Yeah I think Arch is fine, but I’d never recommend it to a new Linux user.

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.

Hey, you’re on the wrong Lemmy instance. :P

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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.

Yep. LM or Ubuntu is my recommendation to newbies

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.

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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.

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.

The Arch wiki is one of the most impressive documentation resources I’ve seen and I’ve only [needed to] scrape the surface so far. Almost every minor unexpected issue I ran into along the way had a detailed solution and the only issue I haven’t been able to resolve is getting all the buttons on my mouse to work…but did find out it’s Logitech’s weird receiver codes that are the issue and they don’t release drivers for Linux.

True

I agree. I don’t use Arch (I have in the past) but I use Arch Wiki heavily.

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. :/

im pretty sure the OP never took a look at Arch and just follow the hate movement

This is me too and why I no longer use Arch btw.

This is why I got a MacBook (unpopular opinion here)

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

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

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.

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.

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.

My “I don’t have time for this” moment came when I tried to set up Nextcloud on Arch:
https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Nextcloud

Meanwhile 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.

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 sddm does the trick.

Archinstall with the entire plasma desktop is probably also nice, or just EndeavorOS which will be preconfigured

When I started using LM I had a lot of problems, but switching to XFCE fixed most of them

Red hat, 25 years ago learned to recompile the kernel to make my sound card/modem work.

Especially a decade ago before archinstall

These days it is comparatively easy.

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Is that… fast? Haha but yes of course it helps

I can have windows up in 15 minutes

Or, just use Endeavor OS and be done with it. It uses the Upstream repositories, the only thing in their customer repositories are some desktop wallpapers and a theme so you can safely remove it without breaking anything. It’s a great way to get a base system in a known good configuration up quickly and from there the arch Wiki can help you tweak things to your desire it’s a much better way to learn than just throwing someone into the deep end of the pool

Informant

It is actually very easy:

1. You setup auto-snapshots (almost trivial)
2. You update
3. Evaluate
   3.1) Repeat goto 2
   3.2) Rollback goto 2

The only problem here is that snapshots (and btrfs for that matter) are not the default behaviour. I would really appreciate Endeavour having this as the default setup. It is very likely what you’d want.