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Arch Linux (/ɑːrtʃ/)[5] is a Linux distribution meant for computers with x86-64 processors. [6] Arch Linux adheres to the KISS principle
("Keep It Simple, Stupid"). [7] The project attempts to have minimal distribution-specific changes, and ther efore minimal breakage with
updates, and be pragmatic over ideological design choices and focus on customizability rather than user-friendliness. [8]

Arch Linux
Arch Linux logo.svg

Developer Levente Polyak and others [a]

OS family Unix-like
Working state Current
Source model Open source
Initial release 11 March 2002; 19 years ago
Latest release Rolling release / installation medium 2021.08.01 [1]

Repository git.archlinux.org

Marketing target General purpose

Package manager pacman, libalpm (back-end) [2]

x86-64
Platforms i686 (unofficial) [b]
ARM (unofficial) [c]

Kernel type Monolithic (Linux)

Userland GNU
Default
Command-line interface (Bash)
user interface
License Free software (GNU GPL and other licenses) [4]
Official website archlinux.org

,a written specifically for Arch Linux, is used to install, remove and update .[9] Arch Linux
Pacman, a package manager written specifically for Arch Linux, is used to install, remove and update software packages.[9] Arch Linux
uses a rolling release model, meaning there are no "major releases" of completely new versions of the system; a regular system update
is all that is needed to obtain the latest Arch software; the installation images released every month by the Arch team are simply up-to-
date snapshots of the main system components. [10]

Arch Linux has comprehensive documentation, which consists of a community wiki known as the ArchWiki.[11][12][13]

Contents
1 History
1.1 Repository security
2 Design and principles
3 Installation
4 Package management
4.1 Pacman
4.2 Repositories
4.3 Arch Build System (ABS)
4.4 Arch User Repository (AUR)
5 Derivatives
6 Logo
7 Reception
8 See also
9 Notes
10 References
11 External links

HistoryEdit
Inspired by CRUX, another minimalist distribution, Judd Vinet star ted the Arch Linux project in March 2002. The name was chosen
because Vinet liked the word's meaning of "the principal," as in "arch-enemy".[5][14]

Originally only for 32-bit x86 CPUs, the first x86_64 installation ISO was r eleased in April 2006. [15]

Vinet led Arch Linux until 1 October 2007, when he stepped down due t o lack of time, transferring control of the project to Aaron Griffin.
[16]

The migration to systemd as its init system started in August 2012, [17] and it became the default on new installations in Oct ober 2012.
[18]
It replaced the SysV-style init system, used since the distribution inception. [19]

On 24 February 2020, Aaron Griffin announced that due t o his limited involvement with the project, he would, after a voting period,
transfer control of the project to Levente Polyak.[20] This change also led to a new 2-year term period being added to the Project Leader
position. [21]

The end of i686 suppor t was announced in Januar y 2017, with the February 2017 ISO being the last one including i686 [22] and making
the architecture unsupported in November 2017. [23] Since then, the community deriv ative Arch Linux 32 can be used for i686 hardware.

Repository securityEdit

Until Pacman version 4.0.0, [24] Arch Linux's package manager lacked support for signed packages. [25] Packages and metadata were not
verified for authenticity by Pacman during the download-install pr ocess. Without package authentication checking, tamper ed-with or
malicious repository mirrors could compromise the integrity of a system. [26] Pacman 4 allowed verification of the package database
and packages, but it was disabled b y default. In November 2011, package signing became manda tory for new package builds, and as of
the 21st of March 2012, every official package is signed.[27]

In June 2012, package signing v erification became official and is now enabled b y default in the installation process.[28][29]

Design and principlesEdit

Arch is largely based on binary packages. Packages target x86-64 microprocessors to assist performance on modern hardware. A
ports/ebuild-like system is also provided for automated source compilation, known as the Ar ch Build System. [30]

Arch Linux focuses on simplicity of design, mean ing that the main focus involves creating an environment that is straightforward and
relatively easy for the user to understand directly, rather than providing polished point-and-click style management t ools — the package
manager, for example, does not have an official graphical front-end. This is largely achieved by encouraging the use of succinctly
commented, clean configuration files that are arranged for quick access and editing. [31] This has earned it a reputation as a distribution
for "advanced users" who are willing to use the command line. [32]
 Relying on complex tools to manage and build your system is going to hurt the end-users. [...] "If you try to hide the
complexity of the system, you'll end up with a more complex system". Layers of abstraction that serve to hide internals
are never a good thing. Instead, the internals sho uld be designed in a way such that they NEED no hiding.

