this post was submitted on 17 Feb 2025
555 points (84.4% liked)

Linux

50410 readers
868 users here now

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).

Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.

Rules

Related Communities

Community icon by Alpár-Etele Méder, licensed under CC BY 3.0

founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
 

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)

(page 7) 50 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] [email protected] 8 points 5 days ago (15 children)

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.

load more comments (15 replies)
[–] [email protected] 6 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago) (4 children)

If your distro can't be forked into a "beginner distro" then it's fundamentally flawed IMHO.

To be clear, I've used Arch as my daily drivers for a while, and while it's not the best fit for my needs (I use Debian mostly), there's nothing that I experienced that was incompatible with a "beginner" distro.

load more comments (4 replies)
[–] [email protected] -4 points 6 days ago (2 children)

Arch users are the sanctimonious vegans of the linux world. Bacon is delicious, and you are not special.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 6 days ago (2 children)

Damn why did you have to bring vegans into this lol

[–] [email protected] 13 points 5 days ago

Because vegan bashing and arch bashing have in common having broadly stupid opinions ;)

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] [email protected] 0 points 6 days ago (5 children)

I can not agree more not everyone that uses arch is like this but every one of the Linux users that wants to be elitist about their distro runs arch based on how hard it is.

If you want to be low level to learn you run Linux from scratch. If you want bleeding edge you run tumbleweed or debian sid. If you want to run a distro that is only mildly harder to configure than a debian bootstrap install but less hard than running debian or redhat back in the 90s just for bragging rights you run arch.

load more comments (5 replies)
[–] [email protected] 65 points 6 days ago (7 children)

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.

load more comments (7 replies)
[–] [email protected] 0 points 6 days ago
[–] [email protected] 25 points 6 days ago (3 children)

My first distro was an Arch fork and I moved to vanilla Arch a year later. My problems in that time have been minimal. Personally, I am glad that someone recommended that I use an arch-based distro as a beginner. Mind you, I came in as a modestly computer-literate Windows refugee willing to learn. I think for those types of people it can be appropriate to recommend Arch-based distros.

So, yes, if you are not willing to google a problem, read a wiki, or use the terminal once in a while, Arch or its forks are probably not for you. I would probably not recommend Arch as a distro for someone's elderly grandparent or someone not comfortable with computers.

That said, I do not know that I agree with the assertion that Arch "breaks all the time," or that I even understand what "Arch bullshit®" is referring to. This overblown stereotype that Arch is some kind of mythical distro only a step removed from Linux From Scratch has to stop. None of that has been my experience for the last 4 years. Actually, if anything, it is the forks that get dependency issues (looking at you, Manjaro) and vanilla Arch has been really solid for me.

load more comments (3 replies)
[–] [email protected] -5 points 6 days ago

I pretty much just don't help arch and arch derivatives users any more despite using it for over a decade now. It's not worth the time nor effort.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 6 days ago (1 children)

The real problem: Define beginner distro

Every user is starting from a different point. There is no such thing as a beginner distro. You can say this distro is good for people who can grasp the idea of a command line or this distro is good for people who have no idea command line interfaces exist, but that doesn't differentiate between beginner friendly or not.

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 days ago (1 children)

I mean, Manjaro wasthe first distro I truly used regularly.

But I'm no stranger to command lines, so there's that.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 6 days ago (2 children)

I was one of the lucky users who used Manjaro on my old laptop for over a year and never had any real problems.

I was very confused when I started getting more involved in the Linux community and kept hearing about how terrible Manjaro was.

For me, vanilla Fedora has actually been the most consistently problematic distro. I've had more random issues getting it set up and working properly than any other distro.

God bless Mint though, it has been basically flawless for years.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 days ago

I think that one's experience with Manjaro is often heavily dependent on how many AUR packages one has installed. Were you using many AUR packages?

Manjaro was my first distro for a year and it was fine. The occasional AUR dependency blockage was irritating for me but did not break anything.

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] [email protected] 11 points 6 days ago (3 children)

why are you making shit up tho, whos install bricked, mine has no issues, neither does any other linux newbie ive talked to, it has an easy to use gui to setup and then it just works?

load more comments (2 replies)
[–] [email protected] 7 points 6 days ago (3 children)

I never saw what was so hard about arch. But not doing anything weird so maybe I missed all the bad stuff? Wiki is nice.

Nixos, now there's a distro for beginners, lol.

load more comments (3 replies)
[–] [email protected] 4 points 6 days ago (1 children)

This is funny. I feel like I see a "which arch is better" post almost everyday now.

A lot of people I think would be well suited to be on Bluefin or Bazzite. I really can't sing the praises of it enough. It has a ton of well developed resources and the Appstore is flatpak centric. It really does give you that ChromeOS like experience for the average user.

End users should really be nowhere near package management. They should just be able to run the apps they want and expect them to work.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 6 days ago

My job is literally to make Linux distros using Yocto for various boards. I'm constantly writing new build scripts or updating build scripts, debugging the kernel/systemd/glibc and whatever libraries are on the system.

