Wierd defaults (ipv6, gpu_mem)

[gdkags]

Hello fellow Archers,

I recently got some RPis and almost immediatly put arch on them.

Now, after several annoying config errors I do have a question:
Why does Arch ARM not honor the "Arch Way"?

I do remember Arch as a distro that comes with sane config files that do state the default settings, but are commented out.
That does not seem to be the same with ARM.

First minor annoyance was when I put gpu_mem on the top of the config.txt, only to find out an hour later that it already is configured with the defaults _not_ commented out and overriding my config.
Now I came to the realization, that ipv6 is disabled via kernel line.

Are there any reasons for those two choices?
Are there more pitfalls in place that I should know of?

[WarheadsSE]

Memory: something has to be provided. In this case, defaults are what come shipping by default.
IPv6: IIRC, at some point there was a reason for this. Kernel? Network sucking?

[pepedog]

IPV6 goes back 2 1/2 years, so many routers had problems with it.
gpu memory is more recent, I think there was an .install script with firmware-raspberrypi for awhile, putting in sane values so it would boot.
The only other things are fstab customised, a few services enabled (many are devices are headless needing ssh, network, time)

The biggest gripe with raspberry pi is hardware/firmware changes, no one lets us know, I'm not trawling all of their forum messages, or commit messages, or twitter feeds. How hard would it be to message the handful of maintainers when something important happens?

Anyway, back to the OP question, it was historic to make things work
And you mean weird defaults btw