Top Five Arch-Based Linux Distros 2022

as a long-time linux user i have distrohopped hundreds of times i have literally tried hundreds of different linux distributions at this point i've probably installed at least a couple of hundred different linux distributions just on the youtube channel to share with you guys and you know things are different now than when i first switched to linux as my main operating system 13 14 years ago now at this point you know back then ubuntu was the dominant desktop linux operating system a matter of fact ubuntu was by far the most popular linux distribution probably had more users than all the other linux distributions combined and then you know all the different spins of ubuntu that came about there were probably a hundred different flavors of ubuntu or spins of ubuntu most people that wanted to create their own linux distribution based off of ubuntu but then everything changed really about five or six years ago you noticed a real shift where people that wanted to create their own linux distributions most of them started basing off of arch linux because arch linux people realized had some advantages over the old stable static release model that things like ubuntu and debian have you know arch linux is a rolling release model and for me at least i prefer that i prefer the software availability that is in arch because it has by far the most packages available of any linux distribution mainly because of the aur and i prefer the rolling release model knowing that all of my packages will be absolutely up to date on the latest version as long as i update my system and i think that is why arch linux has become so popular and why arch based distributions have become so popular so today i wanted to cover what i think are the top five arch linux based desktop linux distributions coming in at number five of my list of the top five archbase linux distributions is ardex linux what you're taking a look at here is ardex linux with the lxq desktop and with the open rc init system because the claim to fame with artix is that it ships with several different init systems available for you that are not system d a matter of fact they don't offer any system d versions because ardex the reason it exists it exists to be arch linux without system d it was forked from some arch linux users years ago when arch linux decided to move to system d well i mean most linux distributions eventually had to move away from cis5 and yet and then to system d the new hot in it system that was out there you know there were a lot of arch linux users that did not want to move to systemd so they forked arch linux and created ardex so ardex has been around for a number of years and i think most people probably don't realize this because all of a sudden for some reason i i don't understand it ardex has become popular i see it climbing the distro watch rankings and i get tons of questions i've probably gotten dozens of people here in the last six months to a year asked me hey man when are you going to take a look at artix linux and i have taken a look at artix linux two or three different times on the channel at least just off the top of my head i've done videos about artix linux like you know three four years ago before was popular so go check out those videos but to me it's a little weird because ardex linux essentially is just arch linux without system d when you go to the ardex linux website and go to their downloads page you pick the desktop environment you want and you pick the init system you want for the iso you can choose from open rc run it or s6 for your init system now me personally i have no problem with system d so that is why i don't talk about ardex that much i mean i take a look at it every now and then i haven't taken a look at it recently but i really don't care about ripping out systemd and replacing it with open rc or run it that's not appealing to me and essentially that is all ardex is ardex is a protest district what i often label as a protest distro is basically a fork of another distribution out of protest for a decision they made and artix they're definitely a protest distro i mean they state that proudly on their website ardex linux is a rolling release distribution based on arch linux it uses real init systems because pid 1 must be simple secure and stable pid 1 is the process id number 1 which is typically your init system it's the very first thing that starts when your linux system starts and they say that basically your system should use a quote real net system i guess system d isn't a real linux system and this is kind of off-putting to me i don't really like protest distros i typically don't use them myself and i don't give them a lot of time on the channel that's why you don't see a lot of artix content from me or dev1 content which is deviant without systemd because uh the debian community also had the same problem when debian switched to systemd people forked debian and create a div one and the problem is when you make a statement like this up front on your website you're basically saying that this is your sole reason to exist is system d hate system d hate is your identity with your distribution and i think that's unfortunate now of course that's just my opinion about system d that i don't care about it i understand many of you guys do dislike systemd and maybe you have legitimate reasons for it and that's fine and if you're one of those people i do think that ardex linux is a good distribution for you to try for a non-systemd arch linux based distribution i mean this is it and one minor gripe i will say about arctics though is you know it scares me when i go to their downloads page and go to grab an iso and i notice that their isos are six months old all the isos are dated july of 2021 and for a rolling release distribution that's a little too old i don't like i don't like installing rolling release distributions with isos that are more than a few weeks old six months old is