Arch is like making your own cookies, starting from growing the wheat.
Mint and Pop! are like buying Oreos.
I’m done threshing in my life, never again.
Arch is like making your own cookies, starting from growing the wheat.
This is really more like LFS. Arch would be having all the ingredients and doing the baking.
I think LFS means you also need to build the stove.
LFS: Here’s an empty planet and a bunch of minerals and shit, bake a cake.
If you wish to
make an apple piecompile Linux from scratch, you must first invent the universe-Carl Sagan
I agree. and I happen to enjoy baking. arch was my first distro and after a whirlwind tour of other options at some point, has remained my daily driver os for the better part of a decade.
i don’t suggest arch to just any newbies. I suggest it to the ones who are overtly interested in baking. I don’t suggest it to people asking the best way to get tasty cookies, who are perhaps the majority, but not by as much as people seem to naturally suspect. sometimes I think some people giving answers don’t remember or realize that there are many kinds of people interested in learning about Linux and therefore many right answers for a starting distro.
For the new readers never heard of LFS : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux_From_Scratch
Arch would be having all the ingredients and doing the baking.
After being forced to watch a 3 hour documentary.
I like Oreos.
And not at all sarcastically, mint Oreos.
ChOcoLaTE tOotHpAstE
mint has the same problem that butyric acid has in american herseys chocolate. if you associate the ingredient with toothpaste/vomit first, then you come in with a much more negative view of it.
Goddamit, now you made me buy and try out mint oreos for the first time.
They’re one of my many one weaknesses
Right up there with table legs in the dark and white cheddar cheezits
Make sure to have a glass of milk with them!GUZZLE MILK WHILE YOU EAT THEM.
Edit: I sounded too much like an ad.
Mint Oreos are good, but lemon Oreos are great
Damn you and your mouth-watering memory inducers!
I had a phase of making shakes with milk + mint oreos + mint ice cream
Arch has an installer script now. It’s literally 1 command and you get a fully working system
You maybe get a working system. archinstall is nowhere near foolproof or even complete.
If you want a really painless install of something that gets you the closest to Arch use Endeavour.
So? You can install Windows with 0 commands
Doesn’t mean it is setup how you like it
Alright so I got a steam deck and that seems cool. Windows has sucked for awhile and now it blows too so can I just install the steamdeck’s version of linux on my PCs too? Or do I choose a different distro? Or uhhhhhhhhhhhh wtf do I do I just wanna play games without being spied on and advertised at
Other comment made great points on MintOS and PopOS for beginning a Linux journey.
SteamOS isn’t available for a full PC release (that I am aware of), but Bazzite was made to be a full-distro alternative to SteamOS. I haven’t tried it myself yet, but it has good reception from what I see.
Linux Mint is very easy to pick up, though, and I highly recommend for someone coming from Windows. It is fully functional through GUI and has several different flavors for the desktop environment. I’m a fan of KDE, but Cinnemon was also very nice. A version of KDE Plasma is what SteamOS 3.0 uses. I’m not as big of a fan of GNOME, but a lot of people love it as a mor elegant, modern desktop environment.
Bazzite is pretty good, as are Nobara and ChimeraOS. I’ve got HoloISO (SteamOS reimplementation) running and it’s pretty ok. It does what I need but I wouldn’t necessarily recommend it due to the Bluetooth issues I’ve had and the on again/off again support.
Funny enough, instead of fixing the Bluetooth issues I just wrote a script a week or two ago that runs on startup. It removes btusb and btintel then reloads them. I hate janky fixes like that but I don’t have the time or energy to tinker with operating systems anymore.
MintLinux and Pop!OS are normally the two front-runners for new users. Basically, if you use Steam and you don’t play online-only games with bad implementations of anti-cheat software, you are good to game on either.
Make a USB that you can “live boot” from, so you can test out how they work with your hardware before you actually install the OS. Generally speaking, Mint works better with AMD, and Pop! works better with Nvidia.
Here’s the official basic guide for Mint:
https://linuxmint-installation-guide.readthedocs.io/en/latest/And here’s the official basic guide for Pop!:
https://support.system76.com/articles/install-pop/If you like traditional desktop approach, just go with Linux Mint. If you wanna try something different, go with PopOS. You can always use Steam’s Big Picture mod if you want Steam Deck UI.
Obviously the distro choices are limitless but it’s a good idea to start with one of these.
