this post was submitted on 03 Jun 2024
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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).
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Why are you trying to install arch, it is not a noob-friendly distro
Says who? The days when this was true are long gone. Ubuntu is no longer the user friendly everyman's desktop system anymore. Arch is extremely user friendly, just not the installation process. I find it to be much less of a pain in the ass to use than Debian based systems. For one, you have the Arch User Repository, so you're very unlikely to need to not be able to find some software you want, and more importantly, so many packages in Debian are out of date and they take forever to update them, stuff often breaks because the version needed as a dependency for something else is not in the repositories.
For people who want to use arch but don't want to manually do everything I highly recommend EndeavorOS. You fly through a wizard, just like Mint or something desktop oriented, and you wind up with a nice, working environment, but it's Arch tooling instead of Debian tooling. The biggest and for most people only noticeable difference is the package manager, and pacman is so much more robust than apt.
I get frustrated online when I see people saying "Ubuntu is the most user friendly distro" or "arch is not for noobs", this stuff was true like 10 years ago, that's no longer the case. Ubuntu is user hostile, and there are arch derivatives that are basically arch with a graphical installer, which is the only part of using arch that is hard for people who aren't hardcore nerds. It's not like Gentoo or Void or Alpine or Nix or running a BSD system or something advanced like that.
Nope, Arch is not noob friendly, you have been using Linux for long enough that you forgot how everything was different when you started. Also Arch hasn't changed much in 10 years (I should know, I have been using it for 15), if it wasn't noob friendly before, it's certainly less so now that it doesn't has an installer and the wiki makes you jump from one page to another instead of having all of the steps for installation in a single place.
I agree that Ubuntu is not ideal, which is why my recommendation is Mint. I also agree that Arch is not hard. But if you give a new user who just wants things to work Arch you're setting it up for disaster.
For users that are familiar enough with Linux that they feel comfortable on the terminal, yeah, Arch is a breeze to use, but you need to understand the difference between "power user friendly" (which is what Arch is, i.e. allows power users to have an easy time, by for example having a large user repository) vs "beginner friendly" (which is most definitely what Arch is not, i.e. give users an easy out of the box experience where they can figure things out without needing to read wiki pages). Most new users need a beginner friendly distro, and shoving Arch down their throats is not the way to do it.
I switched to Linux about a year ago and I agree with the poster you replied to I used fedora for about a week before switching to arch based endeavor OS and I've been on EOS ever since. The install truly is the only hard part of arch.
Read my other comment, if you don't think those are issues you either are not as noob as you think, or you haven't encountered any of those yet https://lemmy.world/comment/10431667
@Anarchistcowboy @Nibodhika
yeah I ran Arch on one machine for a long time...but such hassle to assimilate machines again...sometimes you just wanna get one or more machines up & running ready for business ASAP!
Dude thank you, someone who actually tried what I'm recommending weighing in.