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)
Meanwhile random people just using SteamOS and being happy.
yea, but I feel like it’s worth saying that steamdeck (where most of the steamos instances are) runs primarily in steam mode, and runs immutable OS by default so it’s pretty hard to actually mess that up. Plus steam manages most updates for you instead of you managing the updating yourself, which also helps remove the skill factor.
Android looks at SteamOS from the distance
SteamOS falls into the category of about 2 arch forks that have a reason to exist.
Don’t know about Cachy but Endeavour is not even a fork. It’s just Arch with a fancy installer.
And nice gui apps, default settings, nice community and cool branding.
Didn’t both distros have Btrfs auto snapshots. Same as Garuda. Anything broken? Just a reboot, arrow keys, and rollback.
EndeavorOS is not automatic but you can set it up with one terminal command.
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.
This was a big driver for my distro hopping, until I landed on purple Arch. I’ll either go to the blue team or Gentoo or LFS or something if I decide to hop again.
My struggle was that more beginner-friendly distros like mint and Fedora workstations were too beginner-friendly. I struggled to find things to learn because I installed it and had an out-of-the-box windows experience
I struggled to find things to learn because I installed it and had an out-of-the-box windows experience
And that’s a good thing! Non-technically-inclined ppl are wary of instability issues and having to work with the terminal to fix their daily driver. If the OOTB experience is good and the UX is comparable or better than Windows - they will be more likely to stay.
If someone is accepting the fact that shit might go sideways, is willing to learn through experiencing issues first-hand or simply likes to spend time fiddling with their OS to find the perfect setup for them - that should be the Arch- and Arch-derivatives audience.
Agreed! It was a struggle for me and a boon for others.
This is something I run into rather often because I crunch through information. Just skip me to the intermediate course and give me a synopsis of the beginner course and most of the time I’m off to the races
If someone is accepting the fact that shit might go sideways, is willing to learn through experiencing issues first-hand or simply likes to spend time fiddling with their OS to find the perfect setup for them - that should be the Arch- and Arch-derivatives audience.
But once you leave the comfort of your parents house, time is money and no one has a spare twelve hours to get a functional OS together when another distro would do it in minutes.
Absolutely agreed! Arch wiki helps with this as well.
Although Ive been using linux for 2 years now, and i still want an installation manager with sane defaults.
Although Ive been using linux for 2 years now, and i still want an installation manager with sane defaults.
Have you heard about our Lord and Saviour, Debian?
I would, however, recommend Arch if you’re a Linux novice looking to learn about Linux in a more accelerated pace.
I would argue Gentoo is better suited for that. It is just compilation that can take a long time.
Linux From Scratch or Slackware too.
Bit of a different beast. Not something I would daily drive though. Slackware perhaps. But gentoo other then the docs being top notch and the learning experience being fairly streamlined. It is also a good distro for daily use.
Gentoo’s my daily driver.
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 think their documentation is pretty solid, for everything else the reddit/internet searches can solve it. But as with EVERY DISTRO on this planet, the archwiki can be applied! You just need to know what are the differences from void to arch. (no systemd for example)
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.
So basically because Archwiki doesn’t cover runit related stuff (I am not even sure about that) Void is not recommended as distro for learning more about linux. Makes no sense to me sorry.
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
a lot of it applies to other distros though. its a lot of help in a pinch.
True, between arch and gentoo wiki you can hardly find any other information that is worth your while.
“I didnt read the changelogs”
I have never read the changelogs and I have never broken my EOS install ever.
Weak bait.
- Arch users everywhere: You MUST read the Arch news files before updating.
- Also Arch users when updating: Oops, I forgot to read the news file.
- pacman when updating: I have pre install hooks but I don’t print the news files updates by default because that’s probably bloat or something.
Make it make sense
while you do have a point, i’m still having issues with taskwarrior printing it’s update notifications, even after opening an issue and the maintainers patching it.
The thing is, i use arch on 3 different devices, and i don’t need to see every news entry 3 times, so yes in my case having it as default in pacman would indeed be bloat.
That said, there is PLENTY of places where I think arch could have saner defaults. but the beauty of arch is that it is made to be configured exactly the way you like it, so you really can’t fault arch as much in this case, compared to other distros that try to take all decisionmaking away from the user.
