 As a longtime Linux user, I have distro hopped hundreds of times. I have literally tried hundreds of different Linux distributions at this point. I've probably installed at least a couple of hundred different Linux distributions just on the YouTube channel to share with you guys. And you know, things are different now than when I first switched to Linux as my main operating system 13, 14 years ago now at this point. You know, back then Ubuntu was the dominant desktop Linux operating system. A matter of fact, Ubuntu was by far the most popular Linux distribution, probably had more users than all the other Linux distributions combined. And then, you know, all the different spins of Ubuntu that came about. There were probably a hundred different flavors of Ubuntu or spins of Ubuntu. Most people that wanted to create their own Linux distribution based off of Ubuntu. But then everything changed really about five or six years ago. You noticed a real shift where people that wanted to create their own Linux distributions, most of them started basing off of Arch Linux because Arch Linux, people realized, had some advantages over the old stable static release model that things like Ubuntu and Debian have. You know, Arch Linux is a rolling release model. For me at least, I prefer that. I prefer the software availability that is in Arch because it has by far the most packages available of any Linux distribution, mainly because of the AUR. And I prefer the rolling release model knowing that all of my packages will be absolutely up to date on the latest version as long as I update my system. And I think that is why Arch Linux has become so popular and why Arch based distributions have become so popular. So today I wanted to cover what I think are the top five Arch Linux based desktop Linux distributions. Coming in at number five of my list of the top five Arch based Linux distributions is Artex Linux. What you're taking a look at here is Artex Linux with the LXQ desktop and with the OpenRC init system because the claim to fame with Artex is that it ships with several different init systems available for you that are not system D. A matter of fact, they don't offer any system D versions because Artex, the reason it exists, it exists to be Arch Linux without system D. It was forked from some Arch Linux users years ago when Arch Linux decided to move to system D. I mean, most Linux distributions eventually had to move away from sys5 init and then to system D, the new hide init system that was out there. There were a lot of Arch Linux users that did not want to move to system D. So they forked Arch Linux and created Artex. So Artex has been around for a number of years and I think most people probably don't realize this because all of a sudden for some reason I don't understand it, Artex has become popular. I see it climbing the distro watch rankings and I get tons of questions. I've probably gotten dozens of people here in the last six months to a year ask me, hey man, when are you going to take a look at Artex Linux? And I have taken a look at Artex Linux two or three different times on the channel, at least just off the top of my head. I've done videos about Artex Linux like three, four years ago before it was popular. So go check out those videos. But to me, it's a little weird because Artex Linux essentially is just Arch Linux without system D. When you go to the Artex Linux website and go to their downloads page, you pick the desktop environment you want and you pick the init system you want for the ISO. You can choose from OpenRC, Runit or S6 for your init system. Now me personally, I have no problem with system D. So that is why I don't talk about Artex that much. I mean, I take a look at it every now and then. I haven't taken a look at it recently, but I really don't care about ripping out system D and replacing it with OpenRC or Runit. That's not appealing to me. And essentially that is all Artex is. Artex is a protest distro. What I often label as a protest distro is basically a fork of another distribution out of protest for a decision they made. And Artex, they're definitely a protest distro. I mean, they state that proudly on their website. Artex Linux is a rolling release distribution based on Arch Linux. It uses real init systems because PID1 must be simple, secure and stable. PID1 is the process ID number one, which is typically your init system. It's the very first thing that starts when your Linux system starts. And they say that basically your system should use a quote, real init system. I guess system D isn't a real Linux system. And this is kind of off-putting to me. I don't really like protest distros. I typically don't use them myself. And I don't give them a lot of time on the channel. So why you don't see a lot of Artex content from me or Dev1 content, which is Devian without system D, because the