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How do you realistically build your own OS with Arch Linux? (lemm.ee)

submitted 2 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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As a Linux newbie, all I know about Arch Linux is that it is a DIY distro where you assemble the entirely of the OS by scratch. Somehow it feels like it is too easy than it needs to be, even if it is primarily meant for experienced users. I imagine it to be less like building your PC from parts bought from the market and more like building each and every component of the PC by scratch along with building the PC, which I assume to be much harder for the average consumer. It seems absurd how it is possible for a single person to incorporate the innumerable components required for functionality in a personal system that does not crash 100% of the time due to countless incompatibility errors that come with doing something like this.

I would like someone to elaborate on how it feels to 'build' a system software by yourself with Arch and how it is reasonable to actually do so in a simple language. I do have some experience in programming, mainly in webdev, so it's not like I need a baby-like explanation in how this works but it would be nice to get to know about this from someone who could understand where this confusion/curiosity is coming from.

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago

I would like someone to elaborate on how it feels to 'build' a system software by yourself with Arch and how it is reasonable to actually do so in a simple language.

It's not for everyone. I did it in a VM to practice and decided it's not for me. There's options like Archcraft and EndeavorOS that get you up and running with varying minimum installs, but you are correct that it's very minimal (on purpose). You get to decide what software goes on your system, and that's the core of the philosophy; you should know what you did, so when a problem occurs, you know what parts might be broken and what to research.

The Arch wiki is vital for anyone who wants a modern Desktop experience, and there's guides for pretty much everything, even down to switching to an immutable ostree setup. I have no idea how anyone might do it blind from scratch.

The setup is just a lot of sudo pacman -S <package name> and sudoedit /path/to/config. It's not that different from making changes in other distros.