Arch is aimed at people who know their shit so they can build their own distro based on how they imagine their distro to be. It is not a good distro for beginners and non power users, no matter how often you try to make your own repository, and how many GUI installers you make for it. There’s a good reason why there is no GUI installer in arch (aside from being able to load it into ram). That being that to use Arch, you need to have a basic understanding of the terminal. It is in no way hard to boot arch and type in archinstall. However, if you don’t even know how to do that, your experience in whatever distro, no matter how arch based it is or not, will only last until you have a dependency error or some utter and total Arch bullshit® happens on your system and you have to run to the forums because you don’t understand how a wiki works.
You want a bleeding edge distro? Use goddamn Opensuse Tumbleweed for all I care, it is on par with arch, and it has none of the arch stuff.
You have this one package that is only available on arch repos? Use goddamn flatpak and stop crying about flatpak being bloated, you probably don’t even know what bloat means if you can’t set up arch. And no, it dosent run worse. Those 0,0001 seconds don’t matter.
You really want arch so you can be cool? Read the goddamn 50 page install guide and set it up, then we’ll talk about those arch forks.
(Also, most arch forks that don’t use arch repos break the aur, so you don’t even have the one thing you want from arch)
Any windows power user or dev on a mac can follow a wiki, read a bit and learn.
Good for beginners? I didn’t describe a beginner right here. Anybody with experience in computing will find arch straightforward and satisfying. Heck, a CS student would probably go through a first install process faster than I do after 5 years.
What are the concept involved? Partitioning, networking, booting… These are all familiar fields to tons of very normal computer users.
Arch can be a good first distro to anyone who knows what a computer is doing (or is willing to learn)
Meanwhile random people just using SteamOS and being happy.
Android looks at SteamOS from the distance
This post is a little cringe. Endeavor OS is a great Arch Experience for those who want a little preconfiguration and a GUI install. I’ve since moved onto doing it the arch way, but EOS was a great foot in the door and I know for a fact I’m not alone. Ive learned more about Linux in 2 years going from EOS to Arch (and running a proxmox server) than I would have running some “beginner friendly” distro. Really wish folks would stop gatekeeping.
EOS btw.
I had arch, it never broke on me for no reason. Sometimes the pacman wouldn’t update because of some weird keyring issue, but that was about it. Then my Logitech mouse randomly stopped working and I tried everything. Then I hopped distros to see if it worked better and that didn’t help. Now I’m on opensuse
“I didnt read the changelogs”
I have never read the changelogs and I have never broken my EOS install ever.
Weak bait.
I watched a 9 year old install a fully working version of Arch with no GUI…
I think you’re just making it harder than it has to be… lol
EDIT: Or maybe she’s 10? Not sure. But either 9 or 10.
Installing is just following directions. It’s maintaining it after you Frankenstein the hell out of it that most new users struggle with
I would, however, recommend Arch if you’re a Linux novice looking to learn about Linux in a more accelerated pace.
Or Void Linux.
are there any good tutorials or something for void. I’m very interested because the name is cool but haven’t found a good resource for learning.
I’m very interested because the name is cool
Lol I love the honesty
For novices Void is worse because it does not have the Arch wiki. The Void Docs are brief and you will inevitably end up reading the Arch wiki anyways, except you will run into Runit specific bs.
Runit specific bs? You mean being simple and sane? lol And yes reading documentation is true for both. Also be aware of context.
Not talking about the quality of the software. I mean that some guide on Arch wiki will not work because some software expects systemd or the guide is just more difficult to follow with a system using runit. My point is that a new user does not have “the context”, so for a new user Void is a worse way to learn linux quickly than Arch or honestly even Gentoo. Even Gentoo has its own wiki so it’s likely that if an Arch wiki guide does not work for you, you will likely find the Gentoo specific detail on their wiki. You don’t have such luxury with Void.
On the contrary, I’d still argue it’s a good distro for beginners, but not for newbies. people who are tech-sawy and not hesitant to learn new things.
I jumped straight into EndeavorOS when I switched to Linux, since arch was praised as the distro for developers, for reasons.
Sure, I had some issues to fight with, but it taught me about all the components (and their alternatives) that are involved in a distro.
So, once you have a problem and ask for help, the first questions are sorts of “what DE/WM do you use?.. is it X11 or wayland? are you using alsa or pipewire?”.
Windows refugees (like me) take so many things for granted, that I think this kind of approach really helps in understanding how things work under the hood. And the Arch-wiki is just a godsend for thst matter. And let’s be real, you rarely look into Arch-wiki for distros other than Arch itself, since they mostly work OOTB.
The Arch-wiki was my main reason for switching to arch. When I used an ubuntu based distro I felt like I had to rely on forum posts to figure out anything whereas with arch everything is documented incredibly well
True, between arch and gentoo wiki you can hardly find any other information that is worth your while.
I mean, Manjaro wasthe first distro I truly used regularly.
But I’m no stranger to command lines, so there’s that.
I was one of the lucky users who used Manjaro on my old laptop for over a year and never had any real problems.
I was very confused when I started getting more involved in the Linux community and kept hearing about how terrible Manjaro was.
For me, vanilla Fedora has actually been the most consistently problematic distro. I’ve had more random issues getting it set up and working properly than any other distro.
God bless Mint though, it has been basically flawless for years.
Man, I’m just glad to finally see someone else saying they have issues with Fedora. Everyone seems to think it’s amazing and stable but it never lasts more than a few months for me. I don’t do any tinkering or hacking or anything, just web browsing, Python coding, some light gaming with Steam. Arch and Debian both hold up great for me doing the same stuff.
Yeah, ironically Arch overall has been more stable for me than Fedora lol.
Debian of course is amazing.
I think that one’s experience with Manjaro is often heavily dependent on how many AUR packages one has installed. Were you using many AUR packages?
Manjaro was my first distro for a year and it was fine. The occasional AUR dependency blockage was irritating for me but did not break anything.
Good point, I only a had a few AUR packages installed, so that probably made things more stable.
What are people doing that breaks their computers? I have used arch for like 15 years now and nothing ever goes wrong?
The closest would be on my desktop sometimes nvidia drivers are in a state that breaks display reinit on wake from sleep but my thinkpad is always fine.
Seriously who are you weird computer vandals going around and breaking everything all the time? What do you do?
Timeshift has turned my system breaking updates and tinkering into a non-issue. I just set up all my systems with it right off the bat. One snapshot per day, one weekly, and one monthly.
Since doing that, I’ve never had to toss a totally borked install.
I really need to set it up, not because I have issues but because having backups feels so nice.
Arch users are the sanctimonious vegans of the linux world. Bacon is delicious, and you are not special.
Damn why did you have to bring vegans into this lol
