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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Isn't the lack of dependency management a huge pain on Slackware? I think Gentoo is my forever distro, but I'm very curious about Slackware.
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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.
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Used to have Slackware as a daily driver in 2005ish, will arch be similar or more difficult?
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Everyone has a right to go their own way. Everyone has a right to have an opinion on how you go your own way.
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Arch's package manager, pacman, manages dependencies for you and is quite robust. Arch is much simpler to run and maintain than Slackware, I think.
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I dunno, I used ubuntu (or some flavor of it) for 15 years before Arch. I will say that the first time I installed Arch, I did it solely to prove to myself that I could. After that, I fell in love with it as a daily driver for a lot of reasons. The AUR is a big one, and the fact that it's so well documented also helps. But really, once it's installed, Arch isn't any more complicated than any other distro to keep running.
I did switch to EndeavourOS, though, because once one has installed Arch the "Arch way" a few times I don't reallly see any benefit in doing it again.
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I don't think this is a well-defined term, so not much point in arguing about its definition.
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Once it's installed Arch is just as easy to use as any other distro. It's "unstable" because it's rolling release, sometimes issues crop up with bleeding-edge updates, just keep an eye on the forums before updating.
I've only had to deal with a broken system a couple of times, both were 100% my fault, and both were fixable without reinstalling. Even when something breaks it's pretty forgiving, as long as one is paying attention and not afraid of reading documentation.
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The only thing I don't like about stable distros is being 3-4 versions behind on software. Back when I was using Ubuntu I used to get frustrated because I wanted to use the latest version of things like LibreOffice, but couldn't without bypassing the repos, which can cause issues down the road.
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For what it's worth, I have switched three machines of mine from Win10 to Mint in the last year, and in each case it was much easier and faster to install than Windows. And of course, daily use is much faster and smoother than Windows, but that is true of all distros. It's just worth mentioning because mint is made to be the full featured user friendly experience (some might even call it bloated) out of the box, yet it's still a rocket in comparison.
One was a typical work-issued Dell laptop w/ port replicator + M365, one was an old PC at home I built several years ago, and the last was an even older PC I built like 14 years ago.
Just yesterday at work I installed Win10 in VirtualBox so I could test a Windows app that gets built alongside our main embedded Linux software (used the VM since a certain popup window secondary to the main app wasn't immediately working in Wine). Holy crap was it painful after being used to the Mint installer.
Then when I got home I decided to turn on that 14 year old system that's been off for a month (when I installed the latest point release 22.1) to let it update. Even using the GUI updater, and even though it had to update the updater itself before updating however many dozen packages AND the kernel, I timed the entire process at five minutes flat. On the computer from 2011, with a pretty old & small SATA SSD system drive. And you can use the PC like normal until it's done, when it shows a banner suggesting you reboot when you can because of the kernel update.
Again, nothing special in the Linux world where software is actually created with users put first. But still noteworthy for being the "easy" distro that looks a lot like Windows when you first boot it up.
I'm not posting this to say anything negative about Arch, either. That kind of distro is very important to begin with, and Arch in particular seems it's good enough that it might be the new Debian. Especially with SteamOS switching to it.
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Compared to garbage proprietary software documentation? At least if it’s FOSS garbage there are usually other helpful users on random forums.
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I think mint is crazy better these days compared to 10 years ago, and it probably just came down to "we want to be user friendly to those who need their hands held" crashing into "actual users who need their hand held are trying it out." 10 years ago, I think there simply wasn't enough interested in Linux outside of Linux circles to properly test and figure things out, not to mention the strides the software itself has made in supporting more hardware more seamlessly.
The thing about RTFM is that users don't, and the users that stuff like Mint is geared towards is those who when asked to read a wiki page, will simply give up. Windows has a cottage industry of people who do various things to make it easier for that kind of user. For example, just installing Windows on a device for you (albeit with bloatware usually) complete with all the drivers for your hardware. For most of the hardware on a laptop (audio, internet, HIDs, USB), that'll have you set for life without having to touch anything and for the graphics that'll at least have you set for several years without having to touch anything. And it's not like Linux doesn't have this level of support, it's just that Windows has this level of support for consumers and Linux typically has it relegated to the enterprise sphere.
That being said, it's insane how easy it is now to just install Mint, or PopOS, or even Ubuntu and have a working system. But most users don't even install their Windows, much less a completely foreign OS.
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We, long-time users of Linux, all have our opinions based on various preferences. The thing is that a lot of these preferences are pretty technical, like Ubuntu having snaps, Fedora and Mints' flat pak policies, etc...
For the average user, they will not know what this is or even see a difference between the systems at first. The linux community would do better if we could have a unified front on distro recommendations. People will switch distros as they learn and their curiosity grows.
I think, we should ask people to pick based on their DE preference. If they want something like windows, let them have Mint or Kubuntu, if they want something closer to mac, let them have Ubuntu. I say this as someone who likes Fedora Plasma spin.
Everything else, is just information overload and will give users decision paralysis.
Our goal should be conversion of users. Once our numbers start growing, then things will pickup. Just imagine if we had office and adobe products here. How many people would be able to switch. I still use windows on my work computer as there is a single app holding me back.
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I think their documentation is pretty solid, for everything else the reddit/internet searches can solve it. But as with EVERY DISTRO on this planet, the archwiki can be applied! You just need to know what are the differences from void to arch. (no systemd for example)
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I'd say they are similar, but they have somewhat different philosophies. Slackware maintains a KISS philosophy and comes as a full system. It has its ncurses interface for installation. Some might find that helpful. Arch is purely CLI, so you need to know the commands (or write them down) to set the keyboard layout, set up a network connection, time/date, and so on. You build your Arch system from the ground up, but Pacman handles dependencies for you. Slackware comes as a full or minimal installation (or you can choose individual packages at the risk of breaking dependencies). Slackpkg does not handle dependencies for you. Both will require you to have some sense of what's going on under the hood. You'll need to edit config files and be a sysadmin of your own system.
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Even when you removed the french language pack?
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Please, do not bring adobe and office pack there for god sake...
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It makes sense because if you are a veteran, you probably already have your workflow streamlined, so you don't need new software in the repositories.
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For novices Void is worse because it does not have the Arch wiki. The Void Docs are brief and you will inevitably end up reading the Arch wiki anyways, except you will run into Runit specific bs.
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I'd argue the demographic that writes posts about switching their OS is more likely to be happy switching to Arch than most of the people who switch. The way I imagine the average Linux noob is a university student who installed Ubuntu for their coding class.
