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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[–] chaoticnumber@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 points 4 days ago (1 children)

What the fuck are you on about? Jesus christ, we get ragebait in here too now?

Know your usecases. Thats it. Linux isn't hard if you do.

But no, let me recommend the jet engine service manual to my 6 year old that is learning to read. You're going to have a bad time.

For the record, since this post and most comments irked me, arch is fine. I'm using arch on my workstation/personal rig for years. Fedora on the laptop because I need a stable work thing. Alpine VMs on the homelab because it needs light and stable.

USECASES!

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[–] pr06lefs@lemmy.ml 7 points 4 days ago (3 children)

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.

[–] CarbonBasedNPU@lemm.ee 4 points 4 days ago

NixOS is theoretically great but fucking hell they need better docs.

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[–] major_jellyfish@lemmy.ca 7 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (2 children)

People are recommending arch to beginners? This is genuinely the first time i hear of this trend and Ive been into linux for over 20 years now.

Not once have I heard arch pushed to beginners at my local LUG or any LUG ive attended in other cities or countries.

People usually recommended Ubuntu in the past or Mint. Occasionally Fedora. Then Elementary had some steam. Nowadays the landscape is much more diverse I think.

Maybe there is some folks on the internet who get a kick out of recommending hard things to people who need easy things. To gatekeep and create an exclusive feel. But i think if youre seeing that regularly then you need to reasses where youre spending time. Because core Linux culture has never been that since i can remember. We have always embraced that different distros are appropriate for different use cases. And that has always been our strength.

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[–] Yppm@lemy.lol 2 points 3 days ago (2 children)

Used to have Slackware as a daily driver in 2005ish, will arch be similar or more difficult?

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[–] GravitySpoiled@lemmy.ml 5 points 4 days ago (2 children)

It's the best beginner distro for those beginners who want to learn about linux.

[–] oo1@lemmings.world 4 points 4 days ago

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.

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[–] qjkxbmwvz@startrek.website 5 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (4 children)

If your distro can't be forked into a "beginner distro" then it's fundamentally flawed IMHO.

To be clear, I've used Arch as my daily drivers for a while, and while it's not the best fit for my needs (I use Debian mostly), there's nothing that I experienced that was incompatible with a "beginner" distro.

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