Absolutely. I installed Arch to my moms machine and left her staring the blinking cursor. Whatsapped the Arch Wiki link to her phone on the way home, she should be ok.
@@ClockworkRBLX Your way of choosing an OS is a bit weird. By your logic nobody should use Windows, OSX, or most flavors of Linux. You are missing out on one of the best desktop Linux distros because of a silly meme. I use Arch BTW
@@etherweb6796 But no one should use Windows, OSX or most flavors of Linux including arch. Partly because they all use, or condone the use of nonfree software.
@Mr. Anarchy I run arch, my Aunt e.g. runs Mint. I have had colleagues switch to Arch and then back to Ubuntu/Mint. Arch breaks for me at least every few months in drastic ways due to updates. So yes, If you want to learn about Linux, using the terminal etc, it's great. For beginners that don't care and just want a working system? No.
Mr. Anarchy, this. Takes way too much time to remove unneeded stuff, then search for 3d party repos, then install what you want with a slow-ass package manager, then discover touchpad doesn’t work properly ‘cause the good driver is in the newer kernel which isn’t in the repos, then add newer kernel, then fallback to an older kernel ‘cause other shit doesn’t work nicely with upstream... fuck this man.
I put linux mint on an old core 2 duo laptop that I gave away to a coworker who had not yet been introduced to the world of personal computing. I let my friend who had windows 7 at the end of its life use my manjaro install disk to introduce him to the world of linux and then walked him through installing arch a couple of weeks later once he gained a little comfort in the command line. He was what you could call a power user when it came to windows 7 but did not want to upgrade to windows 10.
I literally laughed out loud as soon as I saw the video title coupled with that stock photo of a happy elderly couple using a computer. 🤣 This is the most beautiful Linux clickbait I've ever seen, and I mean that as a sincere compliment. Well done!
Good reasoning. DT did say "willingness to learn" is a key component of this. That's pretty optimistic tho. I would say 80% of the people who use computers barely have a willingness to click an update button. I use Debian BTW.
Mostly people who use computers are interested in what they use them for. Not what someone interested in operating systems or development use computers for. We all just happen to have the fortuitous confluence of 'using computers' and 'using computers to learn about computers', working for us.
If someone came to Linux, someone who was a power user on Windows, an enthusiast, then I _would_ agree that Arch would be one hell of a start. After installing Arch, you will start off with a knowledge of the major parts of Linux.. a start that will prove to be invaluable later on. There are people using Linux that don't know the difference between a window manager or a file manager or a desktop environment.. Learning by installing Arch forces you through all of this one at a time, and you'll end up being able to fix problems that would have seemed far more complicated than not knowing what the big pile of mystery code was doing. Linux is very well defined structurally, far more so than Windows ever was, and knowing the half-dozen major parts of it will prove invaluable in the long run.
This person was me. I had only played around in Ubuntu many years ago. I installed Arch on my home computer and spent days just getting the basics to work. Once I got it working, I customized dwm, wrote scripts, etc. I loved the whole experience and learnt from so much from it but a very, very small percentage of people would be willing to do that.
Arch was my first time ever interacting with linux, I totally agree with him. I dumped 2 days straight into the original installation, im sooo much better at the command line now because of it. Arch is great for beginners
I began with Arch today and was stuck on "verifying internet connection" because though all networking seemed OK, I couldnt ping or traceroute anything...my router was configured to block ICMP by default. To hell with it, I said, entering the installation_guide script after hours and hours... Yelled at myself little bit when it loaded just fine.
Arch is my first distro. I loved installing Arch. I've done it about 4 or 5 times now. It's really, really fun and you learn a lot. The problem I had was maintaining it. After runs of -Syu and having my video card stop working, or the display manager kicking me back to the CLI I worked so hard to get out of because it's dependencies are all whacked out, I just got tired. It's probably my fault, with my rookie mistakes and such, but it felt like I was trying to teach a dead person to walk while maintaining it, and it kinda hurt LOL. Installed Manjaro, and it's great. Really painless. I know I'll go back to Arch someday, though. I'm not done beating the crap out of it to force it to work.
This video is what pushed me over the edge and into the deep end. I was looking at Linux, and particularly at Arch for quite some time, and I installed it in a VM after watching this. Best decision I've ever made. Arch is the best teacher there is, and it's only a matter of time before I permanently leave Windows. Thank you DT!
Did that on actual hardware, N E V E R and I mean this N E V E R install arch first try on hardware. Took me 2 days to get it up and working, now I know how to install arch in 10 minutes
I installed Arch on hardware with little no experience and it took me like 2 hours and I'm stil running it. Although I've tried Gentoo in a VM and that took me like 2 days and I broke it in the VM almost instantly lmao haven't really touched gentoo much since then
@@horatiumarasescu6187 you don't need a graphical installer for Arch. Can you partition a drive by yourself? Can you Pacstrap? Can you Chroot and install a bootloader? If you can, you don't need a graphic installer, if you can't, you shouldn't use Arch :)
@@NiceMicroTV see, that's what's keeping people from ArchLinux. This very attitude. "I shouldn't use Arch" . That's downright rude and pointless. Yes, I can do all the aforementioned things you mentioned. Does it make me a superior being or pays my mortgage? I will use whatever feels right at the moment. Wasn't Linux or still is the place where one express own FREEDOM of choice? So, tone down, one is free to do things as sees fit. Btw, I also use Arch and Manjaro and EndeavourOS and all distros. And I love them all, because I can do my computing as I see fit. My freedom, my way of doing things. At the end of the day, I care about one thing: that I helped by fellow Linux user and I promote the freedom of choice. Whatever, as long is not Windows.
@@horatiumarasescu6187 No, it doesn't make me any better than someone using Ubuntu or Mint or OpenSUSE. Arch has a very specific audience to cater to, and I'm a member of that audience. If this is not a product that caters to your needs, don't use it. There are products that better suit you. The goal of the Arch Linux developers is not to be appealing to as many people as possible. So yeah, if it's not a proper distro for your use case, you shouldn't use it. As much as Mint is not built for my use case, so I shouldn't use Mint. "anything but Windows" is a bad attitude imho, you should use the thing that makes your life easier. If it's Win, than use that. If it's Linux Mint, use that. But don't use Arch just for the meme and then be disappointed that it isn't a distro tailored for you. That's all what I'm saying, no one is better or worse a human being for the OS they use on their PC.
@@horatiumarasescu6187 I mean he's not really infringing on your freedom by saying that. He's just expressing an opinion on what might be suitable or not suitable for a specific person. And it's a fair point. If you settle for an installation method that requires little maintenance then will you be able to do maintenance when needed or when you want to do a little customization? After all that's the point of Arch.
Arch was my first distro, and I kept it for a couple weeks before switching to Ubuntu, because I'd basically never touched Linux up until that point. When I got comfortable with using Linux in general, I came back to Arch, and only really started learning about the internals of the OS at that point. I guess it's the idea that the best way to learn to swim is to dive into the deep end.
I agree on many points.Linux is a good chance of learning, and can be a long term relationship. From Windows/Mac to Linux, one should start with one of the "easy-go" distros. Ubuntu, Pop OS!, Elementary are good choices. After you can handle the basics, a good path is to take the RPM family for a spin, with all the Red Hat seriousness. Next step Arco/Manjaro, that have the wild taste that can lure the user to the Arch world. Those steps are like "dating". The engagement phase is when the user is curious to get more into the inner internals of the system. Arch wiki is an amazing source of knowledge, it is hands on linuxry kamasutra. Marriage is when all gets deep and complex. You're no noob no more, but you can go further, you can void, you can Exherbo, you can Gentoo. You can even go Linux From Scratch. All mysteries unfold and other mysteries arise. But let's all be aware, if the user burn phases of the relationship, there are good chances a hurtful separation or divorce in the future. Keep on with your great videos!
He's honestly correct. I never took to Linux until I used Arch because I was familiar with more technical aspects of computers and Ubuntu has always had that similar feeling of "trying to hide things" that Windows has. The fact is that Arch is a simple way to have a complex OS, so it's relatively easy to understand what's going on when you need to fix something. It doesn't help that I regularly see people asking for help on Ubuntu with stuff that just kinda worked OOTB on Manjaro/was extremely easy to set up in Arch after I installed the required packages, (eg. VAAPI, I heard someone claiming on reddit that it's still poorly supported under Linux in a thread from an Ubuntu user asking for help, meanwhile on my PC everything picked up that the drivers/GPU offered it and automatically enabled it) it actually makes me wonder what Canonical has done under the hood at times.
An arch installation forces you do everything from scratch, except for when you run pacstrap base and it pretty much installs the entire system in a single command. If you have ever tried LFS (Linux From Scratch) you know that actually Arch is automating the majority of the installation process.
Edit: goddamn autocomplete on android I use manjaro with the cinnamon desktop on my laptop but my dev machine is running ubuntu 19.10 eoan ermine and my old crappy netbook runs arch with i3 window manager
So many people seem to have missed the point of the video :/ I started on Mint cinnamon, messed around and learned a bit about Linux but not as much as I wanted Hopped to Arch and instantly started learning a ton, because there is no way I can get past a stage if I don't know what I'm doing DT means that Arch pushes you to learn Linux. Things will break and you'll learn by fixing them
I have been messing with Linux distros since about the time of Windows 95, when they were messier than today. I did a Gentoo installation quite a lot of years ago only because people who loved Gentoo believed there was something valuable in installing a distro the way Gentoo does, and I believed them. I didn't see it. I watched DT, who loves Arch, install Arch in his video on the off-chance I would see something special that would make it worth doing myself. I didn't see it. (I may do it anyway, watching DT do so on a second computer.) Installing a distro in a tedious way doesn't tell you much about how Linux works, and I would be interested to know more about how Linux works. Linus Torvalds was asked if he knew how everything in the kernel works. He said that he depends on specialists on his kernel team to know exactly how their area works. Therefore, not quite being Linus Torvalds, I don't expect to ever know much of anything about how Linux works. Doing things in the most tedious, mind-numbing way may make you feel as if you are understanding Linux, but don't kid yourself. It is just memorizing great amounts of gobbledygook. I am in awe of people capable of remembering endless non-sense, probably because I am not good at it, but I am not good at it. I just watched a video of a fairly knowledgeable person telling how to install the xfce desktop on a raspberry pi 4 starting with ubuntu server already installed. He got the command line (overlayed on the video) a little wrong, because who can remember everything? One person in the comments who tried it didn't even copy that right and couldn't figure out what was wrong. Because I was not watching the video on a raspberry pi, and didn't want to install xfce just check in any case, I tested various possibilities, using command line completion until it (bash?) completed the line, and recommended that line to him. That's how it goes when you don't remember everything you have ever seen, or have not ever seen it to begin with. I don;t count remembering completely arbitrary and meaningless strings of text as "understanding" Linux. Perhaps somebody could explain to me what they understood about Linux by having installed Arch? Then I'll know what to look for should I ever decide to do it.
