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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A package manager + some packages in the base system maybe, is basically a distro template. And maybe some kernel tweaks, or a built-in DE/WM.
There are so many more aspects of Arch that you conveniently ignored. The filesystem hierarchy, the special compilation arguments options tweaks and configuration for e.g. dynamic linking, and how Arch has way more packages than just "some packages in the base system". And no, I don't mean the AUR. Arch is no less of a distro than any other distro. What is a distro if not a large swathe of packages meticulously tweaked to interop gloriously?
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What are people doing that breaks their computers? I have used arch for like 15 years now and nothing ever goes wrong?
The closest would be on my desktop sometimes nvidia drivers are in a state that breaks display reinit on wake from sleep but my thinkpad is always fine.
Seriously who are you weird computer vandals going around and breaking everything all the time? What do you do?
Almost a decade for me (on CachyOS currently) and I also have no idea how people are breaking their systems so much. In that decade, I think my system broke twice due to an update hiccup and both times were easy to fix.
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I watched a 9 year old install a fully working version of Arch with no GUI...
I think you're just making it harder than it has to be... lol
EDIT: Or maybe she's 10? Not sure. But either 9 or 10.
Has this kid installed Linux before? Or at least some tech background?
Even without it, you know kids learn really well, right? Can you say the same about a 40 year old?
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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.
This was a big driver for my distro hopping, until I landed on purple Arch. I'll either go to the blue team or Gentoo or LFS or something if I decide to hop again.
My struggle was that more beginner-friendly distros like mint and Fedora workstations were too beginner-friendly. I struggled to find things to learn because I installed it and had an out-of-the-box windows experience
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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)
Linux Mint.
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Almost a decade for me (on CachyOS currently) and I also have no idea how people are breaking their systems so much. In that decade, I think my system broke twice due to an update hiccup and both times were easy to fix.
I think people might be saying their system broke when a specific, non critical, application doesn't work after an update based on an interaction here.
That does become more common if you start installing third party software and/or use less common/recommended tools. Personally I wouldn't consider that breaking, but I guess to a casual person it might not be clear that rolling upgrade systems have this risk and the weirder your system gets the more familiar you should be with backups and rollbacks.
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I watched a 9 year old install a fully working version of Arch with no GUI...
I think you're just making it harder than it has to be... lol
EDIT: Or maybe she's 10? Not sure. But either 9 or 10.
Installing is just following directions. It's maintaining it after you Frankenstein the hell out of it that most new users struggle with
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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.
EOS btw.
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I think people might be saying their system broke when a specific, non critical, application doesn't work after an update based on an interaction here.
That does become more common if you start installing third party software and/or use less common/recommended tools. Personally I wouldn't consider that breaking, but I guess to a casual person it might not be clear that rolling upgrade systems have this risk and the weirder your system gets the more familiar you should be with backups and rollbacks.
If that is the case, that's a weird way to think. I mean, if I was using Windows and one app stopped working, I wouldn't blame that on Windows, I would just assume an issue with that particular app being incompatible with an update.
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At least, my definition of my system breaking is either it won't boot at all, or it won't boot into the DE. Even then, not booting could be a broken bootloader (not a broken system) which is usually straightforward to fix. -
My main issue with linux rnow is davinci, and houdini, davinci is easy to pirate, but no redgiant, etc. The effects I use can be remade following tuts or with other addons, symbol bitmapping, and pixeldither. But houdini specifically is just so expensive for hobby use, im addicted tho. I will never make money off that shit if I magically do ill spend 2.5k on the perpetual license. Cant find anyway to pirate an up to date version.
I thought piracy would be easier on linux but it seems to be much harder to find resources if they even exist. Nice for foss stuff tho.
Your main issue with Linux is that it doesn't help you pirate proprietary software made for another OS?
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Has this kid installed Linux before? Or at least some tech background?
Even without it, you know kids learn really well, right? Can you say the same about a 40 year old?
Has this kid installed Linux before? Or at least some tech background?
No. I sat behind her and encouraged her to read the prompts in their entirety. She asked questions (like the difference between sys/data partitions, etc), that's basically it. I maintain that if a child can do it, anyone can. People don't read as well as they should.
Even without it, you know kids learn really well, right? Can you say the same about a 40 year old?
This is the worst excuse in the history of excuses... Quite literally pathetic.
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Installing is just following directions. It's maintaining it after you Frankenstein the hell out of it that most new users struggle with
Now this I can agree with.
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What are people doing that breaks their computers? I have used arch for like 15 years now and nothing ever goes wrong?
The closest would be on my desktop sometimes nvidia drivers are in a state that breaks display reinit on wake from sleep but my thinkpad is always fine.
Seriously who are you weird computer vandals going around and breaking everything all the time? What do you do?
sometimes nvidia drivers are in a state that breaks display reinit on wake from sleep
That happens so often that I've just bound a hotkey in Hyprland to poke my monitors config (toggling VRR off and on again) in order to force a mode change and wake up the display.
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The first Linux I used wasn't part of any distro. A few years later I compiled Slackware to run bind and Sendmail.
Last year I tried Arch in a VM. I got to where it expected me to know what partitions to create for root and swap and noped out. It's not 1996. I don't have time for those details any more. No one should. Sane defaults have been in other distros for decades.
Debian welcomes you
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If that is the case, that's a weird way to think. I mean, if I was using Windows and one app stopped working, I wouldn't blame that on Windows, I would just assume an issue with that particular app being incompatible with an update.
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At least, my definition of my system breaking is either it won't boot at all, or it won't boot into the DE. Even then, not booting could be a broken bootloader (not a broken system) which is usually straightforward to fix.Yeah, I would say broken if it wont boot to a normal userspace. Like if you need to insert a recovery tool, or even just login as root and unfuck something before you can get your X/Wayland session up, or if applications start crashing because toolFoo has some critical bug.
But the last time that happened was on Debian when I tried to write a fstab file manually without reading the manual. Also this was the era of CD drives and no multi PC households. Learned a valuable lesson on the ride back from the library, printed documentation in hand haha.
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Don't know about Cachy but Endeavour is not even a fork. It's just Arch with a fancy installer.
And nice gui apps, default settings, nice community and cool branding.
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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)
It's the best beginner distro for those beginners who want to learn about linux.
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Installing is just following directions. It's maintaining it after you Frankenstein the hell out of it that most new users struggle with
That's why you shouldn't Frankenstein it
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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)
EndeavourOS is the best
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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)
Debian is the best distro for newbies, it may require setup and reading some documentation but afterwards you get a stable distro.
