Arch Linux () is an

open source Open source is source code that is made freely available for possible modification and redistribution. Products include permission to use and view the source code, design documents, or content of the product. The open source model is a decentrali ...

rolling release Rolling release, also known as rolling update or continuous delivery, is a concept in software development of frequently delivering updates to applications. This is in contrast to a ''standard'' or '' point release'' development model which uses ...

Linux distribution A Linux distribution, often abbreviated as distro, is an operating system that includes the Linux kernel for its kernel functionality. Although the name does not imply product distribution per se, a distro—if distributed on its own—is oft ...

. Arch Linux is kept up-to-date by regularly updating the individual pieces of software that it comprises. Arch Linux is intentionally minimal, and is meant to be configured by the user during installation so they may add only what they require. Arch Linux provides monthly "snapshots" which are used as installation media. Pacman, a

package manager A package manager or package management system is a collection of software tools that automates the process of installing, upgrading, configuring, and removing computer programs for a computer in a consistent manner. A package manager deals wi ...

written specifically for Arch Linux, is used to install, remove and update software packages. Additionally, the Arch User Repository (AUR), which is the community-driven repository for Arch Linux provides packages not included in the official repositories and alternative versions of packages; AUR packages can be downloaded and built manually, or installed through an AUR 'helper'. Arch Linux has comprehensive documentation in the form of a community-run

wiki A wiki ( ) is a form of hypertext publication on the internet which is collaboratively edited and managed by its audience directly through a web browser. A typical wiki contains multiple pages that can either be edited by the public or l ...

known as the ArchWiki.

History

Inspired by

CRUX CRUX is a lightweight x86-64 Linux distribution targeted at experienced Linux users and delivered by a tar.gz-based package system with BSD-style initscripts. It is not based on any other Linux distribution. It also utilizes a ports system ...

, another minimalist distribution, Judd Vinet started 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". Originally only for 32-bit x86 CPUs, the first

x86 64 x86-64 (also known as x64, x86_64, AMD64, and Intel 64) is a 64-bit extension of the x86 instruction set. It was announced in 1999 and first available in the AMD Opteron family in 2003. It introduces two new operating modes: 64-bit mode a ...

installation ISO was released in April 2006. Vinet led Arch Linux until 1 October 2007, when he stepped down due to lack of time, transferring control of the project to Aaron Griffin. The migration to

systemd systemd is a software suite that provides an array of system components for Linux operating systems. The main aim is to unify service configuration and behavior across Linux distributions. Its primary component is a "system and service manage ...

as its

init In Unix-based computer operating systems, init (short for ''initialization'') is the first process started during booting of the operating system. Init is a daemon process that continues running until the system is shut down. It is the direc ...

system started in August 2012, and it became the default on new installations in October 2012. It replaced the SysV-style init system, used since the distribution's inception. The end of

i686 The P6 microarchitecture is the sixth-generation Intel x86 microarchitecture, implemented by the Pentium Pro microprocessor that was introduced in November 1995. It is frequently referred to as i686. It was planned to be succeeded by the NetBur ...

support was announced in January 2017, with the February 2017 ISO being the last one including i686 and making the architecture unsupported in November 2017. Since then, the community derivative Arch Linux 32 can be used for i686 hardware. On 24 February 2020, Aaron Griffin announced that due to his limited involvement with the project, he would, after a voting period, transfer control of the project to Levente Polyak. This change also led to a new 2-year term period being added to the Project Leader position. In March 2021, Arch Linux developers were thinking of porting Arch Linux packages to x86_64-v3, roughly correlating to the Intel Haswell era of processors. In April 2021, Arch Linux installation images began including a guided installation script by default. In late 2021, the Arch Linux developers released Pacman 6.0, which enabled parallel downloads. In February 2022, the Arch Linux developers began offering debug packages. In September 2024,

Valve A valve is a device or natural object that regulates, directs or controls the flow of a fluid (gases, liquids, fluidized solids, or Slurry, slurries) by opening, closing, or partially obstructing various passageways. Valves are technically Pip ...

partnered with Arch Linux developers to support ongoing development efforts with the focus on build service infrastructure and secure signing enclave.

Repository security

Until Pacman version 4.0.0, Arch Linux's package manager lacked support for signed packages. Packages and metadata were not verified for authenticity by Pacman during the download-install process. Without package authentication checking, tampered-with or malicious repository mirrors could compromise the integrity of a system. Pacman 4 allowed verification of the package database and packages, but it was disabled by default. In November 2011, package signing became mandatory for new package builds, and as of March 2012, every official package is signed. In June 2012, package signing verification became official and is now enabled by default in the installation process.

