BlisterexeI deleted windows and installed linux
MightyCuriosityI’m trying but arch won’t even let me use the terminal to install anymore.
Why are you trying to install arch, it is not a noob-friendly distro
Says who? The days when this was true are long gone. Ubuntu is no longer the user friendly everyman’s desktop system anymore. Arch is extremely user friendly, just not the installation process. I find it to be much less of a pain in the ass to use than Debian based systems. For one, you have the Arch User Repository, so you’re very unlikely to need to not be able to find some software you want, and more importantly, so many packages in Debian are out of date and they take forever to update them, stuff often breaks because the version needed as a dependency for something else is not in the repositories.
For people who want to use arch but don’t want to manually do everything I highly recommend EndeavorOS. You fly through a wizard, just like Mint or something desktop oriented, and you wind up with a nice, working environment, but it’s Arch tooling instead of Debian tooling. The biggest and for most people only noticeable difference is the package manager, and pacman is so much more robust than apt.
I get frustrated online when I see people saying “Ubuntu is the most user friendly distro” or “arch is not for noobs”, this stuff was true like 10 years ago, that’s no longer the case. Ubuntu is user hostile, and there are arch derivatives that are basically arch with a graphical installer, which is the only part of using arch that is hard for people who aren’t hardcore nerds. It’s not like Gentoo or Void or Alpine or Nix or running a BSD system or something advanced like that.
Jumutaagreed ubuntu is kinda shit but arch is hard (to setup post-installation) for a new user imo. You should try kde neon or smth which I’d consider to be a nice beginner distro
How is arch hard post installation?
embed_meFor starters you don’t have to worry about installing bluetooth stacks, or a network interface to control your wifi (if they somehow don’t end up installing a whole DE package group)
In what? What???
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Rolling release means no stable API which can result in incompatibilities.
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Bleeding edge mean you’re essentially the guinea pig for most changes.
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pacnew/pacsave files means you HAVE to use the terminal.
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AUR packages become unmaintained or broken often.
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It’s expected you read the news before updating your system.
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It’s expected you update your system periodically.
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Pacman doesn’t automatically enables services installed, meaning that you need to run systemctl commands after installing a new service.
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It is expected you read the wiki.
None of these are actual problems, and for even intermediate users they’re well worth it since in turn you get bleeding edge packages, a gigantic user repository that normally just works, and an excellent wiki to get answers. But for someone who’s never used Linux before, each of these is a huge problem in and of themselves.
I have never, once, run into an issue due to rolling release. I have never once read the news before updating. I’ve never had an update on arch break my system, never.
“Bleeding edge” is beta or alpha releases, people running those are the guinea pigs. All packages in default arch repositories are release versions, intended for use by users.
It is always expected to update your system periodically, no matter what distro or even software you’re using.
None of these are actual problems
Yes, and I argue that this is true of new users as well.
normally just works
Yes, very user friendly
excellent wiki to get answers.
Yes. All users of systems, new, intermediate, advanced, and of any system, including windows and Mac, google stuff sometimes and look for information. This is probably one of the most important components for any software, the more easy it is to find information the better it will be. You can’t find anything up to date on Ubuntu anymore, you’re in a forum with a post from 2008 following outdated information.
expected to read the wiki
yes, when using software it is expected that at some point you’ll want to look at documentation, so documentation needs to be detailed, accurate and up to date.
This problem you’re talking about with packages A B and C and wrong versions and stuff, I’ve never run into it. I’m sure it can happen, but I’ve never seen it. I have run into it on Debian based systems, every time I’ve tried to run one for a few months I get broken dependencies and stuff due to mismatched versions. Basically every problem after your edit applies to all package managers, forcing yes on dialogs is always dangerous, “apt purge” and “apt autoremove” to clean cache and remove unneeded dependencies, this stuff isn’t unique to pacman, and again, I’ve only ever seen it on Debian, it’s theoretically possible on arch but a guarantee on Debian that you’ll run into these problems.
But we are getting lost in the weeds. Give someone an endeavorOS installer and a Linux Mint installer, will there be a noticable difference in ease of use? No, there won’t, generally what determines user friendliness is the DE. The few things they could get stuck on are in the terminal, that applies regardless of the distro, and the big difference is the package manager, and like I’ve said, I’ve never had pacman break, I’ve had apt break something every time I’ve run it for a few months.
forcing yes on dialogs (the “y” in -Sy)
That’s not what the y means, and that’s not the issue with that command. Please at the very least read the manual or the wiki of the distro you claim to know before replying to someone who just told you has been using it for 15 years.
Give someone an endeavorOS installer and a Linux Mint installer, will there be a noticable difference in ease of use?
Yes, all of the issues I mentioned are not issues with Mint.
I’m not claiming Arch will break if you don’t read the news, or spend a week without updating, but what you’re missing (possibly because you only recently started using Arch) is that all of these things do happen and are expected to happen, it’s part of the philosophy.
Whereas many GNU/Linux distributions attempt to be more user-friendly, Arch Linux has always been, and shall always remain user-centric. The distribution is intended to fill the needs of those contributing to it, rather than trying to appeal to as many users as possible. It is targeted at the proficient GNU/Linux user, or anyone with a do-it-yourself attitude who is willing to read the documentation, and solve their own problems.
In other words Arch is by definition NOT noob friendly on purpose.
Yeah you’re right it’s refresh databases, my bad.
Exactly, so if you run pacman -Sy something and that something has an important dependency that has also been updated, e.g. glibc, you have now updated glibc without updating all of the packages that depend on it, causing them to stop working. E.g. pacman depends on glibc, so doing pacman -Sy something when a new glibc version was released since last you updated essentially breaks your install.
This is because Arch assumes you know what you’re doing, and let’s you do it. Great for power users, dangerous for people who don’t know enough. All of the things I mentioned are similar things that look innocuous, but will cause you huge headaches if you don’t know what you’re doing. And they don’t happen on other distros, because the other distros purposefully try to stop you from doing them.
Here’s an example:
wiki.archlinux.org/title/Nextcloud
Compare that to Ubuntu:
snapcraft.io/install/nextcloud/ubuntu
or even Slackware:
slackbuilds.org/repository/…/nextcloud-server/
The wiki just likes to make the details available. Installation of nextcloud is as easy as pacman -S nextcloud
You’re comparing a simple install guide with the entire detailed documentation of a package. of course the package docs are going to have more details.
Ignoring details is not the same as being user friendly. Having a bunch of corpo marketing pictures of slightly above average people smiling on video chat in your installation docs does not make something user friendly. Is this really the metric we are going by, how little information is in the documentation?
After pacman -S nextcloud you don’t have a functioning Nextcloud. You’re still missing the web server, php, caching, etc. And all of it needs to be configured manually to work with Nextcloud.
After installing the Snap on Ubuntu or the Slackbuild on Slackware, you do have a functioning Nextcloud that lets you connect to it via the web frontend and finish the setup.
After installing the Snap on Ubuntu or the Slackbuild on Slackware, you do have a functioning Nextcloud that lets you connect to it via the web frontend and finish the setup.