A simple, lightweight distribution

You've reached the website for Arch Linux, a lightweight and flexible Linux® distribution that tries to Keep It Simple.

Currently we have official packages optimized for the x86-64 architecture. We complement our official package sets with a community-operated package repository that grows in size and quality each and every day.

Our strong community is diverse and helpful, and we pride ourselves on the range of skillsets and uses for Arch that stem from it. Please check out our forums and mailing lists to get your feet wet. Also glance through our wiki if you want to learn more about Arch.

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Latest News

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Incoming changes in JDK / JRE 21 packages may require manual intervention

2023-11-02

We are introducing a change in JDK/JRE packages of our distro. This is triggered from the way a JRE is build in modern versions of Java (>9). We are introducing this change in Java 21.

To sum it up instead of having JDK and JRE packages coexist in the same system we will be making them conflict. The JDK variant package includes the runtime environment to execute Java applications so if one needs compilation and runtime of Java they need only the JDK package in the future. If, on the other hand, they need just runtime of Java then JRE (or jre-headless) will work.

This will (potentially) require a manual user action during upgrade:

  • If you have both JDK and JRE installed you can manually install the JDK with pacman -Sy jdk-openjdk && pacman -Su and this removes the JRE related packages.
  • If you have both JRE and JRE-headless you will need to choose one of them and install it manually since they would conflict each other now.
  • If you only have one of the JDK/JRE/JRE-headless pacman should resolve dependencies normally and no action is needed.

At the moment this is only valid for the upcoming JDK 21 release.

Changes to default password hashing algorithm and umask settings

2023-09-22

With shadow >= 4.14.0, Arch Linux's default password hashing algorithm changed from SHA512 to yescrypt.

Furthermore, the umask settings are now configured in /etc/login.defs instead of /etc/profile.

This should not require any manual intervention.

Reasons for Yescrypt

The password-based key derivation function (KDF) and password hashing scheme yescrypt has been chosen due to its adoption (readily available in libxcrypt, which is used by pam) and its stronger resilience towards password cracking attempts over SHA512.

Although the winner of the Password Hashing Competition has been argon2, this algorithm is not yet available in libxcrypt …

ansible-core >= 2.15.3-1 update may require manual intervention

2023-08-19

As of ansible-core 2.15.3, upstream moved documentation and examples to a separate dedicated repository (see the related changelogs).
This means that, starting from version 2.15.3 the ansible-core package will stop shipping documentation and a default configuration example under /etc/ansible/ansible.cfg.

Regarding the documentation, it is available online: https://docs.ansible.com/
As for the configuration file, as explained in the wiki, a base config can be generated with the following command:

ansible-config init --disabled > ansible.cfg

After updating from ansible-core <= 2.15.2-1 to >= 2.15.3-1, everyone using a custom global Ansible configuration file stored under /etc/ansible/ansible.cfg will have their …

budgie-desktop >= 10.7.2-6 update requires manual intervention

2023-08-11

When upgrading from budgie-desktop 10.7.2-5 to 10.7.2-6, the package mutter43 must be replaced with magpie-wm, which currently depends on mutter. As mutter43 conflicts with mutter, manual intervention is required to complete the upgrade.

First remove mutter43, then immediately perform the upgrade. Do not relog or reboot between these steps.

pacman -Rdd mutter43

pacman -Syu

TeX Live package reorganization

2023-06-18

Starting from version 2023.66594-9, TeX Live packages have been reorganized to mirror upstream collections. Even though the new texlive-basic replaces the old texlive-core, many of the texlive-core contents (including language specific files) are now split between different packages. To find out which Arch package contains a specific CTAN package, you can use the tlmgr utility, eg.

$ tlmgr info euler | grep collection
collection:  collection-latexrecommended

which means the euler CTAN package is contained in texlive-latexrecommended. You may also use pacman -F to query for specific files.

A new metapackage texlive-meta is available to install all subpackages (except for …

Older News

2023-06-14
OpenBLAS >= 0.3.23-2 update requires manual intervention
2023-05-21
Git migration completed
2023-05-15
Git migration announcement
2023-02-12
Switch to the base-devel meta package requires manual intervention
2023-01-13
PHP 8.2 update and introduction of legacy branch
2023-01-12
In memory of Jonathon Fernyhough
2022-09-23
Removing python2 from the repositories
2022-09-16
Arch Linux mailing list changes
2022-08-30
Grub bootloader upgrade and configuration incompatibilities
2022-07-14
wxWidgets 3.2 update may need manual intervention

Recent Updates (more)

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cargo-shuttle 0.34.1-1 x86_64
rclone 1.65.0-1 x86_64
pwru 1.0.4-1 x86_64
linux-hardened 6.5.13.hardened1-1 x86_64
gopls 0.14.2-1 x86_64
go-tools 4:0.16.0-1 x86_64
fzf 0.44.1-1 x86_64
delve 1.21.2-1 x86_64
cilium-cli 0.15.16-1 x86_64
powerdevil 5.90.0-2 x86_64
plasma-desktop 5.90.0-2 x86_64
rio 0.0.28-1 x86_64
libksysguard 5.90.0-2 x86_64
onefetch 2.19.0-1 x86_64
plasma-activities-stats 5.90.0-2 x86_64