way too old for arch linux based distributions because every package on that iso is out of date many of them have seen updates several updates over the course of six months and you do run the risk of your installation failing because of that so i would i wish arctics saw more releases more frequent releases and this has been the case with ardex for years you know as long as i've been taking a look at artix is they just don't push out isos in a timely manner and really because of that i can't really rank it higher than number five on my list coming in at number four is endeavour os endeavor os is the spiritual successor to the old antergos linux distribution antergos died the people that were working on it just quit working on it and endeavor os spraying from that once again we're looking at the lx cute desktop here i should have probably picked a different flavor of endeavor os since i did lxq for artix but this is the one i happen to have already installed these what we're taking a look at today are virtual machines of all these particular linux distributions that i already had set up endeavoros comes in a variety of different editions as far as desktop environments and window managers what we're looking at here is the welcome screen it's a little helper program that endeavor os created for its users if we take a look at their website and look at some of their flagship editions as far as desktop environments and window managers you can see that they have flavors for xfce mate cinnamon gnome budgie plasma lxq which we were looking at lxde which is a dead project at this point but they still offer an lxde edition i3 bs pwm sway open box and recently they added a qtile edition and it's one of the things that makes me really happy is that qtal before i started my youtube channel and started talking about qtile all the time because it's one of my favorite window managers most people had never actually heard of that particular window manager and now there are actually several linux distributions actually shipping qtile editions and that makes me smile so why does endeavor os make my top four linux distributions based on arch linux well the installer is rather easy the desktop environment editions they ship with all of them are well done i won't say it's the most polished desktops you know this lxq desktop is rather plain vanilla but it doesn't look bad the wallpapers look good for the most part what endeavor os aims to be is a quick way to get arch linux right endeavor os really is very much in line with arch linux you can think of it as arch linux with an easy installer a matter of fact i will say that of the five distributions i talk about today endeavor os is probably the one that deviates the least from mainline arch and coming in at number three on my list of top archbase distributions is garuda linux now what we're taking a look at here is the dragonized edition of garuda the dragonized edition is a really fancy kde plasma desktop with some gaussian blur going on in the menu system there's a lot of blurring and some of the applications themselves this is the dolphin file manager and you can see the blurred background and this really cool icon set and just everything about it now in this vm you don't get a lot of the cool animations on physical hardware though there's a lot of cool window animations and everything when you're opening and closing things you notice that the background blurs when i open something you have fall dragon here which is their customized fork of libre wolf which is a fork firefox and when i open fire dragon here you see the background the desktop it blurs it automatically blurs the background that way you your eyes really focus on the applications themselves when i close the application you see now we get the unblurred desktop some of the things that really make garuda stand out other than obviously just the gorgeous desktop is the fact that they again are opinionated on some of the decisions you see we have this fancy shell prompt here by the way the shell is the fish shell so if i start typing something you see red means hey this command you're typing is not a real command when i finally type something that is a real command it turns blue that lets me know that they're using the fish shield also we've got fish in the title bar here of the console so they do the fish shield as your default user shield they do butter fs for a file system they do the linux zen kernel by default because it uses the zen kernel and because it's rolling release distribution and everything it's really meant for performance especially for gamers they kind of try to appeal to the gaming crowd another interesting thing about garuda is they have the chaotic aur enabled for you the chaotic aur is basically a separate aur it's like a third party aur i've never found the need to use the chaotic aur it's not something i typically enable on my systems because the standard aur pretty much has every package known to man anyway but the chaotic aur is nice if you need to use it now other than the kde dragonized edition that we're seeing here they do offer a number of different desktop editions if i go to the garuda download page here we have dragonize we also have garuda gnome xfce lxq with the kwin uh window manager lxq that particular desktop environment doesn't ship with its own window manager you can use any window manager you want within lxqt typically you either use open box because it's very lightweight or because it is a cute base desktop and kwin is plasma's window manager people that want more fancy effects will swap out open box with caitwen they also offer a way fire edition a sway edition so two different uh wayland compositors which is kind of interesting because wayland is still uh well iffy right it's still not quite ready for prime time they also are one of these linux distributions that now ship with a q-tile edition which again makes me small and q-tile also even though it's a xorg window manager