Arch Linux


Arch Linux is an open source, rolling release Linux distribution. Arch Linux is kept up-to-date by regularly updating the individual pieces of software that it comprises. It provides monthly "snapshots" which are used as installation media. Arch Linux is intentionally minimal, and is meant to be configured by the user during installation so they may add only what they require.
[|Pacman], a package manager written specifically for Arch Linux, is used to install, remove and update software packages. The Arch User Repository serves as a community-driven software repository for Arch Linux and 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 known as the ArchWiki.

History

Inspired by CRUX, another minimalist distribution, Judd Vinet began 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 IA-32 CPUs, the first x86-64 installation standard ISO image 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 as its init system began 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 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 called 'archinstall' 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 partnered with Arch Linux developers to support ongoing development efforts with the focus on build service infrastructure and secure signing enclave.
On 14 August 2025, the Arch User Repository, the Arch Linux Forums and the Arch Linux website were hit by a distributed denial-of-service attack. As a result of the attack web services became temporarily unavailable and downloads from the AUR were severely slowed down or impossible.

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 microprocessors to assist performance on modern hardware. A ports/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.

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 images that may be burned to a CD or USB 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 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 to install base and additional packages with the mountpoint of the destination device as the root 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, configuring the system with a hostname, 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 rolling release model. Packages in the main repositories are updated often, with new updates being pushed far quicker when compared to long-term support distributions. This style of package management allows systems to remain updated easily.
Occasionally, manual interventions are needed 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 package manager 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, with .pkg placed before this to indicate that it is a Pacman package ;
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 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 unneeded 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.
Also, testing repositories exist 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 before being released into testing.
  • kde-unstable, which contains packages of a new version of KDE 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.