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submitted 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) by Skullgrid@lemmy.world to c/linuxmemes@lemmy.world

I (struggle to) use arch (in disposable VMs, not my actual machine) btw

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[-] l3mming@lemmy.world 2 points 1 hour ago* (last edited 1 hour ago)

You don't have to be 1337 to install arch, but you do need to be pretty 1337 to keep it running. I use arch btw, but I also use Mint because I don't always have time for Arch's shit.

[-] UninterestingVoid@reddthat.com 1 points 3 hours ago
[-] Skullgrid@lemmy.world 1 points 2 hours ago

Arch has good documentation. Read it and you'll be ok.

[-] Shanmugha@lemmy.world 3 points 10 hours ago

Well, what a fest of dumb elitism and delusional farce in the comments. I need more popcorn and that you deeply for posting this

[-] EuroNutellaMan@sh.itjust.works 1 points 1 hour ago

Tbh gatekeeping Arch by keeping an area of pestilent neckbeards around it is good actually. I mean there's nothing hard or elite about Arch really but newbies should never be exposed to the AUR (see recent events) when they have no clue what they're doing and the risks associated with AUR use.

[-] Skullgrid@lemmy.world 2 points 9 hours ago

I need more popcorn and that you deeply for posting this

buy me a drink first

[-] Shanmugha@lemmy.world 2 points 7 hours ago

It will take some time, as I am preparing to move from one place to another with a few animals. But provided with a way to do it, will do

[-] psion1369@lemmy.world 3 points 13 hours ago

I definitely agree here. But if you want to better learn how the system works, I suggest getting a cheap used laptop and just hammer at installing arch using the install guide, not the installer tool. The tool is nice and all, but you still need to know what is going on under the hood and to understand most of it.

[-] realitaetsverlust@piefed.zip 41 points 1 day ago

You don't actually have to be 1337 to use arch

You don't have to, no. But you should. Not understanding how a system works that you fundamentally completely set up yourself is setting you up for massive failure. That's like using unreal engine and only relying on blueprints without understanding C++.

If you want Arch without knowing shit about arch, there's plenty of distros you can use. Stop trying to be cool. Pick something that fits your use case.

[-] Speiser0@feddit.org 4 points 14 hours ago

That’s like using unreal engine and only relying on blueprints without understanding C++.

I like your comparison in this situation. It's so layman-unfriendly that one can doubt its usefulness. And I'm happy to see that I'm not the only one struggling to find suitable comparisons.

[-] realitaetsverlust@piefed.zip 1 points 10 hours ago

Good news, if you don't understand that comparison, you shouldn't use arch linux.

[-] Speiser0@feddit.org 1 points 1 hour ago

First of all, I disagree, kind of. You don't need to know about unreal engine specifics to use arch. On the other hand, I can guess what blueprints are without knowing unreal (therefore I only disagree kind of). On the 2nd other hand, if they're able and motivated to read up what you mean, they're likely able to use arch.

Second of all, it's not really good news, because if they don't understand the comparison, they will not understand what you told them and therefore just ignore it. A warning in a language that you don't understand will not stop you.

[-] Skullgrid@lemmy.world 1 points 9 hours ago

Someone tries to reach out and find common ground with you

FUCK YOU , YOU'RE NOT MY REAL DAD

[-] rozodru@piefed.world 44 points 1 day ago

You don’t actually have to be 1337 to use arch

Omarchy users in shambles right now. oh who am I kidding, they can't read.

[-] richardisaguy@lemmy.world 9 points 14 hours ago* (last edited 14 hours ago)

There are 10 users on omarchy right now, 3 of them are very pissed at you. The other 7 are AI agents so they don't care.

[-] zebidiah@lemmy.ca 1 points 2 hours ago

That's a really insightful observation, and you're right to push back....

[-] esc@piefed.social 16 points 1 day ago

Installing arch won't give you anymore understanding of how system works, at least no more than installer would, linux systems are somewhat hard to understand especially if you aren't deeply involved with them. Also that understanding requires so much peripheral knowledge of linux to start with, it's not even funny. Like you can start on disk partitioning and it would take a week to explain everything you can do, look at this pie: encryption, vdo, lvm, different filesystems, billion things available in device mapper, then systemd mounts etc., etc..

