Arch Linux

Arch Linux is an independent Linux distribution focused on the KISS (Keep It Simple, Stupid) principle that focuses on being lightweight and flexible. It was originally founded by Judd Vinet due to his inspiration from CRUX Linux being "simplistic, elegant, and very quick and easy to use" .

Functionality

One of the distinguishing traits of Arch Linux from other distributions is the presence of its package manager called pacman. Its main goal is to offer binary packages with an "intuitive build system" that is easy to maintain and manage. Pacman uses different repositories to store its packages:

• [core], housing all of the packages necessary for a base Arch installation to function;
• [extra], housing applications and tooling that is not necessary for the system to function but serves instead for user-defined needs;
• [multilib], housing 32-bit architecture libraries centered around legacy or compatibility concerns;
  • [-testing], housing testing versions of the other repos that people from the Arch Testing Team test before it gets into the main repos;
  • [-staging], containing broken packages and is used solely by developers for rebuilding many packages at once;
• the AUR (Arch User Repository), housing community-maintained, unofficial builds of software aimed at either convenience or specific use-cases;
  • custom user repositories, housing specific software outside of the AUR and official repositories.

Philosophy

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Trivia

• If you add "ILoveCandy" to /etc/pacman.conf instead of a regular progress bar you get a pacman eating dots.
• The name "Arch" came from the word "arch-nemesis".