I recommend nobara
Use Gentoo, add -telemetry to FLAGS, so every software will be built without it - no spyware.
You can /s me later.
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While this is true, Ubuntu is not quite the shining example of user friendliness anymore. Debian is a little janky nowadays in my experience.
EndeavorOS is fantastic.
I’ve only tried EndeavourOS with the i3 wm, it was better than setting it up myself from scratch, but it still left a lot to be desired (in particular; no way to deal with external displays as far as i could tell, except using
xrandr)But i guess it’s more focused on the desktop manager options?
Endeavour does not aim to be used friendly, it just aims to make Arch faster to install. After that you’re on your own just as much as you’d be on Arch.
I3 only accepts xrandr configs, I don’t know what you’re expecting endeavour Devs to do besides preinstall arandr…
I usually use Ubuntu containers because it has more packages by default and then I don’t have to worry about dependencies so much.
I will happily recommend Arch to a new user… If they’re interested in learning Linux, and not dependent on it working reliably, while warning them of the risks and telling them about the advantages.
I wouldn’t recommend it to somebody who wants something that just works, but for tech-inclined people looking for a system they are in control (and responsibility) of, willing to learn how to set it up, I think a manual installation is a good experience.
But they will be warned.
I recommend arch to a first time user…once. because he said he wanted to have Linux as a new hobby of sorts. Everyone else I recommend Pop! Or Fedora most of the time.
What would be a good source of info on this, for someone who only knows windows but isn’t afraid to learn a lot of new stuff if that means doing it right.
I feel like i should move away from windows with their shenanigans. I use my pc for gaming and messing around with my 3d printer(and everything that comes with that), photography, design work.
The arch wiki is the gold standard for Linux, not just arch. But it definitely talks specifically about arch.
So, there are built in install scripts now. There’s no GUI installer, but it’s 1 command to get a full arch setup installed with a desktop environment. Arch is a 100% reasonable choice for a new user.
The Arch Linux wiki is considered, by several Linux users including myself, as the best reference for troubleshooting and learning more about Linux, even when you’re not using Arch Linux. For a gamer (which I’m not,btw) have a look at https://bazzite.gg/ and https://nobaraproject.org/ and there’s Lemmy communities for linux_gaming
As others mentioned, archwiki is the information source if you want to use Arch, and a great source of information even if using other distributions.
For other distros, I’ve seen people mention Linux Journey.
All that said, you might not be able to drop Windows entirely - if we’re talking CAD software, the Adobe suite, that kind of stuff, you might not be able to find suitable alternatives for Linux. That said, you can always dual boot, or you might even be able to work with a VM.
If you do want to try a dual boot, I strongly recommend setting up the Linux boot partition on a separate physical drive, to minimize the risk of Windows overwriting it… As well as you accidentally messing up your windows install. I’d also recommend using rEFInd as the bootloader, since it’s very easy to set up and will automatically show a boot option for Windows.
Feel free to ask questions, I’m no expert, but I’ll try to answer when I have time.
On the flip side, I don’t consider OpenSUSE, Fedora, or Debian to be all that beginner-friendly either.
opensuse and debian, for sure. But fedora is real beginner friendly
Fedora is redhat’s guinea pig, they’ve been teasing completely dropping x11 really soon which imo isn’t ideal for noobs
“Real soon” for Fedora means “maybe in the release after next” which in real world terms means it’s at least one year away if it gets approved. Which approval keeps getting reverted. So basically it’s a “maybe one year from now” time frame which keeps being pushed back.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
https://www.piped.video/watch?v=x9qCqRTEVz0
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
Hannah Montana Linux for life
Okay, I guess I’ve gotta play the crow here … Is Arch really such a bad choice for a beginner these days? Obviously building it the “proper” way would be a bad idea, but there are tons of Arch-based distros with GUI-installers. I currently run Garuda on both my personal devices and the install process really couldn’t have been easier, and almost everything worked out of the box. The stuff that needed tweaking was all minor and mostly related to this being my first foray into KDE in over a decade. Let’s face it - that’s a pretty high bar even on Windows systems these days.
Granted, the rolling release aspect means inevitably you’re gonna get a borked update that you have to revert, so that’s a stumbling point for a complete newbie. It’s not like that doesn’t sometimes happen on other distros though - or even Windows. On the other hand, the AUR means little or no manually compiling stuff. Plus, the best wiki in the community (even if you don’t use Arch). And gaming (at least on AMD) is rock solid.
