stolen from linux memes at Deltachat
Arch user here.
My recommendation to noobies is always Linux Mint even though I don’t use it.
I use Arch, btw.
Yeah I think Arch is fine, but I’d never recommend it to a new Linux user.
Most Arch users (myself included) don’t recommend Arch to n00bs or even light seasoned Linux users if they already are happy with their setup.
But the meme is the meme and I like bullying Arch elitists.
Even I wasn’t cruel enough to banish my mother to arch. She uses fedora on her desktop (because she liked gnome) and Linux mint on her laptop because I wanted her to make sure she still wanted to switch after trying it for about a month.
She wanted to jump head first but it would have been a pain to go through four installs if she didn’t like it.
Indeed, besides most linux distributions are fairly equally lightweight and can be customized. I tried 4-5 distros this past January (Arch being one) when I got my new gaming laptop and they all booted in ~9.5 sec for example, and perform equally well in general, they had fairly similar RAM load with the same desktop environment.
Arch is about managing the system as a hobby, which is fine.
One problem here is that new users install Endeavour/Garuda but don’t know how to manage updates safely about pacnew/pacsave/etc. So the system might slowly “rot” without them knowing about it because new components use old configs, etc…
I also recommend Mint to new users. I don’t use Mint, nor do I use Arch.
Arch is about managing the system as a hobby
You’re thinking of Gentoo.
As a Gentoo user currently vacationing in Arch-land I’m not sure whether to feel insulted or affirmed. Imean, it is but some might say that to disparage it or its users 😅
No disparaging intended, it just isn’t my thing.
For me: Gentoo is a meta distro, you are the distro maintainer then the power user of that specific distro you created for yourself which can definitely be fun. Arch is more like: let’s give you one instance of a Gentoo distro when you are tired of being the distro maintainer.
Tbf I don’t think many people know about pacdiff. The way I found out about it was by looking up a warning about pacnew/pacsave during an upgrade, because I was bored. Very random.
Arch is about managing the system as a hobby, which is fine.
Only the installation takes more time, maintenance is no longer than the noob friendly ones.
Hey, you’re on the wrong Lemmy instance. :P
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I so want to join that one :D Brilliant name.
… Then go back to Gentoo and stay anyway >:P
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I remember when this was the joke with Slackware.
I think I’m remembering right.
I’ve never used arch. If I get another laptop one day I’ll give it a go.
I use both, but Mint is strictly better if you want a no-fuss system that just works and will continue to do so
As a seasoned distrohopper, can confirm. When I try something new, I always ask myself: Would a noob be ok with the fact that in this distro you have to do things this way. In Fedora, Debian, Manjaro and so many other I always end up saying “no” more than a few times. With Mint, you just don’t bump into these situations very often. IMO, Mint is the best starter distro for most users. If you know your friend is very technical, you can recommend something else.
I finally tried out Linux Mint this year at work (we use Fedora for some of our different tasks). It arms like such a nice experience out of the box, and I’d put it on a family computer in a second.
Mint was my first used, was straightforward and easy to get going. Still use mint.
I’ve always read it doesn’t really matter what distro you choose, just to pick one you like. That’s confusing to a noob because they don’t know why they should or shouldn’t like a specific one.
Mint is very simple to setup and works very much like a windows PC by default. Can even set it up to work like a Mac if you want to.
Yep. LM or Ubuntu is my recommendation to newbies
Isn’t archwiki one of the most comprehended wikis for Linux distros out there? If anything, the arch-wiki (to me) has often too many answers for the same problem than the other way around.
The Arch wiki is great, but Arch is a terrible platform for newbies, unless they go into Linux with the intent to do a deep dive into the structure behind a Linux OS.
I switched like ten years ago because I wanted to learn the details, but in all honesty I still feel like I barely understand anything. Not sure how normal this is, maybe I’m unusually dumb, but I feel like what I’ve really learned is how to troubleshoot and solve issues by reading documentation and tinkering, rather than understanding what I’m actually doing. I’ve had a stable system for years but I kind of feel like if a typical arch forum poster looked my system configuration for five minutes they’d be like wtf are you doing.
