Please don't post shallow dismissals on HN. We're aiming for a higher standard of discussion here. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

The analogy they weren't making: "This is life critical, just like Arch Linux"

The analogy they were making: "This is a commonly home-built and heavily customized hacker aircraft, just like Arch Linux is a commonly home-built and heavily customized hacker Linux distro"

Two things can be analogous in one aspect while being disanalogous in another aspect. That doesn't make the analogy invalid.

General aviation (and especially experimental light aircraft) is not a particularly safe hobby. This pilot literally put his life in the hands of a 3D printed part someone sold him at an airshow. Pilots can and do "brick" their planes as a result of "innovative" approaches to repairs, upgrades, and maintenance. Luckily, much of the time these errors are caught before the plane gets off the ground.

Guy, the person who bet his life on a part with questionable quality is a moron. People who choose an OS are not betting their life on their OS booting up. Do you not grasp the difference in stakes?

I don't think anyone is struggling with grasping the difference in stakes. The stakes are different, the size and shape are different, there are a lot of things different.

You don't make analogies out of things that are the same, that's one of the hallmarks of an analogy.

mort96 explained my analogy better than I could. Obviously your OS and your plane are not equally risky choices. Regardless, there exist communities of people who like to heavily customize either of those things.

Clearly you have a boring life. Dial it up a bit!