Hell, I have a fifteen-year-old intern at my work (through his school). He’d had almost no exposure to Linux when he started with us, so as a learning project I had him set up Arch with Hyprland from the console. The little bugger did find the install script, but even then he had to learn a bunch of stuff and still had a running system in about an afternoon.
ANYWAY, I’m not saying that Arch should necessarily be the first distro for most beginners, just that it’s not as daunting as most people make it out to be.
Setting up a computer for Grandma? Mint.
Already something of a power-user in Windows? Depending on your use case, Arch is worth consideration.
Granted, the rolling release aspect means inevitably you’re gonna get a borked update that you have to revert, so that’s a stumbling point for a complete newbie. It’s not like that doesn’t sometimes happen on other distros though - or even Windows.
People post things like this constantly and I feel like I’m living on a different planet. I don’t think I’ve ever heard of a Windows install needing to be reverted through no fault of the user.
I am a sysadmin and believe me when I say that happens. Mostly due to updates. Within that updates that just plainly break things. E.g. deleting the users files. Or other updates which only break some PCs. (those are fun to diagnose) E.g. if the recovery partiton created by its own installer is suddenly to small. and I also had it more than a few times that Windows pulled in a driver “update” which broke things. One time it even tried to apply the wrong driver! I have now disabled all driver updates trough windows on all PCs I manage. Rarely PCs also just suddenly refuse to boot, being caught in a recovery loop. After trying two times for hours to find the reason and only one success I don’t care anymore and just restore a working backup in that case. Mind that (nearly) all users do not have admin rights.
On Linux? I had it that release upgrades broke things, but only once several years ago on the PCs where I wait till the official release is made. On my own ones I am often to feature hungry to wait until after the beta, and I know I can fix things. I had one 12 year old PC where X11+KDE got unstable after a release upgrade, thankfully a switch to Wayland solved this. Besides that? Never had any issue I didn’t cause myself and never had a running system which suddenly broke. Granted I do not administer as many Linux PCs as Windows ones. But there are a few, some of them also in the hands of users.
I did bork Windows 10 after a big fall update
Also, sometimes Windows can stuck in an endless loop while updating, forcing user to force restart. Consequences may vary…
I’ve had more windows updates breaking stuff than I had arch updates breaking stuff, that’s for sure. I think it’s frankly laughable that a paid OS has problems such as that.
There are some updates that broke stuff on Windows. Like that one which broke all those HP printers for a lot of people.
The thing is that it is kind of impressive how little it happens seeing the sheer amount of users. And normally Microsoft is quite quick to release an other update to fix it.
I haven’t had an arch update break shit in almost a decade.
I think Arch is a good distro to learn for new users who are interested in tech, it gives an amazing example of good documentation and teaches you a lot about how UNIX-Like filesystems work.
That being said for non-technical users with zero interest, my main recommendations are Mint if you are coming from or prefer Windows and Elementary if you’re coming from or prefer Mac.
This, I switched from win10 to Mint, the only issues I had with the transition were self-inflicted, or stemmed from me approaching it with a windows mindset rather than the mindset of learning a new OS.
I’ve settled in quite well now, and actively cringe when I’m forced to boot into my windows install for some reason or another.
I’ve been distro-hopping with my orangepi, however I can only do so much hopping on arm, I’m considering adding yet another drive to my rig with which to try out some other distros and see if I can find a better fit than (the already great fit) Linux Mint.
I would consider myself an intermediate-advanced user (not quite power user), do you think trying Arch is a good idea at this stage?
I would get started with virtualization
I’m actually attempting to convert my windows install into a VM these past few days, it’s most of the way there now, just need to get the VM to actually boot from that drive.
It was my original intent upon switching to Linux that I would VM my windows, however only in the last few days of trying (read: failing) to get mods for a few games working under proton, that I’ve really upped my effort.
If there are any resources you recommend, I’m all ears.
I would consider myself an intermediate-advanced user (not quite power user), do you think trying Arch is a good idea at this stage?
Arch Linux used to be pretty difficult to install for new users, but now it comes with a build in installer it requires less reading than before. btw There is Arch for ARM https://archlinuxarm.org/ maybe your orangepi is supported. Distro hopping or just testing another Linux distro can be comfortable on SBC since replacing SD card or USB stick is usually easy.
I recommend not using the installer if you want to learn how Linux works well.