Can be done for the right minded user. With a bit of help from me in regards to troubleshooting things they got wrong, I've seen average users install Arch relatively smoothly
That is essentially what I did like 6 months ago. From Windows to Arch in one day and I never really used Linux before. I do almost everything in the terminal and use vim. I still have to learn a lot but that is what I like about Arch.
Luke Smith said that he has seen people go from Windows straight into Arch. Whether thats true or not, idk. But I think he is talking about a specific type of new user. The tinkerer that actually wants to learn. Not the average Joe that just wants to watch RUclips and email and crap.
I jumped from Win10 to Hackintosh and straight to Arch linux with no prior knowledge of Linux, Linux CLI (ls/mkdir/rm/cd doesnt count really). It is NOWHERE as hard as people say. I would even dare to say its easy. Hell, my win10 was harder to clean than arch linux. I had been total noob up until i installed it 1 month ago. I confirm, Arch is user friendly.
I've been using Arch since the first day that I switched to Linux and I've loved it but I had spent months doing research on Linux before doing the switch. Also RTFM is not good advice for someone who doesn't know how to read the docs
A lot of prerequisite research before diving in and a lot of that research requires research on the research to understand. Some of it goes around in circles and without having any understanding it's futile for a beginner without feedback. That said, I'm a (mostly) beginner in the research process without feedback and going in circles. 🤣 I'll probably work it out in a year or 10. It'd be a lot faster with someone to teach though, I have the ADD thing and really don't learn well from text, I'm a tactile learner and no one could be fucked with people like me.
I'm very new to linux. All I've been doing is jumping from Manjaro to Pop OS. I didn't even know you could build your own linux. WOW. MIND BLOWN. I don't know if I'm smart enough but I think I'm brave enough for the challenge. Wish me luck!
Great. Thanks for that recommentation! I'm a ubuntu user and yesterday i did the proposed update to ubuntu 19.10, and since then nothing works anymore. Good time to change to Arch.
I started with Gentoo back in 2004; stage 2 install if I remember correctly. It was educational for sure even though I’m an Ubuntu/Pop user today. It’s actually a good learning experience just to run through an install on a vm periodically to stay sharp.
@@AlucardNoir Yeah, early into my Linux experience I hated the thought of something not being configured right (as it was left for me to do) so I would roll with Ubuntu, Mint, Manjaro or Debian. Arch is overwhelming for the beginner. It's good for a beginner to see and examine what it looks like but it takes time to get knowledgeable and comfortable with it, maybe you'll even have to do all that "getting comfortable" by maining a different distro. But once you have that install with Arch that you're comfortable with you'll end up learning about all distros really.
love the channel DT. subscribed recently. Love your unfettered passion for Linux. I am a longtime Windows user. I worked in IT and had to make it my business to know Windows since the machines I supported ran Windows. I recently installed Arco Linux in a VM and have been testing the waters. I can see why Linux has so many enthusiasts. Wish I had come onboard sooner. Thanks for all the very informative videos!
Absolutely, I used redhat back in 1999 and mandrake, and ubuntu, Linux Mint etc... And I stayed in the gui but after installing arch in August, I was amazed and I am enthusiastic
@@JosueRodriguez08 And someone who learnt to ride on that monocycle of yours is probably going to become very good at riding bikes because he/she learnt on the 'most difficult' one. Knows all the ins and outs.
@@abhileshxd621 no one fucking cares, because the person want to ride the bike...no to be the best...he wants to go to the store.........just like most people wants to just use a computer, not to devote 4 monhts to it
I considered Arch as a beginner too! When I first started out, everyone kept raving about it, and I saw there was a very comprehensive Wiki to do it! The idea of learning what's going on in a literal operating system as I went seemed like a great challenge with a great reward. In the end, I chose Elementary OS because I didn't want to distro hop, and wanted the paywall to keep me locked into one distro. Now that I'm curious about using Linux for very specific purposes, like using a computer only as a word processor, I feel like Arch may be in my future yet!
2 years late, but I still feel like dropping my 2 cents. I've installed Arch in a VM to try it out and it's cool and all, I even use it to browse the internet now since it runs faster than Windows on bare metal, but I want to use my computer. Not to go check Facebook for an hour every couple days. I play video games, code, store data like old, hard to replace movies and I use it for almost all my social interactions these days. I'm not unwilling to learn or disinterested in my system, I just can't afford it breaking. I'm sure I'm not the only one like this either. We're not just stupid, stubborn sheeple who refuse to use Arch because it forces us to learn to use a computer, our kryptonite, we just need our computer to run without issue. Arch is a fantastic OS if you want a fast and easily customizable system that isn't a pain in the ass to install, but it just isn't stable enough for me. Wish it was, I sure do like using it when it works, but it just isn't.
For a beginner it may be useful to try some other distros to have some ideas how different desktop environments can be configured in a pro way. The desktop env. (and/or Window Manager) is probaby the hardest thing to decide regarding GNU + Linux, because there are so many options (there are also quite some panel options). Also having seen the limitations in other distros or how boring they may be, they may appreciate Arch then.
I'd also say that the wiki forums are amazing for learning more about arch. I used to frequent the newbie corner to help new users with various problems and ended up learning a lot. I think that some users that tell people to read the manual, forget that these are users that don't even know what command restarts their computer, some of them don't even know there even *is* a command that restarts your computer.
I mean the arch install teaches you pre-instalation and post-instalation of all systems, the actuall installation is hidden behind scripts, and pacman. The gentoo install teaches you how to go from any system to any arcutacture, provided both have a C compiler. Conclusion: Just use the server/minimal version of Debian or whatever.
I just came to linux a week ago and chose arch as my first distro for this very reason. I also insisted on using bspwm as my wm and trying to go as lightweight as possible. I wanted to know every function of ever system running on my computer. Arch was great for this because it forced me to actually understand what was going on to get anything to function. That said, it did take about a full week and about 7 VMs to get everything working how I wanted it to.
I completely agree. I installed arch when I was 13 after wanting to live up to the meme and understand Linux. Broke it so many times I can’t count on my fingers and toes, but I rocked it for quite a while and it felt good
Two years after this video was made, a decade and a half after I started using linux semi-regularly, and four years after I switched to Linux as a daily driver, you've convinced me: My next computer is going to have Arch on it (I don't want to distrohop on my current machine; I want to learn, but I can have a little patience).
I scoffed when I read the title, but honestly after hearing what you had to say, I agree. I first installed Arch when I was 13 on an old Panasonic Toughbook (am now 19); it was intimidating but it taught me a lot at the time and was super satisfying when I first started up XFCE. All that one really needs to install Arch is the install guide 95% of the time. If something goes wrong, the Arch wiki is a godsend.
He's right on the mark. I never personally found Linux to be entirely to my taste until I just said "fuck it", ignored everyone saying not to do it and went straight from Mint to Arch.
I've recently decided to move from windows to linux. Most software I use is also available for linux, and I can find alternatives for the rest, or use emulation in the worst cases. I've got some experience with Ubuntu from a few years ago, and despite it being a perfectly fine "out of the box" distro, at that time I needed to use Windows only software for my job, and I felt like I did not really understood what was under the hood. So, definitely, I think that aiming for an Arch distro is a good idea. Lots of things to learn, but I'm pretty excited by it!
@@derubermensch9809 Are you sure you're doing it right? GRUB works on pretty much anything. If you have UEFI firmware you'll need to pass the right arguments in grub-install.
I would like to leave my thoughts as a beginner. A week and a half ago I installed Linux Mint, and it was absolute pain. The same day I switched to Kubuntu, which I liked more. But now that I've got used to the basics of Linux on Kubuntu, I switched to Arch yesterday and while, sure, it had complexity, I feel like it has actually been a lot easier. I don't have to mess around with all this "bloat" that comes installed, I install what I need, how I want to use it, and it just *works*. Sure, I might need to play around with things, but it is a lot easier to get it to do what I want in my experience. Everyone was scaring me off but I mean it really was not that hard. Hell, Windows is way more difficult in my opinion, the OS I have *always* used. Edit: no idea of the bold not working in this comment, it is formatted correctly as far as I can tell.
hell yeah! i am begginer and i started with arch first. everyone discouraged me and told me to use stuff like mint but i learned so much from arch (i know most of them ment me good but lot of them didnt)
As a software enginner who has worked with Linux systems and CLI for years my first venture into desktop linux (outside of a few ubuntu vms) was Arch Linux, but if you don't have prior experience with the command line and unix system structure you're going to have a pretty rough time.
I absolutely love watching your videos. They're highly informative and I get to learn a lot! Waiting for the Linux From Scratch series on this channel!!
Absolutely agree DT my first two Linux years on Ubuntu did almost nothing to prepare me for Arch install or maintenance, the Arch Wiki and Man pages did.
Hi DT, sounds like you watched my last ramble. It's all about mindset and about being prepared to do some research. I agree with you entirely, although when I saw the title I didn't think I would :-)
I took your advice on this one. It definitely giving me flashbacks to pre-windows days, and I'm loving it. There's sooo much more to experience and learn with this platform, and it pretty much forces you to do exactly that.
I couldn't agree more than that. I if one wants to become a Linux user, one should start from scratch. If one wants to use a Linux desktop as just an alternative that is something completely different. The first makes a bold and conscious choice the second wants half measures. It baffles me to this day of I'm the first or the latter. What I do know is that I just wanted to do my tasks securely in the past and that now I want to dive deep into the rabbit hole. FTF and in 3 months I'll start the path you proposed.
Believe it or not, Arch is actually the first distribution I installed on my own hardware, and it's the first distribution I've installed period if you count count installing Fedora on school computers as part of a class in 2006-2007 and installing Ubuntu in virtual machines around 2010. Moreover, this is how my Arch install worked. I did it on a Lenovo ThinkPad W550S in 2016. If you turned the laptop on by itself, you'd boot into Windows 10. On my keychain I had a 8 GB USB drive, containing an external LUKS header and a 8192 KB LUKS encrypted keyfile. If the laptop was booted with this drive inserted, the machine would load rEFInd, and if I selected Arch Linux the drive would be mounted as /boot and the Arch encrypt hook (which I had to modify to make this work) would prompt me for the LUKS password to decrypt the LUKS encrypted keyfile. Then the decrypted keyfile would be used to decrypt my main partition, then the LVM volumes would be mounted and everything would load. After that, it was just a matter of unmounting /boot and removing the USB drive. In addition to the "two factor" LUKS authentication to use Arch, the external LUKS header gave plausible deniability that the partition was encrypted at all.
For someone like my grandmother, a pure Arch installation would be a bad idea. She would want the simplest installation and easiest window manager to use. At one point she didn't want to spend any money on Windows or antivirus for an old used computer, so I installed Ubuntu with Gnome 3. The main thing she needed was a web browser, so all she had to do was click Firefox on the side dock. She never had a problem with it. I also added an update button to the dock so she could update it when she felt like it. It could also receive her digital camera's pictures and print them just fine.
