Arch Linux

A rolling-release Linux distribution that ships only what you install.

Arch Linux is a minimalist rolling-release distribution. The base install is small — kernel, package manager, basic userland — and the user assembles a complete system from packages in the official repositories and the user-maintained Arch User Repository (AUR). There are no version "releases": once installed, the system stays current through pacman -Syu.

The Arch Wiki is one of the most thorough single sources of Linux knowledge on the web. Many Linux articles you find through general web search are Arch Wiki entries, even for problems on other distributions, because the Arch documentation goes deeper into kernel-level and configuration detail than most others.

Judd Vinet started Arch in 2002, inspired by the simplicity of CRUX. Arch's audience tends to be experienced users who want to build a system that exactly matches their needs and to follow upstream releases closely. The combination of the rolling-release model, AUR's breadth, and the Wiki's depth has kept Arch a vibrant community for over twenty years. Manjaro and EndeavourOS are popular Arch-based distributions for users who want similar packages with less manual installation work.

Arch Linux screenshot — Screenshot: Arch Linux developers, GPL, via Wikimedia Commons.

License: Composite (GPL, MIT, BSD, etc.) per package

Category: Distribution

Website: https://archlinux.org/

Install

Download an ISO from https://archlinux.org/download/ and follow
the official installation guide:
  https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Installation_guide
The archinstall script automates the process for new users:
  archinstall

Authors

Judd Vinet (creator, 2002)
Arch Linux team

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