Design and principles

Arch is largely based on binary packages. Packages target

x86-64 x86-64 (also known as x64, x86_64, AMD64, and Intel 64) is a 64-bit extension of the x86 instruction set architecture, instruction set. It was announced in 1999 and first available in the AMD Opteron family in 2003. It introduces two new ope ...

microprocessor A microprocessor is a computer processor (computing), processor for which the data processing logic and control is included on a single integrated circuit (IC), or a small number of ICs. The microprocessor contains the arithmetic, logic, a ...

s to assist performance on modern hardware. A

ports Ports collections (or ports trees, or just ports) are the sets of makefiles and Patch (Unix), patches provided by the BSD-based operating systems, FreeBSD, NetBSD, and OpenBSD, as a simple method of installing software or creating binary packages. T ...

/ ebuild-like system is also provided for automated source compilation, known as the Arch build system. Arch Linux focuses on simplicity of design, meaning 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 tools 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. This has earned it a reputation as a distribution for "advanced users" who are willing to use the

command-line interface A command-line interface (CLI) is a means of interacting with software via command (computing), commands each formatted as a line of text. Command-line interfaces emerged in the mid-1960s, on computer terminals, as an interactive and more user ...

Logo

The current Arch Linux logo was designed by Thayer Williams in 2007 as part of a contest to replace the previous logo.

Installation

The Arch Linux website supplies

ISO image An optical disc image (or ISO image, from the ISO 9660 file system used with CD-ROM media) is a disk image that contains everything that would be written to an optical disc, disk sector by disc sector, including the optical disc file system. IS ...

s that may be burned to a CD or

USB Universal Serial Bus (USB) is an industry standard, developed by USB Implementers Forum (USB-IF), for digital data transmission and power delivery between many types of electronics. It specifies the architecture, in particular the physical ...

drive. Installation can be accomplished manually by following the instructions on the Arch Wiki, or automatically through the use of the included "archinstall" script. Another command line utility that comes bundled with the installation media, "pacstrap" may be used to install the base system. Installation of additional packages which are not part of the base system can be done with either pacstrap, Pacman after booting (or

chroot chroot is a shell (computer), shell command (computing), command and a system call on Unix and Unix-like operating systems that changes the apparent root directory for the current running process and its Child process, children. A program that i ...

ing) into the new installation, or by specifying packages within the guided archinstall script. An alternative to using CD or USB images for installation is to use the static version of the package manager Pacman, from within another Linux-based operating system. 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 device as the

root In vascular plants, the roots are the plant organ, organs of a plant that are modified to provide anchorage for the plant and take in water and nutrients into the plant body, which allows plants to grow taller and faster. They are most often bel ...

for its operations. This method is useful when installing Arch Linux onto USB flash drives, or onto a temporarily mounted device which belongs to another system. Depending on the selected installation type, further actions may need to be taken before the new system is ready for use. Notable configuration includes the installation of a

bootloader A bootloader, also spelled as boot loader or called bootstrap loader, is a computer program that is responsible for booting a computer and booting an operating system. If it also provides an interactive menu with multiple boot choices then it's o ...

, configuring the system with a

hostname In computer networking, a hostname (archaically nodename) is a label that is assigned to a device connected to a computer network and that is used to identify the device in various forms of electronic communication, such as the World Wide Web. Hos ...

, network connection, language settings, and graphical user interface. Arch Linux does not schedule releases for specific dates, nor does it provide traditional releases, but instead uses a

model. Packages in the main repositories are updated often, with new updates being pushed far quicker when compared to LTS distributions. This style of package management allows users to easily keep systems updated. Occasionally, manual interventions are required for certain updates, with instructions posted on the news section of the Arch Linux website.

Package management

Pacman

All packages are managed through pacman, a

written specifically for Arch Linux. Pacman handles package installation, upgrades, downgrades, removal and features automatic dependency resolution. The packages for Arch Linux are obtained from the Arch Linux package tree and are compiled for the x86-64 architecture. Pacman typically uses binary packages with a .tar.zst extension (for zstd compression), with .pkg placed before this to indicate that it is a Pacman package (giving .pkg.tar.zst); though other compression formats are also valid, such as .pkg.tar.xz. Packages can be installed via pacman -S , and pacman -Syu can be used to perform a full system upgrade. As well as Arch Linux, Pacman is also used for installing packages under MSYS2 (a fork of

Cygwin Cygwin ( ) is a free and open-source Unix-like environment and command-line interface (CLI) for Microsoft Windows. The project also provides a software repository containing open-source packages. Cygwin allows source code for Unix-like operati ...

