I Use Arch BTW: A Love Letter to Unnecessary Suffering

We need to talk about the guy in your Discord who opens every conversation with “I use Arch btw.”

Not because he’s answering a question. Not because anyone asked. But because his entire personality is now a Linux distribution.

This is about why we do this to ourselves.

The Setup

You know the type. Every developer community has one:

Normal person: “Hey, my React app won’t build”

Arch Guy: “I use Arch btw. Also that wouldn’t happen on i3 with dwm and a tiling window manager I compiled from source.”

Normal person: ”…I’m on a Mac”

Arch Guy: “That’s your first mistake. I wrote my own bootloader.”

No one asked. No one ever asks. But he tells you anyway.

Why Do We Do This?

Here’s the thing about developers: we actively seek out inconvenience.

Normal humans want things to just work.

Developers want things to barely work after 47 Stack Overflow tabs and a weekend of debugging.

Examples:

Using Vim instead of VS Code (because suffering builds character)
Writing your own CSS framework (because Bootstrap is for cowards)
Self-hosting everything (because cloud is too easy)
Compiling from source (because package managers are for normies)
Using Arch Linux (because you hate yourself but with extra steps)

We literally choose the harder path. On purpose. Then brag about it.

The Hierarchy of Suffering

There’s an unspoken ranking system in tech based on how much pain you voluntarily endure:

Level 1 - Normie Tier:

Uses Windows
Installs things with .exe files
Just wants the computer to work
“Why would I read the docs?”

Level 2 - Baby Dev:

Uses Mac
Homebrew install everything
Occasionally uses the terminal
“It just works!”

Level 3 - Linux Curious:

Dual boots Ubuntu
Still uses GUI for most things
Scared of the command line
“I’m basically a power user now”

Level 4 - Terminal Warrior:

Arch with i3wm
Everything is CLI or doesn’t exist
247 browser tabs of wiki articles
“I use Arch btw”

Level 5 - Beyond Sanity:

Gentoo compiled from scratch
Custom kernel
Window manager written in Rust
“GUI is bloat”

Level 6 - Touched Grass (Reverse Prestige):

Back on Mac
Uses VS Code
Ships code instead of configuring dotfiles
“I have a life now”

The Dotfiles Paradox

Let’s talk about dotfiles.

You know what dotfiles are? Configuration files for your terminal, text editor, shell, etc.

You know what developers do with them? Spend hundreds of hours perfecting them.

The cycle:

Discover you can customize your terminal
Spend 2 hours changing the color scheme
Realize other people share their configs
Fall down rabbit hole of “ricing” your setup
Spend entire weekend configuring Vim plugins
Create GitHub repo for your dotfiles
Write 4000-word README nobody will read
Automate the installation process
Never actually code anything
Tell everyone about your setup

Reality check:

Time spent coding: 3 hours Time spent configuring the tools to code: 47 hours Productivity gained: Maybe 2 minutes per day Smugness level: Maximum

The math doesn’t math. But we do it anyway.

The Keyboard Wars

This deserves its own section because it’s peak cringe.

Mechanical keyboards are the Arch Linux of hardware:

Unnecessarily expensive ✓
Requires extensive research ✓
You will tell everyone about it ✓
Objectively worse for the people around you ✓

The progression:

Year 1: “I bought a mechanical keyboard!” Year 2: “Actually, Cherry MX Blues are for casuals. I use Zealios.” Year 3: “I hand-soldered my own split ergo keyboard with custom firmware.” Year 4: “I designed my own switches. QMK is bloat. I wrote my own in Rust.” Year 5: typing sounds like a machine gun everyone in the coffee shop hates you

And you WILL tell people about it. Constantly.

