I love the work of the ArchWiki maintainers

ArchWiki as a cross-distro resource

• Many commenters don’t run Arch but still use the wiki as their primary Linux reference.
• It’s praised for being accurate, rarely misleading, and broadly applicable because Arch sticks close to upstream.
• People report learning “Linux itself” from it, not just Arch, and some even switched to Arch after repeatedly landing on the wiki from other distros.
• It’s frequently used for topics like systemd, CUPS, SANE, networking, sensors, and ACPI regardless of distro.

Documentation style and online man pages

• The wiki is valued for being concise, precise, and extensive without being verbose.
• Arch’s online man pages (man.archlinux.org) are praised as clearer and more user-friendly than other manpage sites.
• There’s frustration that many modern CLI tools ship only --help output instead of proper man pages, despite tools (e.g., help2man, language-specific generators) that can convert help text.
• Several comments note you can install man pages without root via MANPATH / ~/.local/share/man.

Arch’s history and learning culture

• Older users recall a period when pacman -Syu routinely broke systems (e.g., /bin to /usr/bin migration, Python 2→3, early systemd), which forced them to learn quickly and fed the wiki.
• Some nostalgically say “something was lost” when Arch became more stable; others emphasize the entire Linux ecosystem has matured.
• Arch and similar “bleeding edge” distros are seen as absorbing breakage early so mainstream distros can be stable later.

LLMs and the future of documentation

• Concern that LLMs are now the “preferred” first stop, which may reduce human contributions to wikis and forums.
• People note LLMs often give confident but wrong answers, especially for complex system issues.
• There’s anxiety about a potential “knowledge crisis” if public technical writing declines, leading to more centralized, private knowledge bases.
• Several argue that resources like ArchWiki are exactly what made current LLMs good, and that preserving human-written docs is critical.

Comparisons, critiques, and resilience

• ArchWiki is often contrasted favorably with Debian’s and other distros’ wikis; Gentoo’s and BSD docs are cited as strong but narrower or more structured.
• One commenter claims the wiki showcases how “broken” Linux desktops are; others counter that Arch intentionally exposes complexity and is not representative of user-friendly distros.
• Some worry about catastrophic data loss (as reported for the Gentoo Wiki) and hope ArchWiki has robust backups.