All of my work and personal desktops run some version of Fedora Atomic or a uBlue variant right now.

With distrobox/toybox/brew and using podman/docker/KVM+qemu, even as a tinkerer, it's great

[–] [email protected] 7 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago) (2 children)

People are recommending arch to beginners? This is genuinely the first time i hear of this trend and Ive been into linux for over 20 years now.

Not once have I heard arch pushed to beginners at my local LUG or any LUG ive attended in other cities or countries.

People usually recommended Ubuntu in the past or Mint. Occasionally Fedora. Then Elementary had some steam. Nowadays the landscape is much more diverse I think.

Maybe there is some folks on the internet who get a kick out of recommending hard things to people who need easy things. To gatekeep and create an exclusive feel. But i think if youre seeing that regularly then you need to reasses where youre spending time. Because core Linux culture has never been that since i can remember. We have always embraced that different distros are appropriate for different use cases. And that has always been our strength.

load more comments (2 replies)
[–] [email protected] 9 points 6 days ago

Tbh I think endeavor os is a pretty nice beginner way to get into arch--it was my introduction to arch and the aur.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago)

I do not recommend Arch to new users but I really wish people would have a point supported by evidence when they post.

There is no 50 page manual to install EndeeavourOS or CachyOS, the two distros mentioned in the graphic. Both are as easy to point and click install as Fedora and maybe easier than Debian. The better hardware support makes the install much more likely to succeed. They both have graphical installers and lead you by the hand. In fact, when it comes to EOS, its entire identify is making Arch easy to install and to provide sensible defaults so that everything works out of the box. And of the 80,000 packages in Arch/AUR, less than 20 of them are unique to EOS (mostly theming).

There are lots of things to complain about regarding Arch related distros. Or maybe there isn’t if we have to lie about them.

[–] [email protected] 25 points 6 days ago (8 children)

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.

Is Arch only for people who know how to seek help? Maybe. But it absolutely is not a distro template. It's a distro.

load more comments (8 replies)
[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 days ago (3 children)

it's a good beginner distro because getting thrown into deep water is how one learns to swim. archinstall makes it easy enough to install. some configuration may be needed, but that's the point of Arch as a learning process! still, i'd recommend Fedora, Tumbleweed, or even Debian (it's out of date but some people prefer UIs that don't change very often and it still offers 32-bit for your grandpa and his old laptop that's now too slow for Windows 10/11) over Arch.

Arch is good for beginner sysadmins/programmers/CS students. Fedora and Tumbleweed for enthusiasts who want the latest software but aren't trying to be that hardcore. Debian for people who have old laptops and only want to learn GNOME/XFCE once and never have to re-learn it with every update.

Gentoo is a good example of a distro that's absolutely not for beginners. Arch, on the other hand, really isn't all that bad.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 6 days ago (1 children)

it’s a good beginner distro because getting thrown into deep water is how one learns to swim

That's... not how it works, for distros or for actual swimming. Usually when someone who can't swim is thrown into deep water, they drown and/or reinstall Windows which is much the same thing.

load more comments (1 replies)
load more comments (2 replies)
[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 days ago (3 children)

And I started with Gentoo...

load more comments (3 replies)
[–] [email protected] 16 points 6 days ago (13 children)

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?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 days ago (1 children)

Recent Python 3.13 update broke the ProtonVPN client

[–] [email protected] 8 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago) (1 children)

Is the protonVPN package maintained by the arch team? Or did you install it on your own?

If the latter you can't rely in pacman to know about dependencies you never told it about or took steps to ensure were met.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 days ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 4 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago) (1 children)

https://archlinux.org/packages/extra/any/proton-vpn-gtk-app/ doesn't list a particular version of python in deps.

Seems like the proton team made a mistake /shrug. Not exactly a system breaking though, it's a third party piece of software not being kept up to date.

just roll back till they maintain it. Normal enough procedure

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 days ago (1 children)

Timeshift has turned my system breaking updates and tinkering into a non-issue. I just set up all my systems with it right off the bat. One snapshot per day, one weekly, and one monthly.

Since doing that, I've never had to toss a totally borked install.

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 days ago (1 children)

I went from noob to arch about 3 months ago, and only had to reinstall twice after I broke things. Couldn't figure out how to get my vpn and tail scale to play nicely together, even if I only used one at a time. After the 2nd attempt/reinstall I just gave up on tail scale, and haven't had any show stopping bugs/issues since. Sure would be nice if rustdesk played nice with Wayland tho.

I didn't realize archinstall existed until I had to reinstall, so I can see why a terminal based install from scratch might scare some people away.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 days ago (1 children)

tailscale works without issues on cachyos, i use it so i can ssh to my computer and have automation on my iphone to turn it on when using ssh apps like neoserver. (it drains battery if always on)

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 days ago

Yeah, tailscale also works fine on arch, by itself. But the problem was with tailscale AND a vpn being installed at the same time, even if only one was active/running. Almost certainly not an issue with arch or tailscale, the vpn was probably the problem.

load more comments (10 replies)
load more comments
view more: ‹ prev next ›