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)
Hey, you forget about Gentoo Linux!
The real distro for newbies… (Provided the newbies are expert cs graduated and crazy nerds…)
All depends on what a beginner is… Not all beginners are tech illiterates or people who only want to use office.
I started with EndeavourOS, which is basically Arch, and had a great experience.
I did have someone knowledgeable help guide me a bit at first, but eventually I learned how to find solutions myself on google, and use the Arch wiki.
I must have broke my installation a dozen times, but used Timeshift to bring it back from the dead… And I learned so much about how Linux works in the process. Wouldn’t have done it any other way.
Thanks for reminding me to set up Timeshift on my EndeavourOS install, salute to you.
Not sure about forks, but I agree with what you said before.
Manjaro is great.
Clearly you’ve never used it for an extended period, or If you have you never installed packages from the AUR.
I use Debian ftw.
The level of disillusion in the thread is insane. At no point in time is it a good idea to recommend Arch and it’s derivatives to Linux newbies. They will 100% wreck their install in the first two weeks. Even I, as a pretty experienced user had to wipe my arch install after failed update attempts, luckily I had a separate home partition. Anything else like fedora or tumbleweed will provide packages that are very up to date, but that are also tested. For example I don’t fear that updating my fedora install will completely brick the networking of my system like what happened to me on arch.
Ironically I wouldn’t recommend any Ubuntu derivatives as for some reason, every single time I’ve installed Ubuntu or one of its variants like PopOS they ended up messed up in some way or another, albeit never as critical as Arch did to me numerous times. Probably some kind of PPA issues that make the system weird because it’s always the fault of PPAs
Ubuntu or one of its variants
Even Mint? Seems to be the go-to recommendation for newbies.
Never was able to try mint, I only did once but the installer didn’t work for some reason, probably Nvidia related so I don’t blame mint for it.
Honestly, as someone who ran Arch and its derivatives, no one should be running upstream Arch but the testers.
No amount of experience or expertise will save you from breaking it. It WILL break, and you’ll be mocked for that as well by “Arch elitists” who will then face the same issue.
That’s why Linux veterans are rarely using Arch. It’s good for its purpose, it’s very important both for downstream Arch and for the entire Linux community, but it is NOT the distro you should run on your PC.
Go Fedora. Go Debian. Go to the downstream distros if you’re strongly into Arch, take Garuda for example. Make your machine actually work.
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Some functionality (menus, networking) working not as expected, random glitches, bugs, instabilities…also, now coming from the experiences of others (wasn’t there at the time), one time even GRUB had an update that broke it on all systems with Arch, forcing many to halt updates. In my eyes, from personal experience and experiences of others, it got a reputation as a quite messy system.
Oh wow yeah I had forgotten about the grub update, the only way to not have a bricked computer was to be active in the arch communities because they didn’t remove the faulty package even though it was known to brick computers
The GRUB update is why more Arch needs more testers lol. They do have separate repositories for testing, but none of the active testers had the relevant problematic configuration that caused that problem during the testing period, and then it shipped to stable. The package maintainer did configure the package to not include the breaking change that same day, but it doesn’t look like that was ever shipped for some reason.
Mint has worked consistently for me on the PC it’s installed on.
Second this. Am not a huge fan of ubuntu itself and I have had issues with other debian based distros (OMV for example) but mint has always been rock solid and stable on any of my machines. The ultimate beginners distro imo.
EndeavourOS is the best 💪
I want linux to be as welcoming as possible to everyone and the newbie qiestion of what distro to use will come up a lot. I dont think it’s helpful in any way to bicker about why my choice in linux is better. We should be giving them the tools to make the best decision for themselves
What if we built a beginners linux community (Linux, Where Do I Start -> LWDIS) and point to all the distros communities, and on those distro specific communities they had beginner friendly install, setup, rice, maintenance instructions and advice along with a difficulty rating. I don’t know if stickies are a thing here but could be helpful in keeping relevant info on top. This could be a place for fanboys to shine on there favorite distro while keeping the basic inclusive LWDIS community free of bickering about distros that might cause confusion and turn people off.