If you know where to look and where to tinker, then I think you have at least some understanding of what you’re doing.
Knowing you don’t know everything is what makes you smart. Arch helps keep people smart by forcing them to be on edge all the time by feeding everyone the most recent, often not very well-tested versions of software. All the shiny new tech, with some of the sharp edges that still need to be sanded down.
Every time you learn how to configure a tool or daemon or subsystem, a new, shinier tool comes out, or there’s a major update, or you discover an approach that works better for you. The Linux landscape is constantly shifting. You can bite down and stick with what you know (CentOS and derivatives are great for that!) or you can stay along for the ride.
Weird shitty configs is the Arch Linux life. The flexibility is what allows you to configure your system in whatever way works for you, and until it inevitably all explodes with some future update, it’s probably best not to touch anything and break your config because there’s a “better” way. Unless you like that stuff, of course.
Is actually great since it forces you to learn which saves you much more time in the long run.
But most people can’t see past their nose.
Edit
Can’t believe somebody got offended by this…
couldve stopped at the first sentence, but had to keep with the stereotype i guess ;)
??
Smug sense of superiority. You’re special and do things the right way because everyone else is too dumb.
Jesus fucking christ what a bunch of drama queens
you’re doing a really good job of breaking this stereotype, bub
To be fair, your original comment would have been more likely to push people towards trying Arch if it didn’t have the last sentence.
You can’t invite people to your party by antagonizing them.
Is actually great since it forces you to learn which saves you much more time in the long run.
It is great when you have time to learn, but when you are trying to troubleshoot while understand basically nothing of the wiki … it is not good.
Most people want a functional OS, they don’t care about the benefits of NetworkManager over its competition. Figuring out every possible configuration setting and finding the right combination to get everything working as intended takes forever.
Some people are into that, and power to them, but most people aren’t.
Can’t believe you got so offended someone was offended you edited your comment…
to be fair, i wasnt offened :) just wanted to point out the irony
oh nooo, you weren’t offended at all (:
I’m not in just tired to deal with whiny bitches
I run Debian and I regularly look at the Arch wiki.
It is most comprehended, but for newbie it is too comprehensive. Its overwhelming, I tried to troubleshoot why I boot to black screen even the installation said its successful and there’s no error. I saw solutions that want me edit grub, edit xorg … and some other file that I never understand.
I understand the wiki is very good and very important, its just not newbie friendly.
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That’s the issue. Arch and it’s wiki are labyrinths for beginners.
For anyone not interested in tinkering all-day long they’re better off using fedora, debian or suse.
True
A lot of new users are coming to Linux not because they like tinkering with their setup but because they are tired of Microsoft tinkering with their setup. For these people Arch will probably never be the answer. That’s ok, we should encourage all Linux adoption and the best way to do that is to start with the simple and familiar.
I mean, who doesn’t love to have candy crush and facebook automatically bundled with their OS? I mean, I had a fantastic two years waiting for the never combine taskbar feature to be released. The never-ending prompt to make edge my default browser is also utterly refreshing. m$ is so ahead of the game, they even anticipated my needs by shoving onedrive prompts in my control panel. How about that Office 365? Have you tried it yet? No? Well you’re missing out my man, in case you change your mind I’m going to put it right there in the front page of settings so you’ll never miss it.
I switched a few weeks ago, it was because my computer is slower than a toaster and windows was tanking it down even more I installed xubuntu, well I must say it’s ok, after I finished setting stuff up I realised I should’ve just gone for debian with xfce (I tried to install kubuntu-deskop on my xubuntu installation just to try how would kde run on my pc, it ran as well as windows did, but was just a tiny tiny bit faster, the way I installed it was probably bad and it could’ve been the way I installed it tho)
And yeah, I definitely love tinkering with stuff so this wasthe obvious choice
heres the thing: as a decade+ software dev, I never want to even think about my distro.
I just want Linux terminal style commands, and Linux style ssh shit to just work in the most middle of the road way as possible. I’m trying to get a job done, not build a personality.
