Arch is not hard… at all. Everyone says it is hard but no one can cite why. There is always the option of using a traditional linux installer wizard and it installs just as easy as any other distro. Then the only difference is you have a different command for your package manager. It runs the same software. I’m tired of hearing that there are meaningful differences between these distros when the only major difference is “command install packagename” vs “different_command install packagename”. Woah there. I think this is going to be too complicated for new users.

The only other major difference is arch ships the configs that the developers recommend as a default while ubuntu tries to be as aggressive with some of the software as they can be. My experience is sometimes this breaks thing (at least did back in the day) depending on updates and your hardware. This leaves you trouble shooting the most low level stuff. I’ve had to do more high level tech support for myself every year I’ve run Ubuntu than I have in 6 years of running Arch.

Maybe Arch users shout Arch because we know it’s the easiest distro we’ve used and we want to save new users the headache that comes from accepting the BS marketing on Ubuntu as real. The more a distro tries to accomplish the more they are going to fail the more it is you who will hold the bag for fixing it. So the distro that does the least is actually the easiest one. If you pick manjaro or artix you get the install wizard and its as easy to install as Ubuntu but with less broken stuff once it is running.

Next time something breaks in your ubuntu just know that if you were running arch it would have never happened.

Arch is hard not just because of the installation, it’s because of everything after. There are so many small things you expect your OS to have set up automatically that you might not even know exist that Arch expects you to do by hand. Arch doesn’t enable TRIM on your SSDs by default, it has no firewall. It doesn’t install microcode, leaving you open to many security exploits. It NEVER cleans old downloaded packages from it’s cache, something you will only find out about after you start looking for where 300GB of your disk space went to. It requires specific arcane syntax commands to install and update packages. You seriously expect someone coming over from Windows and MacOS to do those things or even know they need to do them? I haven’t used Ubuntu in a long time and wouldn’t use it now but it’s still an easy recommendation just because I know it has the least abrasions for a new user to encounter. After they learn how Linux works and feel comfortable, they themselves can branch out and try other distros.