I started using Linux on my main computer a year ago, and even though I really wanted to learn Linux well, I do definitely not regret not using Arch the first time around, though I did start with Manjaro after playing around with ubuntu in a VM. The thing is, there is already so much to learn with different shells, package management, the GNU core utilities, the file hierarchy, users, file ownership... I could go on. Arch would be too overwhelming, and making the choice for everything you want in an operating system seems impossible if you don't have any experience. One thing that is helpful for beginners is to have to have some GUI/Desktop Environment, and choosing that from all the possibilities seems like a daunting task if you don't know the first thing about them.
Finally someone has said it, i changed to antergos for a week then arch for 5 months (to today) and i think it's a great distro to learn about the linux workflow
i appreciate your advice Arch sounds awesome, (getting 1st computer soon) was getting a lot of “arch is for experienced people” vibes, so glad to hear your interpretation
I have installed Arch onto my 64G USB thumbdrive, it was indeed a very satisfying thing to have done successfully even with a YT tutorial Before I have used Ubuntu a little at school on an IT highschool profile, and a little on a second device miniPC I had and needed something very light, I have also just installed Debian onto my tablet (like a Lenovo tablet that originally came with Windows) Im totally looking forward to learning more and more and getting a new 2TB NVME for my PC and install Arch there Besides being a software engineer and game developer I am a gamer, so Im extremely happy seeing everything Valve has done for the Linux community and I hope I wont stay bummed because of a lot of the current shortcomings of Linux and that it will be able to truly compete, because I will definitely have to either leave my Windows drive untouched or run it in a VM / run Wine for stuff like Adobe software or anything else like that
This is (partially) titlebait. At least title is intentionally provocative. Ideal first "user" (both "non-techies" and "techies" included) linux distro is default, non-minimal Ubuntu, not Arch. It is the most polished, supported, compatible, and ready-to-use general purpose distro at the current moment. If some user (even a very advanced one) wants their system to "just work", to help getting the job done, and be not-Windows and not-MacOS, they should pick Ubuntu (as of today). *HOWEVER*, ideal first "poweruser" distro is, indeed, ArchLinux. Core principles of this distro are deeply similar to the intents of powerusers, and they affect a lot in how users interact with the system (including installation process). And, because most people who switch to Linux do so because they want to surpass some limitations, or set up a custom workflow, i see the logic behind this video title - it is appealing to "newbie powerusers", and as much as i like that (a lot), i still have to point out that this title is made for a specific audience, even if unintentionally. And this is a good titlebait :3 I use Arch btw.
I went from Win10 straight to Arch Linux (straight as in playing with it in a VM for 5 months before installing it directly :D)! That's what I'm putting on my RUclips channel to force myself to believe it did worth it :D
I watched tutorials for 3 days. Then deleted windows, googled for best linux distro, installed Arch. Idk why ppl say its hard. Its amazing. PS. Never used linux in my life before these 3 days
Y'know what, you're right. Never would have thought of it this way, but honestly, if you want to use Linux, it's worth doing it "properly". Otherwise, why bother? Why not just use Windows? I know Linux users tend to hate on Windows but it's perfectly fine for anyone who's not a tech/PC enthusiast, who just wants to use their computer as an appliance. I never considered using Linux for a personal machine before, but I had an old PC that I thought I'd try to set up as a basic web browsing, music listening and simple programming machine, and for some reason Arch's minimalist approach appealed to me. I expected to hate it, but it's exactly the opposite: I *get* it now. Arch is amazing for teaching you how Linux actually works, and it's nowhere near as onerous to set up as I thought it would be. As long as you follow the steps carefully on the wiki, you'll be fine.
I understood most of the steps you mentioned that an arch installation required but I would try to learn that by tinkering once the system is installed and not have to spend time trying to make it work. Not everybody wants (or can) devote their entire weekend to a Linux distro.
Come on, I've used multiple linux distros during the last decade, I'm learning how use the terminal to do more and more stuff every day, but I still do not feel ready to do an arch installation.
The whopediwhat now? This sounds like an interesting video. watching it now :D *edit: Yes, actually I agree with you. I'm a new Linux user (4 months give or take) and I decided to go for something arch based, as I heard it will break more often and I wanted to learn. In retrospective I should have used vanilla arch, yes. But this only applied, because I was a windows poweruser. Fixing my own stuff is totally fine and you mention this in your video: when not ready to RTFM and dedicate time to learning- install Mint or something.
Yeah, I'm about a little over five months into linux, so beginner as well. I need to dedicate a spare couple of hours to learn to install arch. I don't have any spare hardware to dedicate to installing arch on, so a VM will have to do.
Arch Linux i'd personally not vouch, its harder to install and it can break due to the frequent updates. Manjaro however is what i personally recommend people start on, their automatic driver installations are the best in class and the updates are a bit more controlled while you don't have to do distro upgrades every few years to keep your system up to date. It truly is a set and forget distro. But i don't agree with you here DT, the average user wants to USE linux and doesn't care how it works just like they don't care how Windows works. They want something that is easier to use not harder to use without having to really need to read tutorials or manuals. And once they are then familair with Manjaro they can easily transition to Arch if they really wanted to do it from the ground up or to any other distro that fits them better.
Manjaro, Arch and Antergos (before it was ashcanned ). Manjaro is my go to though. Seem to be hooked on Peppermint OS now though. Plays my movies flawlessly!
I agree with you on it, honestly. I never took to Linux until I said "Screw it, gonna use Arch" and found it entirely to my tastes, and I'd probably just go back to Windows rather than deal with the extra work of fixing up Ubuntu that everyone seems to forget you have to basically do for a good gaming experience.
The thing with arch is that when a noob installs it ,he tries to have that installed so he learns to find an answer to his problems instead of reinstalling it
Someone who knows this better than I do should make a "guided" install for arch that is designed to teach you to understand what you are doing. You will still have to enter all the commands, but your options will be explained to you in the terminal, and what those options mean will also be explained.
I agree DT, even though I eventually settled on vanilla Debian, I used Arch for a long time and the learning experience was absolutely invaluable... Learning how to install, search for solutions, and repair your system. The documentation is incredible.
Why I don't use Arch: I just left Windows because I got tired of all of Microsoft's spyware, and I want something that just works for my needs. Installing Arch was a nightmare, especially during network configuration. I'm currently happy with Fedora. I don't have to "be a true Linux user and actually build my system" to be able to use my computer.
I think for the newb user that you are talking about, that may be the appropriate choice. When I was a newbie user, that would have been the worst choice. Now, my knowledge has gradually increased on it's own, but just diving out in the deep end like that, I would have left Linux and gone back to Windows. I needed a computer that worked out of the box (not one with my anemic knowledge to get up and running to work right of the box). I had work to get done (no, not just web browsing and sending emails) and the longer that it would take me to get a rig up that is "mission critical", the more I take a hit on using it to earn a living. Likewise if updates kill the usability of the rig and I have to hunt around for a fix. The time that I spend having to fix it, that's a hit on my efficiency as well. It really does depend on what time of Linux newb. People come to Linux for all kinds of reasons, and try to focus them on Arch isn't always going to be the best thing. On occasion, I still have tried to do Arch on my main office rig and rarely does it last past 2-3 weeks. Starts off great, but then updates start rolling in and it takes longer and longer to troubleshoot and fix. Regardless if I can or can't fix it, it still eats away time and I can't have that if trying to get work done. Fedora is even too bleeding edge for my production needs as it is, but I can at least get that to last longer then an Arch install.
I agree that we are not the average users, but what we need to attract those Windows user who just want to go. We are at a point where a new user can turn a machine on and have a working desktop. It is not so esoteric that you have to be well steeped in Linux to run the system.
On my desktop computer I use arch, because I like the aur and the performance for gaming. On my laptop on the other hand though. I have run arch for at least 14 months on my old laptop, but I recently started to realize that some software like wine and proton wouldn't work, because xf86-video-ati does not support 32 bit anymore on that laptop. So on my laptop I installed Debian and it works good! Wine and proton work so I can run my windows software that I need on there. It's also less pain to update, because it's very slow with updating and now I only get updates twice a week, but not that many anymore. On arch it sometimes took 15 minutes to update the whole system, because I only update twice a week. With conclusion: I'd just install Debian on older devices (My laptop is from 2007) and on a modern system install archlinux (if your internet is good), because if you have slow internet it takes a long time.
Man I say this all the time. It forces you to learn I used mint and other distros for a while but I would get stuck and not be able to do something and go back to windows. On arch, I had to learn little things to even make the system run and it took me multiple times to get it right. But now I feel proficient, there has not been a program I couldn't run. If I do run into a problem I figure it out because there is documention on everything. Edit: I remember posting on Reddit to get help with Linux Mint and someone said try arch or Gentoo then you will no pain. I took that as a challenge. Now I can install arch with ease. Gentoo is another story.
To be honest when I moved to Linux, I didn't care about deeply learning Linux, but I have always hated a lot of things Microsoft since 2005, and the restriction in not so old hardware 2016 in which basically Microsoft openly admitted they would not support that type of hardware anymore, that was the last drop in the base for me. I've tried several times Linux in the past (Kubuntu/Mint/Ubuntu/Open-SUSE) but because of wine being nothing but I nice dream in those years, as a kid and then teenager, I've got boring really fast. being 2018 the last time I tried it with Linux mint cinnamon 19 with a very low resources (dual core[2013], 4 gb of ram and 500GB hdd), the overall-experience was sweet despite those components, and I only used the console to update the system and to prepare the environment to program in java and c++. I had problems back them with the university because the professors in charge in one of my course didn't used Linux (that university was extremely pro-windows, they even have an agreement with Microshit and everything), and he almost didn't accept one of my assigned home works because it was not compiled in Windows. Well, At the end I somehow managed to persuade him to just copy and pasted the code in their windows machine. But I didn't want to take the risk anymore and just return to windows again (very slow with that machine, at least I was able to resurrect my other pc which was a gaming one, so oh course that also influenced my decision). Anyway, since 2019, with Valve entering in the Linux game and actively supporting wine and Linux to make gaming possible Linux, finally my last restrained was lifted. Then I started again several months ago. This time with Kubuntu. The experience was nice but because I wanted to play, there were a lot of tricks I needed to do and all of them required terminal. That's how I started assimilating terminal commands and wanted to learn more about them. I then try using a tiling windows manager because my beautiful kde DE was tooo bloated although with my gaming PC I didn't have problems with that. But I did learn a lot more because I needed to use the terminal even more and I needed to learn more about making scripts to open my programs because it were not found by Dmenu. Then I'm trying fedora-i3wm spin, and I've getting even more enthusiastic and interested about learning more a scripting and shell scripting after seeing the possibilities that have never passed through my mind when I was a windows user or an only GUI Linux user. So it's up to now, I'm really starting to love Linux.
