Arch is simple, but not easy.
Other distros might be easy, but not simpleLanguage is beautiful.
But not simple. Or easy…
…beautiful is language.
*is beautiful* 🍷🐧
Feisty one you are
everything is simple once you know how to do it. i think a lot of the arch recommenders likely don’t realize how difficult some of these things can be the first time. it’s the same with any kind of specialized knowledge i think. it’s one of the reasons why teaching can be difficult. but the arch community has been super helpful in my experience
It’s true. Simple things like “be sure to review AUR scripts before installing” are so easy to say, but incredibly difficult to really explain what you’re looking for that could be problematic.
It’s a general problem with the community in my experience. People keep saying it’s “simple”, then whip 3 terminal commands out of their pocket nobody without extensive knowledge would understand (or be able to tell if they do something wrong). They just don’t realize how much knowledge they possess in comparison, and/or how little others are interested in gaining said knowledge (not because they’re ignorant, but simply because they got other priorities in life).
The community really needs an “injection of normies” for some people to wake up from their elitism trip.
Original, because sharing xkcd without alt text is a crime: https://xkcd.com/2501
People keep saying it’s “simple”, then whip 3 terminal commands out of their pocket nobody without extensive knowledge would understand
People do the same thing for all Linux distributions though. You’ll see people telling you to run
apt-get update && apt-get upgradelike you’ll see people telling you to runpacman -Syu.Not arguing that Arch is easy, just that this specifically doesn’t feel like a counter argument.
Well yes, although with Arch Linux it’s a necessity. Most distros using apt do come with graphical software centers as well. Unfortunately many people in the community indeed do ignore those tools instead of pointing to them. Hell, some even still recommend editing the god damn fstab file despite it being perfectly manageable with both Gnome and KDE tools, which are present in most popular distros and way safer unless you really know what you’re doing. To have those on Arch you’re forced to use CLI tools first.
It was more of a rant about the community than an argument against Arch.
Tacit knowledge really is a problem in the Linux community, but also in the rest of society.
Another thing that I hadn’t really thought about before reading another comment in this thread is that the arch wiki install guide (and other pages) are written with the assumption that you want to understand what you’re doing. And I think for many people that’s just not the case. Which is fair enough, not everyone enjoys tinkering with software. Just like I’m currently paying someone to build my new pc for me because I really don’t enjoy doing that. But there have been a few places within the arch install process where I had to research some background info to know what to optimally do for my use case instead of taking a guess and hoping it works out. And that’s quite a barrier, I see people struggle with similar things all the time at work. If any research is required beyond what your step by step guide is telling them, many people will give up.
You’d like to think people just do this to assholes, but the number of innocent noobs that get recommended Arch is too damn high.
of innocent noobs
Don’t know about you, but I only recommend arch when someone says they want the most costumisable distro. No matter if they just mean the DE, if they are too dumb to realise the difference between a DE and a distro, they shouldn’t be on Linux anyway.
That’s not a matter of being dumb, just that they never had a reason to question the difference. The proper way to answer that if you think there might be confusion is to recommend arch and note that they might just care about the DE, in which case there are simpler options. Otherwise you’re just being an ass.
Recommending someone Arch who is a newbie is just dirty. At least recommended EndeavourOS or something.
EndeavourOS is even worse.
It will install, and work, but then after one update it will just Brick because the newbie didn’t read the Patch notes from the arch RSS feed.
That’s a flaw with pacman and I’ll die on that hill. If it’s critical for someone to read the Arch News file before updates and pacman supports pre install hooks it should be recording what time you last installed updates and checking for updates to the news file since then and printing them or giving you the link to it and saying “THERE IS AN UPDATE TO THE NEWS FILE, PLEASE READ BEFORE CONTINUING.”
satan wants to meet you
I mean, have you seen archinstall? its pretty easy and straightforward. Unless you have a phobia against terminal screens.