I wasn’t aware Arch had builds available for arm, I will certainly give it a look-see.
Unfortunately the Orangepi 5 is somewhat shitty to hop around with, many builds either don’t support the RK3588 at all, or certain things just don’t work at all on most (I’m looking at you GPU acceleration).
On top of this, the SPI flash can be quite a pain to work with, due to orangepi doing the bare minimum to ship the product, I would really love to see dual-boot in future for it, though my expectations have been seriously tempered when it comes to orangepi.
The result of this, is that any distro I installed to the SSD removed boot priority from the SD slot, ergo, without formatting/overwriting the SPI flash, it will refuse to boot from SD, even with no SSD present. Some builds boot fine from having been directly flashed to the SSD, so far Batocera, Ubuntu and the J-Reik Rockchip Ubuntu have all booted flawlessly when directly flashed to the SSD, no luck with most others though.
I must admit though, that RK3588 is blazingly fast for how little power it draws. The hardware is top notch, I just wish the software weren’t lagging so far behind. If I remember rightly the incoming kernel should resolve many of these issues, I believe it’s still running 5.10 currently.
Apologies for the rant, during my writing of this reply I came across a repo on GitHub that someone’s been building for the Orangepi, I’ll give it a shot and hope for the best I guess! Seems to have rkbootloader paired with it, which might help dodge the bullet that the SPI flash can feel like at times.
Oh, I see :/ Forgot that I’m kind of privileged with using Raspberry Pi (I don’t particularly endorse them actually.It just happened years ago). From time to time when I look at other SBC hardware options I do see that the software is not catching up as well as it does for the rpi. Good to hear your story.
I do actually have an RPi4, it’s on full-time Kodi duty at present. I’ll have to pick up a few more SD cards to load up and mess with.
I bought the Orangepi first funnily enough, because it was the peak of the RPi shortage and I didn’t want to spend blood money on an aging SBC, I did pick the RPi up the moment stock was available though, no regrets, it’s been rock solid since first boot, and even easier to work with than the community attests to.
I love that little fucker to bits, I just wish it had the power of the Pi 5 (orange OR raspberry), as it drops a fair few frames during 4k directplay, 1080/1440p runs butter smooth though.
It’s a shame really, I’d be first in line to buy the Orangepi Neo (their incoming 7840U handheld) were it not for the piss poor experience I’ve had with the Pi. Now I’m firmly planted in the “wait and see, but probably not” camp.
Absolutely this. Arch can be a first good distro, but only for a limited subset of new users with a very specific goal in mind. Anybody who says it’s any more stable than Debian or mint is either delusional, very lucky or disingenuous. I’ve never had to chroot into my system to roll back a bugged grub update on fedora, Debian or Ubuntu, but on Arch yes. And I’m saying that with love from EndeavourOS. I love my system to bits but I’m realist enough to acknowledge the reason why I am comfortable on it is that I have enough years of experience on Linux to not stress about what to do when something breaks.
Who the hell would recommend Arch or even worse Gentoo to new users? They really don’t want this community to grow
As people said above, depends on the purpose that drove person to Linux, really.
If it’s about getting a user-friendly everyday system that just isn’t powered by corporations, certainly terrible pick.
If motivation is to learn more about computers, the way they work, to tinker a lot, then why not.
But by default we should assume the former indeed.
NOBODY wants to have to sit through a multi-hour YouTube video just to install something.
I’m a Linux user with 20+ years of experience who has done LFS, compiled kernels for fun and put together their own mini-distro and I don’t want to install Arch.
That’s not how you teach people Linux. That’s not how you teach people anything, let alone difficult stuff.
Beginners being told to use Arch is like telling a person “you might like some fresh air” and then taking them deep into the mountains, putting them in front of a vertical cliff face and telling them “start climbing”.
Any unsuspecting person bring tricked into installing Arch would be well within their rights to say “fuck you all with a rusty spoon” and then refuse to hear the word “Linux” for another decade.
The worst part is that the install would be the least of their problems. Assuming they have a saint’s patience and make it through, then what? They’re now a complete beginner stuck on a distro for advanced users. Did a 3 hour install make them an advanced Linux user? No, it didn’t. So what’s the point?
The path of half the people who try Linux
Windows -> simple Linux -> Arch -> Gentoo -> Windows
Arch isn’t a bad choice for a new Linux user who was a power user on Windows. You get to actually know what’s installed on your system which can really help during the inevitable troubleshooting, though it’s definitely a trial by fire when it comes to manual install and setting up the environment.
