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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[–] Petter1@lemm.ee 1 points 5 days ago

Those guys should just role with a Tumbleweed

No scary terminal required

Just do not get scared by YaST

And don’t forget Packman repo

And always use either flatpak or search here to find “single click” file that needs to be double clicked (lol) to install it using YaST

https://software.opensuse.org/packages

[–] kittenzrulz123@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 points 5 days ago (18 children)

Debian is the best distro for newbies, it may require setup and reading some documentation but afterwards you get a stable distro.

[–] orcrist@lemm.ee 1 points 5 days ago

I use Debian on a regular basis and have for years, but I wouldn't recommend it as the starting distro unless I knew that the user would have very ordinary hardware and no special software needs. It's just annoying if you have to learn how to install Chrome, or your wireless drivers, for example.

It's almost simple enough, but not quite, in my view. But if I were helping them get it installed, then after that they would probably be good to go.

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[–] NocturnalMorning@lemmy.world 1 points 5 days ago

Mamma says you're ornery bcz you have all them teeth and no toothbrush.

As someone who wanted to jump in with both feet on my journey to using more than just Windows & mobile OSes, I actually started from Arch. Well, sort of. If you have a beginner who wants to try Linux and actually wants to know the discomfort they'll experience, give them Archbang.

It works on very basic hardware requirements, does very well as a live distro, and was honestly an important step in my personal journey that has ended me up in a place where I keep two systems - one with Windows 10, and a separate computer with Linux Mint.

Obviously, I'm not in the place many people are. But I just wanted to toss in my 2 cents. Arch itself is not for beginners. Archbang can be, especially if you have a user who's open to a live distro and doesn't want to try dual-booting yet (and only has one computer). I think that the project deserves more visibility and support than it gets.

[–] SnailMagnitude@mander.xyz -3 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (2 children)

It's a really simple system meant to 'just work' and provides an idiot sheet you can copy and paste from for those who don't ever want to RTFM

as long as the system isn't doing anything important Arch is great for noobs fucking around, it's high grade spoonfeeding and doing what you are told.

Power users use RHEL, Ubuntu, Gentoo. Governments, armies, tech giants and that kinda stuff, Arch is more for newbies karma farming on r/unixporn for lolz

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[–] dustyData@lemmy.world -4 points 5 days ago (2 children)

The package manager way of delivering distro management, updates and upgrades is an archaic and dumb idea. Doomed to fail since inception and the reason Linux never broke the 1% of users in forever. It's a bad model.

Atomic and immutable distribution of an OS is the preferred and successful model for the average user who wants a PC to be a tool and not a hobby on itself. I don't think the traditional package manager will ever go away. But there are alternatives now.

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[–] accideath@lemmy.world -1 points 5 days ago

Larger downstream distros like manjaro (and steamOS for that matter) can be stable. I wouldn’t call manjaro a beginners distro though, like mint would be (No Linus, there’s no apt in manjaro) but it’s very daily-driveable.

Although, if you’re most people, just stay away from rolling release distros. There’s so little benefit unless you’re running bleeding edge hardware…

If it‘s your first time trying linux, go with mint. It’s stable and almost every tutorial will work for you. If you know your way around a terminal already, the choice is all yours. I personally like Fedora.

[–] seh@lemdro.id 0 points 5 days ago

this guy is so damn right i cant argue. arch isnt hard to use, whats hard is experiencing different things and learning

[–] ethera@lemmy.ml 0 points 5 days ago

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

[–] downhomechunk@midwest.social -3 points 5 days ago (4 children)

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

[–] lordnikon@lemmy.world 1 points 5 days ago (4 children)

I can not agree more not everyone that uses arch is like this but every one of the Linux users that wants to be elitist about their distro runs arch based on how hard it is.

If you want to be low level to learn you run Linux from scratch. If you want bleeding edge you run tumbleweed or debian sid. If you want to run a distro that is only mildly harder to configure than a debian bootstrap install but less hard than running debian or redhat back in the 90s just for bragging rights you run arch.

[–] Nibodhika@lemmy.world 1 points 5 days ago (1 children)

every one of the Linux users that wants to be elitist about their distro runs arch based on how hard it is.

Which always makes me laugh because I use Arch mainly because I'm a lazy ass and want something easy to maintain.

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[–] thatradomguy@lemmy.world 0 points 5 days ago
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