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I'm a bit hesitant to try arch, since it seems quite daunting to start with such a trimmed down distro - and yet I really like the idea. The hardest part will

I'm a bit hesitant to try arch, since it seems quite daunting to start with such a trimmed down distro - and yet I really like the idea. The hardest part will probably be setting up the wireless connection, and getting the WM set up. Do you think arch is suitable for a relative beginner?

swalladge 9y ago
It depends on how you define beginner. If you're careful, and follow the installation guide on the wiki, you should be fine. Often people recommend installing distros in virtual machines to get a feel for the process. However, if it's an older laptop as you said and not your primary machine, then you can always just go for it and if something goes wrong, you can format the drive and start again. By the way, setting up wireless in the install process usually only consists of running wifi-menu, and a WM is as simple as `pacman -S i3` (or which ever wm you want) and launching it from the DM or .xinitrc. ;) Another advantage of starting from a bare install like arch, or a trimmed down version of another distro, is that you get a feel for how the system is held together (what software is installed, how the disks are partitioned, etc.). Sometimes comes in handy if you need to debug something!
- bananicorn 9y ago
  Now I'm armed with two sticks - one with the official Arch distro, and one with manjaro, in case I don't manage to get regular arch working. I'll probably stick to the first distro I can get running with i3, working wireless and gcc, so arch probably has a good chance to be my final choice (if I like pacman)
  - jackstraw- 9y ago
    If your first installs are going to be gcc and i3, then I think you should give the standard Arch install a shot. It takes a basic understanding of what's happening during the install process, and I'm guessing if you're kicking off with i3 then you're comfortable with things like partitioning and configuring a window manager. If that's the case, installing Arch will teach you things that an Ubuntu install definitely won't, and you get a fresh clean minimal install too.
  - macawfish 9y ago
    You might also try "Arch-Anywhere". It's got a very nice install script, and is minimal. You'll end up with a very basic installation of Arch, probably similar to the one you'd get with a more manual installation. This is how I got started using Arch, and I've learned more about Linux than I ever would have been able to with Ubuntu or Debian. https://arch-anywhere.org/ https://arch-anywhere.org/ Arch has turned out, surprisingly to be much easier to maintain, since things are well documented and consistent.
    - majewsky 9y ago
      > Arch has turned out, surprisingly to be much easier to maintain, since things are well documented and consistent. Agreed. I've moved all my private servers [1] to Arch, despite everyone warning that it will break all the time, and I've never experienced any sort of breakage (except when I did stupid things myself). [1] Currently, there are three: one physical machine as a homeserver, and two VPS for public services.
  - Lunatic666 9y ago
    There is a community distro of Manjaro which already includes i3: https://sourceforge.net/projects/manjaro-i3/ https://sourceforge.net/projects/manjaro-i3/ It was a big help to get more into i3. It also includes a lot of helper scripts. I used them in the beginning to get things done and later switched over to the "real" commands. inst -> pacman is an example for that.
dnt404-1 9y ago
I would suggest Antergos based on Arch, in that case. You can select xfce as the starting de, and then install wm on top of it, or individually. You will get a working distro quite easily, and after that you can customize as much as you want, without having to go through the base Arch distro installation, which requires you to follow the excellent Arch wiki guides. I installed Antergos on a 4 years old laptop that I got recently, and it works fine seamlessly.
- gremlinsinc 9y ago
  agreed I love antergos, my favorite distro by far, esp. with i3 window manager.
film42 9y ago
If you're a beginner, and the intent is to learn C programming, I would start with ubuntu since it's stable and lots of linux questions asked online are often asked by other ubuntu users. Learn how the system is put together and get a feel for the tools. After a while, maybe try out Arch or some other start-from-scratch distro. I say this as someone who runs Arch on my work and personal laptop. I really like Arch, but it certainly requires some upfront knowledge and you can really shoot yourself in the foot. Reduce as many variables as you can while getting started, and running ubuntu is certainly a great way of doing that. Plus, a lot of shops run ubuntu in production, which makes that experience pretty valuable. Good luck!
dantillberg 9y ago
Whether or not you use Arch Linux itself, the documentation at wiki.archlinux.org is really truly fantastic. I learned so much by setting up and customizing my Arch system(s), but it was those docs that helped me learn more than anything specific to the Arch distro/code/tools itself.
gremlinsinc 9y ago
Antergos is arch, but super user friendly.. I was sick of ubuntu (crashed a lot for me) and antergos runs very smoothly, for added pleasure I recommend trying i3 window manager once you learn tiles you'll love it--esp. if you do any web development.
majewsky 9y ago
If you're willing to learn, then definitely. When doing it for the first time, you should be prepared to take your time and go through the installation guide paragraph for paragraph to make sure you're not skipping some obscure, yet important step. Also, since there are a lot of standard steps involved, I recommend that you document what you're doing, either as a plain text file of notes, or as some sort of configuration management playbook/recipe/template. I started doing that two years ago and it really took the pain out of bringing up new Arch systems, or reinstalling existing ones: https://github.com/majewsky/system-configuration https://github.com/majewsky/system-configuration
rhinoceraptor 9y ago
If you have a well supported wireless card, you can use wifi-menu (which uses a curses interface) and it should all just work (tm). It should also work when you're running from the USB installer.