Devian community also had the same problem when Devian switched to system D, people forked Devian and created Dev1. And the problem is, when you make a statement like this up front on your website, you're basically saying that this is your sole reason to exist is system D hate. System D hate is your identity with your distribution. And I think that's unfortunate. Now, of course, that's just my opinion about system D that I don't care about it. I understand many of you guys do dislike system D, and maybe you have legitimate reasons for it, and that's fine. And if you're one of those people, I do think that Artex Linux is a good distribution for you to try for a non-system D Arch Linux-based distribution. I mean, this is it. One minor gripe I will say about Artex, though, is it scares me when I go to their downloads page and go to grab an ISO. And I noticed that their ISOs are six months old. All the ISOs are dated July of 2021. And for a rolling release distribution, that's a little too old. I don't like, I don't like installing rolling release distributions with ISOs that are more than a few weeks old. Six months old is way too old for Arch Linux-based distributions, because every package on that ISO is out of date. Many of them have seen updates, several updates over the course of six months. And you do run the risk of your installation failing because of that. So I would, I wish Artex saw more releases, more frequent releases. And this has been the case with Artex for years, you know, as long as I've been taking a look at Artex, is they just don't push out ISOs in a timely manner. And really, because of that, I can't really rank it higher than number five on my list. Coming in at number four is Endeavor OS. Endeavor OS is the spiritual successor to the old Anteagos Linux distribution. Anteagos died, the people that were working on it just quit working on it, and Endeavor OS sprang from that. Once again, we're looking at the LXQt desktop here. I should have probably picked a different flavor of Endeavor OS, since I did LXQt for Artex, but this is the one I happened to have already installed. Now what we're taking a look at today are virtual machines of all these particular Linux distributions that I already had set up. Endeavor OS comes in a variety of different editions as far as desktop environments and window managers. What we're looking at here is the welcome screen. It's a little helper program that Endeavor OS created for its users. If we take a look at their website and look at some of their flagship editions as far as desktop environments and window managers, you can see that they have flavors for Xfce, Monte, Cinnamon, Ganon, Budgie, Plasma, LXQt, which we were looking at, LXDE, which is a dead project at this point, but they still offer an LXDE edition. i3, BSBWM, Sway, Openbox, and recently they added a Qtile edition. And one of the things that makes me really happy is that Qtile, before I started my YouTube channel and started talking about Qtile all the time, because it's one of my favorite window managers, most people had never actually heard of that particular window manager, and now there are actually several Linux distributions actually shipping Qtile editions, and that makes me smile. So why does Endeavor OS make my top four Linux distributions based on Arch Linux? Well, the installer is rather easy. The desktop environment editions they ship with all of them are well done. I won't say this, the most polished desktops, you know, this LXQt desktop is rather plain vanilla, but it doesn't look bad. The wallpapers look good. For the most part, what Endeavor OS aims to be is a quick way to get Arch Linux, right? Endeavor OS really is very much in line with Arch Linux. You can think of it as Arch Linux with an easy installer. A matter of fact, I will say that of the five distributions I talk about today, Endeavor OS is probably the one that deviates the least from Mainline Arch. And coming in at number three on my list of top Arch based distributions is Garuda Linux. Now what we're taking a look at here is the Dragonized edition of Garuda. The Dragonized edition is a really fancy KDE Plasma desktop with some Gaussian blur going on in the menu system. There's a lot of blurring and some of the applications themselves. This is the Dolphin file manager and you can see the blurred background and this really cool icon set and just everything about it. Now in this VM, you don't get a lot of the cool animations on physical hardware, though there's a lot of cool window animations and everything. When you're opening and closing things, you notice that the background blurs. When I open something, you have File Dragon here, which is their customized fork of LibreWolf, which is a fork of Firefox. And when I open Fire Dragon here, you see the background, the desktop, it blurs. It automatically blurs the background. That