this post was submitted on 17 Feb 2025
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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)

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[–] despaircode@lemmy.ml 5 points 4 days ago (3 children)

That depends on what the beginner's goal is. Arch could very well be a nice beginner distro, as could Gentoo or Slackware or any other "hard" distro if you're determined to learn. My baptism of fire was on Slackware in the 90s (which I'm still on), long before "beginner distros". Trying and failing was a big part of the fun. If you're determined to learn, I don't see any issue with starting with a distro that doesn't hold your hand.

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[–] JackGreenEarth@lemm.ee 10 points 5 days ago (1 children)

I never see Fedora recommended enough, but it's really good for beginners. And by that I mean people new to computers, not just Linux. GNOME is a good looking by default, intuitive to use, simple DE.

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[–] Xanza@lemm.ee 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.

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[–] Shimitar@downonthestreet.eu 7 points 5 days ago

Hey, you forget about Gentoo Linux!

The real distro for newbies... (Provided the newbies are expert cs graduated and crazy nerds...)

All depends on what a beginner is... Not all beginners are tech illiterates or people who only want to use office.

[–] cavemeat@beehaw.org 9 points 5 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.

[–] Thcdenton@lemmy.world 1 points 3 days ago

It was my second distro after mint. It's very fun to learn as long as you got time to kill.

[–] rtxn@lemmy.world 9 points 5 days ago (3 children)

Counterpoint: if you have the ability and willingness to learn how Linux works, un-fucking a broken Arch installation will teach you more about the system than spending months with a stable distro. I know because my first serious daily driver was Manjaro.

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[–] kitnaht@lemmy.world 9 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago) (1 children)

Honestly Arch is fine as a beginner distro for the right person - The benefit of arch is the rolling release model and the fact that it's closer to edge than other distros. No; I don't want to use that package that's 6 months out of date -- Compile it myself? Well, then why would I run a 'stable' distro then?

Someone being on Linux instead of Windows is enough of a win for me. I'm going to praise whatever way they want to approach it, none of this purism shit.

Likewise, SteamOS is based on Arch because of the way it's architected in the first place. It's fine to want that. Now...if this were Gentoo on the other hand...

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[–] Fizz@lemmy.nz 6 points 5 days ago

Everyday I see people saying they are having issue with Linux and its always because they went straight to arch and used archinstall. They have no idea how any of their system works and when they run into an issue thry do a full system reinstall.

[–] brucethemoose@lemmy.world 8 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago)

I mean, you are right, and way more people should be using openSUSE :P

I will say Arch-derived distros are a good experience if you want to learn how the terminal and other systems work. They're engineered to be configurable; the documentation is great. But if you just want to use your computer without opening too many hoods, it's fundamentally not an optimal system.

Another thing is that many people just want their new laptop to work, and for it to game on linux. Sometimes it does not just work. If you start pulling in fixes and packages that are not supported on your distro, you can screw up any distro very quickly (and this includes the AUR, unofficial Fedora repos and such). If the community packages these, stages them, tests them against all official packages, and they work out-of-the-box... that's one less hazard.

[–] Vivendi@lemmy.zip 6 points 5 days ago

AMEN!

Fucking hell this is what I've been trying to hammer into people for a long time

If I hit my Alex Jones InfoVape™ hard enough I can probably weave a conspiracy theory on how Micro$oft started the "arch btw" meme in order to hurt Linux in the eyes of new users

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