This is me too and why I no longer use Arch btw.
I used Arch for AUR, but with flatpak getting more popular these last few years even the more niche stuff I had to rely on AUR for got a flatpak. So I’ve been trying out immutable distros like Fedora Kinoite.
Exactly. That’s why i use Mint. I don’t want to think about my operating system, I want to get stuff done.
Same here fam
This is why I got a MacBook (unpopular opinion here)
I only ever have Mac stuff from employers, but it is nice hardware and linux-like enough for me to be happy.
Probably also helps Mac that every windows machines provided by an employer is some random HP buttbook that looks and preforms like it could be from 2021 or 2012, who knows
Macs are not really what I think of when reading “middle of the road linux”
I interpreted “middle of the road” as doing nothing special, just normal tasks done a normal way and therefore hoping everything just works so you can focus on work
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Weird shot at the Arch wiki, which is truly great. I turn to it regularly despite not using Arch.
Wiki do not have answer
?? The arch wiki is one of the greatest Linux resources out there. Sure there may be situations where it doesn’t have the answer for something, but for a new user? It has all bases covered.
It’s actually really great… if you know how to interpret and apply the information on it to your situation and adapt as needed. A good new user experience it does not make however.
On one hand, the archlinux bbs had the only exact reference to the issue I was having. On the other hand, no one could replicate it enough to figure anything out. :/
I agree. I don’t use Arch (I have in the past) but I use Arch Wiki heavily.
im pretty sure the OP never took a look at Arch and just follow the hate movement
Ex arch btw user here. I noped out and wiped after thinking I had it all nailed down, then I tried to connect my Bluetooth headphones and I came to a grand awakening. I am too old for this shit.
Installed Tumbleweed and been happy ever since.
Tumbleweed is boring, and that’s why it’s wonderful.
I am too old for this shit.
You don’t even have to be old; just wise.
Tumbleweed is great, but I prefer EndeavorOS myself.
Starbucks coffee is great, but I prefer vicious, unrelenting cock and ball torture myself.
Hahaha this had me chuckling. Take my upvote you rascal.
- Stop supporting genocide (Starbucks supports Israel)
- EndeavorOS ain’t CBT.
My “I don’t have time for this” moment came when I tried to set up Nextcloud on Arch:
https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/NextcloudMeanwhile on Slackware:
Configuration (1) Add the following in /etc/httpd/httpd.conf Alias /nextcloud "/srv/httpd/htdocs/nextcloud/" Options +FollowSymlinks AllowOverride All Dav off SetEnv HOME "/srv/httpd/htdocs/nextcloud" SetEnv HTTP_HOME "/srv/httpd/htdocs/nextcloud" (2) In /etc/httpd/httpd.conf, enable mod_rewrite and PHP by uncommenting "LoadModule rewrite_module ..." and "Include /etc/httpd/mod_php.conf", then restart httpd.I just installed Nextcloud on Arch and the official packages caused the most headaches I ever had within my 3 years of arch. In contrast I installed the official Jellyfin and Prometheus Server packages and they ran OOTB.
I ended up with not using the official packages but extracting the tar.bz2 into /var/www/nextcloud and slightly modifying the nginx config from their site. I had to move the inclusion of the MIME-Types file to a different block for nextcloud to deliver its CSS, SVGs and images. It wasn’t exactly straight-forward too considering permissions. I found it a beast compared to many other server software.
ngl, I love how “I don’t give a fuck” the slackware authors are, they didn’t even bother with https on their official website.
I love how their official “support” page links to a website that includes this:
https://www.steubentech.com/~talon/desktop/lmao this is exactly the image that would pop into my head if I imagine a Slackware user in 2023.
Its probably just one package. I guess for example
pacman -S plasma-desktop plasma-meta flatpak fish plasma-wayland-session sddm sddm-kcm && systemctl enable --now sddmdoes the trick.Archinstall with the entire plasma desktop is probably also nice, or just EndeavorOS which will be preconfigured
I actually did the whole KDE shebang with archinstall. I never really expected that Arch btw deigned it too opinionated to just provide an audio and Bluetooth interface. Instead I have to choose between pulse audio and pipewire and bluez and a bunch of others. I just didn’t have the patience nor time to look into what and why these options are presented, and this was after I already wasted days figuring how to get my pc to boot with my 12th gen Intel and Nvidia gpu combination.