way your eyes really focus on the applications themselves. When I close the application, you see now we get the unblurred desktop. Some of the things that really make Garuda stand out other than obviously just the gorgeous desktop is the fact that they, again, are opinionated on some of the decisions. You see we have this fancy shell prompt here. By the way, the shell is the fish shell. So if I start typing something, you see red means, hey, this command you're typing is not a real command. When I finally type something that is a real command, it turns blue. That lets me know that they're using the fish shell. Also, we've got fish in the title bar here of the console. So they do the fish shell as your default user shell. They do butter FS for a file system. They do the Linux Zen kernel by default, because it uses the Zen kernel and because it's rolling release distribution and everything. It's really meant for performance, especially for gamers. They kind of try to appeal to the gaming crowd. Another interesting thing about Garuda is they have the Chaotic AUR enabled for you. The Chaotic AUR is basically a separate AUR. It's like a third-party AUR. I've never found the need to use the Chaotic AUR. It's not something I typically enabled on my systems because the standard AUR pretty much has every package known to man anyway, but the Chaotic AUR is nice if you need to use it. Now other than the KDE Dragonized edition that we're seeing here, they do offer a number of different desktop editions. If I go to the Garuda download page here, we have Dragonized. We also have Garuda GNOME XFCE LXQ with the K-WIN Window Manager. LXQ, that particular desktop environment doesn't ship with its own window manager. You can use any window manager you want within LXQ. Typically, you either use OpenBox because it's very lightweight or because it is a Qt-based desktop and K-WIN is Plasma's Window Manager. People that want more fancy effects will swap out OpenBox with K-WIN. They also offer a Wayfire edition, a Sway edition, so two different Wayland compositors, which is kind of interesting because Wayland is still iffy, right? It's still not quite ready for primetime. They also are one of these Linux distributions that now ship with a Qtile edition, which again makes me small. Qtile also, even though it's an Xorg Window Manager, Qtile is actually already starting to work on Wayland. When you log into Qtile, you actually have two different Qtiles in your login manager. You have Qtile, which is just Qtile on Xorg, and you also should now see Qtile with Wayland as an option. Coming in at number two, the Silver Metal goes to ArcoLinux. I know that's going to surprise a lot of my viewers because I often say that ArcoLinux might be my favorite Linux distribution. It's the one I actually run. I am running ArcoLinux on my main production machine here at the office. It's what I use to produce all my videos. My home computer also runs ArcoLinux. What we're taking a look at right now on camera here is a virtual machine of ArcoLinux with the OpenBox Window Manager, which is one of my favorite Window Managers, ArcoLinux. Initially, when they started, they didn't have a whole lot of desktop environments and Window Manager additions. Initially, they actually shipped an ISO that had three different DEs or Window Managers installed. They shipped their main ISO, which had the XFCE desktop environment, the OpenBox Window Manager, and the i3 Window Manager all installed. Being a huge fan of OpenBox, they shipped a really nice OpenBox edition. That's how I came to love ArcoLinux back then. Actually, it wasn't even named ArcoLinux. When it started several years back, it was then called Archmerge. It became ArcoLinux. Now, why do I like ArcoLinux that much? What's its claim to fame? What separates it from the rest of the crowd? Well, let's go to their website at arcolinux.com. Now, their website is confusing because they have multiple websites. They have arcolinux.com. They also have arcolinux.info, and they don't display the same information. And there's a ton of information here. ArcoLinux is really designed to be educational. It's designed to show you basically how to eventually become an Arch Linux user. You start with the basics of, hey, here's our main flagship edition with the XFCE desktop environment. It uses the Calamaris installer. You can quickly get up to speed and install an Arch-based Linux distribution, but they also have several other ISOs that require a little more work to install. They have ArcoLinux. They also have ArcoLinux B, which is like a build-it-yourself kind of ISO. They have ArcoLinux D, which actually has some install scripts to it. You can actually do a command line install with ArcoLinux D. I've done that on camera in the past. It's been a few years. But basically, it is designed, again, as an educational process. You