pyromaniac_donkeyshhhh dont tell them :)
JamieDepends on the user’s needs. If you need bleeding edge software, like for gaming, a just works distro can be more work. I loved using Linux Mint, but trying to use the latest kernel, drivers, wine version, and whatever else on a stable release distro becomes pain fairly quickly.
In case you didn’t know, you can get Mint’s Cinnamon desktop on other Debian distros. You used to be able to do it on RHEL, but last I checked the project was abandoned.
When I originally moved to Arch, I had a 1:1 clone of my Mint experience. I installed Cinnamon and had backed up Mint’s themes to just put them into the proper place again. Aside from not installing a number of applications on Mint that I didn’t often use, there was no difference in UI at all.
I only swapped off Cinnamon because I wanted to test other compositors to try and resolve my screen tearing issues which were probably actually NVIDIA’s fault. These days I’m on KDE Plasma and don’t get screen tearing anymore.
SatyrSackNot Debian, but there is an official Fedora Cinnamon spin
Fedora Cinnamon Spin
Cinnamon is a Linux desktop which provides advanced innovative features and a traditional user experience. The desktop layout is similar to GNOME 2. The underlying technology is forked from GNOME Shell. The emphasis is put on making users feel at home and providing them with an easy to use and comfortable desktop experience. Cinnamon is a popular desktop alternative to GNOME 3 and this spin provides the option to quickly try and install this desktop.
SpaceCadetThe irony is that “it just works” is often more true for Arch than for other distros because it has up-to-date drivers for everything.
Try to get a Radeon 7900XT working on Ubuntu 22.04 for example. It’s possible, but you’ll be jumping through much more hoops than on Arch.
whileloopSince Manjaro is forked from Arch, it would benefit from Arch’s updated drivers, right?
Possibly, I don’t know how up to date they are.
Manjaro is amazing if you don’t want to bullshit through the hassle of what the Arch installer has become. I understand the point of it is to get you more familiar with the linux system in general, but they had an installer and they ripped it out. Manjaro is basically just pre-configured Arch, so yeah. Despite all the purists “Manjaro isn’t arch!!”…in practice, it basically is.
NeilManjaro holds back Arch packages for futher testing, but they don’t hold back AUR packages (which would be a nightmare to be fair). I haven’t used Arch or Manjaro in several years, but I do remember Manjaro being a lot less stable after installing/using a lot of AUR packages due to dependency issues.
Not saying Manjaro is bad, but it’s a downside that separates it from Arch and shows it’s more than just a pre-configured Arch.
I usually just move the sources so that they point to arch, so I didn’t even think about this.
somedaysoonYeah, this, and I’m glad to see a level-headed response and understand why Manjaro can sometimes be problematic. I would often see a site that listed reasons not to use Manjaro parroted on reddit and it was a fucking joke… like every point was either reaching or ridiculous.
But what you said is very reasonable. It is also why AUR is disabled by default and it is discouraged to use AUR in Manjaro unless you know exactly what you are doing. Because if you enable AUR in Manjaro there is a good chance that you will run into a dependency issue, and there is another chance that dependency issues breaks your system.
you can say Manjaro is bad, completely fucked my system like twice then switched to endeavor, which is the spiritual successor to AntergOs endeavouros.com
Arch actually has an installer again and it’s fantastic wiki.archlinux.org/title/Archinstall
Shit, it was a nightmare getting my R9 390 working with 22.04. And don’t get me started on trying to do a RAID 0 install.
bob_wileyThat’s a double edge sword though. Bleeding edge updates also mean more bugs that need to get worked out, so how seamless the experience is may be up to luck or the amount of effort being put in to keeping up on release notes.
Absolutely right, though the Arch maintainers do put in a lot of QA effort to keep breaking bugs out.
At the end of the day, it depends on what you want: an up-to-date rolling release distro where the latest stable version of almost every imaginable piece of FOSS is at your finger tips, or a distro where the software selection is curated for you and that “just works” as long as you color inside the lines of its limitations.
I remember being very frustrated when they rolled out a kernal update this year that broke one of my USB slots.
I don't remember anymore which version it was, just that it was very frustrating looking it up to find that it was a known issue but still considered low priority enough that shipping out was fine.
But the good thing is that it’s usually super easy to fix if something does break. The amount of headaches I had with PPAs and snap are worse than having an arch update break something. You can usually roll back the packages with issues (namely anything from nvidia).
It really depends on how much time a user wants to spend playing sys admin in their free time. If you run an update and it installs 250 package updates, and some random thing stops working, maybe you don’t even notice it for a couple updates… have fun tracking it down, especially if it’s some random library that’s several dependencies deep on the thing that actually broke.
