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Arch Linux vs Centos: What are the differences?
Arch Linux: A lightweight and flexible Linux distribution that tries to Keep It Simple. A lightweight and flexible Linux distribution that tries to Keep It Simple; Centos: The Community ENTerprise Operating System. The CentOS Project is a community-driven free software effort focused on delivering a robust open source ecosystem. For users, we offer a consistent manageable platform that suits a wide variety of deployments. For open source communities, we offer a solid, predictable base to build upon, along with extensive resources to build, test, release, and maintain their code.
Arch Linux and Centos can be primarily classified as "Operating Systems" tools.
MAK IT, RELEX Solutions, and Decision6 are some of the popular companies that use Centos, whereas Arch Linux is used by Decision6, IT-Partner-Berlin, and store2be GmbH. Centos has a broader approval, being mentioned in 352 company stacks & 304 developers stacks; compared to Arch Linux, which is listed in 5 company stacks and 32 developer stacks.
Global familiarity, free, widely used, and as a debian distro feels more comfortable when rapidly switching between local macOS and remote command lines.
CentOS does boast quite a few security/stability improvements, however as a RHEL-based distro, differs quite significantly in the command line and suffers from slightly less frequent package updates. (Could be a good or bad thing depending on your use-case and if it is public facing)
At the moment of the decision, my desktop was the primary place I did work. Due to this, I can't have it blow up on me while I work. While Arch is interesting and powerful, Ubuntu offers (at least for me) a lot more stability and lets me focus on other things than maintaining my own OS installation.
Pros of Arch Linux
- Large Community15
- Package Manager13
- Customizable11
- Arch User Repository10
- Rolling Release10
- Bleeding Edge9
- Extensive Documentation8
- Arch Build System7
- X86_64 architecture supported6
- Can fix bugs yourself if you know how to3
Pros of CentOS
- Stable15
- Free to use8
- Reliable8
- Has epel packages5
- Good support5
- Great Community4
- I've moved from gentoo to centos2
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Cons of Arch Linux
- Systemd only2
- Only X86_64 architecture is offically supported1
- No Guided Installation1
- System maintenance1
- Unstable1
- Comparatively fewer offically supported packages1
Cons of CentOS
- Yum is a horrible package manager1
