Can we please, PLEASE for gods sake just all agree that arch is not and will never be a good beginner distro no matter how many times you fork it?
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I'm not sure a newcomer will notice the difference between xorg and wayland?
If you have multiple monitors with different refresh rates, you'll notice immediately.
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I would, however, recommend Arch if you're a Linux novice looking to learn about Linux in a more accelerated pace.
I would argue Gentoo is better suited for that. It is just compilation that can take a long time.
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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.
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This post is a little cringe. Endeavor OS is a great Arch Experience for those who want a little preconfiguration and a GUI install. I've since moved onto doing it the arch way, but EOS was a great foot in the door and I know for a fact I'm not alone. Ive learned more about Linux in 2 years going from EOS to Arch (and running a proxmox server) than I would have running some "beginner friendly" distro. Really wish folks would stop gatekeeping.
Absolutely agreed! Arch wiki helps with this as well.
Although Ive been using linux for 2 years now, and i still want an installation manager with sane defaults.
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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.
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In 9+ years of literally never reading the changelog the ONLY time ive had arxh break was when grub did that unbelievably retarded update where it broke compatibility with itself and they did not put a goddamn hook to automatically update the install on bootloader.
That was solved in about 10min with a liveusb and replacing grub with systemdboot, which honestly I should have done a long time ago anyway it has a nice, easy, clean, simple configuration file instead of whatever the fuck they call that absolute monstrosity grub uses
I stopped using grub after that pain in the ass
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To me, every distro that seriously requires you to read through all changelogs before updating is BS, and it doesn't solve a basic problem. No one but in their sane mind will do this, and the system will break.
That's why, while I respect the upstream Arch, I'd say you should be insane for running it and trying to make things stable, and mocking people for not reading the changelogs is missing the point entirely. Even the best of us failed.
Arch is entirely about "move fast and break stuff".
I subscribe to the arch news letter, and they email me about potentially breaking changes like 4 times a year. Usually I don't have to do anything about them but it's good to be aware of, just in case.
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I came in as a modestly computer-literate Windows refugee willing to learn
That's like 2% of the people who want to switch to Linux
How so? I see plenty of posts by folks who recently switched from Windows, and I imagine the ones who are willing to take that leap in the first place lean towards the more tech-literate side.
"Willing to learn" is more subjective, perhaps, but I do not think my case is that uncommon.
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Then whatever a modern OS is under your model is not an OS I'm willing to use. I've seen Win 11. I'm going to stick with 10, as I stuck with XP through Vista, had a second machine with 7 through 8(.x), and then surrendered and used Win10 when the 32-bit Win7 machine finally stopped working for love or money.
Well that is fair and I am very glad that Linux still offers you what you need and that you are fine with using X and have (still) more compatibility like this
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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)
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.
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I would argue Gentoo is better suited for that. It is just compilation that can take a long time.
Linux From Scratch or Slackware too.
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I'm not sure a newcomer will notice the difference between xorg and wayland?
I did, before I knew what wayland is, I did some distrohopping (see path below), and recognised that sometimes it feels more nice than other times. First I thought it was just GPU driver stuff, but later learned that it was something called wayland that does something underneath your desktop management (didn’t know that there is another layer below at that time)
(mint->manjaro->manjaro(after it died once)->Opensuse TW(after manjaro died again)->Arch(because I liked installing from AUR more than from suse community hub)->EndeavourOS(because I don’t have time to do Arch manually and archinstall was to difficult/time consuming with dualbooting macOS)
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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.
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yes, yes, and it works without tearing in xorg
no problem. multitouch is not xorgs nor wayland's responsibility.Umm no. Xorg only knows keyboard and pointer devices
Everything must be put into one of those in hacky ways to work with Xorg, meaning you using a protocol for a device that can move itself, scroll and register clicks and keyboard to multitouch efects
This, for example, results in swiping on Xorg is just clicking a keyboard shortcut, while in wayland you can smoothly scroll for and back between the virtual desktops mid animations
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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.
If you want to talk about breakage we can, as long as you understand that's not what people mean when they say stable. About breakages Arch doesn't break that often, or at all, I can't recall a single time my system broke for an update or for something that was not entirely my fault.
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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)
Very bad post. And Tumbleweed has OBS (Open Build Systems), although I dont even know if that is the right name for its AUR equivalent.
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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.
I tired it as well to see what this aur was all about but kinda hated it since it's so opaque if they wanted to be as hardcore as they say they would build packages by hand and that can be done on any distro.
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I would, however, recommend Arch if you're a Linux novice looking to learn about Linux in a more accelerated pace.
Or Void Linux.
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That was solved in about 10min with a liveusb and replacing grub with systemdboot
Try explaining that to a newbie
I am not a newbie and wouldn't even know how to do it without using a manual (archwiki)
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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.
Wait, immutable distribution don't have a packet manager? But you can still install flatpaks?