In this case I don't belive Derek is trolling, he'sd just being provocative. I started my serious linux journey by haveing a two weeks of bad man cold. Day three i got tired of watching youtube, movies and tried a Arch install in a VM. That ran well for a couple of days, and then I just installed it om bare metal. A few weeks later I trashed it by experimenting wildly, but a new install just takes fifteen minutes. Then I got to learn more and wanted LVM and LUKS encryption. Thats when I hit a wall. Me having no programming background what so ever, really had a hard time then. It took me six months to really read up and get a hang of it to get it working. --- BUT This is not for everyone. I do firmly belive that there is a distro for everyone, even for those who just want to browse the web. I got my Gf on a Debianbased distro, and that works superbly for her. I love her to bits, but she is most sertainly not a hacker. ;)
@John Smith Thanks for the reply, and yes it's far from a optimal set up for a beginner. It was me getting big headed, and trying to bite of to much at the same time. That plus I'm one of those stubborn jackasses that want's to understand what I'm doing. I got LVM + LUKS running, but the tips you gave me were really good, and I will probably tinker one of my systems to shreds... again. ;)
I tried Garuda first to get familiar with Linux at first, then I got the barebones addition to get used to packages, then I jumped to Arch. Go in slow, but don't be afraid to learn.
I would argue that a good middle ground for someone who wants to instantly be able to do things but also wants to learn is an openbox distro, something like Crunchbang ++ where things work but to change things you have to get your hands a little dirty in clearly designated config files and using the terminal is encouraged.
I think we should distinguish some terms. If by beginner one means someone who has a lot to learn and is enthusiastic about it and knows how and where to look for answers and have the means to do so... yes Arch is just awesome! I am doing so right now. But for some one lacking any of those that I have mentioned, arch can be a horrible experience. Because if I'm curious about linux, and I don't know where and what to do, I don't know what to search, I don't know where to search, or I don't have the motivation to do any of these, I will just give it up. Even if you were a user of fedora or ubuntu or any of those kinds of distros, and have not been using terminal to the extend of knowing your way around the terminal, you would have an extremely hard time just doing the vanilla arch. Instead I just suggest a 1U2D3M4A before doing vanilla Arch. Which is 1 month of Ubuntu (or mint) just to see what it could be look like, find similarties with what you have been used to, learn a few different package names, and maybe try apt for the first time. Then try to work with Debian. That helps you understand how it was built, try to troubleshoot more and also, have better understanding of what makes linux especial. Then try Manjaro for 3 month. It is just to let you know what arch structure is. what rolling release is, and see why AUR is the shangri-la of linux users. Then move on for 4 month to arco and go through stages of learning "the arch way" and then if you like, stay with arco or go with arch. This way, you learn linux, with out the danger of losing motivation altogether.
Honestly, installing software on anything but rolling release is not user-friendly. The packages are either outdated or not in the repos. Arch doesn’t need Snaps or Flatpacks. It just works.
It’s more user friendly for people who want static/stable software so they don’t have to deal with feature changes for quite a while. Debian/Ubuntu repos are pretty healthy.
Arch is the perfect distribution for those who want to have a thorough understanding of Linux. I've been using Linux for 25 years and UNIX before that so I was in at the ground floor pretty much so I have a deeper understanding just because of it. Arch will accelerate your learning, if you want to obtain a deeper understanding.
but most people who switch to Linux nowadays do it for performance/software/privacy/pricing reasons. they don't want to use terminal for everything, they just want a free desktop operating system. what's the point of learning how to mount USB drives using a bunch of terminal commands if they will just use Gnome or KDE which will automount them
I'm not so sure I agree. I've installed Arch just to see if I could. It's been a while, and I don't remember all the problems I faced, but I do remember deciding, fairly quickly, that Arch would be a downgrade from Manjaro Xfce, and that was after about 2 years of using Linux as my only HDD installed OS. I think if Arch were a user's first Linux experience, they would conclude that Linux just has problem after problem and every problem requires page after page of reading to fix. I'd recommend Manjaro Xfce as a good start. Although I've tried countless others in VMs, I still feel I started with best. Sorry DT, but when you make as many badass videos as you do, you're bound to have a flop ever now and then.
Arch users say read the wiki step by step, word by word, etc, You are not learning anything by reading word by word, step by step etc. Anyone can read a wiki, but that certainly doesn't mean you are learning the ins and outs of Linux. You still need some knowledge outside the wiki to install Arch. Linux From Scratch is really learning about Linux. Btw, I'm a Tiny Core user.
I've never been a rolling type of guy. My servers are all Redhat and I don't like any other kind. For my desktop I want to be perfectly utilitarian, fast, secure, stable, and efficient. So of course I started with Slackware 1.0 (although it was many versions later before I could get enough drivers to build a livable kernel). My background was about 15 years of commodore and a dabble here and there in Atari/TI/Apple/PC stuff, so it took me a really long time to figure out this whole non-proprietary world. I really found my home between Slackware 9 to 11, especially when the DE was perfected in KDE 3.5. Shortly after my PC world fell all apart and I was made homeless by Plasma contamination. These days I just install Lubuntu and try not to customize it to the breaking point, especially the kernel. Dang it, I'm feeling almost proprietary again.
For a beginner user who's familiar with computers, and delves into settings from time to time, I'd say Manjaro. For an absolute beginner or grandparents, Ubuntu. It'll always work.
For absolute beginners, I don't think so. But, for a bit experienced Linux 'users' (not beginners), but 'users', I believe Arch could be a great springboard into the Linux. With doing so, a Linux user can learn 100% more about Linux and topics you have mentioned in the video such as disks, partitions, LVM, kernel, boot sequence, GUI, interfaces...
My Wife and her father using Arch for 4 years now running into exactly 0 Problems. I had to install it though and keep the machines up to date on a 3 month basis. But 0 trouble
You know, as a novice Linux user who keeps coming back to Windows due to not knowing what to do and not having the right experience, I think trying Arch Linux might be the solution. I started out like a lot of noobs by installing "beginner friendly" distros like Pop, Mint, and Zorin. But the thing that kept me from sticking with it was not knowing what to do when something went wrong. I am fully willing to spend the time to learn as I have a passion for computing in general, I just couldn't find a good starting point. And I think Arch might be the answer I've been looking for. I've seen videos of people installing Arch and it doesn't seem too hard. Especially with the well written wiki. There also is the Arch install script, but I want to do it the normal way to gain a better understanding of how the operating system functions. Plus I think it will be more fun 🙃
Do you have an update at all? I'm in a similar boat atm, but this video got me wanting to try Linux again after 5+ years since abandoning Mint in frustration. I just didn't have enough knowledge about the OS to do what I wanted with it, and was overwhelmed by how much I needed to learn all at once to fix supposedly rather simple issues.
I ended up not using arch. I am currently using mint but plan to switch to fedora with gnome material shell. My advice is that the best way to learn is to just stick with it and deal with the frustration and eventually you will learn how to problem solve issues and things will become easier, I can liken it to moving a heavy trailer, its difficult to move at first, but once it gets going it's a lot easier. Linux mint is a great jumping off point, I would recommend starting with that. Another thing to note is that linux has become a lot more plug and play in the last 5 years, especially for gaming. I tried to switch to linux back in 2021 and gave up after 2 months because it was too frustrating, but when I switched again a few months ago it went much smoother. In fact I barely even used the terminal when I switched recently. It also helps to have well optimized linux hardware (Basically stuff without proprietary blob drivers, I used to have a Nvidia GTX 970 and now have an AMD RX 6700 XT and that made things a lot easier) TLDR, Start with mint, keep pushing through the difficulties, and it will get easier.
@@agrisimfarming Thanks! I think that I will still give Arch a brief shot still, even if only to install it and get a desktop environment going. I'm not worried much about functionality this time, as I'll be installing it on an old computer that I don't use anymore for the express purpose of learning Linux. I was initially going to stubbornly try to push through any difficulties of Arch, but I'll make sure to be willing to switch to something like Mint if it gets to be too much though.
Absolutely. I installed Arch to my moms machine and left her staring the blinking cursor. Whatsapped the Arch Wiki link to her phone on the way home, she should be ok.
@@piotrtalarczyk8987 Yes, but i'm a rebel. :P
@@piotrtalarczyk8987 In think you miss understood the video.... your mon don't want to learn gnu/linux.... she just want to use a computer.
Your mom must have done something bad to you in the past lol ;)
@Dominik Sienko Come no he is clearly joking. No one would torture their own mother by installing their favorite distro on her hardware :D
@@svhuwagv2965 I am sure there are some mothers who now more than their kids
Arch is the perfect distro for people who want to say they use Arch.
The toxic cult-like following around arch is enough reason for me to not use it as a desktop OS.
@@ClockworkRBLX you forgot to say "by the way I use Arch" 😄
@@ClockworkRBLX Your way of choosing an OS is a bit weird. By your logic nobody should use Windows, OSX, or most flavors of Linux. You are missing out on one of the best desktop Linux distros because of a silly meme.
I use Arch BTW
@@etherweb6796 But no one should use Windows, OSX or most flavors of Linux including arch. Partly because they all use, or condone the use of nonfree software.
@@ClockworkRBLX If you say so St. Ignucius - have fun with your paperweights
In short: 'No' for my mom's laptop and 'Yes' for a friend who wants to learn Linux and is willing to feel the pain that can come with Arch.
@Mr. Anarchy I run arch, my Aunt e.g. runs Mint. I have had colleagues switch to Arch and then back to Ubuntu/Mint. Arch breaks for me at least every few months in drastic ways due to updates. So yes, If you want to learn about Linux, using the terminal etc, it's great. For beginners that don't care and just want a working system? No.
@@epsi I had to rebuild initramsfs twice this year already due to shoddy update processes ;) Graphical sessions had nothing to do with that.
Mr. Anarchy, this. Takes way too much time to remove unneeded stuff, then search for 3d party repos, then install what you want with a slow-ass package manager, then discover touchpad doesn’t work properly ‘cause the good driver is in the newer kernel which isn’t in the repos, then add newer kernel, then fallback to an older kernel ‘cause other shit doesn’t work nicely with upstream... fuck this man.
you made 4 typos in the word can
I put linux mint on an old core 2 duo laptop that I gave away to a coworker who had not yet been introduced to the world of personal computing.
I let my friend who had windows 7 at the end of its life use my manjaro install disk to introduce him to the world of linux and then walked him through installing arch a couple of weeks later once he gained a little comfort in the command line. He was what you could call a power user when it came to windows 7 but did not want to upgrade to windows 10.
I literally laughed out loud as soon as I saw the video title coupled with that stock photo of a happy elderly couple using a computer. 🤣 This is the most beautiful Linux clickbait I've ever seen, and I mean that as a sincere compliment. Well done!
David C. Drake, yeah the photo was pretty hilarious. Well played DT.
same here :)
I've not even watched the video. I just saw the title and have only just stopped laughing!
He indirectly said it this is for "Boomers" generation
😆
Good reasoning. DT did say "willingness to learn" is a key component of this. That's pretty optimistic tho.
I would say 80% of the people who use computers barely have a willingness to click an update button.
I use Debian BTW.
@ItsAllUnity I went to Arch straight from Win10. But yeah, I love challenges and getting outside my comfort zone, so there's that.
Mostly people who use computers are interested in what they use them for. Not what someone interested in operating systems or development use computers for. We all just happen to have the fortuitous confluence of 'using computers' and 'using computers to learn about computers', working for us.
