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

submitted 3 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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[–] Sbauer 1 points 2 months ago

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.

It’s really just the package manager. Every package has a description that tells the package manager what it provides and what it needs(called dependencies). So if you tell it to install X, and X needs y and z to function the package manager will automatically pull them in as well as their dependencies. It’ll also know to avoid incompatibilities the same way, the packages themselves contain the information.

90% of the real work in making a new distro is packaging, I.e. finding a way of feeding the package manager the information it needs to do its job by creating the packages. 0.1% of arch users deal with that shit.