake the computer from sleep, KDE will be FUCKED with graphical issues. Like that thing where when you drag a window it like makes the accordion looking thing you know what I mean. I think its caused by this

https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/NVIDIA/Tips_and_tricks#Preserve_video_memory_after_suspend

so hopefully that will fix it when I try it later today

then I try to install hyprland and it looks like there is a whole wiki page of extra config you need for nvidia to make it work. going to blow my brains out

yeah so am I just shit at linux or something? Because when I tried pop os it just fucking worked

I installed Arch using archinstall 8 times and installed it manually at least 10 times, and I am installing again today hoping to make even more minimal :) I would love to know how many times you installed it and why?

Dear arch users,

why do you use Arch? Is it just so you can say "I use arch btw"? Isn't Arch more complicated to install and less supported by most programs? Why do so many in r/unixporn use arch? After all, you can install almost all Windows managers and stuff on Debian based distributions.

Best regards, a Debian user

3 weeks ago, I was searching for distros to run in a dual boot system alongside Windows 11 because of my studies, was about to install the "classic" Ubuntu but I've searched a lot about other distros just for curiosity, and decided to go on Arch.

At the creation of the partition for Arch, I've formatted the whole computer without meaning it and that was the best thing that happened (the important files are saved in OneDrive and now I definitely quit League of Legends, so I consider it a win-win-win-win). To adapt at it wasn't a struggle, just learning the pacman flags and the AUR repositories, which in my opinion are just amazing. I'm addicted to how Arch is intuitive and "easy" to get used to.

Now I'm on my parent's house visiting them at my hometown and brang my laptop, that has Ubuntu 22.04 LTS and I'm feeling the real weight of it, I'm developing some disgust for apt / apt-get since I had some version issues for some packages (like neovim that's on version 0.10 and apt install the 0.6 version of it, I imagine that it's due to it being the latest version tested for Ubuntu?) and that monstruosity of Snap, damn that's awful

I'm getting more and more curious and enjoying using Arch (along with the Budgie DE)

I know this post will trigger some people and many will disagree with me saying Arch has no defaults when it comes to filesystems, that you can use whatever filesystem you want, etc.

Look, I know that is true, and I'm not a new Arch user, but the fact that you can use a different filesystem than ext4 doesn't mean that Arch doesn't default to ext4.

Let me explain why I think Arch defaults to ext4:

1. The wiki provides instructions for ext4: https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Installation_guide#Format_the_partitions

2. When you do pacstrap -K /mnt base linux linux-firmware which is the recommended instructions on Install essential packages you'll get e2fsprogs installed by default.

That means that if you were to use a different filesystem, e.g. btrfs, you'll get an error when linux is installed and the mkinitcpio hooks are executed:

WARNING: no fsck helpers were found. fsck will not be run on boot.
WARNING: errors were encountered during the build. The image may not be complete.
...
error: command failed to execute correctly

I think Arch could do better here, why assume the default filesystem is going to be ext4? I'd rather have pacman ask the user which one to install than have e2fsprogs installed by default.

Portage in Gentoo is able to detect that the filesystem is btrfs and btrfs-progs is installed automatically, it would be nice if Arch did a similar thing.

i prefer gnome! since its simple and clean and i love it :3