Why I switched from Ubuntu to Arch Linux

Ubuntu is a great GNU/Linux distribution. I have been using it since 2004, and except for one LTS (long term support) upgrade a couple years back everything was fine. That LTS upgrade a couple years back screwed up the X system, leaving me with the bash shell. Don’t get me wrong: I enjoy dabling with my Linux system, but an LTS upgrade should be safe.

Well, this was years ago.

After upgrading from Ubuntu 11.10 to 12.04 the same thing happened again: No X system.

I have a cheap Nvidia card with dual head setup (dual head means you can plug in 2 monitors). Worked fine with Ubuntu since 2009. So I upgraded to Ubuntu 12.04. And I’m back to: No X system.

I was not amused.

It was not a hardware problem: The old OS (Ubuntu 11.10) worked fine. It was not the fault of Nvidia. I am talking about a video card for 20-50 bucks! Not one of those high-end video cards.

Instead of switching to another deb or rpm based system I decided to switch to one of those “rolling” distributions like Gentoo or Arch. I picked the later and have so far not regrated the decision.

Arch Linux is my home production system of choice.