artix, and honorific mentions to parabola and hyperbola (hyperbola is moving towards becoming a gnu + kopenbsd thing, like there was an attempt for a debian gnu + kfreebsd effort though this one got dropped)

EndeavorOS is my go to for arch based systems. But with the archinstall script I’d say just give vanilla a go

EndeavourOS. It’s like Arch, but a bit easier with a few automation and gui stuff builtin. It’s still heavy on terminal usage and it comes light out of the box. I switched from Manjaro to EndeavourOS, because Manjaro gave me some problems (especially their package manager and because of the AUR too, and I didn’t like the maintainers, no further comment). It’s my daily driver for years now. I use it for everything, daily usage, little programming, gaming on Steam and especially RetroArch too. I’m a huge RetroArch fan. :-) So if you plan to use base Archlinux or Manjaro, then I can recommend to use EndeavourOS a lot.

Cachy OS is probably a good choice too, because their focus on performance optimizations. But they do also have a bit more, let’s say bloat, out of the box and their branding is a bit strong it seems. It’s a bit farther away from base Archlinux than EndeavourOS is.

Cachyos has a meta gaming package which will install steam, Lutris and a couple of launchers like heroic games launcher. Should have some extra optimisations as well. Lutris can install emulators too, as well as showing games in your steam library. I’m not sure if it can go full screen like retroarch and use a controller to select games, maybe it can.

aight let me tell you MY arch experience. itll be a long one.

i first installed arch with the install script and later manually, i ran this setup for quite some time, and as time goes, small erros cascade into bigger ones. it got to the point where i was reconfiguring system configs every week to fix something that broke from an update. the thing that ultimately caused the most trouble was converting my existing ext4 system to btrfs. this caused all sorts of issue primarily with gaming performance (i had to disable cpu boosting in order to not have constant lag spikes for example). this old system was a mess held together with duct tape and hope, it broke with EVERY update, and not at small scales. at some point i had to reinstall grub everytime i changed something in my boot order. Ultimately i decided 2 days ago it was time for a reinstall. i tried installing it normally, i followed the official install instructions and got greeted by a grub shell. i fucked something up during the install, so i decided fuck it, i will use archinstall script again. then it took me legit 6 hours to get my system running in a way i could use it, tgen the next day an additional 3 to get everything set up so i can game with proper OBS recording and all.

now i have a perfectly functioning Arch setup. and a lot more performance (even tho the setup should be the same, like i really dont know what was wrong with my old setup)

arch WILL be a hassle at some point. in turn you get bleeding edge packages, no bloat, complete customisation, a great learning opportunity, the AUR, and (if properly set up) great performance.

i like arch. i wouldnt use anything else.

If you don’t want to spend your time larping sysadmin I’d recommend one of the uBlue images as Kodi, Retroarch and Steam are available from Flathub. If you want to spend your time keeping your media center alive (and possibly learn something about Linux in the process), go ahead with Arch or any of its derivatives. I use Aurora, btw.

I don’t have much experience with Arch but I did briefly use EndeavorOS in a virtual machine. While I didn’t use it enough to form a proper opinion on it, it did seem pretty good and it’ll probably be what I use if I need an Arch-based distro (which I think I might but I don’t remember what it was I needed Arch for).

EndeavourOS is the way to go, btw.

can someone who runs arch btw on weak hardware, like dual-core U-series i5 and such, tell me how they’re handling AUR and friends? every time I bring that up I get downvotes as if I’m some MICROS~1 agent paid to besmirch arch btw’s good name and whatnot…

the idea that I hafta build and compile shit on a puny dual-core in 2026 is fucking ludicrous to me, never mind the bloat and cruft from all the build tools and deps for every possible stack. so what obvious solution am I missing? like, how do you handle a full system upgrade, say you got like ten things from AUR in addition to regular packages, what does that look like?

Not since the 2022 GRUB incident. Now use Tumbleweed.

For a mediacenter that isn’t on bleeding edge hardware, fedora or Debian would be my choice for stability. Performance will be similar regardless of distro.

I use arch on my desktop and laptop and Debian/Ubuntu on servers.

I prefer plain old arch

💀 Manjarno

I tried it, liked it, bricked my system, and now I enjoy EndeavourOS because it’s simple and easy.

I use plain Arch, but if you are just gonna use it as a media center, use Debian or something like it. A media center doesn’t need to be up to date if you’re just using it for TV and retro gaming. However, how mediocre are we talking? Are you intending to run full steam games or are you planning on streaming them from another computer?

If the latter, I think Debian or even a healthy rPi running RetroPie might be up your alley because you can install Kodi and SteamLink on that.