see on their website, they have learning phases, phase one. And I think they have phases all the way up to like a phase five, which phase five is basically now go install Arch Linux the Archway. And I mentioned ArcoLinux is designed to be educational. So this website is filled with a ton of good blog posts, articles to read. Also, the main dev of ArcoLinux is a guy named Eric Dubois. He has a YouTube channel and he probably has made thousands, literally thousands of videos about ArcoLinux. Really good stuff. I strongly suggest if you haven't already subscribed to Eric Dubois on YouTube, please do. And you're going to find his videos helpful regardless of whether you actually use ArcoLinux or not. If I go to the ArcoLinux downloads page, one interesting thing about Arco, again, that separates it from most of the crowd is if I go to ArcoLinux B on seed host, they had a number of different ways to get an ISO. But look how many additions we have. We have awesome BSBWM, Budgie, Cinnamon, Kewfish, CWM, Deepen, DWM, FVWM, GNOME, HLWM, that's Herb's Loft, I3, Window Manager, JWM, LeftWM, LXQ, Mate, OpenBox, Plasma, QTOP, SpectreWM, UQUI, I don't know that one, WM Durlan, I don't know that one either. They have several additions. I didn't actually know they had XFCE, Xmoneb, the extended addition, which is, hey, pick however many different of these Window Managers you want and Dusk, which I don't know. They have like four different ISOs here, Window Manager additions that I didn't even know they had, so they're constantly adding new ISOs. They got like 25, 30 different ISOs to pick from, and that really is what separates Arco. Also, the installer, you get to pick and choose your software. They have a Calamari's installer where you get to pick and choose, for example, what terminals you want installed, office suites, whether you want any multimedia programs or not. They have it broken down by category, and the Calamari's installer, you'll have an accessories category, an office category, and a games category, et cetera, and you just go through and tick on the programs that you want to be installed during the installation process, and that's really cool. Now, after me talking so highly about Arco Linux, what a great distribution it is. Personally, again, maybe my favorite, it is my favorite. Well, why is it only number two on my list, and what could possibly be number one of my top ArchBase distributions? And the gold medal goes to the number one Arch Linux-based distribution Manjaro. What we're taking a look at here is Manjaro's KDE Plasma edition. It comes in three different main flavors. You have KDE Plasma, XFCE, and GNOME. They also have several community editions which offer a variety of desktop environments and window managers to choose from. Another cool thing about Manjaro is they offer a very nice ARM edition. They have several ARM ISOs. I actually run Manjaro ARM on my Raspberry Pi's. So why does Manjaro make the top spot, in my opinion? Well, Manjaro really has a level of professionalism and polish that I think really separates it from everyone else when it comes to Arch Linux-based distributions. Manjaro is really heavily focused on user-friendliness. I'm talking about new user-friendliness. They're also very heavily focused on accessibility. And they're really, they're ahead of the curve mainly because it's such a popular Linux distribution. Manjaro has exploded in popularity here in the last few years. Manjaro has a corporation behind it now. They're actually incorporated. And I think in the large part, here in the last couple of years, we've had big YouTubers like Linus Tech Tips that have mentioned Manjaro on camera, and that has really accelerated the growth of Manjaro. And Manjaro has been around now for a number of years. And I really think they are the originator of the new user-friendly Arch Linux-based desktop distribution. I mean, they were doing this stuff way before anyone else. Way before the other Arch-based distributions we talked about today, before ARCO, before Gerudo, which is rather new, Endeavour has been around for a while. But Manjaro really made Arch Linux popular, much more so than probably anything else out there. Their installer is very easy to use. It's just the standard Calamari installer. I never really have problems installing a Manjaro. It typically installs on all of my hardware. And again, because it has a corporation behind it, and it's a rather large distribution these days, I would certainly say, you know, as far as desktop Linux distributions, nobody really knows numbers, just or watch rankings don't matter. But I would be shocked if Manjaro wasn't like in the top five of desktop Linux distributions being run, as far as the number of users and number of ISOs being downloaded. And I think this is a good thing because I do think Manjaro gets a lot of things right for