Artix Linux

Reader supplied reviews for Artix Linux Average rating 9.2 from 209 review(s) Please select a rating in the range of 1-10. Please write at least a few sentences about the distribution while limiting your review to 4080 characters. 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: -- 2025040720240823202308142022071320210726202002102018100420170808 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: 20250407 Rating: 10 Date: 2025-12-28 Votes: 9 The freedom of choice for what init one wants is just awesome. I have tried them all. I currently use dinit. Dinit provides the quickest boot up and shutdown I have ever experienced. Dinit has an excellent recovery mechanism to get a working system without resorting to live image boot and chroot fix if stuff goes wrong like when one is creating a new startup script but didn't get it right causing init failure. There is a great choice of desktops and window managers one can use. I currently am using openbox window manager which has provided a very fast, responsive user interface. Like Arch the configuration for the system is mostly command line editing. Artix also offers Xlibre which has worked very well for me including running Steam. Seems to me it is the open source way to have choice. Artix provides that in earnest. In short the Artix experience is very similar to one Arch offered before systemd hit. Pros: Most choices of init available with four different ones to choose from: Openrc, Runit, S6, Dinit Great selection of user desktops and window managers to choose from that are not hard coded to use systemd. Complete compatible with AUR and Arch (minus packages with systemd dependencies). Cons: If one is using one of the desktop version images with the graphic installer, one may have to create the partitions if something more than root, esp and swap is needed beforehand. Only use offline install when using the graphic installer. Once installed one can chroot into the install and update it from there then reboot once done. A few packages that are hard coded to use systemd require workarounds to function some of which still need to be updated. This is an evolving situation that changes as time goes bye. Summary: Artix with dinit is my daily driver that is stable, easy to configure and customize. Was this review helpful? Yes No Version: 20250407 Rating: 10 Date: 2025-12-14 Votes: 5 Got tired of Win11 shenanigans, so I’ve been hunting for a good distro for over a year now. Tried Debian, Mint, Fedora, Void, Arch, and finally settled on Artix. Runit is lightning fast to boot (boots faster than my old laptop took to wake from sleep) and is easy to maintain compared to systemD. Artix has essentially every package I’ve needed from Arch or the AUR (which is what kept me off Void). It runs lightweight and stable on my Haswell MacBook Air and my AMD R7 6800H desktop. Pros: huge package support, no SystemD, very lightweight, comes with XFCE OOTB (my preferred), actual live environment with a DE, easy to use installer. Cons: wireless drivers for some machine (eg Broadcom for MacBooks) works in live but not included in install, similar quirks to Arch with packages breaking things, some things expect SystemD and require workarounds. Was this review helpful? Yes No Version: 20250407 Rating: 10 Date: 2025-12-13 Votes: 8 Artix Linux with the LXQt desktop and OpenRC is an operating system built for people who care about speed, simplicity, and control, not hand-holding. From the first boot, the system feels immediately responsive. Applications launch instantly, the desktop never stutters, and there’s none of the background noise or latency common on heavier distributions like fedora. One of Artix’s strongest points is its init system freedom. OpenRC is fast, transparent, and predictable, and the availability of xlibre makes Artix especially appealing for users like me who want a clean, systemd-free X stack. This alone sets Artix apart from most mainstream Linux distributions. LXQt is a perfect match here. It’s clean, lightweight, and genuinely snappy. Memory usage is low, CPU usage is minimal, and the system always feels ready rather than busy. Pros Extremely fast boot and runtime performance OpenRC is simple, reliable, and transparent xlibre availability is a major win LXQt is lightweight, clean, and responsive No systemd dependency anywhere Cons Where Artix stumbles is there polish. The GUI installer is unreliable and inconsistent, often creating more confusion than it solves. For a distro that otherwise targets experienced users, the installer feels why is this even here! just remove it! Pacman remains a point of friction. While powerful, it’s brittle and unfriendly compared to more modern package managers, and Artix inherits all of Arch’s quirks without improving them. Out of the box, there are no Artix-specific themes or visual identity included. The base install looks raw and unfinished, requiring manual theming and configuration just to reach an acceptable baseline. While this isn’t difficult for experienced users, it does feel like unnecessary busywork. That’s where the biggest contradiction lies: Artix expects a significant amount of manual setup, but if you’re already willing to do that much work, you may reasonably ask why you didn’t just build LFS or Gentoo instead. Artix LXQt with OpenRC is a phenomenally fast, clean system with excellent init freedom and minimal overhead. It’s ideal for users who want full control and zero systemd — but it demands effort in return. If you enjoy setting things up yourself, Artix delivers raw performance and simplicity. If you don’t, the rough edges will feel unnecessary. Was this review helpful? Yes No See all 209 reader reviews of Artix Linux...