Then you roll it back, which may be rolling back other things, or letting that stuff break. And then what happens for updates, do you then have to watch the PRs and release notes on those projects to see if/when the issue is resolved, or write the fix yourself and submit the PR.
That might be fun for some people, but not for the masses. It also doesn’t seem like something a person would want on their primary system if it needs to be used for anything even remotely important or time sensitive.
Those are valid points, but windows has the exact same issues. Updates break stuff so often that many people have just adopted a habit to never update if they need to rely on their machines. The same is true for me, I spent many hours trying to find a version of the nvidia driver that has no issues.
True. The company I work for is starting to get a little more proactive with OS updates and I can’t tell if it’s good or bad. On the one hand, we get some new features. On the other hand, things are always broken… but things have always been broken because they load them up with so much security software that they fail to function. So I’m not sure if they’re more or less broken than usual, lol.
My company recently enabled windows defender’s ASR and it caused a shitload of issues, so they had to disable it again for half the company.
Windows also does shit like turning up my volume all the time and some update broke lightshot in a weird way where some people who had it installed before the update can use it, but when you install it after the update, it just won’t launch. This crap is impossible to troubleshoot.
Meanwhile on Linux, I can fix pretty much everything with a bit of googling and if I can’t figure it out, I can post on the arch forums and get help for free, usually very quickly and by people who really know their shit.
For Linux newbies, you can have both Arch and Ubuntu (or any 2+ of your favorite distro installed) by using different root partitions (16-32G) and sharing your home and other partitions.
Though it may work better if the distros you use have different desktop managers or the same desktop manager on the same major version number (KDE 3.x and 4.x settings don’t mix).
sharing your home
I wouldn’t recommend that, because your home directory is not just where your files live but your user configuration as well. Arch and Ubuntu will have different versions of the same software, so you may get conflicts and compatiblity issues with the various configuration files in ~/.config, ~/.local and whatnot when you switch from one to the other. Ubuntu also comes with a default ~/.bashrc and ~/.bash_profile for example whereas Arch does not.
It would be like sharing the user registry between Windows 10 and Windows 11.
zelifcamdouble edge sword
Yeah, I mean what can you do? If the drivers / functionality didn’t exist previously then what options do you have? These are normal growing pains for an OS clawing it’s way into being supported by hardware manufacturers.
Use old versions of software that doesn’t work, new versions of software that does work
Although it’s only fully possible in NixOS where the deps are not globally installed
Bleeding edge updates also mean more bugs that need to get worked out
It also means getting bugfixes as soon as they’re available. When I was using debian I had to wait for the next version of the distro to release or compile the program myself which is much more painful than on arch.
LaggyKarSo you go with OpenSUSE Tumbleweed. Well tested with OpenQA and a lot less effort than Arch, but still has the latest software and up-to-date drivers.
I don’t get where this idea comes from that Arch is a lot of effort.
Uh no? You just need the latest kernel which you can install with one click it you use mainline. You’ll also want the latest version of Mesa which you can through Kisak’s PPA. It should take maybe 10 minutes. The average user is going to spend way more than 10 minutes installing and setting up Arch…
The average user is going to spend way more than 10 minutes installing and setting up Arch…
khm endeavouros.com
unless you are going to argue that it’s not pure arch in which case I will argue it’s distinction without a difference that matters to anyone but the 0.01%
Also archinstaller is pretty easy to use.
Maybe I’m a bit biased because I have over 25 years of Linux and Unix experience, but I never found Arch particularly hard to install, just a little bit tedious. I mean, it’s just following a few basic instructions from a wiki.
well yeah, but I don’t want to follow instructions when installing my OS, I want a working OS, I don’t particularly care for setting up networking, I want it to just work, hence endeavorOs, click a few buttons, stuff I would install anyway gets installed and it just works.
Could I do the install manually? I could. Will I? I won’t. Why? Exactly. Why would I do it when there is something that does it for me.
Why would I do it when there is something that does it for me
Fair enough if you don’t want to but, there are reasons:
- You may not like the implicit choices the installer makes for you
- You may want to do things in a way that the installer simply hasn’t foreseen or doesn’t support
- It forces you to make deliberate choices and think about them, for example: which software do I want to use to manage my network connections?
- It familiarizes you with what goes into booting your linux system and shows you that it’s not “magic” but quite an understandable process
- It familiarizes you with how you can fix your system if you broke it and it doesn’t boot. (
arch-chrootcan be super handy)
I see it as investing 30 minutes to an hour of my time to ensure the system is configured exactly as I want it. It’s not as if you have to do it every week or month, I currently have three computers running Arch, installed in 2014, 2019 and 2021 respectively. On each of them I have installed Arch exactly once.