new to Linux users. And you're coming from windows and switching over to Linux. I think Manjaro is a great landing spot. I think it's a great starting point. Again, their main additions Xfce, Plasma, GNOME. But let's talk about the community additions because again, this is one of the things that separates it is we have these community flavors. They're not the official flavors of Manjaro, but many of these are really good. They have a budgie addition, a sentiment addition, a deepened addition, and i3 addition. And the i3 addition is really what I wanted to point out because many Linux users that have never tried a tiling window manager, hey, how do I get started with a tiling window manager? One of the best distributions to start with is actually Manjaro's i3 addition because it is really well done. It's like a full desktop environment built around i3. It's already configured for you and it is a great starting point. If you're one of these people that, well, I can't really configure my own tiling window manager because I'm not good with scripting or playing with the terminal and yada, yada, yada. Check out Manjaro's i3 addition. I really think it's one of the best tiling window manager distributions out there and has been for many years now. Other community flavors available include Monte, Sway, and again, if you go to the additions and check ARM, they have several ARM ISOs, including some for the Pinebook and for the Raspberry Pi. So there you have it, my number one top Arch Linux-based distribution, Manjaro. Now let's talk about some of the Arch Linux-based distributions that didn't quite make my top five because really, I knew what the top four were going to be immediately when I decided to make this video. I knew that Manjaro, Arco, Geruda, and Endeavor had to be on the list. I wasn't sure what order I'd put them, but they had to make it. But that fifth spot, which I put Artex in there because Artex is unique being not SystemD, but there were others that I briefly thought about putting in there. So let's talk about two Arch-based distributions that just missed the cut. I do want to mention Archcraft because I've made a couple of videos about Archcraft. It's a rather new distribution. The very first time I took a look at Archcraft, I hated it. It was very hard to use the font size and it was incredibly small. So small, it was practically unusable. I couldn't even navigate the menus or change anything. It was a very painful experience and it was probably one of the worst videos I ever made. And that's my opinion. I think my video of it was bad because I shouldn't have made that video. I was very critical, very harsh, very negative about Archcraft. But that negative video, the main div, took that to heart. He took it as constructive criticism and all of my problems that I had with Archcraft he fixed in later versions and I've taken some more recent looks at Archcraft. And I find it rather appealing and actually rather attractive. It's mainly about style is what Archcraft is. It's not really about trying to do things under the hood, you know, like the guts of Arch Linux. It's mainly about, you know, putting lipstick on Arch Linux, right? It's all about configuring these desktop environments and window managers to look really good. And they do a great job with that. So Archcraft, I thought about putting in the fifth spot, but it just didn't quite make the cut. And one more I wanted to briefly mention is Maybox Linux, which is a open box distribution. It uses the open box window manager and it looks fantastic. And if you love the open box window manager, you will love Maybox Linux. So I know not everyone is going to agree with my top five. So if you disagree with my list of my top five Arch Linux based distributions, please share in the comments below. Now before I go, I need to thank a few special people. I need to thank the producers of this episode. These are my highest tiered patrons over on Patreon. I'm talking about Devon Gabe, James, Matt, Michael, Mitchell, Paul, Scott, Wes, Akami Allen, Lennox, Ninja Chuck, Commander, Angry Curt, Diokai, David, Dylan, Gregory, Ico, Costco, Lee, Maxim, Mike, Nitrix, Erion, Alexander, Peace, Arch, and Fedor, Polytech, River, Red Prophet, Stephen and Willie. These guys, they're awesome, right? Without these guys, I couldn't do what I do. I also couldn't do what I do without each and every one of these ladies and gentlemen, all these fine ladies and gentlemen, these names you see on the screen. These are all my supporters over on Patreon because I don't have any corporate sponsors, really. It's just me and you guys, the community. If you like my work and you want to see more great videos about Lennox free and open source software, please help support me. Subscribe to DistroTube over on Patreon. All right, guys, peace. Maybe I'll do a top five Ubuntu based distribution next.