Arch Linux Is The Ideal Beginner's Distro DistroTube
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Date: 2022-03-30
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Comments and reviews: 10
Mohammed
I completely disagree. I switched to Linux just 2 months ago and I would have be paranoid if the first distro I downloaded was Arch, I am sure that I wouldn't have downloaded it in the first attempt and probably if it took more than 2 attempts then I would have given up on Linux as a whole. I took 2 attempts spaced over 2 weeks to install Pop OS because I didn't knew even the basic concepts like what an iso file is (Pop OS is the first OS that I have installed in my life, I haven't even installed Windows yet). Also even though I agree that everything GUI is just bells and wisterias and is not unique to a distro and hence as far as GUI goes distro don't matter and everything in a distro can be very easily replicated into another, but as a noob I didn't knew that and sticked around to learn all those things because the Gnome modified by Pop OS was so well done that it gave me a wonderful workflow and different desktop environment than Windows out of the box that I didn't wanted to go back to Windows. If I had got KDE or stock Gnome for that matter, I probably wouldn't have sticked around, forget about using Arch as a beginner. After a month though I was familiar enough with things in Linux that I was able to switch to Arch. So in my opinion Arch is a best second distro, but definitely not the best first.
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I completely disagree. I switched to Linux just 2 months ago and I would have be paranoid if the first distro I downloaded was Arch, I am sure that I wouldn't have downloaded it in the first attempt and probably if it took more than 2 attempts then I would have given up on Linux as a whole. I took 2 attempts spaced over 2 weeks to install Pop OS because I didn't knew even the basic concepts like what an iso file is (Pop OS is the first OS that I have installed in my life, I haven't even installed Windows yet). Also even though I agree that everything GUI is just bells and wisterias and is not unique to a distro and hence as far as GUI goes distro don't matter and everything in a distro can be very easily replicated into another, but as a noob I didn't knew that and sticked around to learn all those things because the Gnome modified by Pop OS was so well done that it gave me a wonderful workflow and different desktop environment than Windows out of the box that I didn't wanted to go back to Windows. If I had got KDE or stock Gnome for that matter, I probably wouldn't have sticked around, forget about using Arch as a beginner. After a month though I was familiar enough with things in Linux that I was able to switch to Arch. So in my opinion Arch is a best second distro, but definitely not the best first.
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James
I have a different argument for why Arch is for beginners. Now I won't say vanilla Arch is for beginners. But an arch based distro that makes good defaults is. The reason I think this is because of the rolling release and access to the AUR. Other distros struggle with stale packages and so there is a lot of up front load when wanting to install newer software or drivers. Snaps and flatpacks are starting to mitigate this but they are far from perfect. On Arch having the latest and greatest is easy. Sure it might break in 6 months or a year but that is infrequent vs having to install PPAs for everything. At worst you reinstall every 6 months or a year. That was something I was doing in the days of Windows. So my argument boils down to ease of day to day vs hard breakage occasionally. I think ease of day to day is more important for new user.
For a new user, choice is a cognitive load. This is where Arch linux is weakest. If you read the arch wiki or go through the install guide it tells you your options but does not indicate what are some sane defaults, -if in doubt, choose this.- Even as an experienced Linus user this rears it's ugly head. But arch Linux with sane defaults is great. RIP Antergos
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I have a different argument for why Arch is for beginners. Now I won't say vanilla Arch is for beginners. But an arch based distro that makes good defaults is. The reason I think this is because of the rolling release and access to the AUR. Other distros struggle with stale packages and so there is a lot of up front load when wanting to install newer software or drivers. Snaps and flatpacks are starting to mitigate this but they are far from perfect. On Arch having the latest and greatest is easy. Sure it might break in 6 months or a year but that is infrequent vs having to install PPAs for everything. At worst you reinstall every 6 months or a year. That was something I was doing in the days of Windows. So my argument boils down to ease of day to day vs hard breakage occasionally. I think ease of day to day is more important for new user.
For a new user, choice is a cognitive load. This is where Arch linux is weakest. If you read the arch wiki or go through the install guide it tells you your options but does not indicate what are some sane defaults, -if in doubt, choose this.- Even as an experienced Linus user this rears it's ugly head. But arch Linux with sane defaults is great. RIP Antergos
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Snowfall
i don't know, i can understand what you are saying, yes you will learn a lot, but its quite overwhelming, at least for my learning style. im learning slowly using mint, im watching videos like this and playing with small things here and there where i can, learning the terminology, slowly building my knowledge and confidence. mint is a safe pre-built playground with the space to play with things in, if i really mess something up, i know i can try to figure it out, or do a fresh install and get back to where i was before to try again. i at least have that fallback.