I use arch BTW
Just use manjaro lol
same.
i use ubuntu btw too (it does count as debian as well right?)
If someone came to Linux, someone who was a power user on Windows, an enthusiast, then I _would_ agree that Arch would be one hell of a start. After installing Arch, you will start off with a knowledge of the major parts of Linux.. a start that will prove to be invaluable later on. There are people using Linux that don't know the difference between a window manager or a file manager or a desktop environment.. Learning by installing Arch forces you through all of this one at a time, and you'll end up being able to fix problems that would have seemed far more complicated than not knowing what the big pile of mystery code was doing. Linux is very well defined structurally, far more so than Windows ever was, and knowing the half-dozen major parts of it will prove invaluable in the long run.
This person was me. I had only played around in Ubuntu many years ago. I installed Arch on my home computer and spent days just getting the basics to work. Once I got it working, I customized dwm, wrote scripts, etc. I loved the whole experience and learnt from so much from it but a very, very small percentage of people would be willing to do that.
@barutaji You just described me.
Me: *read the title*
Also Me: *check the calendar*
Arch was my first time ever interacting with linux, I totally agree with him.
I dumped 2 days straight into the original installation, im sooo much better at the command line now because of it.
Arch is great for beginners
@@ChrisJones-rd4wb Indeed! I was an early Gentoo adopter, when I heard about Arch I couldn't have been more excited 🤣
My University scripting professor, when asked if we have a textbook, says, "RTFM means read the manual and the F is silent" and the class chuckles.
1. week - installed arch
with kde-plasma
2. week - Installed i3 and polybar
3. week - Now I'm tired of customising.
for me it was
1. day - tried to install arch, didnt work
2. day - installed arch with kde, i3 and polybar and now im also tired
I began with Arch today and was stuck on "verifying internet connection" because though all networking seemed OK, I couldnt ping or traceroute anything...my router was configured to block ICMP by default. To hell with it, I said, entering the installation_guide script after hours and hours... Yelled at myself little bit when it loaded just fine.
Arch+KDE is one of the best.
@@mecrumbly429___4 yeah, i use tiling wms though
I've got started with bspwm, I hate DE,
wm it's better
Arch is my first distro. I loved installing Arch. I've done it about 4 or 5 times now. It's really, really fun and you learn a lot. The problem I had was maintaining it. After runs of -Syu and having my video card stop working, or the display manager kicking me back to the CLI I worked so hard to get out of because it's dependencies are all whacked out, I just got tired. It's probably my fault, with my rookie mistakes and such, but it felt like I was trying to teach a dead person to walk while maintaining it, and it kinda hurt LOL. Installed Manjaro, and it's great. Really painless. I know I'll go back to Arch someday, though. I'm not done beating the crap out of it to force it to work.
This video is what pushed me over the edge and into the deep end. I was looking at Linux, and particularly at Arch for quite some time, and I installed it in a VM after watching this. Best decision I've ever made. Arch is the best teacher there is, and it's only a matter of time before I permanently leave Windows. Thank you DT!
Thanks, Paul!
I'm just waiting for battleye etc to fix their anticheat so I can play rainbow6siege
I tried Arch in a VM. Yes, I fucked it up a few times, but it was a learning experience.
same. setting up the com on windows was harder than actually installing the OS
whoops *setting up the vm
Did that on actual hardware, N E V E R and I mean this N E V E R install arch first try on hardware. Took me 2 days to get it up and working, now I know how to install arch in 10 minutes
I installed Arch on hardware with little no experience and it took me like 2 hours and I'm stil running it. Although I've tried Gentoo in a VM and that took me like 2 days and I broke it in the VM almost instantly lmao haven't really touched gentoo much since then
It's harder to sign up to the arch linux forums than it is to install arch linux.
true that
@@horatiumarasescu6187 you don't need a graphical installer for Arch. Can you partition a drive by yourself? Can you Pacstrap? Can you Chroot and install a bootloader?
If you can, you don't need a graphic installer, if you can't, you shouldn't use Arch :)
@@NiceMicroTV see, that's what's keeping people from ArchLinux. This very attitude.
"I shouldn't use Arch" . That's downright rude and pointless.
Yes, I can do all the aforementioned things you mentioned. Does it make me a superior being or pays my mortgage?
I will use whatever feels right at the moment.
Wasn't Linux or still is the place where one express own FREEDOM of choice?
So, tone down, one is free to do things as sees fit.
Btw, I also use Arch and Manjaro and EndeavourOS and all distros. And I love them all, because I can do my computing as I see fit. My freedom, my way of doing things.
At the end of the day, I care about one thing: that I helped by fellow Linux user and I promote the freedom of choice.
Whatever, as long is not Windows.
@@horatiumarasescu6187 No, it doesn't make me any better than someone using Ubuntu or Mint or OpenSUSE. Arch has a very specific audience to cater to, and I'm a member of that audience. If this is not a product that caters to your needs, don't use it. There are products that better suit you. The goal of the Arch Linux developers is not to be appealing to as many people as possible. So yeah, if it's not a proper distro for your use case, you shouldn't use it. As much as Mint is not built for my use case, so I shouldn't use Mint.
"anything but Windows" is a bad attitude imho, you should use the thing that makes your life easier. If it's Win, than use that. If it's Linux Mint, use that. But don't use Arch just for the meme and then be disappointed that it isn't a distro tailored for you. That's all what I'm saying, no one is better or worse a human being for the OS they use on their PC.
@@horatiumarasescu6187 I mean he's not really infringing on your freedom by saying that. He's just expressing an opinion on what might be suitable or not suitable for a specific person.
And it's a fair point. If you settle for an installation method that requires little maintenance then will you be able to do maintenance when needed or when you want to do a little customization? After all that's the point of Arch.
Arch was my first distro, and I kept it for a couple weeks before switching to Ubuntu, because I'd basically never touched Linux up until that point. When I got comfortable with using Linux in general, I came back to Arch, and only really started learning about the internals of the OS at that point. I guess it's the idea that the best way to learn to swim is to dive into the deep end.
I agree on many points.Linux is a good chance of learning, and can be a long term relationship.
From Windows/Mac to Linux, one should start with one of the "easy-go" distros. Ubuntu, Pop OS!, Elementary are good choices. After you can handle the basics, a good path is to take the RPM family for a spin, with all the Red Hat seriousness. Next step Arco/Manjaro, that have the wild taste that can lure the user to the Arch world. Those steps are like "dating".
The engagement phase is when the user is curious to get more into the inner internals of the system. Arch wiki is an amazing source of knowledge, it is hands on linuxry kamasutra.
Marriage is when all gets deep and complex. You're no noob no more, but you can go further, you can void, you can Exherbo, you can Gentoo. You can even go Linux From Scratch. All mysteries unfold and other mysteries arise.
But let's all be aware, if the user burn phases of the relationship, there are good chances a hurtful separation or divorce in the future.
Keep on with your great videos!
viniciusxp nice analogy
Is this an out of season April Fools Joke?
Why? Don't you have a phone?
If you watched the video, he was referring to the more tinker minded people wanting to learn linux.
I pretty much agree with his point of view, though the title is pure clickbait.
His facts are solid and as a new linux user I do agree with him!
He's honestly correct. I never took to Linux until I used Arch because I was familiar with more technical aspects of computers and Ubuntu has always had that similar feeling of "trying to hide things" that Windows has. The fact is that Arch is a simple way to have a complex OS, so it's relatively easy to understand what's going on when you need to fix something.
It doesn't help that I regularly see people asking for help on Ubuntu with stuff that just kinda worked OOTB on Manjaro/was extremely easy to set up in Arch after I installed the required packages, (eg. VAAPI, I heard someone claiming on reddit that it's still poorly supported under Linux in a thread from an Ubuntu user asking for help, meanwhile on my PC everything picked up that the drivers/GPU offered it and automatically enabled it) it actually makes me wonder what Canonical has done under the hood at times.
An arch installation forces you do everything from scratch, except for when you run pacstrap base and it pretty much installs the entire system in a single command. If you have ever tried LFS (Linux From Scratch) you know that actually Arch is automating the majority of the installation process.
yep the most compicated I did was installing Gentoo and it is kinda in between LFS and Arch (rather on the Arch side imho).
By the way I use Linux Mint.
Cinnamon ftw
Btw I use Windows 10
I stopped distro hopping at Linux Mint Mate.
Edit: goddamn autocomplete on android
I use manjaro with the cinnamon desktop on my laptop but my dev machine is running ubuntu 19.10 eoan ermine and my old crappy netbook runs arch with i3 window manager
pOp oS :-)
So many people seem to have missed the point of the video :/
I started on Mint cinnamon, messed around and learned a bit about Linux but not as much as I wanted
Hopped to Arch and instantly started learning a ton, because there is no way I can get past a stage if I don't know what I'm doing
DT means that Arch pushes you to learn Linux. Things will break and you'll learn by fixing them
Totally agree. I wanted to learn more about Linux and Arch taught me the most out of all the distros I experimented with.
Never understood the Arch meme. It’s nowhere near as cumbersome to install as something like Gentoo.
That's why the "Install Gentoo" meme is even better known, as it's very popular even outside the Linux community
@@unicatte My nearest encounter with Gentoo was in the water world zoo.
Not being as cumbersome as the most cumbersome distro to install isn't really a great standard to strive for
It's just arch users flexing on all the meta-distribution and non-linux(or bsd) users.
I have been messing with Linux distros since about the time of Windows 95, when they were messier than today. I did a Gentoo installation quite a lot of years ago only because people who loved Gentoo believed there was something valuable in installing a distro the way Gentoo does, and I believed them. I didn't see it. I watched DT, who loves Arch, install Arch in his video on the off-chance I would see something special that would make it worth doing myself. I didn't see it. (I may do it anyway, watching DT do so on a second computer.) Installing a distro in a tedious way doesn't tell you much about how Linux works, and I would be interested to know more about how Linux works. Linus Torvalds was asked if he knew how everything in the kernel works. He said that he depends on specialists on his kernel team to know exactly how their area works. Therefore, not quite being Linus Torvalds, I don't expect to ever know much of anything about how Linux works. Doing things in the most tedious, mind-numbing way may make you feel as if you are understanding Linux, but don't kid yourself. It is just memorizing great amounts of gobbledygook. I am in awe of people capable of remembering endless non-sense, probably because I am not good at it, but I am not good at it.
I just watched a video of a fairly knowledgeable person telling how to install the xfce desktop on a raspberry pi 4 starting with ubuntu server already installed. He got the command line (overlayed on the video) a little wrong, because who can remember everything? One person in the comments who tried it didn't even copy that right and couldn't figure out what was wrong. Because I was not watching the video on a raspberry pi, and didn't want to install xfce just check in any case, I tested various possibilities, using command line completion until it (bash?) completed the line, and recommended that line to him. That's how it goes when you don't remember everything you have ever seen, or have not ever seen it to begin with. I don;t count remembering completely arbitrary and meaningless strings of text as "understanding" Linux.
Perhaps somebody could explain to me what they understood about Linux by having installed Arch? Then I'll know what to look for should I ever decide to do it.