— Aaron Griffin [33]

InstallationEdit
The Arch Linux website supplies ISO images that can be run from CD or USB. After a user partitions and formats their drive, a simple
command line script (pacstrap) is used to install the base system. [29] The installation of additional packages which ar e not part of the
base system (for example, desktop environments), can be done with either pacstr ap, or Pacman after booting (or chrooting) into the
new installation. [34][35][9]

 
Neofetch output of an Arch Linux
Installation.

An alternative to using CD or USB images for inst allation is to use the static version of the package manager Pacman, from within
another Linux-based operating system. [36] The user can mount their newly formatted drive partition, and use pacstrap (or Pacman with
the appropriate command-line switch) to install base and additional packages with the mountpoint of the destination de vice as the root
for its operations. This method is useful when in stalling Arch Linux onto USB flash drives, or onto a temporarily mounted device which
belongs to another system. [citation needed]

Regardless of the selected installation type, fur ther actions need to be taken before the new system is ready for use, most notably by
installing a bootloader and configuring the new system with a system name, network connection, language settings, and gr aphical user
interface.[37]

The installation images come packaged with an experimental command line installer , archinstall, which can assist with installing Ar ch
Linux.[38]

Arch Linux does not schedule releases for specific dates but uses a " rolling release" system where new packages are provided
throughout the day. Its package management allows users t o easily keep systems updated. [39]

Occasionally, manual interventions are required for certain updates, with instructions posted on t he news section of the Arch Linux
website. [40]

Package managementEdit
Arch Linux's only supported binary platform is x86_64. The Arch package repositories and User Repository (AUR) contain 58,000 binar y
and source packages, which comes close t o Debian's 68,000 packages; however, the two distributions' approaches to packaging differ,
making direct comparisons difficult. For example, six out of Arch's 58,000 packages comprise the softwar e AbiWord, of which three in
the user repository replace the canonical Abiword package with an alternative build type or version (such as sourcing from the latest
commit to Abiword's source control repository), whereas Debian installs a single v ersion of Abiword across seven packages. [41] The
Arch User Repository also contains a writerper fect package which installs several document format converters, while Debian provides
each of the more than 20 converters in its own subpackage. [42]

PacmanEdit
 
Example of pacman usage

To facilitate regular package changes, Pacman (a contraction of "package manager") was developed by Judd Vinet to provide Arch with
its own package manager to track dependencies. [43] It is written in C.[44]

All packages are managed using the Pacman package manager. Pacman handles package installation, upgr ades, downgrades, removal
and features automatic dependency resolution. The packages for Ar ch Linux are obtained from the Arch Linux package tree and are
compiled for the x86-64 architecture. It uses binary packages in the tar.zst[45][46][47] (for zstd compression), with .pkg placed before
this to indicate that it is a Pacman package (giving .pkg.tar.zst).[44]

As well as Arch Linux, Pacman is also used for installing packages under MSYS2 (a fork of Cygwin) on Windows. [48]

RepositoriesEdit

The following official binar y repositories exist: [49]

core, which contains all the packages needed t o set up a base system
extra, which holds packages not required for the base system, including deskt op environments and programs
community, which contains packages built and v oted on by the community; includes packages that ha ve sufficient votes and
have been adopted by a "trusted user".
multilib, a centralized repository for x86-64 users to more readily support 32-bit applications in a 64-bit envir onment.

Additionally, there are testing repositories which include binar y package candidates for other r epositories. Currently, the following testing
repositories exist:

testing, with packages for core and extra.

community-testing, with packages for community.
multilib-testing, with packages for multilib.

The staging and community-staging repositories are used for some rebuilds to avoid broken packages in testing.

There are also two other repositories that include the newest v ersion of certain desktop environments.

gnome-unstable, which contains packages of a new v ersion of the software from GNOME before being released into testing.
kde-unstable, which contains packages of a new v ersion of KDE software before being released into testing.

The unstable repository was dropped in July 2008 and most o f the packages moved to other repositories.[50] In addition to the official
repositories, there are a number of unofficial user r epositories.