On each of them I have installed Arch exactly once.
exactly my point, literally learning somethinf that doesn’t matter because by the next time I have forgotten it
- It forces you to make deliberate choices and think about them, for example: which software do I want to use to manage my network connections?
of all the things I could care about in the world this seems the least important one, not to mention the first part goes against the point of me saying I don’t care, I just want it to work fast and not have to think about it.
- It familiarizes you with how you can fix your system if you broke it and it doesn’t boot. (
arch-chrootcan be super handy)
you can do that when you have actually broken something, like I did.
- You may want to do things in a way that the installer simply hasn’t foreseen or doesn’t support
once again, endeavor os installer just works, if it doesn’t you are already in the very small percentage of the already small linux user base
- You may not like the implicit choices the installer makes for you.
that’s so hypothetical, like what?
- It familiarizes you with what goes into booting your linux system and shows you that it’s not “magic” but quite an understandable process
I really doubt it does. either you already have a good grasp of it, or it might as well be chinese for you.
these arguments that you learn something useful while fucking around with your arch install are very much spurious and at best they apply to the very-very small percentage who want to do that. Majority of learning will come once thr system is up and running and then fucking around with it, maybe debugging what works what doesn’t.
Don’t get me wrong, it’s nice that you like it and like the control and it’s awesome that you have the option for it, but it doesn’t apply to 99.9% of the population
so recommending to someone who wants to try out linix to just “try arch install” because it’s easy, is a good way to make them think linux is impossible.
CachyOS is also really easy to install and treats KDE well
OoopsOkay, we won't tell them...
And we also won't tell you that Arch actually is one in the category of "it just works", so you can keep parroting memes.
NixOS is the new Arch Linux
Not to be Marge or anything but I think they’re all neat!
PropaGandalfIt’s 2023: We have archinstall
Yeah it takes 3 minutes to install arch now. What’s the debate?
ѕєχυαℓ ρσℓутσρєBut Arch bad. Hurr dure elitist.
people_are_cuteThis should be at the top.
I'm trying KDE Neon on a new laptop, and the install was pretty smooth and intuitive after the BIOS. I guess the worst part of it is its base of Ubuntu?
I really wish KDE would consider another base for their dev/showcase distro.
Fedora teamed up with the Asahi folks, maybe they’re open to supporting KDE too. Or opensuse, could totally see an opensuse based Neon.
How is Gentoo doing these days?
How is Gentoo doing these days?
Great! A relatively recent development is dist-kernel and has greatly simplified kernel installation.
I’ve been running a server with the same Gentoo install since 2016, still stable as ever. Using OpenSUSE Tumbleweed on the desktop though, really liking it so far.
Assuming everything you said is true, I still want 100% goodness. If I want something which kind of fits but annoys me in certain aspects, I could switch to windows or macOS.
I’m a big fan of EndeavourOS. I’ve done a manual install of Arch enough times I understand what it’s doing and I don’t care to do it again. Endeavour is configured well English for my needs.
BankensteinThis supports my claim that EndeavourOS is a just-works custom Arch install, and a brilliant one at that.
it’s the spiritual successor the AntergOs that I was lokking for for a while, Tried manjaro in the meantime and that also just works, until your system ages a bit you do an upgrade and some shit just completely breaks your system.
EndeavorOs just works, I managed to bork the update one time, but that was my mistake, my mind was on autopilot and even though I read the message about failed package installs I just rebooted, but it didn’t completely bork. my system like manjaro, I recovered it in less than 30 minutes
slstI am using archinstall for the same reasons
nullSame, I’ve done Arch, it was fun. The grub issue borked my system so I hopped to Endeavour and haven’t looked back.
There’s plenty of little things it sets up by default (like pacman tweaks) that I’d do in my Arch setup anyways, so it genuinely just saves time for me at this point.
I tried a stage 1 gentoo install as a lad and haven’t given a fuck since.
kamenokoI did an arch from scratch install, it worked, I liked it, and then I installed Endeavor and loved it. That’s the difference.
What’s bad about Ubuntu? Explain it as you would to a child
Everything people complain about Windows or mac applies to Ubuntu
Ubuntu is maintained by a company that can do what they want with it. See the latest RHEL controversy.
Why the fuck would I explain advanced Linux distro details to a child that isn’t already well versed? Lol
Ubuntu cares about making themselves stand out and their bottom line at the expense of users having to eat shit like Snap, Unity, sending Unity search data to Amazon and unnecessary bugs that other distro don’t have problems with. They were fantastic up until 12.04. Linux Mint avoids all of these problems and nails Ubuntu’s desktop goals, use that instead.