Artix Linux

Reader supplied reviews for Artix Linux Average rating 9.1 from 258 review(s) What are your thoughts on Artix Linux? Please include a few pros and a few cons, along with your overall impression of the operating system. Our FAQ page has tips on writing a good mini-review. Version: -- 202608132025040720240823202308142022071320210726202002102018100420170808 Rating:    -- 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 out of 10 Your review (minimum 250 words): Past reviews - sort by: DateVotes Version: 20260813 Rating: 10 Date: 2026-09-28 Country: Greece Votes: 0 This is the Arch derivative that stands out the most. While most other Arch-based distros just slap up an installer and a fancy wallpaper, Artix is an actual fork officially supporting 4 init systems (openrc, dinit, runit and s6). This is no small feat, if you take into account the extent systemd has spread to the Linux userspace. I'm daily driving the openrc init, which was the first one supported at Artix's inception and I haven't yet needed a daemon service that hasn't got official support. Boot times are really fast, already faster than systemd's, and I've got an additional PC with dinit which is absurdly faster than openrc. People coming from systemd are advised to choose dinit which has the same command syntax as systemd (systemctl -> dinitctl) and similar declarative service files. Both openrc and dinit support user services natively, while for runit and s6 Artix offers a 3rd-party solution. For new installations my ISO of choice is the community QT edition, which offers pretty much anything an average computer user needs and perhaps remove a few apps I never personally use. The community editions have graphical package management front-ends, so users who don't like terminals won't have to use one. After installation it's even preconfigured with the plymouth splash screen and a very tasteful dark theme applied to both QT and GTK applications. The Arch repositories are enabled by default in this one, so you won't miss much but if you do, the AUR is there for you. I should mention that Artix has a repository for user-submitted service scripts (called AURIS, heh), where said scripts are tested and curated and eventually moved to the official repos. Artix offers several desktop editions in their download page, base editions for purists (yes, console only) and recently they introduced a gaming ISO, currently marked as alpha but I didn't notice any issues with it. Think community QT with Plasma, with the addition of several game launchers, gaming tools and utilities and numerous performance settings applied. The community is very vibrant and helpful; this is an important factor to take into account when choosing a Linux distribution, especially non-corporate backed ones. I only needed help once and I had it within the day I posted my question on the forum. All in all, a great choice for a wide range of users, from relatively noobs to experts, but it should be noted that rolling-release distros are generally considered less user-friendly. However, I never felt intimidated by Artix and their wiki is an excellent complement to the Arch one, covering topics specific to Artix. Was this review helpful? Yes No Version: 20260813 Rating: 6 Date: 2026-09-25 Country: Switzerland Votes: 0 I wanted to try a nonsystemd based arch and see the differences. -First Install on rather exotic 2-in-1 device with multigrub failed. Then one on an thinkpad barebone, complete disk erase- that went very smooth with ARCH/XFCE/Dinit, positively surprised, even Calamaris was used properly. -First I am impressed, how many different init systems are supported, how many apps and systems where wired to this other init systems, impressive! -A small set of software with UI preinstalled but too few about system parts for my taste, but that's typical for many ARCH distros. Installed then Pamac for a visual software package management. -Some apps from the AUR repo will not work due their systemd relationship- so the Artix repo should have priority always, as it can cause funky errors. -I found a small, but relevant set of apps on the artix repo, but was missing often the dependencies. -I came in a bad moment a main maintainer just had left, and VM stuff failed with dependency problems. This can happen, and it then all relies how good a "community" can compensate. Didn't go well in my case. I got a couple of random ideas in the artix forum, but I finally found the root cause with some certainity. But then no one could tell me, where bugs are logged, and the repo from the former maintainer is a closed club, also no other options in the forum mentioned where/how bugs find their way to resolution. With this, it's not possible to maintain such a variety of init systems for very long, this distro has a real problem. - I can recommend this distro only for real linux experts with deep CLI knowhow and absolute no need for help. Was this review helpful? Yes No Version: 20260813 Rating: 9 Date: 2026-08-28 Country: The Netherlands Votes: 13 As a long-time Linux user, I love using Artix Linux because of the simple init structure. Now it isn't like the 90ies with SysV but in fact it's better—it gets out of your way. Besides that, it respects my freedom more than any other OS that would force me into Wayland. Now I do use Wayland but only because it's my choice to do so. The only small downside is that if you browse the website, the cringey neckbeard energy is a litle much. But that said, they are my neckboards and I love their style. Artix is a OS that protests systemd. It forked Arch Linux to run runit as init system. It was the rule to do 1 thing simple before systemd changed it. So Artix is following the original linux philosophy that systemd broke. Here's why I keep coming back to Artix: you actually get to decide how your system runs. Most distros nowadays are pushing systemd as if there's no other way. It's convenient, sure, but it's also a one-size-fits-all approach that assumes you want their services running. Not me. Artix lets me use runit, s6, or whatever init system I feel like that week, and I don't have to jump through hoops to make it work. That's the kind of freedom I signed up for when I picked Linux in the first place. Now, the init system is just the beginning. Artix doesn't care what desktop environment you use, what display server you prefer, or whether you're rolling your own setup or using a pre-built iso. If you want to experiment with different tools, you can. If you just want a solid system that gets out of your way, you can do that too. It doesn't lock you into a specific philosophy or force you to follow someone else's rules. Yeah, it's not for everyone. If you want something that just works out of the box without any configuration, you might be better off with Ubuntu or Fedora. But if you want a system that actually respects your choices and lets you take control of what's running under the hood, Artix is hard to beat. It's not perfect, but it's honest. Distros that pretend to give you freedom while actually locking you into their ecosystem are all over the place these days. Keep it up, boys and girls. I will keep using Artix for many more years. Was this review helpful? Yes No See all 258 reader reviews of Artix Linux...