At this point it’s easier / more comfortable than a windows install. No waiting between steps, no unnecessary options, easier disk layouts.
And you get a pacman!
sometimes you can’t even install windows without manually putting drivers on the install media
For some reason archinstall never worked for me. EndeavourOS is a joy to use. (i know it’s a separate distro but besides branding and installing, there’s no difference at all)
EndeavourOS represent! 🪐🚀 Much easier install plus some pretty sick wallpapers, all without being hostile to users like
Windows issome proprietary operating systems.some pretty sick wallpapers
The actual state of Linux distributions.
That’s endevour’s job. Also i think they have most user friendly community after mint community
I don’t quite understand what you’re getting at here.
EndeavourOS is awesome. I use it on everything now. It definitely makes Arch more user friendly.
Separate distro
Purple Arch 👿
I love purple Arch.
Pretty much, lol (with a GUI installer too). I like how it looks so I think that’s a good thing x)
I had slight issues with cachy but once I manually partitioned with gparted it worked well, (did the exact steps it wouldve done automatically) Was still easy using a graphical interface and mouse for everything
Might swap to endeavor tho seems more stable even tho ive had no issues past preinstall, just want to commit long term to linux and it seems easier to do with endeavor over cachy
honestly, I’ve had arch on all my machines for 5y now. the install was simple, as long as you followed instructions to the letter.
the rolling release is beautiful. i never ever have to go through the install again
Used Arch for a few years as well. Recommending it to newcomers who do not specifically ask for a learning experience is just vile.
Specifying intent in the meme would’ve been too much text in my opinion though. In general I think unless specified one shouldn’t expect newcomers to be into learning tech, but into ease of use.
I have a machine which has a much older installation. I’ve destroyed the pacman folder on the var partition accidentally which made my pacman stop working since it had no db and no idea of what packages were installed. I still managed to restore it with some weird scripts after that and is still working fine after like 2 years.
Arch is freaking resilient, but mostly because I didn’t want to reinstall since everything else is working xD
You say that but when I tried it refused to connect to the internet no matter what I tried
And your shift key is still not working?
What is the best package for enabling capitalization?
I had this problem when I unplugged a keyboard while caps lock was on and my other keyboard didn’t have a caps lock key. “ARCH DISABLE CAPS LOCK” is in my search history because I didn’t wanna get up and get my other keyboard again.
It’s fairly well documented and the up to date packages are very convenient.
It can also be pretty confusing installing debian and having to find how to install packages that aren’t out of date.
Imo take a few hours to power through the wiki installation guide and it’s really not too bad + you’re equipped to fix issues as they arise. It’s not Gentoo. When Ubuntu breaks for a new user, it’s a nightmare too.
So I think I disagree, it’s been easier to use than Fedora, Mint, Debian, Ubuntu, Elementary in my experience. I use Gentoo too but that is indeed simple in the challenging sense.
Arch is a nice middle ground between Ubuntu and Gentoo.
Plus, with EndeavourOS users can have their cake and eat it too.
This. Easiest distro for newcomers, provided that they are willing to learn, because of the amazing documentation.
The worst part about “simple” is defining what that means for the person. Depending on what they mean, there are a lot of different answers.
(And a good chunk of those are just Debian with different branding).
As others have said, EndeavourOS is pretty damn easy too. Personally I’ll stick to Arch for desktop, deb stable for servers/lxc’s, and deb sid for mostly screwing around and sending some reports in so stable can be stable.
This is what I eventually settled on too. Switched servers to Fedora last year though as part of switching from docker to podman.
I’m more of an LXC kind of guy, but I get the switch. I don’t do much docker these days, outside of a few work scenarios outside of my control.
Personally I don’t like RH under IBM, so I won’t go with fedora either. Fantastic community, bad business behind it (a story as old as time).