qtile is actually already starting to work on weyland and when you log into qtile you actually have two different qtiles in your login manager you have q-tile which is just q-tile on x-org and you also should now see q-tile with wayland as an option and coming in at number two the silver medal goes to arco linux and i know that's going to surprise a lot of my viewers because i often say that arco linux might be my favorite linux distribution it's the one i actually run i am running arco linux on my main production machine here at the office is what i use to produce all my videos my home computer also runs arco linux what we're taking a look at right now on camera here is a virtual machine of arco linux with the open box window manager which is one of my favorite window managers arco linux initially when they started they didn't have a whole lot of desktop environments and window manager editions so initially they actually shipped an iso that had three different des or window managers installed they shipped their main iso which had the xfce desktop environment the open box window manager and the i3 window manager all installed and being a huge fan of open box you know they shipped a really nice open box edition so that's how i came to love arco linux back then actually it wasn't even named arco linux when it started several years back it was then called arch merge it became arco linux now why do i like arco linux that much what's its claim to fame what separates it from the rest of the crowd well let's go to their website at arcolinics.com now their website is confusing because they have multiple websites they have arco linux.com they also have arco linux.info and they don't display the same information and there's a ton of information here arco linux is really designed to be educational it's designed to show you basically how to eventually become an arch linux user right you start with the basics of hey here's our main flagship edition with the xfce desktop environment uses the calamaris installer you can quickly get up to speed and install arch based linux distribution but they also have several other isos that require a little more work to install they have arco linux they also have arko linux b which is a like a build it yourself kind of uh iso they have arco linux d which actually has a some install scripts to it you can actually do a command line install with arco linux d i've done that on camera in the past it's been a few years but basically it is designed again as an educational process you see on their website they have learning phases phase one and i think they have uh phases all the way up to like a phase five which phase five is basically now go install arch linux the archway and i mentioned arco linux is designed to be educational so this website is filled with a ton of good blog post articles to read also the main dev of arko linux is a guy named eric dubois he has a youtube channel and he probably has made thousands literally thousands of videos about arko linux really good stuff i strongly suggest if if you haven't already subscribed to eric dubois on youtube please do and you're going to find his videos helpful regardless of whether you actually use arko linux or not if i go to the arko linux downloads page one interesting thing about arko the again that separates it from most of of the crowd is if i go to arco linux b on seed host they had a number of different ways to to get an iso but look how many additions we have we have awesome bsbwm budgie cinnamon cute fish cwm deep in dwm fvw m gnome hlwm that's herbs lift i3 ice window manager jwm left wm lxq mate open box plasma qtos spectre wm uqui i don't know that one wm derland i don't know that one either they have several additions i didn't actually know they had xfce exmo nab the extended edition which is hey pick however many different of these window managers you want and dusk which i don't know they have like four different isos here window manager editions that i didn't even know they had so they're constantly adding new isos they got like uh 25 30 different isos to pick from and that really is what separates arco and also the installer you get to pick and choose your software they have a calamaris installer where you get to pick and choose for example what terminals you want to install office suites whether you want any multimedia programs or not they have it broken down by category in the calamari's installer you know you'll have an accessories category and uh office category and a games category etc and you just go through and take on the programs that you want to be installed during the installation process and that's really cool now after me talking so highly about arc of linux you know what a great distribution it is uh personally again maybe my favorite it is my favorite well why is it only number two on my list and what could possibly be number one of my top archbase distributions and the gold medal goes to the number one arch linux based distribution manjaro what we're taking a look at here is manjaro's kde plasma edition it comes in three different main flavors you have kde plasma xfce and gnome they also have several community editions with which offer a variety of desktop environments and window managers to choose from another cool thing about manjaro is they offer a very nice arm addition they have several arm isos i actually run manjaro arm on my raspberry pi's so why does manjaro make the top spot in my opinion well manjoro really has a level of professionalism and polish that i think really separates it from everyone else when it comes to arch linux based distributions manjaro is really heavily focused on user friendliness i'm talking about new user friendliness they're also very heavily focused on accessibility and they're really they're ahead of the curve mainly because it's such a popular linux distribution manjaro has exploded in popularity here in the last few years manjaro has a corporation behind it now