Arch's efficient package manager and rolling release format are attractive to many Linux users – including users who are not so inspired by Arch's minimalist hacker aesthetic. Several derivative projects have started with the Arch code base and modified it in various ways. The Arch Linux project currently lists over 30 active derivatives in its Wiki [1]. The list is divided into distributions that directly use Arch, and those that only use parts, such those that use the Pacman package management system but also maintain their own package archives. Some offshoots address specific tasks, such as UBOS, which is aimed at users who want to build devices for the Internet of Things.

This article takes a close look at five Arch derivatives and considers how close they stay to the original. In addition to better-known candidates such as Antergos [2] and Manjaro [3], I'll also look at the newcomer Apricity OS [4], the minimalist ArchBang [5], and the KDE distribution Chakra [6]. All these distributions benefit from Arch's extremely extensive documentation.

Antergos

Antergos was first launched in 2012 under the name Cinnarch, so named because a developer (from Galicia) used Cinnamon as the desktop environment. Later, the developers switched to Gnome and changed the name of the distribution to Antergos. Like Arch Linux, Antergos works on a rolling-release principle and mainly uses Arch sources in addition to some of its own repositories.

[...]