Its one of the reasons I appreciate Debian as much as I do, and contribute with Sid as often as I can, mostly using sid as a mirror of what I’m doing on my Deb stable boxes and finding breaks.
I don’t have a really good reason not to use LXCs right now. I use VMs because that’s what I knew when I started with Proxmox and the Internet seems pretty divided on when each one shines over the other. The goal of my switch to podman was twofold: switch to rootless and use something with better systemd support. I was hacking together unit files for docker using some pretty dumb tricks, none of that is necessary with quadlets though.
What’s the benefit in your eyes for LXC over VM? I don’t run Windows or anything so using the host kernel isn’t an issue for me. I do sometime have problems with OOM kills taking out a VM though, but my understanding is if it were an LXC that kill could have hit a much more important process than my general apps VM.
E: As far as Fedora under IBM… I don’t like it either. I’m relatively prepared to jump back to Debian though, I’ve kept my Andi key playbooks updated for both Fedora and Debian just in case I have to go back.
In my case, I don’t need the isolation of a VM, really I’m just looking to separate the service I’m running into something manageable and easy to move between hosts. I could do a VM for each, but I’d be adding overhead and power requirements without much benefit.
And really that’d all it comes down to for me. Each service is its own LXC, from stuff most self-hosters use, to random one-offs I write. Managing it all stays in ansible for everything, and the structure is quite a bit simpler.
When I do want to bring it elsewhere, I van package it up clean and toss that on a new LXC somewhere else quickly, like an 80 core monster with $16k in GPU thats already getting pushed hard, and knowing it will be of almost no impact to its main job while adding the service it needs.
I do still have VMs, but that is to do things like dealing with windows. Especially specific versions, like a piece of software for some work stuff that requires XP or server 2008 specifically. Its pretty isolated though, not even allowed network access out. All my writes are to a thumb drive if I need to get something out of it (which is uniquely set as the thumb drive its allowed to see).
So nothing that I couldn’t do a bunch of other ways, this is just the structure thats working best for me.
The biggest thing keeping from doing an LXC per app is a poor decision when I first set the lab up, I only gave it a /24 and didn’t separate out iot/user devices/servers so I’m flirting with exhausting the IPs. I’m planning on setting up opnsense soon so that should take care of it. I have a few different servers with apps grouped by type/priority and then running podman for the containers inside. It works well and I probably shouldn’t change it for no real reason.
Ah - yeah ive got trunk to each of the machines in my clusters, 9 vlans total, and of course I can add more whenever this way. I’m a bit of a glutton for naming and numbering structure too, so the purpose of the service determines which VLAN its on. Like Home Assistant has just about its own vlan, with sensors and misc tools in support of it all there. A different one for IoT devices by others (that I will never trust with internet access, so its initiate from another VLAN on the FW only, outbound can’t be initiated from any device on it, etc), one for work thats part of a site-to-site with work, with a few ports on the switch allocated that I can just plug in ad hoc, etc.
Definitely helps to have the range to play it this way!
In an ideal world I have multiple vlans for studf like iot, security cameras, my personal devices, my family’s personal devices, and various ones for lab stuff (externally available apps, critical apps, etc.)
Networking is my biggest neglect and learning it to start fixing things feels pretty daunting when I only have an hour or so some nights to tinker. I’ll get there eventually though.
well it is simple, but you also gotta be competent as per the wiki :P
Why not just direct them to Gentoo?
I mean, it is dead simple after all
Oh yeah, it’s the community thinking about switching frustrated by the Linux culture that are unfriendly, not the Linux community itself being incredibly unwelcoming to anyone who doesn’t “get it.”
No one said everyone who wants to switch is unfriendly. I do concur that a lot of people in the Linux community act like dicks though.
Manjaro was my “throwing into the water”-distro and it worked very well getting me swimming. YMMV.
I mean as long as it’s elementary OS that might be okay
EndeavorOS too I would think.
Ahh crap, I meant Endeavour lol I got them mixed up.
