> While Antergos is indeed a separate distribution (but very close to > raw Arch), the Archtect Arch Installer and Arch-Anywhere are not > distributions, they are just installers for Arch. So to give you some background why you get the hostility, here's some things I've experienced from the frontlines of Arch Linux support (I am vodik on #archlinux irc channel). Here's the thing with installers - what did they install? I don't mean in a rough sense, like it installed Gnome or whatnot, I mean in *detail*. The devil is in the detail. With so many possible combinations of packages to get a working desktop, its important to know what was installed, what came from official repos, what might have come from elsewhere. Now the bridge with derivatives and installers was burned by some of the earlier (and I think mostly now defunct) derivatives. You had distros claiming to be Arch, nothing more than an installed, but installing packages from AUR by default. What did that mean? Tons of technical support questions asking why package foo broke on upgrade. Why did pkg foo break? Because it never was in the official repos and therefore sitting unmaintained on user's machines. And the user **didn't know**. I'm all for taking advantage of the AUR, but it should be informed decision, not something someone makes for you (and we don't even officially support the AUR to boot). The most pointed example was ArchBang (I think) shipping cairo-ubuntu from AUR by default. After a particular cario update where every other package that depended on cario had to be rebuild, ArchBang installs broke, because it was stuck on the old version. Why was this a support nightmare? Because so many users jumped into #archlinux, complaining about their broken Arch Linux install, and it wasn't our fault. Because those users **didn't know** that package was on their system, not getting updates, and didn't realize it wasn't our fault. And because they didn't know, it was bigger a struggle to initially debug. > And I do believe there are quite a few friendly, helpful people in the > Arch community that will be happy to help, without questioning the > pedigree of the user's installation. Its not a matter of pedigree, its a matter of having informed users. If your users are aware of every detail the installer performs, and that this installer doesn't do anything funny or anything outside of official packages, your users will be fine getting Arch Linux support. Nobody will be the wiser - but that's the important detail. But we do have to make it clear that we won't **officially** support anything installed outside of the officially sanctions instructions. I don't see that as unreasonable.