The most well-known unofficial r epository is the Arch User Repository, or AUR, hosted on the Arch Linux site. However, the AUR does not
host binary packages, hosting instead a collection of build scripts known as PKGBUILDs.

The Arch Linux repositories contain both libre and nonfree software, and the default Arch Linux kernel contains nonfree proprietary
blobs, hence the distribution is not endorsed b y the GNU project.[51]

Arch Build System (ABS)Edit

The Arch Build System (ABS) is a ports-like source packaging system that compiles sou rce tarballs into binary packages, which are
installed via Pacman.[52] The Arch Build System provides a directory tree of shell scripts, called PKGBUILDs, that enable any and all
official Arch packages to be customized and compiled. Rebuilding the entir e system using modified compiler flags is also supported by
the Arch Build System. The Arch Build System makepkg tool can be used to create custom pkg.tar.zst packages from third-party
sources. The resulting packages are also installable and trackable via Pacman.[53][54]

Arch User Repository (AUR)Edit

In addition to the repositories, the Arch User Repository (AUR) provides user-made PKGBUILD scripts for packages not included in the
repositories. These PKGBUILD scripts simplify building from source by explicitly listing and checking for dependencies and configuring
the install to match the Arch architecture.[55] Arch User Repository helper programs can further streamline the downloading of
PKGBUILD scripts and associated building pr ocess. However, this comes at the cost of executing PKGBUILDs not validated by a trusted
person; as a result, Arch developers have stated that the utilities for aut omatic finding, downloading and ex ecuting of PKGBUILDs will
never be included in the official repositories.[56]

Users can create packages compatible with P acman using the Arch Build System and custom PKGBUILD scripts. [57] This functionality
has helped support the Arch User Repository, which consists of user contributed packages t o supplement the official repositories.[58]

The Arch User Repository provides the community with packages that are not included in the repositories. Reasons include:

Licensing issues: software that cannot be redistributed, but is free to use, can be included in the Ar ch User Repository since all
that is hosted by the Arch Linux website is a shell script that downloads the actual softwar e from elsewhere. Examples include
proprietary freeware such as Google Earth and RealPlayer.
Modified official packages: the Ar ch User Repository also contains many variations on the official packaging as well as beta
versions of software that is contained within the repositories as stable releases.
Rarity of the software: rarely used programs have not been added to the official repositories (yet).
Betas or "nightly" versions of the software which are very new and thus unstable. Examples include the "fir efox-nightly" package,
which gives new daily builds of the Firefox web browser.

PKGBUILDs for any software can be contributed by ordinary users and any PKGBUILD that is not confined to the Arch User Repository
for policy reasons can be voted into the community repositories.

DerivativesEdit
See also: List of Linux distributions § P acman-based

There are several projects working on por ting the Arch Linux ideas and tools to other kernels, including PacBSD (formerly ArchBSD) and
Arch Hurd,[59] which are based on the FreeBSD and GNU Hurd kernels, respectively. There is also the Arch Linux ARM project, which
aims to port Arch Linux to ARM-based devices, including the Raspberry Pi, as well as the Arch Linux 32 project, which continued suppor t
for systems with 32-bit only CPUs after the mainline Ar ch Linux project dropped support for the architecture in November 2017. [60][61]

SteamOS 3.0, the upcoming version of SteamOS used in Steam Deck is based on Arch Linux. [62][63][64][65]

LogoEdit
The current Arch Linux logo was designed b y Thayer Williams [66][67] in 2007 as part of a contest to replace the previous logo.[68]

ReceptionEdit
OSNews reviewed Arch Linux in 2002. [69] OSNews also has 5 later reviews about Arch Linux. [70][71][72][73][74]

LWN.net wrote a review about Arch Linux in 2005. [75] LWN.net also has 2 later reviews about Arch Linux. [76][77]

Tux Machines reviewed Arch Linux in 2007. [78]

Chris Smart from DistroWatch Weekly wrote a review about Arch Linux in January 2009.[79] DistroWatch Weekly reviewed Arch Linux
again in September 2009 and in December 2015. [80][81]

Linux maintainer Greg Kroah-Hartman[82] has stated that he uses Arch and that it "works really really well," he also praised the Arch Wiki,
and that the distribution stays close to upstream development, as well as the feedback loop with the community.[83]

See alsoEdit

Free and open-source

software portal
 
icon
Linux portal
 

Comparison of Linux distributions

List of Linux distributions