Disclaimer: auto generated YouTube subtitles for Arabic video from arch user.

English Transcript: “دونكم… صرخة Arch Linux” (Arch Linux Cry)

Video: Watch here

Wait, all of you, wait. Let me stand among you for a moment, as one who only means to advise.

Word has reached me that many of you now ride upon gentle, obedient distributions — ones that lead their user by the hand like a toddler taking his first steps.

You call them by soft, friendly names, but in truth they are nothing but gilded chains, shackles dressed in every color of the rainbow — the one who wears them believes himself free, when in fact he is a prisoner to someone else’s will.

As for me and my brothers and sisters of Arch, we chose a rough, unpaved path — one no guide leads and no one smooths. We walk it barefoot across the gravel of the terminal, unafraid, unshaken, because we believe dignity is only earned by carrying the weight of your own choices.

Know this, all who ask: this system was not built to please the newcomer, nor designed to coddle the beginner’s hand.

It was built on a principle they call “Keep It Simple, Stupid,” and to us, that is not stupidity at all — it is honesty itself, truth in its purest form.

The system hides nothing from you, decides nothing on your behalf. It places every thread of your fate in your hands. Weave it well, and you tailor yourself a garment unlike any other, weave it poorly, and blame no one but the hand that pulled the thread.

As for the cries you hear when someone’s system collapses after one update — to us that is no flaw, it is a trial that separates the sincere from the pretender, the steady from the shaken.

Whoever stands firm after a broken update, and rebuilds their system with their own hands from the rubble, reaches a rank no one confined to a distro that guards them from all harm — like a mother guards her infant — will ever reach.

And know that we do not stand alone in this arena. Behind us lies a treasury like no other, known as the Arch User Repository, holding programs you’ll find nowhere else.

Gathered by the devoted, by hand, as volunteer labor — imposed by no ruler, granted by no guardian, whenever you wish to install something rare, you reach into that vault and take what pleases you, asking permission of no one.

And we have a phrase for this, one we raise like a banner, one we hold like a creed: “I use Arch, by the way,” and this is not the empty boast the ignorant take it for, it is a declaration — testimony that we carried the full weight of our choice ourselves, we do not cast it upon a developer, nor a repository, we, and only we, are the captains of our ship, and the captains of its wreck, should it sink.

So to those who believe the easy road is the safe one, know that ease can sometimes disguise hidden ignorance, and whoever hands the reins of their decisions to another forfeits forever the chance to know their own system with certainty, for the one who is led never knows the road as well as the one who carves it themselves.

And to you who mock Arch for its difficulty, listen: difficulty is not a flaw to be hidden, it is a sieve that separates. Whoever passes through it is never the same again, they become the true owner of their system, not a tenant in it, not a passing guest.

So whoever seeks comfort, let them go where comfort lives, and we will not blame them, to each their own choice.

But whoever wishes to know their computer as an equal, to converse with it directly, without mediation, let them draw near to us, and walk the rough road with us, and know that every line they write with their own hand is a new thread in a garment no one will ever weave for them.

That is all I wished to say. I am not the owner of this video. I am merely the echo of the cry of everyone who once typed pacman -S and felt, for a moment, the world sat between their fingertips.

I Use Arch, BTW. 🗿