I'd say Arch is ideal 2nd or 3rd distro. Imagine jumping straight from Windows/Mac to installing and configuring Arch. That's my two cents.
Ditto
Can be done for the right minded user. With a bit of help from me in regards to troubleshooting things they got wrong, I've seen average users install Arch relatively smoothly
That is essentially what I did like 6 months ago. From Windows to Arch in one day and I never really used Linux before. I do almost everything in the terminal and use vim.
I still have to learn a lot but that is what I like about Arch.
Luke Smith said that he has seen people go from Windows straight into Arch. Whether thats true or not, idk. But I think he is talking about a specific type of new user. The tinkerer that actually wants to learn. Not the average Joe that just wants to watch RUclips and email and crap.
I jumped from Win10 to Hackintosh and straight to Arch linux with no prior knowledge of Linux, Linux CLI (ls/mkdir/rm/cd doesnt count really).
It is NOWHERE as hard as people say. I would even dare to say its easy. Hell, my win10 was harder to clean than arch linux.
I had been total noob up until i installed it 1 month ago. I confirm, Arch is user friendly.
I've been using Arch since the first day that I switched to Linux and I've loved it but I had spent months doing research on Linux before doing the switch. Also RTFM is not good advice for someone who doesn't know how to read the docs
A lot of prerequisite research before diving in and a lot of that research requires research on the research to understand. Some of it goes around in circles and without having any understanding it's futile for a beginner without feedback. That said, I'm a (mostly) beginner in the research process without feedback and going in circles. 🤣
I'll probably work it out in a year or 10. It'd be a lot faster with someone to teach though, I have the ADD thing and really don't learn well from text, I'm a tactile learner and no one could be fucked with people like me.
This is just it - to RTFM you need to know what to look up.
The true begginer linux is linux from scratch. Its the best one for beginners to start.
WTF is a beginner going to learn if they don’t even compile their own kernel???
@@keepercool98 ikr
@@keepercool98 COMPLETELY AGREE BRO
@@keepercool98 Better, if they don't even WRITE their own kernel ;-)
I'm very new to linux. All I've been doing is jumping from Manjaro to Pop OS. I didn't even know you could build your own linux. WOW. MIND BLOWN. I don't know if I'm smart enough but I think I'm brave enough for the challenge. Wish me luck!
Great. Thanks for that recommentation!
I'm a ubuntu user and yesterday i did the proposed update to ubuntu 19.10, and since then nothing works anymore. Good time to change to Arch.
my ubantu dose not work so let me switch to a distro where nothing works out of the box
> changing to arch because ubuntu doesn't work anymore
you got a really bad time...
"Arch linux is the best beginner distro" sounds a bit like "murder is the perfect fammily sport".
Clickbait :) A much more honest title would be "Arch is the ideal distro for SOME beginners".
Beginner implies someone who wants to learn something about Linux.
I started with Gentoo back in 2004; stage 2 install if I remember correctly. It was educational for sure even though I’m an Ubuntu/Pop user today. It’s actually a good learning experience just to run through an install on a vm periodically to stay sharp.
@@PraetorGames no, no it actually doesn't.
@@AlucardNoir Yeah, early into my Linux experience I hated the thought of something not being configured right (as it was left for me to do) so I would roll with Ubuntu, Mint, Manjaro or Debian.
Arch is overwhelming for the beginner. It's good for a beginner to see and examine what it looks like but it takes time to get knowledgeable and comfortable with it, maybe you'll even have to do all that "getting comfortable" by maining a different distro. But once you have that install with Arch that you're comfortable with you'll end up learning about all distros really.
@@unicatte That's assuming one is still distro hopping by that point.
love the channel DT. subscribed recently. Love your unfettered passion for Linux. I am a longtime Windows user. I worked in IT and had to make it my business
to know Windows since the machines I supported ran Windows. I recently installed Arco Linux in a VM and have been testing the waters. I can see why Linux
has so many enthusiasts. Wish I had come onboard sooner. Thanks for all the very informative videos!
Absolutely, I used redhat back in 1999 and mandrake, and ubuntu, Linux Mint etc... And I stayed in the gui but after installing arch in August, I was amazed and I am enthusiastic
Derek does it again, confusing peaople with a lot of reasonable arguments for a totally unpopular standpoint. :)
There's no confusion, there's only clickbait.
Reasonable? It's like: you want to learn how to ride a bike? What about starting with this monocycle that does not have a seat?
@@JosueRodriguez08 And someone who learnt to ride on that monocycle of yours is probably going to become very good at riding bikes because he/she learnt on the 'most difficult' one. Knows all the ins and outs.
@@abhileshxd621 no one fucking cares, because the person want to ride the bike...no to be the best...he wants to go to the store.........just like most people wants to just use a computer, not to devote 4 monhts to it
I considered Arch as a beginner too! When I first started out, everyone kept raving about it, and I saw there was a very comprehensive Wiki to do it! The idea of learning what's going on in a literal operating system as I went seemed like a great challenge with a great reward. In the end, I chose Elementary OS because I didn't want to distro hop, and wanted the paywall to keep me locked into one distro. Now that I'm curious about using Linux for very specific purposes, like using a computer only as a word processor, I feel like Arch may be in my future yet!
2 years late, but I still feel like dropping my 2 cents. I've installed Arch in a VM to try it out and it's cool and all, I even use it to browse the internet now since it runs faster than Windows on bare metal, but I want to use my computer. Not to go check Facebook for an hour every couple days. I play video games, code, store data like old, hard to replace movies and I use it for almost all my social interactions these days. I'm not unwilling to learn or disinterested in my system, I just can't afford it breaking. I'm sure I'm not the only one like this either. We're not just stupid, stubborn sheeple who refuse to use Arch because it forces us to learn to use a computer, our kryptonite, we just need our computer to run without issue. Arch is a fantastic OS if you want a fast and easily customizable system that isn't a pain in the ass to install, but it just isn't stable enough for me. Wish it was, I sure do like using it when it works, but it just isn't.
For a beginner it may be useful to try some other distros to have some ideas how different desktop environments can be configured in a pro way. The desktop env. (and/or Window Manager) is probaby the hardest thing to decide regarding GNU + Linux, because there are so many options (there are also quite some panel options). Also having seen the limitations in other distros or how boring they may be, they may appreciate Arch then.
I'd also say that the wiki forums are amazing for learning more about arch. I used to frequent the newbie corner to help new users with various problems and ended up learning a lot. I think that some users that tell people to read the manual, forget that these are users that don't even know what command restarts their computer, some of them don't even know there even *is* a command that restarts your computer.
I mean the arch install teaches you pre-instalation and post-instalation of all systems, the actuall installation is hidden behind scripts, and pacman.
The gentoo install teaches you how to go from any system to any arcutacture, provided both have a C compiler.
Conclusion:
Just use the server/minimal version of Debian or whatever.
I just came to linux a week ago and chose arch as my first distro for this very reason. I also insisted on using bspwm as my wm and trying to go as lightweight as possible. I wanted to know every function of ever system running on my computer. Arch was great for this because it forced me to actually understand what was going on to get anything to function.
That said, it did take about a full week and about 7 VMs to get everything working how I wanted it to.
I completely agree. I installed arch when I was 13 after wanting to live up to the meme and understand Linux. Broke it so many times I can’t count on my fingers and toes, but I rocked it for quite a while and it felt good
Now?
R M this was like 8 years ago. Still feel the same way. All it takes is reading the documentation and following what they say on it
@@stellarorbit1341 I really like Endeavour OS. Its got an amazing young and enthusiastic community
Two years after this video was made, a decade and a half after I started using linux semi-regularly, and four years after I switched to Linux as a daily driver, you've convinced me: My next computer is going to have Arch on it (I don't want to distrohop on my current machine; I want to learn, but I can have a little patience).
I scoffed when I read the title, but honestly after hearing what you had to say, I agree. I first installed Arch when I was 13 on an old Panasonic Toughbook (am now 19); it was intimidating but it taught me a lot at the time and was super satisfying when I first started up XFCE. All that one really needs to install Arch is the install guide 95% of the time. If something goes wrong, the Arch wiki is a godsend.
He's right on the mark. I never personally found Linux to be entirely to my taste until I just said "fuck it", ignored everyone saying not to do it and went straight from Mint to Arch.
@@TheDemocrab i think i'm going to do the same
I've recently decided to move from windows to linux.
Most software I use is also available for linux, and I can find alternatives for the rest, or use emulation in the worst cases.
I've got some experience with Ubuntu from a few years ago, and despite it being a perfectly fine "out of the box" distro, at that time I needed to use Windows only software for my job, and I felt like I did not really understood what was under the hood.
So, definitely, I think that aiming for an Arch distro is a good idea.
Lots of things to learn, but I'm pretty excited by it!
Arch used to be hard back in the day but nowadays everyone can get it running, especially with systemd
That's why they should try Obarun, no SystemD. And read the fine manual.
Nope, not happening. I already tried like five times and its not that easy( 1 year linux user)
@@derubermensch9809 What's the problem ?
@@maciejrutkowski5710 Problem is bootloader. How many i tried but none of them seems work for my motherboard i guess.
@@derubermensch9809 Are you sure you're doing it right? GRUB works on pretty much anything. If you have UEFI firmware you'll need to pass the right arguments in grub-install.
I would like to leave my thoughts as a beginner. A week and a half ago I installed Linux Mint, and it was absolute pain. The same day I switched to Kubuntu, which I liked more. But now that I've got used to the basics of Linux on Kubuntu, I switched to Arch yesterday and while, sure, it had complexity, I feel like it has actually been a lot easier. I don't have to mess around with all this "bloat" that comes installed, I install what I need, how I want to use it, and it just *works*. Sure, I might need to play around with things, but it is a lot easier to get it to do what I want in my experience. Everyone was scaring me off but I mean it really was not that hard. Hell, Windows is way more difficult in my opinion, the OS I have *always* used.
Edit: no idea of the bold not working in this comment, it is formatted correctly as far as I can tell.
hell yeah! i am begginer and i started with arch first. everyone discouraged me and told me to use stuff like mint but i learned so much from arch
(i know most of them ment me good but lot of them didnt)
As a software enginner who has worked with Linux systems and CLI for years my first venture into desktop linux (outside of a few ubuntu vms) was Arch Linux, but if you don't have prior experience with the command line and unix system structure you're going to have a pretty rough time.
I absolutely love watching your videos. They're highly informative and I get to learn a lot! Waiting for the Linux From Scratch series on this channel!!
Absolutely agree DT my first two Linux years on Ubuntu did almost nothing to prepare me for Arch install or maintenance, the Arch Wiki and Man pages did.
In those 2 years you were just not willing to learn
@@rimilmurmu10 no way and let me be clear - Ubuntu sucks
@@user-gi2mn5yf5j so ubantu was holding you back or holdinh you on gunpoint and preventing from learning ?