You can never be 100% certain the news file didn’t update between the three invocations. If you aren’t refreshing that page between invocations then you aren’t actually using Arch the way it was designed.
well you can never be 100% certain your laptop won’t spontaneously die either.
for any new arch user, i do recommend keeping an archiso live USB around in case something really does happen - since every arch user should know the basics of how it works, it should be easy enough to recover as well.
knowing that, i really only check the news out of curiosity, since i’m not a grub user i haven’t had arch be unbootable since i started using it years ago. even if it did i’m confident enough it’d be a quick fix.
Then I never want to see you telling someone they should’ve checked the news file before updating!
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That was solved in about 10min with a liveusb and replacing grub with systemdboot
Try explaining that to a newbie
I am not a newbie and wouldn’t even know how to do it without using a manual (archwiki)
You would, it’s very very straightforward they made it very simple. I literally walked multiple non-technical users through it when it happened because I have moved some of my friends and family to Linux. I won’t say that it wasn’t tedious and that it wasn’t annoying for them but they got through it just fine
Granted that for most newbies doing archchroot from a live USB is complicated enough to reinstall. In any case, as you said, systemd-boot works fine and it’s the default now in EOS so who cares.
For example a friend of mine decided to reinstall bazzite because he changed his GPU from nvidia to amd, when and uses the default drivers… Yes a simple search in bazzite’s download page shows the three coands that have to be executed to rebase the system to the non nvidia one if you like having extra space but… A full reinstall is crazy.
I stopped using grub after that pain in the ass
I’d just like to vent that these kind of discussions are one of the big turnoffs of the Linux community in general. People speak “in absolutes”.
You either do it this way or you’re a dumbass. You either use the distribution I like or you’re doing it WRONG. You shouldn’t use Arch because you’re not experienced enough, you should use Mint for an arbitrary amount of time before you graduate to the good stuff.
You friends get way too worked up over other people’s personal preferences and push your biased and subjective views as facts.
Is Arch Linux the right fit for a newbie to Linux? The right answer is “it depends”, not “never”. Would I recommend Arch to my mom? No. Would I recommend it to my programmer colleague who already lives in the Powershell? Sure, why not.
Veterans will always go back to Debian. It is inevitable.
Debian is just the carcinization of Linux.
I never liked debian or it’s derivatives, but since moving to Selfhosting most of my services and needing sane defaults on my server (I’m a noob with server stuff) I’ve circled back to LMDE after 20 years of using primarily bleeding edge and DIY distros.
I like it, it’s nice that it’s set and forget and doesn’t need constant attention like my bleeding edge stuff always did.
As a fellow Mint enjoyer who is too fucking old to be fixing their desktop all the time…yes
LMDE is great. I run it on my Thinkpad T14 G1. Runs like a champ, and after installing
tlp, it manages to eke out almost 7 hours of battery life with a questionable battery.I’ll be switching from Windows 10 to LMDE on my desktop gaming PC at some point soon this year. I have no intention of letting Microsoft dictate what I can and can’t do on my custom PC that I built with my own hands. W11 further reduces that capability.
Im like 2 grub breaks away from going back lol
Debian is the stable friend who might not have all the answers at the moment but can help you with whatever you need to do, and does it without ever asking for anything in return.
Debian is love, Debian is life.
I’ve got 25 years of Linux usage under my belt at this point, and I’ve settled on Debian for all PCs, servers, and anything else. Stability is so much more important to me than bleeding edge software, but for those things that absolutely need the latest and greatest, there’s Backports and Flatpak.
I’d rather use windows 7 than ever go back to Debian … something with 7 being the last good version of anything ;)
It makes sense because if you are a veteran, you probably already have your workflow streamlined, so you don’t need new software in the repositories.
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)
just because a given person could make it work, doesnt mean they want to. i can personally fix a lot of these issues, but i dont wanna have to bother. i just want to accomplish the inane bullshit i turned my computer on for.
i just think an arch recommendation should always come with that disclaimer. newbies have to know what to expect else they will associate that experience with linux in general.
Arch was my first distro after going back to Linux. I really liked learning the inner workings of a computer and an OS.
I know plenty of people who just want a plug&play experience with the only input for the install being name, password and date. For them, I would never recommend Arch, simply mint or pop_os would do just fine as the only thing the computer has to do is open up the browser.
