this post was submitted on 26 Jun 2023
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Linux
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From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).
Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.
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It does not matter which distribution you use. For example, I am using Arch for over 10 years. Have I gained any new knowledge since then? Sure. But not because I use Arch but because I had to do certain tasks. Or because I was interested in certain things. I even go so far as to say that I got a lot of my Linux knowledge under Mandrake / Mandriva (comparable to Ubuntu) because that was the distribution I used initially.
From my point of view, it is therefore only important that you want to learn something. Whether you use Ubuntu, OpenSuse, Arch or Gentoo for this is basically irrelevant.
Apart from that, I don't think Arch is a difficult distribution to install or use. For example, many of the commands in the official installation guide can be executed without any changes. Or if you want to make it even easier, just use archinstall which has been an official part of the iso file for some time.
As for maintaining Arch, I've been doing exactly two things for years.
Before an update, I check if anything has been released at https://archlinux.org/news/ that affects my installations (this can be automated with tools like informant). It is important to follow these instructions.
And from time to time I synchronize my configuration files with the Pacnew files. There are tools for this as well (https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Pacman/Pacnew_and_Pacsave#Managing_.pac*_files).
In other words, just use the distribution that suits you and learn what you need. Learning things on spec that you may never need is useless in my opinion.