Hi DT, sounds like you watched my last ramble. It's all about mindset and about being prepared to do some research. I agree with you entirely, although when I saw the title I didn't think I would :-)
I took your advice on this one. It definitely giving me flashbacks to pre-windows days, and I'm loving it. There's sooo much more to experience and learn with this platform, and it pretty much forces you to do exactly that.
I couldn't agree more than that. I if one wants to become a Linux user, one should start from scratch. If one wants to use a Linux desktop as just an alternative that is something completely different. The first makes a bold and conscious choice the second wants half measures. It baffles me to this day of I'm the first or the latter. What I do know is that I just wanted to do my tasks securely in the past and that now I want to dive deep into the rabbit hole. FTF and in 3 months I'll start the path you proposed.
Believe it or not, Arch is actually the first distribution I installed on my own hardware, and it's the first distribution I've installed period if you count count installing Fedora on school computers as part of a class in 2006-2007 and installing Ubuntu in virtual machines around 2010.
Moreover, this is how my Arch install worked. I did it on a Lenovo ThinkPad W550S in 2016. If you turned the laptop on by itself, you'd boot into Windows 10. On my keychain I had a 8 GB USB drive, containing an external LUKS header and a 8192 KB LUKS encrypted keyfile. If the laptop was booted with this drive inserted, the machine would load rEFInd, and if I selected Arch Linux the drive would be mounted as /boot and the Arch encrypt hook (which I had to modify to make this work) would prompt me for the LUKS password to decrypt the LUKS encrypted keyfile. Then the decrypted keyfile would be used to decrypt my main partition, then the LVM volumes would be mounted and everything would load. After that, it was just a matter of unmounting /boot and removing the USB drive.
In addition to the "two factor" LUKS authentication to use Arch, the external LUKS header gave plausible deniability that the partition was encrypted at all.
As a beginner, that has arch linux installed. I 100% agree with this video.
Somebody get DT some help. He done gone off the deep end.
It really depends on how much the beginner is willing to learn, in my opinion.
"Most of us when we come to linux we actually want to learn about linux"
Nope. Just fire up Mint and brain off turn.
you sure can learn linux even when using mint.
For someone like my grandmother, a pure Arch installation would be a bad idea. She would want the simplest installation and easiest window manager to use. At one point she didn't want to spend any money on Windows or antivirus for an old used computer, so I installed Ubuntu with Gnome 3. The main thing she needed was a web browser, so all she had to do was click Firefox on the side dock. She never had a problem with it. I also added an update button to the dock so she could update it when she felt like it. It could also receive her digital camera's pictures and print them just fine.
I started using Linux on my main computer a year ago, and even though I really wanted to learn Linux well, I do definitely not regret not using Arch the first time around, though I did start with Manjaro after playing around with ubuntu in a VM.
The thing is, there is already so much to learn with different shells, package management, the GNU core utilities, the file hierarchy, users, file ownership... I could go on. Arch would be too overwhelming, and making the choice for everything you want in an operating system seems impossible if you don't have any experience.
One thing that is helpful for beginners is to have to have some GUI/Desktop Environment, and choosing that from all the possibilities seems like a daunting task if you don't know the first thing about them.
Finally someone has said it, i changed to antergos for a week then arch for 5 months (to today) and i think it's a great distro to learn about the linux workflow
i appreciate your advice
Arch sounds awesome, (getting 1st computer soon) was getting a lot of “arch is for experienced people” vibes, so glad to hear your interpretation
I'm an Arch guy, I love it but I won't recommend it to new linux users.
I have installed Arch onto my 64G USB thumbdrive, it was indeed a very satisfying thing to have done successfully even with a YT tutorial
Before I have used Ubuntu a little at school on an IT highschool profile, and a little on a second device miniPC I had and needed something very light, I have also just installed Debian onto my tablet (like a Lenovo tablet that originally came with Windows)
Im totally looking forward to learning more and more and getting a new 2TB NVME for my PC and install Arch there
Besides being a software engineer and game developer I am a gamer, so Im extremely happy seeing everything Valve has done for the Linux community and I hope I wont stay bummed because of a lot of the current shortcomings of Linux and that it will be able to truly compete, because I will definitely have to either leave my Windows drive untouched or run it in a VM / run Wine for stuff like Adobe software or anything else like that
This is (partially) titlebait. At least title is intentionally provocative.
Ideal first "user" (both "non-techies" and "techies" included) linux distro is default, non-minimal Ubuntu, not Arch.
It is the most polished, supported, compatible, and ready-to-use general purpose distro at the current moment.
If some user (even a very advanced one) wants their system to "just work", to help getting the job done, and be not-Windows and not-MacOS, they should pick Ubuntu (as of today).
*HOWEVER*, ideal first "poweruser" distro is, indeed, ArchLinux. Core principles of this distro are deeply similar to the intents of powerusers, and they affect a lot in how users interact with the system (including installation process).
And, because most people who switch to Linux do so because they want to surpass some limitations, or set up a custom workflow, i see the logic behind this video title - it is appealing to "newbie powerusers", and as much as i like that (a lot), i still have to point out that this title is made for a specific audience, even if unintentionally.
And this is a good titlebait :3
I use Arch btw.
I absolutely agree, I started with Arch and couldn't agree more on it teaching you the most out of every other distro
Lately Derek has had some recurrent problems with body temperature. aka, fever. He is in need of some therapeutic holidays in natural hot springs. :)
I went from Win10 straight to Arch Linux (straight as in playing with it in a VM for 5 months before installing it directly :D)!
That's what I'm putting on my RUclips channel to force myself to believe it did worth it :D
I watched tutorials for 3 days. Then deleted windows, googled for best linux distro, installed Arch. Idk why ppl say its hard. Its amazing. PS. Never used linux in my life before these 3 days
@@bjorn120 People expect things to be so straightforward that they don't need to read any manual, just click click click click.
Y'know what, you're right. Never would have thought of it this way, but honestly, if you want to use Linux, it's worth doing it "properly". Otherwise, why bother? Why not just use Windows? I know Linux users tend to hate on Windows but it's perfectly fine for anyone who's not a tech/PC enthusiast, who just wants to use their computer as an appliance.
I never considered using Linux for a personal machine before, but I had an old PC that I thought I'd try to set up as a basic web browsing, music listening and simple programming machine, and for some reason Arch's minimalist approach appealed to me. I expected to hate it, but it's exactly the opposite: I *get* it now. Arch is amazing for teaching you how Linux actually works, and it's nowhere near as onerous to set up as I thought it would be. As long as you follow the steps carefully on the wiki, you'll be fine.
I understood most of the steps you mentioned that an arch installation required but I would try to learn that by tinkering once the system is installed and not have to spend time trying to make it work. Not everybody wants (or can) devote their entire weekend to a Linux distro.
Come on, I've used multiple linux distros during the last decade, I'm learning how use the terminal to do more and more stuff every day, but I still do not feel ready to do an arch installation.
The whopediwhat now?
This sounds like an interesting video. watching it now :D
*edit: Yes, actually I agree with you.
I'm a new Linux user (4 months give or take) and I decided to go for something arch based, as I heard it will break more often and I wanted to learn. In retrospective I should have used vanilla arch, yes. But this only applied, because I was a windows poweruser. Fixing my own stuff is totally fine and you mention this in your video: when not ready to RTFM and dedicate time to learning- install Mint or something.
Yeah, I'm about a little over five months into linux, so beginner as well. I need to dedicate a spare couple of hours to learn to install arch. I don't have any spare hardware to dedicate to installing arch on, so a VM will have to do.
Arch Linux i'd personally not vouch, its harder to install and it can break due to the frequent updates.
Manjaro however is what i personally recommend people start on, their automatic driver installations are the best in class and the updates are a bit more controlled while you don't have to do distro upgrades every few years to keep your system up to date. It truly is a set and forget distro.
But i don't agree with you here DT, the average user wants to USE linux and doesn't care how it works just like they don't care how Windows works. They want something that is easier to use not harder to use without having to really need to read tutorials or manuals. And once they are then familair with Manjaro they can easily transition to Arch if they really wanted to do it from the ground up or to any other distro that fits them better.
Not if u know what you are doing. And always check the news page before updating your system.
Manjaro, Arch and Antergos (before it was ashcanned ). Manjaro is my go to though. Seem to be hooked on Peppermint OS now though. Plays my movies flawlessly!
I agree with you on it, honestly. I never took to Linux until I said "Screw it, gonna use Arch" and found it entirely to my tastes, and I'd probably just go back to Windows rather than deal with the extra work of fixing up Ubuntu that everyone seems to forget you have to basically do for a good gaming experience.
The thing with arch is that when a noob installs it ,he tries to have that installed so he learns to find an answer to his problems instead of reinstalling it
I agree arch is or sometimes non GUI based Linux are good for beginner by which you'll focus on learning instead of getting distracted with all click
Someone who knows this better than I do should make a "guided" install for arch that is designed to teach you to understand what you are doing. You will still have to enter all the commands, but your options will be explained to you in the terminal, and what those options mean will also be explained.
I agree DT, even though I eventually settled on vanilla Debian, I used Arch for a long time and the learning experience was absolutely invaluable... Learning how to install, search for solutions, and repair your system. The documentation is incredible.
Why I don't use Arch:
I just left Windows because I got tired of all of Microsoft's spyware, and I want something that just works for my needs. Installing Arch was a nightmare, especially during network configuration.
I'm currently happy with Fedora. I don't have to "be a true Linux user and actually build my system" to be able to use my computer.
I think for the newb user that you are talking about, that may be the appropriate choice.
When I was a newbie user, that would have been the worst choice. Now, my knowledge has gradually increased on it's own, but just diving out in the deep end like that, I would have left Linux and gone back to Windows.
I needed a computer that worked out of the box (not one with my anemic knowledge to get up and running to work right of the box). I had work to get done (no, not just web browsing and sending emails) and the longer that it would take me to get a rig up that is "mission critical", the more I take a hit on using it to earn a living.
Likewise if updates kill the usability of the rig and I have to hunt around for a fix. The time that I spend having to fix it, that's a hit on my efficiency as well.
It really does depend on what time of Linux newb. People come to Linux for all kinds of reasons, and try to focus them on Arch isn't always going to be the best thing.
On occasion, I still have tried to do Arch on my main office rig and rarely does it last past 2-3 weeks. Starts off great, but then updates start rolling in and it takes longer and longer to troubleshoot and fix. Regardless if I can or can't fix it, it still eats away time and I can't have that if trying to get work done. Fedora is even too bleeding edge for my production needs as it is, but I can at least get that to last longer then an Arch install.
I agree that we are not the average users, but what we need to attract those Windows user who just want to go. We are at a point where a new user can turn a machine on and have a working desktop. It is not so esoteric that you have to be well steeped in Linux to run the system.
On my desktop computer I use arch, because I like the aur and the performance for gaming. On my laptop on the other hand though. I have run arch for at least 14 months on my old laptop, but I recently started to realize that some software like wine and proton wouldn't work, because xf86-video-ati does not support 32 bit anymore on that laptop. So on my laptop I installed Debian and it works good! Wine and proton work so I can run my windows software that I need on there. It's also less pain to update, because it's very slow with updating and now I only get updates twice a week, but not that many anymore. On arch it sometimes took 15 minutes to update the whole system, because I only update twice a week. With conclusion: I'd just install Debian on older devices (My laptop is from 2007) and on a modern system install archlinux (if your internet is good), because if you have slow internet it takes a long time.
