I disagree. If you want to use Arch for the first time, install it the Arch way. It’s going to be hard, and that’s the point. Arch will need manual intervention at some point, and you’ll be expected to fix it.
If you use something like Manjaro or CachyOS, you’ll look up commands online and maybe it’ll work, but it might not. There’s a decent chance you’ll break something, and you’ll get mad.
Arch expects you to take responsibility for your system, and going through the official install process shows you can do that. Once you get through that once, go ahead and use an installer or fork. You know where to find documentation when something inevitably breaks, so you’re good to go.
If you’re unwilling to do the Arch install process but still want a rolling release, consider OpenSUSE Tumbleweed. It’s the trunk for several projects, some of them commercial, so you’re getting a lot of professional eyeballs on it. There’s a test suite any change needs to pass, and I’ve seen plenty of cases where they hold off on a change because a test fails. And when it does fail (and it probably will), you just snapper rollback and wait a few days. The community isn’t as big as other distros, so I don’t recommend it for a first distro, but they’re also not nearly as impatient as Arch forums.
Arch is a great distro, I used it for a few years without any major issues, but I did need to intervene several times. I’ve been on Tumbleweed about as long and I’ve only had to snapper rollback a few times, and that was the extent of the intervention.
Yeah, there are many people that just want the system to work and not have to become full time geeks like some of us are. There are also plenty of distros, atomic or not, that provide that experience. Perfect match. There’s a distro for everyone, from anti-tech people to full blown rocket scientists.
Honestly, Day 1’ers, I’d rather they run Debian, Mint, Ubuntu, or Fedora. There are strong communities that are noob friendly. Go ahead and install Steam, get some games working, get their feet wet. 99% of the time, they don’t need more than basic stuff. Once they’re over being afraid of not being in windows, then start distro hopping to whatever they want.
I can really suggest Mint for beginners simply because it has an UI for about everything you need somewhat regularly. This means, that you can use GUIs to get familiar and aren’t forced to know your way around the terminal. Its the Ideal beginner Distros (at least from my experience)
I’M FED UP, GOING TO INSTALL LINUX!
I’M FED UP, THIS IS TOO HARD, I’M GOING BACK TO WINDOWS!
Every. Single. Time.
If you want to use arch for the first time use an already setup distro like Manjaro.
I disagree. If you want to use Arch for the first time, install it the Arch way. It’s going to be hard, and that’s the point. Arch will need manual intervention at some point, and you’ll be expected to fix it.
If you use something like Manjaro or CachyOS, you’ll look up commands online and maybe it’ll work, but it might not. There’s a decent chance you’ll break something, and you’ll get mad.
Arch expects you to take responsibility for your system, and going through the official install process shows you can do that. Once you get through that once, go ahead and use an installer or fork. You know where to find documentation when something inevitably breaks, so you’re good to go.
If you’re unwilling to do the Arch install process but still want a rolling release, consider OpenSUSE Tumbleweed. It’s the trunk for several projects, some of them commercial, so you’re getting a lot of professional eyeballs on it. There’s a test suite any change needs to pass, and I’ve seen plenty of cases where they hold off on a change because a test fails. And when it does fail (and it probably will), you just
snapper rollbackand wait a few days. The community isn’t as big as other distros, so I don’t recommend it for a first distro, but they’re also not nearly as impatient as Arch forums.Arch is a great distro, I used it for a few years without any major issues, but I did need to intervene several times. I’ve been on Tumbleweed about as long and I’ve only had to
snapper rollbacka few times, and that was the extent of the intervention.Yeah, there are many people that just want the system to work and not have to become full time geeks like some of us are. There are also plenty of distros, atomic or not, that provide that experience. Perfect match. There’s a distro for everyone, from anti-tech people to full blown rocket scientists.
Honestly, Day 1’ers, I’d rather they run Debian, Mint, Ubuntu, or Fedora. There are strong communities that are noob friendly. Go ahead and install Steam, get some games working, get their feet wet. 99% of the time, they don’t need more than basic stuff. Once they’re over being afraid of not being in windows, then start distro hopping to whatever they want.
KDE Neon ftw
I can really suggest Mint for beginners simply because it has an UI for about everything you need somewhat regularly. This means, that you can use GUIs to get familiar and aren’t forced to know your way around the terminal. Its the Ideal beginner Distros (at least from my experience)