Turns out there’s a bunch of kernel finagling you absolutely have to do first before it even decides to boot from the gpu and not the igpu. Oh well.
For a total newbie, Linux Mint or PopOS are probably the best options. But EndeavourOS is getting there. There shouldn’t be any issues during the installation if one sticks to the defaults. Only thing is, it doesn’t come with a graphical package manager out of the box. But once that is installed (I think anyone will be happy to write a single terminal command, at least), I don’t see why it’s any harder to use than any other distro.
Mint, with any DE, does come with a graphical package manager. It’s as easy as any appstore. The only confusion is it suggests both it’s original and flatpack versions to install.
I think you are talking about EndevourOS there.
Yeah, I’m talking about EndeavourOS. I don’t see what got you confused.
Reading it in a linear fashion, you drop one distro after another without much distinction. I believe it’d be better if you serve EndOS it’s own paragraph since it’s so different.
Bruh
What ‘bruh’?
It isn’t hard to drop a <br> before one starts explaining a completely different OS.
I use Ubuntu. It generally tends to be boring stable, which is kinda what I want out of my OS these days. I can still customize it, and even break it if I really get bored, but it’s nice to have things just work for the most part.
I switched to Debian Stable after using Ubuntu LTS for 6 years, and recommend Ubuntu for beginners. It is stable, best community support, boring and good ol’ reliable, which is perfect to learn Linux and get accustomed to it. Even corporate support and game developers target Ubuntu first. Considering it runs smoothly on a 6 year old midrange Intel laptop chip, nobody is getting that 200% performance boost with other obscure fancy distros.
Yep, games being designed to support Ubuntu first is a big reason why I’m so far into Ubuntu. I could easily switch if I needed to since I’m both a programmer and very comfortable with Linux but for me, it does everything I need an OS to do.
Debian Stable is really, really close for gaming, since Ubuntu LTS itself is based on Debian Unstable branch, if you choose to upgrade with more Linux knowledge in future. Nobara is dedicated to gaming.
Honestly speaking, I keep W10 on SSD for games if any works in a wonky manner on Linux. Takes like 30 seconds to log off Debian, boot into Windows, fire up a game, get back to Linux when not playing.
I still have an old laptop running v16 Ubuntu iirc. Basically using it as a sort of media centre.
I had a friend who wanted to try linux but insisted on arch because it’s what I used at the time even though I said they shouldn’t and gave many suggestions for better distros. They gave up after about a day and went back to windows. I don’t know what they expected, multiple people warned them not to use arch.
multiple people warned them not to use arch.
My IT Bros said the same back when I had to choose W10 or Linux, they haven’t used arch and I had 0 Linux experience. I messed up every single step of the installation to a point where I knew from the problems I created what I did wrong. After many tries and a week later I had a working installation with dual boot. Never used windows and removed it a year later. It was rough but I learned how to recover from most errors a user can create.
If learning is the goal arch and arch-wiki is great.
That’s right. It’s a great recommendation for learning about Linux.
For anyone who needs something that just works, there’s a lot better options.
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Probably. I haven’t tried that, but I should.
The learning curve there might be too challenging if not familiar with certain concepts beforehand…
It’s not that hard to achieve a working system with Arch, so not bad as a Linux 101.
I’ve been off windows for a long time, and when I was forced to use it, it was enterprise, locked down and stripped by knowledgeable IT teams.
Yesterday, I had my first exposure to Win 11 S mode. What a piece of crap. Not just the way its locked down, but the incessant Onedrive ads, broken settings app with missing features, AI buzzword addons, sloppy UI and general lack of control over your own computer.
Recommending my friend install Linux ASAP with my support. Nobody should have to endure that much cruft and garbage on their owned computer. They can’t even install software outside of the MS store? Gross.
