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this post was submitted on 29 May 2026
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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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I'm always interested in Micheal's comparisons but rarely see anything more than an illustration of newer libraries etc showing natural improvements. The trade off of Arch distros is the increased workload of managing a constant change & inevitable instability. Arch devs are notoriously for kicking out capricious system borking changes and the Pacman package manager is rather weak at dealing with cumulative changes. 2% or 3 % potential ephemeral improvements in speed vs hovering over the cli 'fixing' things seems a poor bargain to me.
I used Arch for 10 years and in that time I could literally count on one hand how many times my system broke. Three of those times were user error. I was on CachyOS for about a year and a half and never once had issues. Now on Artix and I've once had my system get borked once (due to one package that was an easy downgrade). I'd hardly call 3 system borks in ~13 years "inevitable instability". Rolling release =/= constant breakage. I wish this myth about Arch and Arch based distros would die.
I agree about Cachy's improvements being meh. I noticed very little improvement (barely perceptible if at all) going from Arch to Cachy. I mostly stayed with it as long as I did for convenience.
At the age of 67, having tried and used everything, not just booted a vm, but honestly used, I found Arch a much higher maintenance burden. System borking changes are definitely a thing - see the "needs manual intervention" messages that happen often. I know Arch users seem to revel in this and gloss over it. Thats fine for them but I no longer get any sense of personal empowerment from tedious obsessive hand holding of any operating system. To me it's just unnecessary distracting extra work.