Petulant counterpoint: SteamOS 3.0 is based on Arch and is a good newbie distro
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I started with EndeavourOS, which is basically Arch, and had a great experience.
I did have someone knowledgeable help guide me a bit at first, but eventually I learned how to find solutions myself on google, and use the Arch wiki.
I must have broke my installation a dozen times, but used Timeshift to bring it back from the dead... And I learned so much about how Linux works in the process. Wouldn't have done it any other way.
I started with Arch
btw
EndeavourOS is the best 💪
To me, every distro that seriously requires you to read through all changelogs before updating is BS, and it doesn't solve a basic problem. No one in their sane mind will do this, and the system will break.
That's why, while I respect the upstream Arch, I'd say you should be insane for running it and trying to make things stable, and mocking people for not reading the changelogs is missing the point entirely. Even the best of us failed.
Arch is entirely about "move fast and break stuff".
It is not as overwhelming as you make it sounds, you don't need to read the whole changelog every time you update just check Arch news page and they state any manual action an update might need. I run arch since like 1 y and I almost never had to do such manual actions. You can see on archlinux.org news it's not that bad although I can totally see why it is not suitable for most people
Is there anyone here remember Gentoo and the merge/split /usr
period?
Gentoo developers are kind and super helpful that they put out any important notice after you pull upgrades to your system. Run eselect news read
to know what the breaking change is going to be, and carefully perform the required actions one by one. It's a great distro made by great fellas.
I don't mind there is breaking change at all. I do mind that you don't tell me about it.
I subscribe to the arch news letter, and they email me about potentially breaking changes like 4 times a year. Usually I don't have to do anything about them but it's good to be aware of, just in case.
The real problem: Define beginner distro
Every user is starting from a different point. There is no such thing as a beginner distro. You can say this distro is good for people who can grasp the idea of a command line or this distro is good for people who have no idea command line interfaces exist, but that doesn't differentiate between beginner friendly or not.
As a (currently) CachyOS user, I would like to point out that their custom mirrors don't always reflect the newest version of packages, too. So if your package has a bug you may have to wait an extra day or two for it to reflect the fixed version after it drops. That or manually install the git.
Just make love with Timeshift and for the love of god don't use topgrade if you don't know what you're doing. Thankfully, because of rule number one, Timeshift told me the topgrade nightmare was over and tucked me back into bed with a glass of warm milk and a bedtime story.
I do not recommend Arch to new users but I really wish people would have a point supported by evidence when they post.
There is no 50 page manual to install EndeeavourOS or CachyOS, the two distros mentioned in the graphic. Both are as easy to point and click install as Fedora and maybe easier than Debian. The better hardware support makes the install much more likely to succeed. They both have graphical installers and lead you by the hand. In fact, when it comes to EOS, its entire identify is making Arch easy to install and to provide sensible defaults so that everything works out of the box. And of the 80,000 packages in Arch/AUR, less than 20 of them are unique to EOS (mostly theming).
There are lots of things to complain about regarding Arch related distros. Or maybe there isn’t if we have to lie about them.
What are people doing that breaks their computers? I have used arch for like 15 years now and nothing ever goes wrong?
The closest would be on my desktop sometimes nvidia drivers are in a state that breaks display reinit on wake from sleep but my thinkpad is always fine.
Seriously who are you weird computer vandals going around and breaking everything all the time? What do you do?
It was my second distro after mint. It's very fun to learn as long as you got time to kill.
Mint has been nice
Arch is for control freaks, which means it takes a lot of work and patient to get it to work for your specific needs. If you don't have the time and patient for that (which is more then understandable) then you shouldn't use it.
And no, it doesn't run worse
Flatpaks that aren't official products of the source project sometimes have interesting issues pertaining to their permissions, are harder to set as the handler for files, harder to enable usage of system tools, don't follow system themes, are harder to start or use from the command line, and yes start slower than native apps.
I like the idea that even stable distros can have latest stuff easily or distros which don't package a given project. I use a few myself. It is certainly annoying that it ends up teaching people about what dirs they need to share with flatseal, flatseal, desktop files, and the command line for something which is supposed to simplify things.
Kinda feels like less work to use rolling release with a more comprehensive set of packages.
I watched a 9 year old install a fully working version of Arch with no GUI...
I think you're just making it harder than it has to be... lol
EDIT: Or maybe she's 10? Not sure. But either 9 or 10.
The install guide is not 50 pages-long, common!
the arch experience is weirdly weird honestly. arch is not hard to use, the wiki documentations are pretty extensive. but still there are people who dont even know how to use a wiki. what people needs to do is not learn how to use arch, but learn how to change their perspective on arch instead