But I’ve been wanting to tell people that I use Arch.

Biblically accurate arch user

EndeavorOS is my go to for arch based systems. But with the archinstall script I'd say just give vanilla a go

Stay away from Manjaro.

I've heard great things about Endeavor and Cachy, but personally use Garuda. Highly recommend it.

EndeavourOS. It's like Arch, but a bit easier with a few automation and gui stuff builtin. It's still heavy on terminal usage and it comes light out of the box. I switched from Manjaro to EndeavourOS, because Manjaro gave me some problems (especially their package manager and because of the AUR too, and I didn't like the maintainers, no further comment). It's my daily driver for years now. I use it for everything, daily usage, little programming, gaming on Steam and especially RetroArch too. I'm a huge RetroArch fan. :-) So if you plan to use base Archlinux or Manjaro, then I can recommend to use EndeavourOS a lot.

Cachy OS is probably a good choice too, because their focus on performance optimizations. But they do also have a bit more, let's say bloat, out of the box and their branding is a bit strong it seems. It's a bit farther away from base Archlinux than EndeavourOS is.

I was using Endeavour, btw. Needed almost zero tinkering and was good to go straight away.

But I run Linux on an ancient 2012 MacBook Pro, so eventually swapped over to Debian, btw.

EndeavourOS is the way to go, btw.

I prefer plain old arch

EndeavourOS is my first choice, CachyOS is my second choice.

Probably not a universal answer as you are optimizing for different things.

I will say that EndeavourOS is essentially vanilla Arch once installed. If you really love configuring everything yourself, vanilla Arch is what you are looking for. If you like Arch but just want to fire up a system with sensible defaults, EndeavourOS adds a lot of value without corrupting the purity of the base system.

So, my vote is for EndeavourOS.

Cachy adds the most additional functionality but also changes the base system the most. If you have a T2 MacBook, this is the best option for sure.

I would avoid Manjaro.

Garuda has fans. A bit much for me.

i use cachyos, runs swimmingly for me. I'm not sure arch is good for your usecase tho.

Mediacenter/homeserver? I'd personally choose something like fedora, but debian sounds fine too

Wait...so you're looking for a solution with zero problems because of...clout or something? I don't get it.

If you like Debian, just stay with Debian. Especially if you're not familiar with what running Arch really means in the deeper sense. Mostly that the guardrails are off, in a sense.

CachyOS puts a ton of work into adding UX helpers that makes it pretty user friendly, but it's still going to have a lot of manual intervention required, but that's a feature to some.

If you have an AMD laptop, maybe look into installing SteamOS and Kodi as a non-steam app. That could be your sweet spot.

Just plain Arch, been using it for the past 5 years. Haven't told anyone unless askes though.

Cachy

Here, I fixed your post for you:

I’ve been wanting to tell people that I use Arch.

I’ve been considering the following distros:

• Arch
• Not Arch
• Not Arch
• Any others?

I’m leaning towards Arch or Not Arch.

Don't use Manjaro it's a wildly unstable piece of shit

I use Arch btw. It's quite touchy, definitely not the best distro. Do it

I use plain Arch, but if you are just gonna use it as a media center, use Debian or something like it. A media center doesn't need to be up to date if you're just using it for TV and retro gaming. However, how mediocre are we talking? Are you intending to run full steam games or are you planning on streaming them from another computer?

If the latter, I think Debian or even a healthy rPi running RetroPie might be up your alley because you can install Kodi and SteamLink on that.

For a mediacenter that isn't on bleeding edge hardware, fedora or Debian would be my choice for stability. Performance will be similar regardless of distro.

I use arch on my desktop and laptop and Debian/Ubuntu on servers.

I use Arch btw. The best Arch distro is just normal Arch linux. If you really want stuff from other "Arch distros", you can add their repos or customize your configs. There's nothing you can do in an Arch distro you can't do with Arch itself.

I use plain Arch for desktop, but for servers I use headless debian. A media center is sort of in between, so up to you. In terms of resource usage on an older laptop, I expect the choice of DE would matter more.