Recommending Gentoo to a new user though is a war crime.
Why not recommend Manjaro then? The benefits of Arch without all the drawbacks.
For beginners it’s probably best to give them an OS they can actually use and then have them find out stuff. Starting off with a troubleshooting experience before being able to use the OS is rather demotivating.
Manjaro is a potential time bomb, delayed repos and AUR don’t always interact well. EndeavourOS is the better Arch fork, especially for beginners that need a smooth introduction.
I have never really seen arch or gentoo unironically pitched to new users. However, I have seen new users try to use arch because they didn’t get the joke.
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Literally the top comment at this time from KubeRoot:
I will happily recommend Arch to a new user… If they’re interested in learning Linux, and not dependent on it working reliably, while warning them of the risks and telling them about the advantages.
Then a bit lower by mac:
I think Arch is a good distro to learn for new users who are interested in tech, it gives an amazing example of good documentation and teaches you a lot about how UNIX-Like filesystems work.
Both are heavily upvoted
Recommending one of those obscure diestros should be considered a crime
I have seen arch recommended to first time Linux users more times than I can count. It’s usually said that installing it is a learning experience. If that’s a joke it’s a really stupid one.
Read the top comments in here again, it’s full of people recommending it with a straight face.
Yes. Arch is not actually hard. It’s just a meme.
Only complaint is… FUCK CANONICAL.
Beyond that, heh. Sure.
(Don’t be shy if you don’t mind the learning curve, there’s nothing wrong choosing a distro that meets your needs.)
What’s wrong with Canonical?
Among other things? They have a restrictive licensing, they’re a for-profit company, and though it’s now disabled by default (maybe, see for profit company bit,) they got into cahoots with Amazon for Spyware
They’ve always skeeved me out with their MS-like approach to UI.
Among other things? They have a restrictive licensing,
Thanks for that link and on the way there reminding me of the Firefox versus Debian conflict over branding :)
It was a bit weasel-y of debian, but like, I understand branding issues being “important”; the issue with Ubuntu and branding is you can’t do that. You have to get approval to repackage/brand Ubuntu.
What’s wrong by a for profit company? Theoretically that is the best option
Same as IBM, but everyone rushes to suck their dick when they’re not even much useful for the ecosystem anyways
What makes you think I’m fond of IBM? What about IBM being creepy makes Canonical not creepy?
Just an interesting thing in the community, how everything canonical does is immediately hate mongered by all relevant Linux media and Red Hat is given free reign
LOL.
So. Fun story. My dad is a Unix SysOps guy. I grew up on Red Hat. he went out to REHL’s HQ in Raleigh, NC, to get pitched their enterprise services for his org. (they were soliciting bids from several places,). In any case, he came back with, for him, a new hostility towards red hat. (“I regret setting you up with red hat…” lots of other comments that could be described as “fuck them”, he’s far less crude than I am.)
the most hilarious part is the some of the swag was this nasty-ass 1 pound chocolate bar that they made a big deal out of. he put it out at his office and not even the office grazers that would eat 3-week old pizza left in the fridge would touch it.
RH has fallen from grace.
fuck red hat
The distro snobs are the worst. They hate the easy and insist on the obscure and harder to work with.
The exception is Debian
Because debian is a vanilla distro that does as little as possible, so it isn’t extra work to use it. Do you know what other distro tries to be as vanilla as possible. Arch. So if you just use the install wizard Debian and Arch are equal difficulty. AKA the easiest. Don’t buy the Ubuntu marketing hype. Just because someone labels themselves the easiest doesn’t mean it’s true. Just because another distro is labeled hard doesn’t mean it’s true.
Nahhh, NixOS for the real beginners ;)
Can there be beginners if everyone is a beginner?
I agree, the experience of switching to Linux as a regular end-user is overwhelming. The worst are the sensationalist articles that seem they were plagiarized and make you feel like you are missing on some epic feature if you pick one distro over the other.
Glorious nixos. For those who want to play a souls like everytime they want to use their pc. /s
i enjoy playing dark souls on nixos
does that make double masochist?
Only if you managed to set up steam and stuff all by yourself!
The thing is. Once smb. Figured it out and shares his config files everybody can just paste it into their nixos.
So if enough nerds use the os it will be the future for sure.
There is almost no “it doesn’t work on my system”