they're actually incorporated and i think in large part here in the last couple of years we've had big youtubers like linus tech tips that have mentioned manjaro on camera and that is really accelerated the growth of manjaro and manjaro has been around now for a number of years and i really think they are the originator of the new user-friendly arch linux based desktop distribution i mean they were doing this stuff way before anyone else you know way before the other archbase distributions we talked about today before arko before garuda which is rather new endeavour's been around for a while but you know manjaro really made arch linux popular much more so than probably anything else out there their installer is very easy to use it's just the standard calamari installer i never really have problems installing manjaro typically installs on all of my hardware and again because it has a corporation behind it and it's a rather large distribution these days i would certainly say you know as far as desktop linux distributions nobody really knows numbers just or watch rankings don't matter but i would be shocked if manjaro wasn't like in the top five of desktop linux distributions being run as far as the number of users and number of isos being downloaded and i think this is a good thing because i do think manjaro gets a lot of things right for new to linux users you're coming from windows and switching over to linux i think manjaro is a great landing spot i think it's a great starting point again their main editions xfce plasma gnome but let's talk about the community editions because again this is one of the things that separates it as we have these community flavors they're not the official flavors of manjaro but many of these are really good they have a budgie edition a cinnamon edition a depend edition and i3 edition and the i3 edition is really what i wanted to point out because many linux users that have never tried a tiling window manager hey how do i get started with a tiling window miniature one of the best distributions to start with is actually manjaro's i3 edition because it is really well done it's it's like a full desktop environment built around i3 it's already configured for you and it is a great starting point if you're one of these people that well i can't really configure my own tiling window manager because i'm not good with scripting or playing with the terminal and yada yada yada check out manjaro's i3 edition i really think it's one of the best hauling window manager distributions out there and has been for many years now other community flavors available include mate sway and again if you go to the additions and check arm they have several arm isos including some for the pine book and for the raspberry pi so there you have it my number one top arch linux based distribution manjaro now let's talk about some of the arch linux based distributions that didn't quite make my top five because really i knew what the top four were gonna be immediately when i decided to make this video i knew that manjaro arco garuda and endeavour had to be on the list i wasn't sure what order i'd put them but they had to make it but that fifth spot which i put artix in there because artix is unique being not system d but there were others that i briefly thought about putting in there so let's talk about two arch based distributions that just missed the cut i do want to mention arch craft because i've made a couple of videos about arch craft it's a rather new distribution the very first time i took a look at arch craft i hated it it was very hard to use the font size in it was incredibly small so small it was practically unusable i couldn't even navigate the menus or change anything it was a very painful experience and it was probably one of the worst videos i've ever made and that's my opinion i think my video of it was bad because i shouldn't have made that video i was very critical very harsh very negative about arch craft but that negative video the main div took that to heart he took it as constructive criticism and all of my problems that i had with arch craft he fixed in later versions and i i've taken some more recent looks at arch craft and i find it rather appealing and actually rather attractive it's mainly about style is what what arch craft is it's not really about trying to do things under the hood you know like the guts of arch linux it's mainly about you know putting lipstick on arch linux right it's all about configuring these desktop environments and window managers to look really good and they do a great job with that so archcraft i've thought about putting in the fifth spot but uh it just didn't quite make the cut and one more i wanted to briefly mention is maybox linux which is a open box distribution it uses the open box window manager and it looks fantastic and if you love the open box window manager you will love maybox linux so i know not everyone is going to agree with my top five so if you disagree with my list of my top 5 arch linux based distributions please share in the comments below now before i go i need to thank a few special people i need to thank the producers of this episode these are my highest yeared patrons over on patreon i'm talking about devon james matt michael mitchell paul scott west tommy allen linux ninja chuck commander angry kurt dyoko david dilling gregory heiko costco lee max and mike nitrix ariane alexander peace arts and fedora polytechnic red prophet stephen and willie these guys they're awesome right without these guys i couldn't do what i do i also couldn't do what i do without each and every one of these ladies and gentlemen all these fine ladies and gentlemen these names you see on the screen these are all my supporters over on patreon because i don't have any corporate sponsors really it's just me and you guys the community if you like my work you want to see more great videos about linux free and open 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