[-] diaphragmwp@discuss.tchncs.de 1 points 16 hours ago* (last edited 16 hours ago)

Idk, my first time a while back (after Mint and git clone, ./configure copypasting), as soon as I stopped trying to debug the python script and started following the damn wiki, it took me like 2 hours or so to choose F2FS out of all options then chain that with LUKS with all of the relevant options to allow discards. Not counting the time it took to reboot from a "you are a dumbass lol - systemd" screen back to the installer. I completely ignored LVM and all of those other funny initialisms because it said it was optional and I didn't see the point. I still don't. Then I looked up how to get 3000000FPS in minenhandwerk and found alhp.go, that was mostly just copy pasting.

[-] exu@feditown.com 10 points 1 day ago

Installing it manually will at least give you all the tools to fix your boot loader or troubleshoot an issue that prevents you from booting.

[-] Skullgrid@lemmy.world 5 points 1 day ago

... there's a reason why I said arch(install).

I appreciate your PSA, my point is maintaining arch properly sounds more challenging than the actual process of installing arch using archinstall.

And like I said in the explaination, I use arch just for random VM shit , precisely because you can set up arch in like 2 mins using arch install in a braindead manner, just like patrick. It's how I slop it into VMs.

[-] realitaetsverlust@piefed.zip 4 points 1 day ago

Oh I get it, dw. But I often see memes like that used as "excuses" for technically illiterate people who want to be cool and use arch without understanding it. Like, it's not about gatekeeping, it's about people using software they are unable to handle and use, not because they're dumb, but usually because there's just no interest in learning these things. That's the whole reason we had this AUR problem a few weeks ago, and that just kinda pissed me off so I'm reacting a bit allergic to these kind of memes.

[-] Skullgrid@lemmy.world 2 points 1 day ago

That’s the whole reason we had this AUR problem a few weeks ago, and that just kinda pissed me off so I’m reacting a bit allergic to these kind of memes.

I had some fun trying to get started with buildbot and looked at packages that were pre-requisites and some of them were on AUR and I noped the fuck away from that shit precisely for that reason.

I need to have set up a lil' debian to have done this shit in an env that I am familiar with, but archinstall is that easy and carefree that I can't be bothered for debian installer to take ages in each step.

[-] Sanctus@anarchist.nexus 26 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

If you ever want to sweat and earn some knowledge that manual install process is a way to use up two weekends doing just that if it's your first time.

[-] lemmyvore@feddit.nl 3 points 17 hours ago

If it's your first time with Arch. Because if it's your first time with Linux there's no point.

[-] southsamurai@sh.itjust.works 5 points 1 day ago

Dammit, that makes me want to steal a laptop just to fuck with arch

[-] Skullgrid@lemmy.world 2 points 10 hours ago

... The whole source of the meme is that I'm just dumping arch into VMs. Download an easy to use VM manager like gnome boxes or virt-manager and use the snapshot functionality to come back to it later.

[-] Axolotl_cpp@feddit.it 2 points 14 hours ago

I can lend you mine if you install me arch

[-] rozodru@piefed.world 9 points 1 day ago

honestly once you learn how to install Gentoo and/or NetBSD every other install is an absolute cake walk.

Really though like you said it's valuable knowledge to learn.

[-] esc@piefed.social 7 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

Not using installer more often than not is a good indicator of being tryhard and not something to brag about (like who cares how exactly have you installed OS, something that you do once in a few years).

[-] BurgerBaron@quokk.au 1 points 18 hours ago* (last edited 18 hours ago)

It was* (before archinstall) usually bragged about in a tongue and cheek way...I thought. Be pretty stupid to brag you're literate enough to just follow directions. Waste of time.

[-] esc@piefed.social 2 points 16 hours ago

I've seen people bragging about it a few times unironically. Not even some cool specifically constrained environment (like offline from installed linux or windows).

[-] Skullgrid@lemmy.world 11 points 1 day ago

I think I get what you're saying, but you might want to fix up the way you said it to be clearer, for your own clarity of expression.

[-] esc@piefed.social 6 points 1 day ago

Sorry, I'm getting less and less proficient with english.

[-] Skullgrid@lemmy.world 6 points 1 day ago

no worries, the sentence was grammatically correct, just an unwieldy one any native speaker can make from time to time

[-] turbowafflz@lemmy.world 2 points 1 day ago

My current copy of arch on my laptop was manually installed by using pacstrap running on my previous nixos installation because i didn't have a usb drive with me. i don't really recommend that route it isnt very well supported

[-] esc@piefed.social 2 points 16 hours ago

It's not really that special, no? IIRC it was even documented on the wiki some time in the past, what troubles did you encounter that weren't caused by nixos?

this post was submitted on 07 Sep 2026
408 points (99.3% liked)

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