From the Raspberry Pi downloads page:

Debian “squeeze”


Arch Linux ARM


But this isn't much to go on, so what are the benefits of using Arch Linux on the Raspberry Pi over the standard Debian build from the Raspberry Pi foundation?


I've never used Arch, so this list of advantages is based on reading their documentation, and summarising it as follows:

  1. Whilst Debian has a bigger repository of software, the Arch repositories include packages that wouldn't qualify as 'free' according to GNU (and therefore wouldn't be included in Debian repositories).

  2. Arch packages tend to be current, more comparable to the versions of software found in Debian unstable. Debian Squeeze is currently the stable release, so two versions of Debian behind.


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    Rolling release is the biggest advantage – Jivings Jun 19 '12 at 19:04
  • @Jivings Perhaps I should note that the list of advantages given above are in no particular order... ;-) – AntonChanning Jun 19 '12 at 19:05
  • I'll have some more to add to this soon :) – Jivings Jun 19 '12 at 19:09
  • Can you give an example of item 1 - what kind of software might I miss out on if I switch to Arch? – Salim Fadhley Jun 25 '12 at 16:49
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    @SalimFadhley You probably wouldn't miss out on anything. First Arch has a User Repository that includes a lot of the missing software, and second you can always install manually. – AntonChanning Jun 25 '12 at 21:12