As an example; i need to know what the parts of the car even are, before i can ever have hope to figure out how to put them all together. if you just gave me all the parts of a car, and a manual on how to build a car with those parts, sure, i might be able to follow the guide, but i will not know what is going on, or why things do the things they do, never mind the fact that i will be completely overwhelmed, even if every part did have a full explanation behind it.
maybe this is because i am dyslexic, i wonder how common dyslexia is in the Linux community?
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i don't know, i can understand what you are saying, yes you will learn a lot, but its quite overwhelming, at least for my learning style. im learning slowly using mint, im watching videos like this and playing with small things here and there where i can, learning the terminology, slowly building my knowledge and confidence. mint is a safe pre-built playground with the space to play with things in, if i really mess something up, i know i can try to figure it out, or do a fresh install and get back to where i was before to try again. i at least have that fallback.
As an example; i need to know what the parts of the car even are, before i can ever have hope to figure out how to put them all together. if you just gave me all the parts of a car, and a manual on how to build a car with those parts, sure, i might be able to follow the guide, but i will not know what is going on, or why things do the things they do, never mind the fact that i will be completely overwhelmed, even if every part did have a full explanation behind it.
maybe this is because i am dyslexic, i wonder how common dyslexia is in the Linux community?
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Jeremy
I would say that the word -beginner- really doesn't tell you a lot about someone's goals, maybe it's not the right term. Someone who is very experienced with Linux might just want to use Ubuntu to get a quick install on a machine they don't use very often that just works out of the box for some basic tasks, while running a very custom setup on their main machine, or even install it for someone who has been using Ubuntu for years and would get confused by anything else. Meanwhile, a Windows power user who is frustrated with the lack of configurability on modern Windows and just doesn't fear difficulty might very well want to start with Arch if what they are sick of is hand-holding and lack of choice. It has less to do with how -new- you are to Linux, and the better question is -Do you view your OS as merely a tool, or do you want to know how to configure it and tweak it to your exact needs?-
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I would say that the word -beginner- really doesn't tell you a lot about someone's goals, maybe it's not the right term. Someone who is very experienced with Linux might just want to use Ubuntu to get a quick install on a machine they don't use very often that just works out of the box for some basic tasks, while running a very custom setup on their main machine, or even install it for someone who has been using Ubuntu for years and would get confused by anything else. Meanwhile, a Windows power user who is frustrated with the lack of configurability on modern Windows and just doesn't fear difficulty might very well want to start with Arch if what they are sick of is hand-holding and lack of choice. It has less to do with how -new- you are to Linux, and the better question is -Do you view your OS as merely a tool, or do you want to know how to configure it and tweak it to your exact needs?-
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Mondscheinbach
I would like to leave my thoughts as a beginner. A week and a half ago I installed Linux Mint, and it was absolute pain. The same day I switched to Kubuntu, which I liked more. But now that I've got used to the basics of Linux on Kubuntu, I switched to Arch yesterday and while, sure, it had complexity, I feel like it has actually been a lot easier. I don't have to mess around with all this -bloat- that comes installed, I install what I need, how I want to use it, and it just -works-. Sure, I might need to play around with things, but it is a lot easier to get it to do what I want in my experience. Everyone was scaring me off but I mean it really was not that hard. Hell, Windows is way more difficult in my opinion, the OS I have -always- used.
Edit: no idea of the bold not working in this comment, it is formatted correctly as far as I can tell.
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I would like to leave my thoughts as a beginner. A week and a half ago I installed Linux Mint, and it was absolute pain. The same day I switched to Kubuntu, which I liked more. But now that I've got used to the basics of Linux on Kubuntu, I switched to Arch yesterday and while, sure, it had complexity, I feel like it has actually been a lot easier. I don't have to mess around with all this -bloat- that comes installed, I install what I need, how I want to use it, and it just -works-. Sure, I might need to play around with things, but it is a lot easier to get it to do what I want in my experience. Everyone was scaring me off but I mean it really was not that hard. Hell, Windows is way more difficult in my opinion, the OS I have -always- used.
Edit: no idea of the bold not working in this comment, it is formatted correctly as far as I can tell.
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Tyler
Arch is my first distro. I loved installing Arch. I've done it about 4 or 5 times now. It's really, really fun and you learn a lot. The problem I had was maintaining it. After runs of -Syu and having my video card stop working, or the display manager kicking me back to the CLI I worked so hard to get out of because it's dependencies are all whacked out, I just got tired. It's probably my fault, with my rookie mistakes and such, but it felt like I was trying to teach a dead person to walk while maintaining it, and it kinda hurt LOL. Installed Manjaro, and it's great. Really painless. I know I'll go back to Arch someday, though. I'm not done beating the crap out of it to force it to work.
