I use the Calam Arch Installer ISO to install Arch. It’s the same GUI installer that most downstream Arch derivatives use, but configured to install base Arch. No dealing with messy terminal install process and you end up with pure Arch install at the end. If all the downstream distros give you is an easy installer, this exists for base Arch as well even if it is a third party thing.

Because pure Arch does not give me a choice of init system (Artix)

I chose EndeavourOS initially because I was relatively new to Linux (I tinkered with Ubuntu in grade school) and wanted out of Microsoft’s environment. The support community is amazing and newbie-friendly. They’ve helped me through a few bricked systems.

Now I’m at a crux because I own a 1080 and am tired of mistakenly breaking my installation because NVIDIA stopped supporting open source drivers for old cards. I felt uncomfortable building my own driver packages and was relying on AUR, but the recent security breach has me skittish.

Rather than switch to another distro (Mint being the top contender), I decided to replace my graphics card and stay with Endeavour because it seems the Arch distros are the only ones staunchly against age verification laws. I’m fortunate enough to be in a position to update and stick with Endeavour. Maybe when I actually get good at Linux I’ll switch to pure Arch.

SO I CAN FEEL SUPREME!!!

And so I can configure EVERYTHING

But I dont use Arch right now.

Fedora has a nice “ecosystem” or more like unixsystem", too and its ready out of the box and has copr similar to aur which is integrated in the official dnf package manager and super-frequent updates including kernel ones AND last 1-2 kernels for backup… it seems much better than Arch, right off the bat thought.

Gentoo, on the other hand… yes okay maybe a decent PC required… but… it feels good

I use CachyOS because I don’t feel like going through the hassle of installing drivers for my 1070ti. The kernel optimizations are nice, tho.

Manjaro is too logical in multiple ways.

i used to use manjaro because i was scared of the text based installer for Arch. Also i liked the shade of green

Arch. When you can’t Gentoo, but are too proud to tell everyone directly.

ArtiX because I don’t want age verification systemd on my computer.

Artix, because Arch mandates systemd and I don’t want systemd.

I run EndeavourOS on my wife’s laptop because it was easy to install.

I’ve installed arch manually a few times. The last time I did it I had issues with my nvidia gpu and plasma glitching out drawing weird lines on the screen. I got tired of trying to fix it and went back to windows for a while. Figured I’d try crunchyos to see if their setup resolved that and it did. And now that it’s installed there’s no reason to uninstall.

Pretty much sums up to being lazy and not wanting to fiddle with configs, we’re perfectly fine with KDE. Plus it’s a great way to familiar ourselves with since our so uses the same distros (Cachy)

Other (bigger reason) is that it’s a no fuss arch experience. Even get a little button to update everything for you, it’s pretty nice since we just need the thing to work cuz it’s also the save pc we use for work.

I taught myself how to properly configure things on Linux using EndeavourOS but ended up sticking with it because there is no real reason for me to switch to pure arch. On my laptop I have NixOS and occasionally notice some of the disadvantages of having not having things pre-installed.

I am indeed lazy lol

I use endeavourOS. If im getting the same OS but with a more mindless installation process and decent wallpapers, why not?