Normal conversation:

“Hey, nice keyboard”

What you should say: “Thanks”

What you actually say:

“Oh this? It’s a custom Lily58 Pro with Kailh Box Jade switches, lubed with Krytox 205g0, featuring custom PBT keycaps I designed in Blender and had manufactured in a small batch run, running QMK firmware I forked and modified to include custom macros for my i3 window manager shortcuts, and the PCB is hot-swappable so I can test different switch combinations, though I mainly stick with tactile switches now because I realized clicky switches are objectively superior despite what linear switch enjoyers will tell you, and actually I’m working on a second build with a 40% layout to really optimize for home row efficiency…”

They’ve already walked away. You’re still talking.

The Actual Cringe Part

Here’s what nobody admits:

We don’t do this for productivity.

We do it because:

Identity - “I use Arch” becomes who you are
Gatekeeping - “You wouldn’t understand, you use VS Code”
Procrastination - Can’t fail at your startup if you’re still configuring Neovim
Belonging - There’s a whole community of fellow sufferers
Dopamine - Fixing config files is easier than solving hard problems

It’s easier to spend 6 hours perfecting your terminal prompt than 6 hours building the thing you’re supposed to be building.

Real talk:

The guy shipping products on a MacBook with default settings is more productive than the guy with the perfect Arch + i3 + tmux + Neovim setup who hasn’t committed code in 3 weeks.

But we don’t talk about that.

The Thing Nobody Says Out Loud

You know what’s really cringe?

Judging other developers for their tools.

Truth:

Windows developers ship products
Mac developers ship products
Linux developers ship products
VS Code users ship products
Vim users… also ship products (eventually, after configuring plugins)

The tool doesn’t matter. The work matters.

But we turned it into a personality trait anyway.

Why This Is Actually Sad

Somewhere along the way, we decided that:

Suffering = Skill
Complexity = Intelligence
Minimalism = Enlightenment
Accessibility = Weakness

We gatekeep our own field. We mock beginners for using “easy” tools. We wear our masochistic tool choices like badges of honor.

And for what?

So we can feel superior in Discord channels? So we can have 3000-star dotfiles repos? So we can correct people who say “Linux” instead of “GNU/Linux”?

The cringe isn’t using Arch.

The cringe is making it your personality.

The Plot Twist

Here’s the secret nobody tells you:

The best developers use whatever the fuck works and ship code.

Jeff Dean probably doesn’t rice his terminal
Linus Torvalds uses Fedora (not even Arch)
John Carmack famously used whatever got the job done
Most successful startup founders use Macs with default settings

The correlation between “time spent on dotfiles” and “actual impact” is zero.

Maybe negative.

What We Should Do Instead

Just… build things?

Like, actually build things instead of:

Spending 40 hours configuring Vim to replicate VS Code functionality
Writing blog posts about your Arch installation process (guilty)
Arguing about init systems
Rewriting your dotfiles in Rust
Telling people you use Arch

Hot take: Use the tools that let you ship, and shut up about it.

The Redemption Arc

Full confession time:

I used to be Arch Guy.

I had the custom i3 setup. The mechanical keyboard. The 4000-line .vimrc. The GitHub repo with installation scripts. The smug superiority.

Then I realized:

I was configuring more than I was creating.

So I switched back to “normie” tools. And you know what happened?

I shipped more code in 2 months than I had in the previous year.

Because I was building instead of configuring.

The Real Lesson

Use Arch if you want. Use Vim if you love it. Build that custom keyboard.

But do it because you like it.

Not because it makes you feel superior. Not because it’s a personality replacement. Not because you need to tell everyone.

And for the love of god, stop opening conversations with “I use Arch btw.”

Nobody asked. Nobody cares. Just ship your code.

Epilogue:

Three people will read this and think “Wow, he really gets it.”

Seventeen people will comment “I use Arch btw” ironically.

And somewhere, an Arch user is already writing a Medium post about why this take is wrong, from their perfectly riced i3 setup, on their custom mechanical keyboard, while their startup idea remains unbuilt.

The cycle continues.

Written in VS Code on a Mac like a goddamn adult.

I use Arch btw. (I don’t.)