this post was submitted on 17 Feb 2025
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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)

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[–] Eyedust@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 points 3 weeks ago

As a (currently) CachyOS user, I would like to point out that their custom mirrors don't always reflect the newest version of packages, too. So if your package has a bug you may have to wait an extra day or two for it to reflect the fixed version after it drops. That or manually install the git.

Just make love with Timeshift and for the love of god don't use topgrade if you don't know what you're doing. Thankfully, because of rule number one, Timeshift told me the topgrade nightmare was over and tucked me back into bed with a glass of warm milk and a bedtime story.

[–] iriyan@lemmy.ml 4 points 2 weeks ago

A beginner to what, to pacman, to arch, to rolling distro, to linux, to unix, to a PC, to using man-made tools ...

I made an installation to an old pc once, I though it would last a while, and since the users could barely understand what an on/off button does, they just wanted google and facebook, so it was a wm with two browsers, daughter already knew what chrome was, and in the login shell I wrote a script that each new day it booted it attempted pacman -Suy --noconfirm then once a week the cache was emptied and the logs trimmed.

That was before covid, a couple months ago I met her, she said it has been working fine every since.

So there is your dinner

PS Actually it wasn't arch it was artix with runit but that is about the same

[–] Maiq@lemy.lol 4 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (3 children)

I want linux to be as welcoming as possible to everyone and the newbie question of what distro to use will come up a lot. I dont think it's helpful in any way to bicker about why my choice in linux is better. We should be giving them the tools to make the best decision for themselves

What if we built a beginners linux community (Linux, Where Do I Start -> LWDIS) and point to all the distros communities, and on those distro specific communities they had beginner friendly install, setup, rice, maintenance instructions and advice along with a difficulty rating. I don't know if stickies are a thing here but could be helpful in keeping relevant info on top. This could be a place for fanboys to shine on there favorite distro while keeping the basic inclusive LWDIS community free of bickering about distros that might cause confusion and turn people off.

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[–] Hitch42@lemmy.world 3 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

Is there really enough of an epidemic of newbies being recommended Arch to warrant this amount of ire? All I ever hear is how Arch is the “hardcore” distro and beginners should all use Linux Mint.

I’m someone who has only ever poked around with Linux Mint on a thumb drive a few times to see what it’s like and thinking, “Yep. This is a working operating system.” and then going back to Windows because there was never any compelling reason to switch.

But I recently decided to have a dedicated PC with Linux on it and I chose CachyOS because I want to play games. (Yes, I know you can game on other distros.) And I’m… fine. I’m computer literate, I did my research, and I knew that using an Arch-based distros was “being thrown into the deep end.” But I followed the instructions, as well as some advice, and the setup completed without any issues.

I’m using my PC and things “just work.” Apparently I’m just an update away from everything collapsing into smoldering wreckage. If that happens, I’ll try to fix it, and maybe I’ll learn something in the process. If not, I’ll try to keep my files backed up so I can restore things. Or maybe I’ll decide that I hate it and try something else, but… so far so good.

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[–] independantiste@sh.itjust.works 3 points 3 weeks ago (10 children)

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

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[–] reallyzen@lemmy.ml 3 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (10 children)

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)

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

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[–] lambalicious@lemmy.sdf.org 3 points 2 weeks ago

I use Debian ftw.

[–] Swedneck@discuss.tchncs.de 3 points 3 weeks ago

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.

[–] daggermoon@lemmy.world 3 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

idk I'm kind of a fucking idiot and I started with Manjaro.

[–] DaveX64@lemmy.ca 2 points 3 weeks ago

EndeavourOS is the best 💪

[–] Vivendi@lemmy.zip 2 points 3 weeks ago

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

[–] capuccino@lemmy.world 2 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)
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[–] Rega@lemmy.ml 2 points 3 weeks ago (2 children)

Arch is for control freaks, which means it takes a lot of work and patient to get it to work for your specific needs. If you don't have the time and patient for that (which is more then understandable) then you shouldn't use it.

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[–] JOMusic@lemmy.ml 2 points 2 weeks ago

But but but SteamOS!

[–] downhomechunk@midwest.social 2 points 3 weeks ago (6 children)

Arch users are the sanctimonious vegans of the linux world. Bacon is delicious, and you are not special.

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