) on Windows.

Repositories

The following official binary repositories exist: *''core'', which contains all the packages needed to set up a base system. Packages in this repository include kernel packages and shell languages. *''extra'', which holds packages not required for the base system, including desktop environments and programs. *''multilib'', a centralized repository for x86-64 users to more readily support 32-bit applications in a 64-bit environment. Packages in this repository include

Steam Steam is water vapor, often mixed with air or an aerosol of liquid water droplets. This may occur due to evaporation or due to boiling, where heat is applied until water reaches the enthalpy of vaporization. Saturated or superheated steam is inv ...

and

Wine Wine is an alcoholic drink made from Fermentation in winemaking, fermented fruit. Yeast in winemaking, Yeast consumes the sugar in the fruit and converts it to ethanol and carbon dioxide, releasing heat in the process. Wine is most often made f ...

. Additionally, there are ''testing'' repositories which include binary package candidates for other repositories. Currently, the following testing repositories exist: *''core-testing'', with packages for ''core''. *''extra-testing'', with packages for ''extra''. *''multilib-testing'', with packages for ''multilib''. The ''core-staging'' and ''extra-staging'' repositories are used for some rebuilds to avoid broken packages in ''testing''. The developers recommend not using these repositories for any reason, stating that any system updating from them will "unquestionably break." There are also two other repositories that include the newest version of certain desktop environments. *''gnome-unstable'', which contains packages of a new version of the software from

GNOME A gnome () is a mythological creature and diminutive spirit in Renaissance magic and alchemy, introduced by Paracelsus in the 16th century and widely adopted by authors, including those of modern fantasy literature. They are typically depict ...

before being released into ''testing''. *''kde-unstable'', which contains packages of a new version of

KDE KDE is an international free software community that develops free and open-source software. As a central development hub, it provides tools and resources that enable collaborative work on its projects. Its products include the KDE Plasma gra ...

software before being released into ''testing.'' The ''unstable'' repository was dropped in July 2008 and most of the packages moved to other repositories. The ''community'' repository was merged with ''extra'' in May 2023. In addition to the official repositories, there are a number of unofficial user repositories. The most well-known unofficial repository is the Arch User Repository, or AUR, hosted on the Arch Linux site. The AUR does not host binary packages but instead a collection of build scripts known as PKGBUILDs. PKGBUILD scripts are executed by the makepkg command, which downloads the necessary files from the software's repository and builds them using the Arch build system. 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 by the GNU project. The linux-libre kernel can be installed from the AUR or by enabling Parabola's repositories.

Arch build system (ABS)

The Arch build system (ABS) is a

-like source packaging system that compiles source tarballs into binary packages, which are installed via Pacman. The Arch build system provides a directory tree of

shell script A shell script is a computer program designed to be run by a Unix shell, a command-line interpreter. The various dialects of shell scripts are considered to be command languages. Typical operations performed by shell scripts include file manipu ...

s, called ''PKGBUILDs'', that enable any and all official Arch packages to be customized and compiled. Rebuilding the entire 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.

Arch User Repository (AUR)

In addition to the repositories, the Arch User Repository (AUR) provides user-made PKGBUILD scripts for packages not included within the main repositories. These PKGBUILD scripts simplify building from source by explicitly listing and checking for dependencies and configuring the install to match the Arch architecture. Arch User Repository helper programs can further streamline the downloading of PKGBUILD scripts and associated building process. 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 automatic finding, downloading and executing of PKGBUILDs will never be included in the official repositories. Users can create packages compatible with Pacman using the Arch build system and custom PKGBUILD scripts. This functionality has helped support the Arch User Repository, which consists of user contributed packages to supplement the official repositories. The Arch User Repository provides the community with packages that are not included in the main repositories. Reasons for exclusion from the main repositories include: *Licensing issues: software that cannot be redistributed, but is free to use, can be included in the Arch User Repository since all that is hosted by the Arch Linux website is a shell script that downloads the actual software from elsewhere. Examples include proprietary

freeware Freeware is software, often proprietary, that is distributed at no monetary cost to the end user. There is no agreed-upon set of rights, license, or EULA that defines ''freeware'' unambiguously; every publisher defines its own rules for the free ...

such as

Google Earth Google Earth is a web mapping, web and computer program created by Google that renders a 3D computer graphics, 3D representation of Earth based primarily on satellite imagery. The program maps the Earth by superimposition, superimposing satelli ...

and

Spotify Spotify (; ) is a List of companies of Sweden, Swedish Music streaming service, audio streaming and media service provider founded on 23 April 2006 by Daniel Ek and Martin Lorentzon. , it is one of the largest providers of music streaming services ...

