I have fully switched to Arch Linux for about a year and a half as I am writing this, and I have been very happy with it. The main reason I use Arch is simple: it just works. I find it easy to set up and use (contrary to the common complaint that the installation is difficult), and it offers excellent performance and compatibility. As a bonus, it also gives me the bragging rights for the meme.

How It Started

Before making the final switch, I had been dual-booting Windows and Linux for quite a while. Having Linux is almost essential when studying computer science, and dual-booting is far less painful than relying on virtual machines. Development on Linux is also significantly more convenient than on Windows.

Interestingly, I also play a lot of Minecraft, and AMD GPU performance on Linux is noticeably better thanks to the open-source drivers and strong OpenGL support. As I learned more about privacy and free and open-source software, I eventually decided to fully switch to Linux and use FOSS alternatives whenever possible.

Why Arch Linux?

Compared to Debian-based distributions I tried before, Arch’s rolling-release model and, more importantly, the AUR (Arch User Repository) greatly improved my personal experience. They make installing up-to-date software incredibly easy, including proprietary applications that are often missing or outdated on other distributions.

Of course, there are trade-offs. New versions may not be as thoroughly tested and can occasionally introduce bugs, and using the AUR requires trusting user-maintained packages. While there have been rare malicious incidents in the past, simply reading the PKGBUILD script is usually enough to stay safe. Overall, this approach is still far easier than manually installing and configuring software that is not available in official repositories elsewhere.

Installing Arch is indeed more difficult than most distributions, but I see this as a valuable learning experience. It forces you to understand how a Linux system actually works and makes you aware of what is running on your hardware. Thanks to the Arch Wiki, arguably the best Linux documentation available, anyone with decent computer science knowledge can install Arch in a day or two. After that, you can confidently say: I use Arch, btw.

What I Install on Arch

Desktop Environment

I do not want to spend weeks customizing my desktop, so I prefer something that works well out of the box. KDE Plasma is my desktop environment of choice. Its look and feel are familiar to Windows users (arguably, Windows has taken inspiration from Plasma in recent years), and I experienced almost no friction when switching.

KDE also provides a rich ecosystem of applications that can be installed separately, such as the Konsole terminal, Dolphin file manager, Kate text editor, and Kdenlive video editor.

Coding

VS Code is open-core but not fully open source. VSCodium is a FOSS fork that uses the OpenVSX extension registry. However, I find that the proprietary language extensions developed by Microsoft still provide a better experience than their open-source alternatives. As a result, some compromise is necessary when choosing between these editors.

Browser

LibreWolf is my main browser. It is a hardened version of Firefox with improved privacy defaults. I use several extensions, including uBlock Origin, which still reliably blocks YouTube ads. This is no longer possible for Chromium-based browsers.

Office Suite

Thunderbird has been working very well as my email client, and it has become even more convenient now that an official Android version is available.

LibreOffice generally works fine, although conversions from Microsoft Office formats are not always perfect. I keep online services as a fallback when formatting matters.

For basic PDF tasks, I rely on my web browser or MuPDF. As for advanced PDF editing, I have not found any FOSS alternative that comes close to Adobe Acrobat Pro, which can be frustrating.

Gaming

Steam works flawlessly on Arch. In fact, SteamOS, which runs on Steam hardware, is based on Arch Linux and KDE Plasma, making my setup quite similar. With Proton (Steam’s Wine-based compatibility layer), some Windows games even run faster on Linux on identical hardware, likely due to the significant overhead present in Windows.

That said, some competitive games only work on Windows because they rely on kernel-level anti-cheat systems. These systems pose serious security concerns and are, frankly, enough reason for me to avoid those games entirely.