I just want more Linux users, not specific distros. In the end if you know your way around Linux, the distro choice doesn’t matter, you just choose a package repo
I agree. There are only two types of distribution, rock solid plug n play and hobbyist/pro .
macOS is my daily driver, but I am a self hosting hobbyist (a bad one) and the moment you become involved with the command line of a multi user operating system, you need a level of skill, curiosity and patience that 99% of people don’t have and don’t want.
Even following ‘beginner’ tutorials is hit or miss, because of the different distros, assumptions, pre requisites, repositories, and so on.
I am a hobbyist, and I don’t mind digging around, but there are several times where I’ve put in a hour or more on what would be a 5 minute job for someone who was fluent - and even then sometimes I’ve got nothing to show for that hour.
Even following ‘beginner’ tutorials is hit or miss
It’s gotten worse than it even used to be, because more than half the “tutorials” I’ve run across are clearly AI written and basically flat out wrong.
Of course, they’re ALSO the “answers” that get pushed by Bing/Google so even if you run into someone who is willing to follow documentation, they’re going to get served worthless slop.
One thing I will give arch is that if there’s a wiki entry for something, it’s at least written by a human and is actually accurate which is more than I’ve found ANYWHERE else.
You’re focusing too much on the installation process, if installing Arch was the whole of the problem things like Endeavor would be a good recommendation for newbies, but they’re not. Arch has one giant flaw when it comes to being beginner friendly, and it’s part of what makes it desirable for lots of us, and that is the bleeding edge rolling release model. As a newcomer you probably want something that works and is stable. Arch is not, and will never be, that, because the core philosophy is to be bleeding edge rolling release. If you’re a newcomer who WANTS to have that and doesn’t mind the learning curve then go ahead, but Linux has enough of a learning curve already, so it’s better to get people started with something they can rely on and afterwards they can move to other stuff that might have different advantages/disadvantages.
We’re talking about the general case here, I’ve recommend Arch to a newcomer in the past, he was very keen on learning and was happy with reading wikis to get there stuff sorted, but realistically most people who’re learning a whole new OS don’t want to ask questions and be told RTFM, and RTFM is core to the Arch philosophy.
The first Linux I used wasn’t part of any distro. A few years later I compiled Slackware to run bind and Sendmail.
Last year I tried Arch in a VM. I got to where it expected me to know what partitions to create for root and swap and noped out. It’s not 1996. I don’t have time for those details any more. No one should. Sane defaults have been in other distros for decades.
Debian welcomes you 💫
one of the main points of arch is for people wanting to learn these details. its not for everyone.
if you want a distro to just work, i second the suggestion from the other dude. get a debian based one.
the wiki could be way better honestly…
Only gets better if we make it better.
that, or having good documentation could be a requirement
FOSS is great but so much if it has just absolute garbage documentation.
Compared to garbage proprietary software documentation? At least if it’s FOSS garbage there are usually other helpful users on random forums.
people who unironically recommend anything arch-based (haha yes steamos is based on arch, yes you’re very very clever, i’m sure you can even figure out why it’s an obvious exception if you think about it for a minute) are just detached from reality and simply want to be part of a group.
The only time arch is suitable for beginners is installing it in a VM to learn linux via brute force, after you’ve gotten used to going through that process you’ll have a very solid base of knowledge for using a more suitable distro.
My first distro was an Arch fork and I moved to vanilla Arch a year later. My problems in that time have been minimal. Personally, I am glad that someone recommended that I use an arch-based distro as a beginner. Mind you, I came in as a modestly computer-literate Windows refugee willing to learn. I think for those types of people it can be appropriate to recommend Arch-based distros.
So, yes, if you are not willing to google a problem, read a wiki, or use the terminal once in a while, Arch or its forks are probably not for you. I would probably not recommend Arch as a distro for someone’s elderly grandparent or someone not comfortable with computers.
That said, I do not know that I agree with the assertion that Arch “breaks all the time,” or that I even understand what “Arch bullshit®” is referring to. This overblown stereotype that Arch is some kind of mythical distro only a step removed from Linux From Scratch has to stop. None of that has been my experience for the last 4 years. Actually, if anything, it is the forks that get dependency issues (looking at you, Manjaro) and vanilla Arch has been really solid for me.
I came in as a modestly computer-literate Windows refugee willing to learn
That’s like 2% of the people who want to switch to Linux
How so? I see plenty of posts by folks who recently switched from Windows, and I imagine the ones who are willing to take that leap in the first place lean towards the more tech-literate side.
“Willing to learn” is more subjective, perhaps, but I do not think my case is that uncommon.