Man I say this all the time. It forces you to learn I used mint and other distros for a while but I would get stuck and not be able to do something and go back to windows. On arch, I had to learn little things to even make the system run and it took me multiple times to get it right. But now I feel proficient, there has not been a program I couldn't run. If I do run into a problem I figure it out because there is documention on everything.
Edit: I remember posting on Reddit to get help with Linux Mint and someone said try arch or Gentoo then you will no pain. I took that as a challenge. Now I can install arch with ease. Gentoo is another story.
To be honest when I moved to Linux, I didn't care about deeply learning Linux, but I have always hated a lot of things Microsoft since 2005, and the restriction in not so old hardware 2016 in which basically Microsoft openly admitted they would not support that type of hardware anymore, that was the last drop in the base for me.
I've tried several times Linux in the past (Kubuntu/Mint/Ubuntu/Open-SUSE) but because of wine being nothing but I nice dream in those years, as a kid and then teenager, I've got boring really fast.
being 2018 the last time I tried it with Linux mint cinnamon 19 with a very low resources (dual core[2013], 4 gb of ram and 500GB hdd), the overall-experience was sweet despite those components, and I only used the console to update the system and to prepare the environment to program in java and c++. I had problems back them with the university because the professors in charge in one of my course didn't used Linux (that university was extremely pro-windows, they even have an agreement with Microshit and everything), and he almost didn't accept one of my assigned home works because it was not compiled in Windows. Well, At the end I somehow managed to persuade him to just copy and pasted the code in their windows machine. But I didn't want to take the risk anymore and just return to windows again (very slow with that machine, at least I was able to resurrect my other pc which was a gaming one, so oh course that also influenced my decision).
Anyway, since 2019, with Valve entering in the Linux game and actively supporting wine and Linux to make gaming possible Linux, finally my last restrained was lifted.
Then I started again several months ago. This time with Kubuntu. The experience was nice but because I wanted to play, there were a lot of tricks I needed to do and all of them required terminal. That's how I started assimilating terminal commands and wanted to learn more about them. I then try using a tiling windows manager because my beautiful kde DE was tooo bloated although with my gaming PC I didn't have problems with that. But I did learn a lot more because I needed to use the terminal even more and I needed to learn more about making scripts to open my programs because it were not found by Dmenu. Then I'm trying fedora-i3wm spin, and I've getting even more enthusiastic and interested about learning more a scripting and shell scripting after seeing the possibilities that have never passed through my mind when I was a windows user or an only GUI Linux user. So it's up to now, I'm really starting to love Linux.
I am on Manjero KDE Plasma /Arch on a Thinkpad now and I love it
What about LFS? Wouldn't that be the ultimate rabbit hole for beginners who are eager to learn the inner workings of Linux?
In this case I don't belive Derek is trolling, he'sd just being provocative.
I started my serious linux journey by haveing a two weeks of bad man cold. Day three i got tired of watching youtube, movies and tried a Arch install in a VM. That ran well for a couple of days, and then I just installed it om bare metal.
A few weeks later I trashed it by experimenting wildly, but a new install just takes fifteen minutes. Then I got to learn more and wanted LVM and LUKS encryption. Thats when I hit a wall.
Me having no programming background what so ever, really had a hard time then. It took me six months to really read up and get a hang of it to get it working.
---
BUT
This is not for everyone. I do firmly belive that there is a distro for everyone, even for those who just want to browse the web. I got my Gf on a Debianbased distro, and that works superbly for her. I love her to bits, but she is most sertainly not a hacker. ;)
@John Smith Thanks for the reply, and yes it's far from a optimal set up for a beginner. It was me getting big headed, and trying to bite of to much at the same time. That plus I'm one of those stubborn jackasses that want's to understand what I'm doing. I got LVM + LUKS running, but the tips you gave me were really good, and I will probably tinker one of my systems to shreds... again. ;)
I tried Garuda first to get familiar with Linux at first, then I got the barebones addition to get used to packages, then I jumped to Arch. Go in slow, but don't be afraid to learn.
I would argue that a good middle ground for someone who wants to instantly be able to do things but also wants to learn is an openbox distro, something like Crunchbang ++ where things work but to change things you have to get your hands a little dirty in clearly designated config files and using the terminal is encouraged.
The Arch Wiki is one of the best GNU/Linux knowledge bases that exist, period.
I think we should distinguish some terms. If by beginner one means someone who has a lot to learn and is enthusiastic about it and knows how and where to look for answers and have the means to do so... yes Arch is just awesome! I am doing so right now. But for some one lacking any of those that I have mentioned, arch can be a horrible experience. Because if I'm curious about linux, and I don't know where and what to do, I don't know what to search, I don't know where to search, or I don't have the motivation to do any of these, I will just give it up. Even if you were a user of fedora or ubuntu or any of those kinds of distros, and have not been using terminal to the extend of knowing your way around the terminal, you would have an extremely hard time just doing the vanilla arch. Instead I just suggest a 1U2D3M4A before doing vanilla Arch. Which is 1 month of Ubuntu (or mint) just to see what it could be look like, find similarties with what you have been used to, learn a few different package names, and maybe try apt for the first time. Then try to work with Debian. That helps you understand how it was built, try to troubleshoot more and also, have better understanding of what makes linux especial. Then try Manjaro for 3 month. It is just to let you know what arch structure is. what rolling release is, and see why AUR is the shangri-la of linux users. Then move on for 4 month to arco and go through stages of learning "the arch way" and then if you like, stay with arco or go with arch. This way, you learn linux, with out the danger of losing motivation altogether.
Honestly, installing software on anything but rolling release is not user-friendly. The packages are either outdated or not in the repos. Arch doesn’t need Snaps or Flatpacks. It just works.
It’s more user friendly for people who want static/stable software so they don’t have to deal with feature changes for quite a while. Debian/Ubuntu repos are pretty healthy.
Arch is the perfect distribution for those who want to have a thorough understanding of Linux. I've been using Linux for 25 years and UNIX before that so I was in at the ground floor pretty much so I have a deeper understanding just because of it. Arch will accelerate your learning, if you want to obtain a deeper understanding.
but most people who switch to Linux nowadays do it for performance/software/privacy/pricing reasons. they don't want to use terminal for everything, they just want a free desktop operating system. what's the point of learning how to mount USB drives using a bunch of terminal commands if they will just use Gnome or KDE which will automount them
I'm not so sure I agree. I've installed Arch just to see if I could. It's been a while, and I don't remember all the problems I faced, but I do remember deciding, fairly quickly, that Arch would be a downgrade from Manjaro Xfce, and that was after about 2 years of using Linux as my only HDD installed OS. I think if Arch were a user's first Linux experience, they would conclude that Linux just has problem after problem and every problem requires page after page of reading to fix. I'd recommend Manjaro Xfce as a good start. Although I've tried countless others in VMs, I still feel I started with best. Sorry DT, but when you make as many badass videos as you do, you're bound to have a flop ever now and then.
A very motivating talk for a true linux beginner
Arch users say read the wiki step by step, word by word, etc, You are not learning anything by reading word by word, step by step etc. Anyone can read a wiki, but that certainly doesn't mean you are learning the ins and outs of Linux. You still need some knowledge outside the wiki to install Arch. Linux From Scratch is really learning about Linux. Btw, I'm a Tiny Core user.
I've never been a rolling type of guy. My servers are all Redhat and I don't like any other kind. For my desktop I want to be perfectly utilitarian, fast, secure, stable, and efficient. So of course I started with Slackware 1.0 (although it was many versions later before I could get enough drivers to build a livable kernel). My background was about 15 years of commodore and a dabble here and there in Atari/TI/Apple/PC stuff, so it took me a really long time to figure out this whole non-proprietary world. I really found my home between Slackware 9 to 11, especially when the DE was perfected in KDE 3.5. Shortly after my PC world fell all apart and I was made homeless by Plasma contamination. These days I just install Lubuntu and try not to customize it to the breaking point, especially the kernel. Dang it, I'm feeling almost proprietary again.
For a beginner user who's familiar with computers, and delves into settings from time to time, I'd say Manjaro.
For an absolute beginner or grandparents, Ubuntu. It'll always work.
For absolute beginners, I don't think so. But, for a bit experienced Linux 'users' (not beginners), but 'users', I believe Arch could be a great springboard into the Linux. With doing so, a Linux user can learn 100% more about Linux and topics you have mentioned in the video such as disks, partitions, LVM, kernel, boot sequence, GUI, interfaces...
My Wife and her father using Arch for 4 years now running into exactly 0 Problems. I had to install it though and keep the machines up to date on a 3 month basis. But 0 trouble
You know, as a novice Linux user who keeps coming back to Windows due to not knowing what to do and not having the right experience, I think trying Arch Linux might be the solution. I started out like a lot of noobs by installing "beginner friendly" distros like Pop, Mint, and Zorin. But the thing that kept me from sticking with it was not knowing what to do when something went wrong. I am fully willing to spend the time to learn as I have a passion for computing in general, I just couldn't find a good starting point. And I think Arch might be the answer I've been looking for. I've seen videos of people installing Arch and it doesn't seem too hard. Especially with the well written wiki. There also is the Arch install script, but I want to do it the normal way to gain a better understanding of how the operating system functions. Plus I think it will be more fun 🙃
Do you have an update at all? I'm in a similar boat atm, but this video got me wanting to try Linux again after 5+ years since abandoning Mint in frustration. I just didn't have enough knowledge about the OS to do what I wanted with it, and was overwhelmed by how much I needed to learn all at once to fix supposedly rather simple issues.
I ended up not using arch. I am currently using mint but plan to switch to fedora with gnome material shell. My advice is that the best way to learn is to just stick with it and deal with the frustration and eventually you will learn how to problem solve issues and things will become easier, I can liken it to moving a heavy trailer, its difficult to move at first, but once it gets going it's a lot easier. Linux mint is a great jumping off point, I would recommend starting with that. Another thing to note is that linux has become a lot more plug and play in the last 5 years, especially for gaming. I tried to switch to linux back in 2021 and gave up after 2 months because it was too frustrating, but when I switched again a few months ago it went much smoother. In fact I barely even used the terminal when I switched recently. It also helps to have well optimized linux hardware (Basically stuff without proprietary blob drivers, I used to have a Nvidia GTX 970 and now have an AMD RX 6700 XT and that made things a lot easier)
TLDR, Start with mint, keep pushing through the difficulties, and it will get easier.
@@agrisimfarming Thanks! I think that I will still give Arch a brief shot still, even if only to install it and get a desktop environment going. I'm not worried much about functionality this time, as I'll be installing it on an old computer that I don't use anymore for the express purpose of learning Linux. I was initially going to stubbornly try to push through any difficulties of Arch, but I'll make sure to be willing to switch to something like Mint if it gets to be too much though.