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.
Repeat after me: it’s not only about installing, but also about maintaining your system!
Yeah, if you’re not up to the challenge of maintaining your own system, Arch isn’t for you.
I’d agree, but this is true of most distros tbh. Like obviously loads of stuff is gonna break on arch just due to the bleeding edge release cycle, but I had fewer issues running arch than Ubuntu, mainly due to PPAs and snap bullshit
obviously loads of stuff is gonna break on arch just due to the bleeding edge release cycle
I keep reading this as if it was fact, but Arch never broke anything for me in several years.
You do need to do a bit more to maintain it, but IMO it’s less effort than a release upgrade on a versioned distro. And if you automate it you only need to deal with it once.Yeah, like 98% of the times something broke while updating, it was something to do with ZFS, because the ZFS drivers aren’t in the kernel for licensing reasons, and there’s always a specific latest kernel version they’re compatible with that’s 1-2 versions behind current. Also the initramfs would sometimes get rebuilt without ZFS if there was a version mismatch, which prevents the system from booting properly, but it’s Fine because Half the Point of ZFS is snapshots.
Someone using arch in a more sane way than I was would probably have no issues (unless they use proprietary Nvidia drivers, which will VERY occasionally break, but that’s nbd).
I have heard good things about Mabox linux, although it’s based on manjaro.
Alternatively one could also try ‘Arco linux’ it’s pretty good.
@squid_slime but it is a pretty bad experience for them I use it just for hyprland and that’s not what most new users want to see they just want a system that just works
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…
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.
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.