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Arch is my first distro. I loved installing Arch. I've done it about 4 or 5 times now. It's really, really fun and you learn a lot. The problem I had was maintaining it. After runs of -Syu and having my video card stop working, or the display manager kicking me back to the CLI I worked so hard to get out of because it's dependencies are all whacked out, I just got tired. It's probably my fault, with my rookie mistakes and such, but it felt like I was trying to teach a dead person to walk while maintaining it, and it kinda hurt LOL. Installed Manjaro, and it's great. Really painless. I know I'll go back to Arch someday, though. I'm not done beating the crap out of it to force it to work.
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PCoverthink
Weird mindset for me. I'm trying Linux partially bc I wanna experiment but my main goal is to make my PC faster which I know Linux kernel is capable of jugging by the power of properly flashed and set up Android phone. Big part of all of it is to feel the impact after transitioning from Win (Properly set up and cut one with minimal background usage and around 1GB of RAM used at the start). It's not ok in my opinion to struggle for no reason and I wouldn't be staying if it's straight up worse for me. It's like being proud that you were beaten up at school or you're underpaid or your time is being wasted for nothing.
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Weird mindset for me. I'm trying Linux partially bc I wanna experiment but my main goal is to make my PC faster which I know Linux kernel is capable of jugging by the power of properly flashed and set up Android phone. Big part of all of it is to feel the impact after transitioning from Win (Properly set up and cut one with minimal background usage and around 1GB of RAM used at the start). It's not ok in my opinion to struggle for no reason and I wouldn't be staying if it's straight up worse for me. It's like being proud that you were beaten up at school or you're underpaid or your time is being wasted for nothing.
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ippos_khloros
I think this depends on what your support network looks like, and how quickly you need a working computer. As someone who doesn't know anyone who could help me with Linux, I'm very glad the Ubuntu installer was as streamlined as it is. Maybe if I had a spare computer I'd install Arch for the learning experience. But being stuck in the shell because I messed something up and my GUI won't boot and I don't know why... well, it's not fun when it's on my daily driver and I need to get stuff done. I want to learn, but I also want to know that things will just work on the days I don't have time to learn.
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I think this depends on what your support network looks like, and how quickly you need a working computer. As someone who doesn't know anyone who could help me with Linux, I'm very glad the Ubuntu installer was as streamlined as it is. Maybe if I had a spare computer I'd install Arch for the learning experience. But being stuck in the shell because I messed something up and my GUI won't boot and I don't know why... well, it's not fun when it's on my daily driver and I need to get stuff done. I want to learn, but I also want to know that things will just work on the days I don't have time to learn.
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Zoe
I considered Arch as a beginner too! When I first started out, everyone kept raving about it, and I saw there was a very comprehensive Wiki to do it! The idea of learning what's going on in a literal operating system as I went seemed like a great challenge with a great reward. In the end, I chose Elementary OS because I didn't want to distro hop, and wanted the paywall to keep me locked into one distro. Now that I'm curious about using Linux for very specific purposes, like using a computer only as a word processor, I feel like Arch may be in my future yet!
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I considered Arch as a beginner too! When I first started out, everyone kept raving about it, and I saw there was a very comprehensive Wiki to do it! The idea of learning what's going on in a literal operating system as I went seemed like a great challenge with a great reward. In the end, I chose Elementary OS because I didn't want to distro hop, and wanted the paywall to keep me locked into one distro. Now that I'm curious about using Linux for very specific purposes, like using a computer only as a word processor, I feel like Arch may be in my future yet!
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Mark
I said yesterday on your 'Don't Give Newbies a Choice, Give Them Ubuntu' video that as a newbie I didn-t like Ubuntu (or Twister on my RPi), because it has too much I don-t use and nothing of what I do use. I can understand why some people do like them but they-re not for me. That-s with the exception I have Mint Cinnamon on my dual boot as I take that away with me to places I can-t download programs. I'm loving EndeavourOS Gnome being a relatively bare boned Arch based OS, I'm learning Yay and Pamac commands and installing the programs I want.
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I said yesterday on your 'Don't Give Newbies a Choice, Give Them Ubuntu' video that as a newbie I didn-t like Ubuntu (or Twister on my RPi), because it has too much I don-t use and nothing of what I do use. I can understand why some people do like them but they-re not for me. That-s with the exception I have Mint Cinnamon on my dual boot as I take that away with me to places I can-t download programs. I'm loving EndeavourOS Gnome being a relatively bare boned Arch based OS, I'm learning Yay and Pamac commands and installing the programs I want.
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