this post was submitted on 17 Feb 2025
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Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.

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Arch is aimed at people who know their shit so they can build their own distro based on how they imagine their distro to be. It is not a good distro for beginners and non power users, no matter how often you try to make your own repository, and how many GUI installers you make for it. There's a good reason why there is no GUI installer in arch (aside from being able to load it into ram). That being that to use Arch, you need to have a basic understanding of the terminal. It is in no way hard to boot arch and type in archinstall. However, if you don't even know how to do that, your experience in whatever distro, no matter how arch based it is or not, will only last until you have a dependency error or some utter and total Arch bullshit® happens on your system and you have to run to the forums because you don't understand how a wiki works.

You want a bleeding edge distro? Use goddamn Opensuse Tumbleweed for all I care, it is on par with arch, and it has none of the arch stuff.

You have this one package that is only available on arch repos? Use goddamn flatpak and stop crying about flatpak being bloated, you probably don't even know what bloat means if you can't set up arch. And no, it dosent run worse. Those 0,0001 seconds don't matter.

You really want arch so you can be cool? Read the goddamn 50 page install guide and set it up, then we'll talk about those arch forks.

(Also, most arch forks that don't use arch repos break the aur, so you don't even have the one thing you want from arch)

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[–] Maiq@lemy.lol 4 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (2 children)

I want linux to be as welcoming as possible to everyone and the newbie question of what distro to use will come up a lot. I dont think it's helpful in any way to bicker about why my choice in linux is better. We should be giving them the tools to make the best decision for themselves

What if we built a beginners linux community (Linux, Where Do I Start -> LWDIS) and point to all the distros communities, and on those distro specific communities they had beginner friendly install, setup, rice, maintenance instructions and advice along with a difficulty rating. I don't know if stickies are a thing here but could be helpful in keeping relevant info on top. This could be a place for fanboys to shine on there favorite distro while keeping the basic inclusive LWDIS community free of bickering about distros that might cause confusion and turn people off.

[–] FauxLiving@lemmy.world 2 points 4 months ago (1 children)

https://xkcd.com/927/

spoiler"Fortunately, the charging one has been solved now that we've all standardized on mini-USB. Or is it micro-USB? Shit."

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[–] actionjbone@sh.itjust.works 3 points 4 months ago (5 children)

I mean, Manjaro wasthe first distro I truly used regularly.

But I'm no stranger to command lines, so there's that.

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[–] lambalicious@lemmy.sdf.org 3 points 4 months ago

I use Debian ftw.

[–] iriyan@lemmy.ml 3 points 4 months ago

A beginner to what, to pacman, to arch, to rolling distro, to linux, to unix, to a PC, to using man-made tools ...

I made an installation to an old pc once, I though it would last a while, and since the users could barely understand what an on/off button does, they just wanted google and facebook, so it was a wm with two browsers, daughter already knew what chrome was, and in the login shell I wrote a script that each new day it booted it attempted pacman -Suy --noconfirm then once a week the cache was emptied and the logs trimmed.

That was before covid, a couple months ago I met her, she said it has been working fine every since.

So there is your dinner

PS Actually it wasn't arch it was artix with runit but that is about the same

[–] Zucca@sopuli.xyz 3 points 4 months ago (3 children)

And I started with Gentoo...

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[–] commander@lemmings.world 3 points 4 months ago (2 children)

Not sure about forks, but I agree with what you said before.

Manjaro is great.

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[–] Cethin@lemmy.zip 2 points 4 months ago

I've been using Garuda, and though I'm not a beginner, it's been great. It's a simpler experience than I had with Fedora, and better than Mint or Ubuntu, though those were about a decade ago. Arch is a fantastic base. Pure Arch is probably bad for beginners, but there are great Arch-based distros out there. SteamOS as another example of this. This post is bad.

[–] Endymion_Mallorn@kbin.melroy.org 2 points 4 months ago

As someone who wanted to jump in with both feet on my journey to using more than just Windows & mobile OSes, I actually started from Arch. Well, sort of. If you have a beginner who wants to try Linux and actually wants to know the discomfort they'll experience, give them Archbang.

It works on very basic hardware requirements, does very well as a live distro, and was honestly an important step in my personal journey that has ended me up in a place where I keep two systems - one with Windows 10, and a separate computer with Linux Mint.

Obviously, I'm not in the place many people are. But I just wanted to toss in my 2 cents. Arch itself is not for beginners. Archbang can be, especially if you have a user who's open to a live distro and doesn't want to try dual-booting yet (and only has one computer). I think that the project deserves more visibility and support than it gets.

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