swalladge 9y ago

It depends on how you define beginner. If you're careful, and follow the installation guide on the wiki, you should be fine. Often people recommend installing distros in virtual machines to get a feel for the process. However, if it's an older laptop as you said and not your primary machine, then you can always just go for it and if something goes wrong, you can format the drive and start again. By the way, setting up wireless in the install process usually only consists of running wifi-menu, and a WM is as simple as `pacman -S i3` (or which ever wm you want) and launching it from the DM or .xinitrc. ;) Another advantage of starting from a bare install like arch, or a trimmed down version of another distro, is that you get a feel for how the system is held together (what software is installed, how the disks are partitioned, etc.). Sometimes comes in handy if you need to debug something!

bananicorn 9y ago
Now I'm armed with two sticks - one with the official Arch distro, and one with manjaro, in case I don't manage to get regular arch working. I'll probably stick to the first distro I can get running with i3, working wireless and gcc, so arch probably has a good chance to be my final choice (if I like pacman)
- jackstraw- 9y ago
  If your first installs are going to be gcc and i3, then I think you should give the standard Arch install a shot. It takes a basic understanding of what's happening during the install process, and I'm guessing if you're kicking off with i3 then you're comfortable with things like partitioning and configuring a window manager. If that's the case, installing Arch will teach you things that an Ubuntu install definitely won't, and you get a fresh clean minimal install too.
- macawfish 9y ago
  You might also try "Arch-Anywhere". It's got a very nice install script, and is minimal. You'll end up with a very basic installation of Arch, probably similar to the one you'd get with a more manual installation. This is how I got started using Arch, and I've learned more about Linux than I ever would have been able to with Ubuntu or Debian. https://arch-anywhere.org/ https://arch-anywhere.org/ Arch has turned out, surprisingly to be much easier to maintain, since things are well documented and consistent.
  - majewsky 9y ago
    > Arch has turned out, surprisingly to be much easier to maintain, since things are well documented and consistent. Agreed. I've moved all my private servers [1] to Arch, despite everyone warning that it will break all the time, and I've never experienced any sort of breakage (except when I did stupid things myself). [1] Currently, there are three: one physical machine as a homeserver, and two VPS for public services.
- Lunatic666 9y ago
  There is a community distro of Manjaro which already includes i3: https://sourceforge.net/projects/manjaro-i3/ https://sourceforge.net/projects/manjaro-i3/ It was a big help to get more into i3. It also includes a lot of helper scripts. I used them in the beginning to get things done and later switched over to the "real" commands. inst -> pacman is an example for that.

dnt404-1 9y ago

I would suggest Antergos based on Arch, in that case. You can select xfce as the starting de, and then install wm on top of it, or individually. You will get a working distro quite easily, and after that you can customize as much as you want, without having to go through the base Arch distro installation, which requires you to follow the excellent Arch wiki guides. I installed Antergos on a 4 years old laptop that I got recently, and it works fine seamlessly.

gremlinsinc 9y ago
agreed I love antergos, my favorite distro by far, esp. with i3 window manager.

film42 9y ago

If you're a beginner, and the intent is to learn C programming, I would start with ubuntu since it's stable and lots of linux questions asked online are often asked by other ubuntu users. Learn how the system is put together and get a feel for the tools. After a while, maybe try out Arch or some other start-from-scratch distro. I say this as someone who runs Arch on my work and personal laptop. I really like Arch, but it certainly requires some upfront knowledge and you can really shoot yourself in the foot. Reduce as many variables as you can while getting started, and running ubuntu is certainly a great way of doing that. Plus, a lot of shops run ubuntu in production, which makes that experience pretty valuable. Good luck!

dantillberg 9y ago

Whether or not you use Arch Linux itself, the documentation at wiki.archlinux.org is really truly fantastic. I learned so much by setting up and customizing my Arch system(s), but it was those docs that helped me learn more than anything specific to the Arch distro/code/tools itself.

gremlinsinc 9y ago

Antergos is arch, but super user friendly.. I was sick of ubuntu (crashed a lot for me) and antergos runs very smoothly, for added pleasure I recommend trying i3 window manager once you learn tiles you'll love it--esp. if you do any web development.

majewsky 9y ago

If you're willing to learn, then definitely. When doing it for the first time, you should be prepared to take your time and go through the installation guide paragraph for paragraph to make sure you're not skipping some obscure, yet important step. Also, since there are a lot of standard steps involved, I recommend that you document what you're doing, either as a plain text file of notes, or as some sort of configuration management playbook/recipe/template. I started doing that two years ago and it really took the pain out of bringing up new Arch systems, or reinstalling existing ones: https://github.com/majewsky/system-configuration https://github.com/majewsky/system-configuration

rhinoceraptor 9y ago

If you have a well supported wireless card, you can use wifi-menu (which uses a curses interface) and it should all just work (tm). It should also work when you're running from the USB installer.