Debian is the best distro for newbies, it may require setup and reading some documentation but afterwards you get a stable distro.
Stable doesn’t mean what you think it means. Stable means not updated.
Stable means not updated.
Oh no! I haven’t got the latest push from 30 seconds ago. My operating system is so out of date and I’m so uncool!!11
Nope, you’re missing the point entirely. It’s about versions not frequency. For example Ubuntu 16.04 used python 2, despite python 3 having been released for 8 years at that time and other distros like Arch having migrated to python 3 years before. Now, Python 2 still got regular updates that Ubuntu released, but Ubuntu 16.04 was maintained until 2021, whereas python 2 reached EOL in 2020, that means that for 1 year Ubuntu was using a deprecated and unmaintained version of python.
One could also make the argument that Arch broke a lot of stuff when they did that upgrade, and there’s an argument there, but it’s not as simple as receiving less frequent updates.
I‘d rather have a system that is stable and a few months out of date than a system that is so up to date that it breaks. Because then I cannot, in a good conscience, use that system on a device that I need to just work every time I start it.
Again, stable doesn’t mean what you think it means. An unstable system is not one that breaks, but one that doesn’t keep a stable base. For example, Debian will not update a major version of almost anything, since that could potentially break dependencies, so it is stable even if it released patches as fast as Arch. On the other hand Arch is unstable, even if upgrading your system never broke anything because it can at any point change the version of any library you have installed.
That’s still exactly what I meant? Sure, arch may never break even though it’s unstable but it being unstable heightens the risk of it (or some program) breaking due to changing library versions breaking dependencies.
Dependency issues happen much more rarely on stable systems. That’s why it’s called stable. And I very much prefer a system that isn’t likely to create dependency issues and thus break something when I update anything.
No, you’re still not understanding, say libX current version is 1.2.3 and we have two distros A (a stable distro) and B (an unstable distro). libX now releases 2.0.0, A remains on 1.2.3 B moves to 2.0.0. libX now releases 1.2.4 which despite being just a patch breaks everything. A update and breaks, B does not.
Stable just means stable API, it says nothing about system breakage. System breakage can happen regardless of stable API, and it’s up to distro managers to not release a package that breaks their diatro, and the Arch ones are excellent at their job. An update breaking Arch is as likely to happen as on Ubuntu, but an upgrade on Arch can break other stuff which on Ubuntu can only happen when doing a version upgrade.
Ok, so arch doesn’t break because it’s unstable, it just breaks anyways. And it doesn’t break more in general, it just breaks worse more often. Got it.
I’ll still stay away from the bleeding edge.
i wouldn’t wish apt on my enemies. terrible habits with all the ppas and piping curl to bash in every forum post
I literally consider Debian to be less functionally stable than arch because of Apt. I’ve had apt completely eviscerate systems and then just bail out leaving you with a system that has a completely empty /bin with seemingly no easy way to recover.
Meanwhile pacman has literally never done that, and even on systems that became horrifically broken due to literal data corruption I was able to just chroot in, download a static built pacman, and reinstall all native packages with a single command… It’s nuts how much more reliable and repairable arch ia but people act like it’s frail just because it gets updates more than once every century
Debian doesn’t support PPAs. That’s an Ubuntu feature. Even if you somehow managed to enable a PPA on Debian, the packages will be for Ubuntu and are likely not install or work correctly.
That very setup is why I do not recommend it to newbies who don’t have someone experienced around. Debian, even Debian 12, is not holding your hand and directing you. You’ll have to figure a lot out by yourself, and this adds to the steep learning curve.
Also, a very slow update cycle means the newbie will be stuck with outdated packages (sure, flatpaks are there, but the base system will be old, like, very old). And new hardware might face issues.
To me, the perfect pipeline is something like Linux Mint, then Fedora, then either Arch derivatives or Debian, depending on what serves you best. Alternatively, if you don’t mind some challenge after an easy entry, start out with Manjaro and then get another Arch. But that one’s more controversial.
Debian stable is always outdated and testing is not stable enough. I think Debian is good for servers but not for desktop.