Oh yeah no I was not at all saying windows was better, I was just saying arch was definitely not a good distribution for beginners and it was weird how one just insisted on using it. I use arch on my laptop and opensuse tumbleweed on my desktop and have not used windows for anything serious in years because it is so unbearable.
I understood you weren’t advocating for Windows (as an Arch user? The very idea!), but your mention of your friend returning to Windows got me thinking about my friends laptop and how icky it felt.
Glad there are fewer and fewer barriers to using Linux full time these days.
Should’ve recommended Arch-based distro like Manjaro. It’s Arch, and you don’t need to use TTY for installation. And they can claim they use Arch btw.
I actually recommended endeavor as an option if I remember correctly but they wouldn’t try it
Manjaro has some issues, endeavourOS is better
Ive been using Manjaro for 5 years now, I’ll try Endevour when I upgrade my laptop. Thanks for the tip!
I’m switching from manjaro to endeavour atm, and i am liking endeavour a lot. I kept having issues with manjaro boot after every kernel update, but otherwise didnt mind it. Probably whatever manjaros build chain for boot is just wasn’t working with my hardware, but also the attitude on the forum is that you are stupid if you have to roll the kernel back.
Endeavour really just provides you arch with some maintenance utilities and otherwise lets you do your thing.
No more firefox home page getting constantly reset to the manajro home page so they can market you their laptop partnerships either 😉
I love Arch but I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone. In my eyes, the only way one should choose Arch is despite all warnings against it, because they feel confident enough to deal with all the problems they encounter.
Honestly I’ve had so little trouble with arch compared to other things, so I would definitely recommend it to experienced linux users, just definitely not unexperienced users. The aur is amazing and rolling release means you don’t have to deal with the horrors of major updates breaking packages. OpenSUSE Tumbleweed is also a great candidate though for people who don’t want to set as many things up themself, I’m currently using both arch and tumbleweed on different computers
Yup! Same here. Once I’ve got everything set up, it has been running smoothly and without any issues for more than 5 years in my case. It’s literally the most reliable system I’ve ever set up, but I understand that the entry hurdle is pretty high.
I will always recommend Debian or Debian based distros to anyone new to Linux. They’ll find their way to arch eventually
Arch btw
I will not stand slander of the arch wiki.
Also start with Linux Mint XFCE (unless they’ve fixed the stability problems with cinnamon)
When I started using LM I had a lot of problems, but switching to XFCE fixed most of them
Arch wiki is the reason I started using Arch. After fixing an install from something I found there for like the 10th time I thought “Why not give it a try”
I don’t have any issue with Arch, everything works. But when I try other distros, they are mostly messed up.
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Many distros do their own packaging on their repos, adding dependencies and custom-builds with custom configurations, and this often breaks my OS. On arch, this doesn’t happen to me. What’s your experience?
Arch also does its own packaging on its repos.
However you are right that Arch tries to stay as close as possible to the source. This is fondamentally different than the debian (and thus all debian-derived distros) way of packaging where they aim for a fully integrated OS at the expense of applying their own patches to many packages.
The patches can sometimes bring issues since they can bring unexpected behaviour if you come from Arch and sometimes will help the end user tremendously since they won’t have to configure every piece of software to work on their computer.
This is really two way of looking at the issue: Arch is make your own OS and Debian has a more hands off approach.
Yeah.
Arch also does its own packaging on its repos.
I know, I said “custom-builds with custom configurations”, I mean the custom configurations many distros add.
I also feel like Debian is very clean, but I still miss the big community under Arch, their wiki and AUR…
Custom configs is for people who might not want to tinker as much so maybe it’s not for you if you prefer Arch.
To answer the question you asked previously, yes I had issues with custom configs from Debian. One I remember is mupdf being launched by a bash script and thus not understanding why did I have two PIDs (one for bash, one for the mupdf binary) when starting.
For context this was important because I needed to know the PID of mupdf to send a SIGHUP to update the view.
If the arch wiki doesn’t have the answer, I just give up
The most unrealistic part of this
It does have the answer, you just can’t find it