I’d argue the demographic that writes posts about switching their OS is more likely to be happy switching to Arch than most of the people who switch. The way I imagine the average Linux noob is a university student who installed Ubuntu for their coding class.
idk I’m kind of a fucking idiot and I started with Manjaro.
I didn’t start with manjaro, but it was the only one that seemed to play nice with my system and programs out of the five or so I tried. I’ve never had an issue with it after 2 years, so… eh?
The level of disillusion in the thread is insane. At no point in time is it a good idea to recommend Arch and it’s derivatives to Linux newbies. They will 100% wreck their install in the first two weeks. Even I, as a pretty experienced user had to wipe my arch install after failed update attempts, luckily I had a separate home partition. Anything else like fedora or tumbleweed will provide packages that are very up to date, but that are also tested. For example I don’t fear that updating my fedora install will completely brick the networking of my system like what happened to me on arch.
Ironically I wouldn’t recommend any Ubuntu derivatives as for some reason, every single time I’ve installed Ubuntu or one of its variants like PopOS they ended up messed up in some way or another, albeit never as critical as Arch did to me numerous times. Probably some kind of PPA issues that make the system weird because it’s always the fault of PPAs
Mint has worked consistently for me on the PC it’s installed on.
Second this. Am not a huge fan of ubuntu itself and I have had issues with other debian based distros (OMV for example) but mint has always been rock solid and stable on any of my machines. The ultimate beginners distro imo.
Ubuntu or one of its variants
Even Mint? Seems to be the go-to recommendation for newbies.
Never was able to try mint, I only did once but the installer didn’t work for some reason, probably Nvidia related so I don’t blame mint for it.
Honestly, as someone who ran Arch and its derivatives, no one should be running upstream Arch but the testers.
No amount of experience or expertise will save you from breaking it. It WILL break, and you’ll be mocked for that as well by “Arch elitists” who will then face the same issue.
That’s why Linux veterans are rarely using Arch. It’s good for its purpose, it’s very important both for downstream Arch and for the entire Linux community, but it is NOT the distro you should run on your PC.
Go Fedora. Go Debian. Go to the downstream distros if you’re strongly into Arch, take Garuda for example. Make your machine actually work.
What do you define as breaking? I ran arch and cachy and never once had a breaking issue.
Some functionality (menus, networking) working not as expected, random glitches, bugs, instabilities…also, now coming from the experiences of others (wasn’t there at the time), one time even GRUB had an update that broke it on all systems with Arch, forcing many to halt updates. In my eyes, from personal experience and experiences of others, it got a reputation as a quite messy system.
Oh wow yeah I had forgotten about the grub update, the only way to not have a bricked computer was to be active in the arch communities because they didn’t remove the faulty package even though it was known to brick computers
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The GRUB update is why more Arch needs more testers lol. They do have separate repositories for testing, but none of the active testers had the relevant problematic configuration that caused that problem during the testing period, and then it shipped to stable. The package maintainer did configure the package to not include the breaking change that same day, but it doesn’t look like that was ever shipped for some reason.
There’s a good reason why there is no GUI installer in arch (aside from being able to load it into ram).
This is the dumbest conceit of the arch community. I learned Linux using Fedora back when regular usage required more know how than installing arch does and it was enormously helpful to have something you could click and install and THEN learn in a functional environment. Also following the guide isn’t THAT hard its just a waste of effort for a million people to do so.
I’ll tell you, nothing bricks as hard or as irreparably as Windows. I have never had to actually reinstall Linux due to some problem (though it’s a good practice security-wise).
We, long-time users of Linux, all have our opinions based on various preferences. The thing is that a lot of these preferences are pretty technical, like Ubuntu having snaps, Fedora and Mints’ flat pak policies, etc…
For the average user, they will not know what this is or even see a difference between the systems at first. The linux community would do better if we could have a unified front on distro recommendations. People will switch distros as they learn and their curiosity grows.
I think, we should ask people to pick based on their DE preference. If they want something like windows, let them have Mint or Kubuntu, if they want something closer to mac, let them have Ubuntu. I say this as someone who likes Fedora Plasma spin.
Everything else, is just information overload and will give users decision paralysis.
Our goal should be conversion of users. Once our numbers start growing, then things will pickup. Just imagine if we had office and adobe products here. How many people would be able to switch. I still use windows on my work computer as there is a single app holding me back.
