When I say arch I mean the arch distro and all of its offspring.

Endeavouros

Arch-gui

Manjaro

Artix --maybe not though

My first enjoyable distro was manjaro, the manjaro element less so but using arch clicked for me. But even so if my first experience was using arch and archinstall then yes its not the easiest but its also not that difficult, arch is treated like a boss battle in darksouls.

So when a pre configured GUI arch is recommend I would like to see less scar mongering.

    • squid_slime@lemmy.worldOP
      0·
      9 months ago

      I struggle to understand what wouldn’t work, if I was to download a pre configed GUI arch iso, load it up on my PC I’d be met with plasma/gnome/or any other wm/dm and would most likely have working networking, a GUI application installer and a browser…

      • d3Xt3r@lemmy.nzM
        1·
        9 months ago

        I’ve been an Arch user for over a decade, and I wouldn’t recommend it for newbies. It’s not about the installation, in fact, installation is the easy part now, what with the official install script, pre-configured dot files, and the likes of EndeavourOS etc which provide a friendly GUI installer; the problem isn’t installing Arch, it’s what comes after.

        For starters, because you’ve cheated and skipped installing the hard way aka “the arch way”, you know little to nothing about how your system is setup and works, particularly around the bootloader, what goes into your initramfs, the DM config, and most importantly: how to deal with pacman issues. pacman isn’t exactly newbie friendly:

        • You’ll need to know how to deal with pacnew files and merge new parameters into your existing config files
        • Ocassionally you’ll run into issues like the PGP signature not being accepted (which requires a manual import), or issues where you may need to update the keyring and pacman first before you upgrade anything else, or there may be a dependency issue where you may need to hold or rollback a package etc.

        Obviously, none of the above requires you to have a rocket scientist-level IQ to figure it out, a couple of Google searches or the Arch wiki can sort you out - but the point is, it shows that you need to have some basic understanding of your OS internals, package mangement, and most importantly you’ll need to be comfortable with using the terminal and CLI apps.

        As a seasoned Linux user, the terminal is home for many of us, but believe it or not, it actually scares away many newbies - and pushing Arch onto these newbies only perpetrates the misconception that you have to use the terminal and punch in some hackerman™ style commands to use Linux. And we know that’s NOT the experience at all with actual newbie friendly distros such as Zorin, Pop!_OS, Elementary etc, where you don’t need to touch the terminal at all, you don’t need to babysit the package manager or know any special commands or OS internals.

        So please, please do not recommend Arch or any Arch-derivatives to newbies: you’d be doing them a massive disservice and potentially put them off Linux forever. Unless of course, you know that person well, and you know for a fact that they’re tech savvy and won’t shy away from using the terminal and getting their hands dirty.

      • NaN@lemmy.sdf.orgEnglish
        1·
        9 months ago

        Yeah, no. Search the Arch Linux News for “manual intervention”. Once that list is zero except for an unintended bug, you’ll be closer. The newbie friendly distros include significant scripting to avoid those situations. Arch is not a “just hit update” distro.