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)
The real problem: Define beginner distro
Every user is starting from a different point. There is no such thing as a beginner distro. You can say this distro is good for people who can grasp the idea of a command line or this distro is good for people who have no idea command line interfaces exist, but that doesn’t differentiate between beginner friendly or not.
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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.
I never see Fedora recommended enough, but it’s really good for beginners. And by that I mean people new to computers, not just Linux. GNOME is a good looking by default, intuitive to use, simple DE.
it wasn’t my choice but i recently installed Fedora for a beginner. (They made their research, read about different distros and chose Fedora.) It was surprising to see how intuitive everything is. A beginner can indeed start using Fedora with no previous Linux experience.
By “beginner” i mean somebody who used one or some of these: windows, macos, ios and android. It’s especially easy, i think, for tablet users.
GNOME is explicitly what kept me exclusively on Windows for about a decade - and what made me gunshy about Android & iOS. It’s totally impossible to drive anything important, doing anything of value required a DOS prompt and arcane commands that had no relation to their exact counterpart in Windows, and it’s just utterly revolting to me.
Cinnamon is the only DE that made me feel comfortable daily driving Linux.
That’s really interesting, because I’ve had a very different experience. Almost anything I wanted to do could be done through a GUI, which looks pretty.
I’m not sure how Android and iOS relate, they are mobile OSs, and both have their flaws, although some more than others.
To go in reverse order: iOS & Android are related because they’re Linux/UNIX. They’re not CP/M based. As a result, my level of trust and respect are always near-zero.
I’m glad you have a different experience with GNOME, someone ought to. I guess it wouldn’t be the standard if no one could use it.
Android technically uses the Linux kernel, but is not GNU+Linux, and has had all the good parts of Linux taken out. I didn’t know iOS was based on Linux, but it’s even worse than Android, locks you so much into Apple’s services and spending money. Freedom over your device is the point of Linux, and iOS fails at that even more than Android, at least with Android you can install custom ROMs.
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
Because vegan bashing and arch bashing have in common having broadly stupid opinions ;)
My other thought was “obnoxious American tourists,” but the bacon thing sealed it.
I can not agree more not everyone that uses arch is like this but every one of the Linux users that wants to be elitist about their distro runs arch based on how hard it is.
If you want to be low level to learn you run Linux from scratch. If you want bleeding edge you run tumbleweed or debian sid. If you want to run a distro that is only mildly harder to configure than a debian bootstrap install but less hard than running debian or redhat back in the 90s just for bragging rights you run arch.
less hard than running debian or redhat back in the 90s
Zoomers will never know the pain… and the joy and actually getting it installed!
That what makes it so cringe that they want that with arch.
Remember the first time you got a printer working in Linux? Better than sex…
every one of the Linux users that wants to be elitist about their distro runs arch based on how hard it is.
Which always makes me laugh because I use Arch mainly because I’m a lazy ass and want something easy to maintain.
I tired it as well to see what this aur was all about but kinda hated it since it’s so opaque if they wanted to be as hardcore as they say they would build packages by hand and that can be done on any distro.
The package manager way of delivering distro management, updates and upgrades is an archaic and dumb idea. Doomed to fail since inception and the reason Linux never broke the 1% of users in forever. It’s a bad model.
Atomic and immutable distribution of an OS is the preferred and successful model for the average user who wants a PC to be a tool and not a hobby on itself. I don’t think the traditional package manager will ever go away. But there are alternatives now.
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.
And no, it doesn’t run worse
Flatpaks that aren’t official products of the source project sometimes have interesting issues pertaining to their permissions, are harder to set as the handler for files, harder to enable usage of system tools, don’t follow system themes, are harder to start or use from the command line, and yes start slower than native apps.
I like the idea that even stable distros can have latest stuff easily or distros which don’t package a given project. I use a few myself. It is certainly annoying that it ends up teaching people about what dirs they need to share with flatseal, flatseal, desktop files, and the command line for something which is supposed to simplify things.
Kinda feels like less work to use rolling release with a more comprehensive set of packages.
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it’s a good beginner distro because getting thrown into deep water is how one learns to swim.
It’s exactly like getting thrown into the deep end, if you don’t know how to swim you’ll drown. No one learns to swim by getting thrown to the deep end, and you’re more likely to have a bad experience and be discouraged from trying it again.
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it’s a good beginner distro because getting thrown into deep water is how one learns to swim
That’s… not how it works, for distros or for actual swimming. Usually when someone who can’t swim is thrown into deep water, they drown and/or reinstall Windows which is much the same thing.
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But but but SteamOS!
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.
It’s a good beginner distro if you want to stumble, fall, and learn things. It’s not a distro where everything is all good right out the box. For that, maybe try something like Linux Mint Debian Edition or Bazziteos
AMEN!
Fucking hell this is what I’ve been trying to hammer into people for a long time
If I hit my Alex Jones InfoVape™ hard enough I can probably weave a conspiracy theory on how Micro$oft started the “arch btw” meme in order to hurt Linux in the eyes of new users
Veterans will always go back to Debian. It is inevitable.
Thanks! Found Garuda is from this thread! You’re a real one!