Arch if you want to do the install completely by yourself and/or have some setup that can't be replicated by the usual installers.

EndeavourOS/Cachy if you want a simple GUI installer for Arch, but you don't get bragging rights.

Don't use Manjaro

I'm on Cachy myself, but I have put in a lot of time with vanilla Arch. Cachy has an easier installation process, although the archinstall script is also quite simple to use. Cachy takes better advantage of your specific hardware, so it's good for squeezing a bit more performance out of your machine. Arch is more bare-bones, the idea being that you get to and have to customize it yourself, from near the ground up. It's a matter of use case and temperament, really. Both are good, and the differences aren't huge in the end.

Manjaro isn't recommended. They made lots of weird decisions and mistakes in the past, maybe still do. Wouldn't trust them. Endeavour or Cachy are the current recommendations for "easy Arch". If you're able to install and maintain vanilla Arch, I'd recommend Arch though. Cut the middleman.

I use cachy os for the optimizations on modern hardware and access to newer packages. I use it on ny pc for gaming and laptop for development. I find it more convenient than arch. But I can't say if it is better.

can someone who runs arch btw on weak hardware, like dual-core U-series i5 and such, tell me how they're handling AUR and friends? every time I bring that up I get downvotes as if I'm some MICROS~1 agent paid to besmirch arch btw's good name and whatnot...

the idea that I hafta build and compile shit on a puny dual-core in 2026 is fucking ludicrous to me, never mind the bloat and cruft from all the build tools and deps for every possible stack. so what obvious solution am I missing? like, how do you handle a full system upgrade, say you got like ten things from AUR in addition to regular packages, what does that look like?

I’ve had great success with Garuda Linux. I’m running the KDE “Mokka” version.

It’s quite opinionated, so be aware of that, but it’s been very reliable on my HP laptop (it even has hibernation support!) and the built-in apps are top notch.

Just be aware that Arch-based distros tend to shun things like Flatpaks in favor of their own repositories and the Arch User Repository (AUR), and there aren’t any friendly point and click app stores like KDE Discover or GNOME Software. You will have to install apps using the command line or tools like Octopi, which is great if you know exactly what you’re looking for, but terrible for app discovery.

Since I mostly use Flatpaks, I installed Bazaar. You can install Discover, but it only works for Flatpak.

I used to run Manjaro, but after it left two of my computers in an unbootable state after an upgrade a few years ago, I moved on.

Manjaro is the best, but you'll have to see it for yourself.

Don't trust the "wisdom of the crowd." It does not exist.

I switched from Windows to EndeavourOS, liked it and used it for a while. (now on Bazzite tho)

I tried it, liked it, bricked my system, and now I enjoy EndeavourOS because it's simple and easy.

Arch in the front, Debian in the back(end). I run Arch on my laptop and Debian on my homeserver. I've ran Debian on laptops before and if stable is getting older hardware support can be a struggle, much better on a rolling distro like Arch. And having all the newest toys on your desktop is very very nice. While on my homeserver I mostly want stability, everything else runs in (podman) containers anyway.

Cachy is a distro I would consider, because it'll theoretically give you slightly better battery life due to the optimised compiles, although I'm not sure you'll ever really notice. Manjaro has a reputation of breaking far more often than Arch does, so that one's a no for me.

I use Cachyos on my 13yr old system. Xeon e5, DDR3 ram, mix of SSD & HDD Sata. GTX 1070 ti.

it's excellent. by far the best linux experience I've had (started using Linux in the late 90s).

I've always gravitated toward various Arch-based distros. Installed vanilla from scratch a decade ago for a college workstation, sunk a lot of time into tinkering the steam deck's SteamOS, and my desktop's been running CachyOS for just about a year now - the latter's been so smooth that I opted to wipe my Deck and install their handheld edition just because, and that's been pretty solid too.

I haven't really distro-hopped enough to say much else, but Cachy's been my go-to since I first set it up and it'd take a lot to move me off if it. All the Arch benefits with some extra bells and whistles.

Just arch with gnome