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 in the void.
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I've got 25 years of Linux usage under my belt at this point, and I've settled on Debian for all PCs, servers, and anything else. Stability is so much more important to me than bleeding edge software, but for those things that absolutely need the latest and greatest, there's Backports and Flatpak.
I started off as a Redhat person (this is before RHEL and Fedora existed, so the distro was just "Redhat"), then after Redhat started their shenanigans, I spent a decade or so distro hopping. I even became an OpenBSD user for a couple of years. But now, I'm all Debian. Sane defaults, stable, quick setup. I can get on with my day. I understand the Arch obsession, but I feel like I'm long past that level of interest in tinkering at this point.
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Different people deal with things in different ways. Some (most?) people feel like learning linux is undesirable or a chore, while others embrace the sense of discovery and exploring a new and exciting thing. After using Windows for decades I don't want the same experience, I want something completely different.
Before I installed Linux I played a bunch on a virtual machine. I installed several distributions, desktop environments, hardware compatibility. I ended up landing on EndeavourOS more than a year ago. Never borked my setup, never had update problems, never had a problem I couldn't solve (more like Arch Wiki solving it for me).
I like to learn things by doing this, I like to fail fast and learn from the mistakes. EndeavourOS provided the exact experience I was looking for and would recommend it to someone with a similar mentality.
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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
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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).
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Then I never want to see you telling someone they should've checked the news file before updating!
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LINUX IS AN EXPERIENCE NOT SOMETHING TO ENDLESSLY DEBATE ABOUT.
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The LWDIS page should have a basic overview of the different distro family's and maybe a breakdown of their specialty's or focus. Probably have a breakdown for windows and mac specific easy ways to burn an ISO in the stickie.
Then people could field questions and guide people to the distro that might suit OP's needs best instead of sponsoring their favorite distro.
From there they can go to the individual distros for more complete information and questions. If that distro and their community feels like a fit for their needs I think we could have a better retention rate than what we have been doing.
The other day I saw one of these which distro posts and most replies were not very helpful and mostly fanboy sponsorships which i don't think would be very helpful to the OP. But their was one person there patiently and thoroughly answering OPs questions with the best info he could provide. It was tip top! That's how we grow together!
I get it, the fanboy thing, I've got it bad for arch, endeavour and garuda. Im also the geekiest twat in my town. I don't really recommend them to people I dont intend to be their IT guy when shit goes wrong. For the most part I recomend distros that have great communities people can draw from. If a newbie goes to the arch forum and hasn't at least read the docs and researched their problem, provide logs or terminal output they arent getting helped. At least not how they might need. But on the mint, ubuntu, fedora forum's they can plow through just about any problem with a little hand holding if that's what they need, and that's not a bad thing.
Friendliness, inclusion, understanding of the users personal needs, computer usage and goals is the way to keep people and expand our linux community IMO.
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Remember the first time you got a printer working in Linux? Better than sex....
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Preach greybeard
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But but but SteamOS!
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::: spoiler spoiler
"Fortunately, the charging one has been solved now that we've all standardized on mini-USB. Or is it micro-USB? Shit."
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It was my second distro after mint. It's very fun to learn as long as you got time to kill.
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I don't think archinstall is drowning sysadmins/programmers/CS students. What it will do is teach them to swim.
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For people who are beginners when it comes to computers in general, yeah. But for people who are new to GNU/Linux but experienced with CS/math, it'll really not be that hard to run archinstall and configure from there. It's not that different than many other distros, which also have an installer and then post-install configuration to contend with. I'd just argue arch has newer packages and better documentation which some beginners (in the sense they're coming from macOS/Windows but know how basic software concepts) might appreciate.
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Fair enough!
I very much appreciated the xkcd, gave a good chuckle.
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A beginner to what, to pacman, to arch, to rolling distro, to linux, to unix, to a PC, to using man-made tools ...
I made an installation to an old pc once, I though it would last a while, and since the users could barely understand what an on/off button does, they just wanted google and facebook, so it was a wm with two browsers, daughter already knew what chrome was, and in the login shell I wrote a script that each new day it booted it attempted pacman -Suy --noconfirm then once a week the cache was emptied and the logs trimmed.
That was before covid, a couple months ago I met her, she said it has been working fine every since.
So there is your dinner
PS Actually it wasn't arch it was artix with runit but that is about the same
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You would, it's very very straightforward they made it very simple. I literally walked multiple non-technical users through it when it happened because I have moved some of my friends and family to Linux. I won't say that it wasn't tedious and that it wasn't annoying for them but they got through it just fine
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quick, quick, explain in one sentence whether the newb should go with musl of gliMBc ... hurry ... the screen is about to turn black and the installer will be gone
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Once you learn pacman is hard to go to anything substandard and slow, so you are hooked.