Newbies can not handle apt and just random deb they find in the internet and wonder why linux is so tedious to update
Most noobs I know did not understand what repo management means and are just copy pasting terminal cammands like a madlad or running random bash script with sudo because the developer thought it was the easiest way to get noobs to add their repo
I prefer giving noobs a single place of truth, if no flatpak available, like:
https://software.opensuse.org/packages
Or
AUR
But but but SteamOS!
It’s a good beginner distro if you want to stumble, fall, and learn things. It’s not a distro where everything is all good right out the box. For that, maybe try something like Linux Mint Debian Edition or Bazziteos
It’s the best beginner distro for those beginners who want to learn about linux.
Just like the ocean is the best body of water for children who want to learn about swimming
And not just “a beach on the ocean”, but literally just the open ocean.
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.
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
The install guide is not 50 pages-long, common!
Admittedly, the installation for Arch Linux is not that difficult.
It’s the General Recommendations that become bullshit.
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What do you mean by “become bullshit”?
the arch experience is weirdly weird honestly. arch is not hard to use, the wiki documentations are pretty extensive. but still there are people who dont even know how to use a wiki. what people needs to do is not learn how to use arch, but learn how to change their perspective on arch instead
I’m not completely up to speed with the core principles of Arch, but I think it revolves around KISS (Keep It Simple, Stupid!). Meaning that Arch doesn’t hold your hand with nice GUIs. Instead, it tries to make the command line interface as easy to understand and use as possible. So if you run into a problem, you’re more likely to understand how to fix it, or at least what the root cause is. Which is not a given when you’re used to distros with more abstraction like Ubuntu. Then again, this design concept is not for everyone.
I don’t think arch does much to make commandline easier to use it understand - instead I’d say it aims to teach you how to use it, because it might be easier than you realize, but importantly it tries to tell you why. Instead of just giving you the command to run, the wiki explains various details of software, and the manual installation process tells you which components you need without forcing a specific choice. As a result, hopefully after using arch you’ll know how your system works, how to tweak it, and how to fix issues - not necessarily by knowing how to fix each individual issue, but by understanding what parts of your system are responsible and where to look.
is the basic arch CLI commands any different from discord bots? it feels easier to use if you think its same as playing with a discord bot. using CLI isnt some kind of programming
is the basic arch CLI commands any different from discord bots? it feels easier to use if you think its same as playing with a discord bot. using CLI isnt some kind of programming
Thanks for the hearty chuckle, zoomer.
Bash and all other shell languages are programming languages. The terminal is just a REPL for a language primarily meant to be used as a REPL for managing your OS.
learning CLI commands is 10 times easier than HTML
If you’re mindlessly pasting commands, sure… but you have zero idea what your fucking with if you think bash is simpler than HTML.
In the context of maintaining an Arch distro you will absolutely need to understand that executing CLI commands is in fact programming.
hard disagree on this… while for people who don’t know it it might look like programming, it’s really not much different than editing config files (which people who don’t know it will assume is programming too).
Sure, the language used by bash can be used to write massive programs. But in 99% cases using the CLI is like using a gui with a button and a text field - type some text into the field and then click the button, letting whatever software you’re running take the content of the text field and do something with it.
way closer, in fact, to executing a discord bot command, than to actual programming as in software development (what i’d argue people think of when talking about programming)
They’re a liiittle harder but yeah basically
this guy is so damn right i cant argue. arch isnt hard to use, whats hard is experiencing different things and learning
I went from Windows to Mint, to Pop-OS, to EndeavourOS and haven’t left EOS.
My time with Mint and Pop were about a week each. I switch from Windows to Linux 2 years ago.
For my experience, jumping into Arch feet first has been a great learning experience. My desktop PC is a gaming PC first, so having the most up to date packages has been great. It’s helped ‘de-mystify’ Linux for me. I’ve had to troubleshoot issues, but thanks to Arch’s excellent and extensive documentation, with some light reading I’ve manages to make it work.
I’m now moving on to setting up my own Homelab/Server, which will NOT be Arch based (…unless…?), because the experience with learning how to navigate Linux with Arch has given me the confidence to tackle something I have absolutely no experience in (NETWORKING).
