I think there’s benefits with more recent packages, the package manager (pacman) and the AUR. But if you’re new or don’t have much experience then something like Ubuntu or Mint is a more sensible distro to begin with. At least they start with some applications and such so you know what’s out there and how some things work.

You learn more about the components of your system, and therefore learn more about fixing things or debugging what could be wrong. Arch is only difficult once.

If you just want to fire up your system with arguably sane defaults and use it, no there really isn’t. Where Arch shines is in providing a mostly blank slate for people with opinions about how their system should be set up. It provides the tools and documentation then mostly stays out of the admin’s way.

Archwiki is probably the best Linux documentation in existance. It greatly lowers the barrier of entry.

Arch is a rolling release that gets the newest software once it’s available. Ubuntus is Debian-based and it’s also following the principle of stability over modernity so there’s a big difference between how recent software you’re gonna run on those two types of distros. But if you want to try the rolling approach you doesn’t have to go directly for arch, you can use some Arch-based distro like Manjaro. I know there are also Arco, Artix and Garuda that are arch based but I don’t tested them. You could use them, experience pacman and aur but without struggle of setting up arch and once you get comfortable you may want to give arch a try

Seems like you answered your own question. Arch is not for people who want something that works out of box. If you want a GUI, suspend on lid close, sleep on idle, etc. by default, don’t do Arch. You have to be prepared to debug issues, configure lower level OS features, and read a lot through the wiki and web searches of you are going to use Arch.

It depends what you want out of your system. If you just want a “plug and play” machine that will do most things reasonably well, by all means stick with Ubuntu.

If you want complete knowledge of exactly what you’ve got installed (and just as importantly what’s not been installed) and how it’s been set up, and tuned and tweaked to your ideal requirements, Arch is a great choice.

Nothing is enabled after installation. While it can be a daunting task to manually hook up your PC to the wifi manually, this philosophy lets you hand-pick the services which you actually want to run, catering for a very personalised and clearly defined system.

I always say I started using arch for the “nerd cred” and stuck with it because of the package manager.

My main reasons for me to use arch are:

1. I can configure my system as I want it and if something breaks later I know how things fit together so I can fix them. Arch taught me a lot about Linux in general
2. The rolling release getting you new packages quite fast and not requiring you to do one big possibly breaking update once every year/two years (Ubuntu updates used to break for me a lot, I know that’s much better now)
3. The package manager makes sense to me in so many ways. Especially compared with the apt-get, apt-cache, apt-key … stuff you used to need. These days just using “apt” makes stuff much easier on Ubuntu as well.

If your new is still recommend Ubuntu as a starting point since installation is quite hassle free and most “Linux” tutorials online are geared toward Ubuntu. And then once you learned some Linux and you know what annoys you in ubuntu you can still switch “fixing” those things in your arch install. If you do go with arch were sure all happy to help.

Yes, several, but there are also several reasons to use Ubuntu over Arch. One thing that tend to fly over most people head is that under the hood all Linux are the same, there are two main differences between distros: Package Manager and philosophy.

Package Manager

Ubuntu is Debian based, so it uses apt, whereas Arch uses it’s own package manager called pacman. If there’s a package you want that is not available in the official channels on Ubuntu you would need to either download a .deb file or add an extra repository of packages called PPA to have that available. On Arch there’s a User Repository called AUR where users create scripts to install packages that are not available on the main repos, this usually involves compiling or downloading a .deb, .rpm (RedHat installation format) or tarball (essentially zipped files), extracting the files and putting them in the correct place. Arch is easier to install extra content because of this, almost anything you wish to install is in the AUR, and that’s one of the main reasons I use it, whereas in Ubuntu you need to find which PPA has the package you want to install.

Philosophy

This is the main difference between most distros. Ubuntu is a user-friendly, stable versioned release distro. Arch is a bare-bones, bleeding edge rolling release distro.

User-friendly vs Bare-bones

Ubuntu will provide a lot of what you’ll need out of the box, after finishing the installation, which is an easy next,next,next type of thing you will be able to browse the web, write documents, play games, or most of what you like to do in your computer, there might be stuff you’ll never use already installed because other people might find it useful, but you can uninstall them. And if you want something extra like a photo editor you can easily install it using a GUI (Graphical Users Interface, i.e. things you use with your mouse), and the system will let you know when there are updates with a handy notification that you can click to install said updates.

Arch is as minimal as possible, the installation will drop you to a command line and you need to manually do a lot of the steps to get your system working, after finishing the installation you’ll be dropped into another command line interface with an installation that is so minimal that it’s essentially useless for anything other than writing .txt files. You need yo build your system up from that point, you need to choose which Graphical backend you will use, which desktop manager, which browser and install all of them. Unless you install something it won’t be there, so unless you know and install a GUI package manager you’ll need to use the terminal for that. In short you need to build from the ground up. If you like everything else in Arch but prefer a less bare bones distro you can check Manjaro.

Stable vs Bleeding edge

Ubuntu has some packages that are mostly stable and only receive security updates, this makes it harder for things to break, but it also makes it difficult to get the latest version of things.

Arch on the other hand gets the latest version of everything every day. This can cause problems if for example a library gets updated but programs don’t support that version. To be fair this is rare, but it does happen, and you’re expected to know how to downgrade the library until the program gets updated as well.

Versioned vs Rolling release

Ubuntu has versions that get released every 6 months but are supported for longer, this means that if you want to always be on the latest version of everything you need to upgrade the system version every six months, not unlike how you would update windows versions from 7 to 8 to 10, etc.

Arch does not have versions, instead packages get updated, and that keeps going until everything is updated naturally. If you like the idea of a Rolling release but would like something more stable than Arch check out Debian.