. *Modified official packages: the Arch 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. *Popularity of the software: rarely used programs have not been added to the official repositories (yet). *Betas or "nightly" versions of software which are very new and thus unstable. Examples include the "firefox-nightly" package, which gives new daily builds of the

Firefox Mozilla Firefox, or simply Firefox, is a free and open-source web browser developed by the Mozilla Foundation and its subsidiary, the Mozilla Corporation. It uses the Gecko rendering engine to display web pages, which implements curr ...

web browser. PKGBUILDs for any software can be contributed by ordinary users. Any PKGBUILD that has 10 or more votes or more than 1% usage fro
pkgstats
can be promoted into the ''extra'' repository.

Reproducible builds

Arch Linux is working on making all official packages

reproducible Reproducibility, closely related to replicability and repeatability, is a major principle underpinning the scientific method. For the findings of a study to be reproducible means that results obtained by an experiment or an observational study or ...

. This means that when a package is rebuilt in a different environment it should be bit-by-bit identical. This allows users and researchers to verify the integrity of the packages found in the official repository. The status of this effort can be monitored on the dedicate
status page

Derivatives

The Arch Linux wiki maintains its own list of Arch-based distributions. There are several projects working on porting the Arch Linux ideas and tools to other kernels, including PacBSD (formerly ArchBSD) and Arch Hurd, which are based on the

FreeBSD FreeBSD is a free-software Unix-like operating system descended from the Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD). The first version was released in 1993 developed from 386BSD, one of the first fully functional and free Unix clones on affordable ...

and

GNU Hurd GNU Hurd is a collection of microkernel servers written as part of GNU, for the GNU Mach microkernel. It has been under development since 1990 by the GNU Project of the Free Software Foundation, designed as a replacement for the Unix kernel, an ...

kernels, respectively. There is also the

Arch Linux ARM Arch Linux ARM is a port of Arch Linux for ARM processors. Its design philosophy is "simplicity and full control to the end user," and like its parent operating system Arch Linux, aims to be very Unix-like. History and development Arch Linux ...

project, which aims to port Arch Linux to ARM-based devices, including the

Raspberry Pi Raspberry Pi ( ) is a series of small single-board computers (SBCs) developed in the United Kingdom by the Raspberry Pi Foundation in collaboration with Broadcom Inc., Broadcom. To commercialize the product and support its growing demand, the ...

, as well as the Arch Linux 32 project, which continued support for systems with 32-bit only CPUs after the mainline Arch Linux project dropped support for the architecture in November 2017. SteamOS 3.0, the version of SteamOS used in the Steam Deck by

, is based on Arch Linux.

Reception

OSNews OSNews is a computing online newspaper. It originally focused on operating systems and their related technologies that launched in 1997, but is now aggregating consumer electronics news. The content is managed by a group of editors and the owner. ...

reviewed Arch Linux in 2002. OSNews also has five later reviews about Arch Linux. LWN.net wrote a review about Arch Linux in 2005. LWN.net also has two later reviews about Arch Linux. Tux Machines reviewed Arch Linux in 2007. Chris Smart from DistroWatch Weekly wrote a review about Arch Linux in January 2009. DistroWatch Weekly reviewed Arch Linux again in September 2009 and in December 2015. The

Linux kernel The Linux kernel is a Free and open-source software, free and open source Unix-like kernel (operating system), kernel that is used in many computer systems worldwide. The kernel was created by Linus Torvalds in 1991 and was soon adopted as the k ...

developer and maintainer Greg Kroah-Hartman (GKH) has stated that he uses Arch Linux and that it "works really really well". He has also praised th
Arch Wiki
the distribution's

model, and the feedback loop with the community. In a 2023 DistroWatch poll, about half of the responders maintained that they were running either Arch (17%) or an Arch derivative (30%). As of 2023, Arch also enjoys the highest average rating of any Linux distribution on DistroWatch with a rating of 9.34.

References and notes

External links

*
Arch Linux
on

GitHub GitHub () is a Proprietary software, proprietary developer platform that allows developers to create, store, manage, and share their code. It uses Git to provide distributed version control and GitHub itself provides access control, bug trackin ...

* on Libera.chat (, ) {{Software in the Public Interest IA-32 Linux distributions Rolling release Linux distributions X86-64 Linux distributions Linux distributions Independent Linux distributions Pacman-based Linux distributions