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)

  • ReallyZen@lemmy.ml
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    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)

    • Nibodhika@lemmy.world
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      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.

    • Programmer Belch@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      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

        • schizo@forum.uncomfortable.business
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          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.

    • Blue_Morpho@lemmy.world
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      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.

      • umbrella@lemmy.ml
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        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.

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      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.

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    I never saw what was so hard about arch. But not doing anything weird so maybe I missed all the bad stuff? Wiki is nice.

    Nixos, now there’s a distro for beginners, lol.

    • TMP_NKcYUEoM7kXg4qYe@lemmy.world
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      People want to switch from baguettes to bread. So they get flour, water, yeast and salt and are asked to bake their own bread. “I never saw what was so hard about baking bread, the seller says.” Well the issue is not the difficulty of baking bread. They simply don’t want to spend time baking bread. They are used to going to the store to buy an already baked baguette.

      • pr06lefs@lemmy.ml
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        then someone comes along with a bread making robot. so convenient! unfortunately the documentation is on a 300 foot long paper scroll.

  • Eyedust@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    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.

    • oo1@lemmings.world
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      I agree, there’s a lot of people in this thread who seem to know exactly what is good or bad for a new user. But I don’t see many being sensitive to what the user might actually want to achieve. New users are not a homogeneous group.

      If the user wants to both use (stably) and learn (break stuff) simultaneously, I’d suggest that they start on debian but have a second disk for a dual boot / experimentation. I don’t really use qemu much but maybe that’s a good alternative these days. But within that I’d say set them self the challenge of getting a working arch install from scrath - following the wiki. Not from the script or endeavourOS - I think those are for 4th/5th install arch users.

      I find it hard to believe that I’d have learned as much if ubuntu was available when I started. But I did dual boot various things with DOS / windows for years - which gave something stable, plus more of a sandbox.

      I think the only universal recommedation for. any user, any distro, is “figure ourt a decent backup policy, then try to stick to it”. If that means buy a cheap used backup pc, or raspberry pi and set it up for any tasks you depend on, then do that. and I’d probably pick debian on that system.

  • cavemeat@beehaw.org
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    Tbh I think endeavor os is a pretty nice beginner way to get into arch–it was my introduction to arch and the aur.

  • ethera@lemmy.ml
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    Arch is good but tbh if you arent prepared for having to keep everything up to date and if ur a beginner in general u are not gonna have a good time

  • despaircode@lemmy.ml
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    That depends on what the beginner’s goal is. Arch could very well be a nice beginner distro, as could Gentoo or Slackware or any other “hard” distro if you’re determined to learn. My baptism of fire was on Slackware in the 90s (which I’m still on), long before “beginner distros”. Trying and failing was a big part of the fun. If you’re determined to learn, I don’t see any issue with starting with a distro that doesn’t hold your hand.

  • purplemeowanon@lemmy.ml
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    it’s a good beginner distro because getting thrown into deep water is how one learns to swim. archinstall makes it easy enough to install. some configuration may be needed, but that’s the point of Arch as a learning process! still, i’d recommend Fedora, Tumbleweed, or even Debian (it’s out of date but some people prefer UIs that don’t change very often and it still offers 32-bit for your grandpa and his old laptop that’s now too slow for Windows 10/11) over Arch.

    Arch is good for beginner sysadmins/programmers/CS students. Fedora and Tumbleweed for enthusiasts who want the latest software but aren’t trying to be that hardcore. Debian for people who have old laptops and only want to learn GNOME/XFCE once and never have to re-learn it with every update.

    Gentoo is a good example of a distro that’s absolutely not for beginners. Arch, on the other hand, really isn’t all that bad.

    • Nibodhika@lemmy.world
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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.

      • purplemeowanon@lemmy.ml
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        For people who are beginners when it comes to computers in general, yeah. But for people who are new to GNU/Linux but experienced with CS/math, it’ll really not be that hard to run archinstall and configure from there. It’s not that different than many other distros, which also have an installer and then post-install configuration to contend with. I’d just argue arch has newer packages and better documentation which some beginners (in the sense they’re coming from macOS/Windows but know how basic software concepts) might appreciate.

    • zurohki@aussie.zone
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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.

      • purplemeowanon@lemmy.ml
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        I don’t think archinstall is drowning sysadmins/programmers/CS students. What it will do is teach them to swim.

  • Aatube@kbin.melroy.org
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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.

    Is Arch only for people who know how to seek help? Maybe. But it absolutely is not a distro template. It’s a distro.

    • dx1@lemmy.ml
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      A package manager + some packages in the base system maybe, is basically a distro template. And maybe some kernel tweaks, or a built-in DE/WM. Or opinionated init system maybe.

      • Aatube@kbin.melroy.org
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        There are so many more aspects of Arch that you conveniently ignored. The filesystem hierarchy, the special compilation arguments options tweaks and configuration for e.g. dynamic linking, and how Arch has way more packages than just “some packages in the base system”. And no, I don’t mean the AUR. Arch is no less of a distro than any other distro. What is a distro if not a large swathe of packages meticulously tweaked to interop gloriously?

        • dx1@lemmy.ml
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          “Conveniently?” I’m not making a case against Arch. I’m literally using an Arch derivative. Just not trying to sit here listing every single customization they ever made. Chill the fuck out.

            • dx1@lemmy.ml
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              Cause there’s like six other distros based on it. The point is that a package manager especially is a huge part of what differentiates the general experience of using a distro, and how a derivative distro works. And sure, lots of other details. Something like Manjaro, Artix etc. is basically cut from Arch as a template, often incorporating upstream changes or packages, with downstream changes based on differences of opinion.

              • Aatube@kbin.melroy.org
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                Ubuntu has over 100 forks. Is Ubuntu a distro template? Something being forkable merely means that it is libre software.

                • dx1@lemmy.ml
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                  I don’t think this is a well-defined term, so not much point in arguing about its definition.

  • eayavas@lemmy.ml
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    What kind of beginning you mean? If you start to learn linux than use Arch or Archman specifically. If you just want to use Linux as desktop go other alternatives.

  • dx1@lemmy.ml
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    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).