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I switched to Arch a few years ago and I regret not having done it sooner. All the things I was assuming about stability being a problem or having to muck arou

I switched to Arch a few years ago and I regret not having done it sooner. All the things I was assuming about stability being a problem or having to muck around with complex settings, were all wrong. It works extremely well. My OS and all my apps update once a day - no reboots, no loaders. The AUR is great. When I use my macbook or boot into windows the user experience feels outdated by comparison.

noirbot 4y ago
I always hear this and really want to jump in, and then I wasted a full week trying to get Arch to dual-boot on my Framework laptop and just couldn't get it to work. The Arch wiki installation instructions regularly were out of date with the current installer and told you to use flags that didn't exist when setting up your disks. I assume I'd love it once I got it installed, but for everything I hear about how good the AUR and the Arch Wiki are, it's been nothing but trash to get set up in my multiple attempts.
- groestl 4y ago
  That's true, it was hard so set it up the first time and get all the details right. However, since then, my Arch Boxes have been an absolute breeze to work with (and my history includes Suse, Debian, Ubuntu, Gentoo, even LFS, ...)
  - noirbot 4y ago
    Installation when you're not working from a completely bare hard drive seems to stymie so many Linux distros. I keep finding myself back on Ubuntu and Fedora because they seem to be the only two that put any effort at all into making sure you can dual-boot without spending hours reading manpages and hoping a wrong flag won't destroy your bootloader and other OS.
- pacifika 4y ago
  Perhaps manjaro would be a better fit? Similar to arch but with a good instaler
  - noirbot 4y ago
    I've been curious about that. Any time I ask about it, a lot of Arch folks come out to explain why Manjaro is terrible and makes all kinds of bad choices similar to the ones TFA is about. How much of that is real vs. overblown purism about Arch?
    - RealStickman_ 4y ago
      If you want Arch with a simple installer, use EndeavourOS. Manjaro has a history of DDoSing the AUR, letting various website certs expire multiple times and holding back any package updates for two weeks (even security updates), but also shipping WIP github patches without notifying users properly. https://manjarno.snorlax.sh/ https://manjarno.snorlax.sh/ https://dont-ship.it/ https://dont-ship.it/
      - noirbot 4y ago
        Yea, that's an interesting lead. I only just learned about Endeavor today but may give it a try. In theory, I really like the idea of the pure "build it yourself" of Arch, but when the docs aren't good enough to get a professional developer through doing it correctly in under 10 hours, I'm not sure what to do. Kernel/Driver stuff isn't my forte, but if your target user has to be, that's rough. That mostly aligns to what I'd hear about Manjaro before. I'd successfully installed it before, but when part of the point of Arch is how good the AUR/Pacman is, hearing that it seems to mess up both of those is a big turnoff.
- fareesh 4y ago
  Was the problem specific to dual booting? I booted off the USB and installed GRUB. I've had issues with dual booting too occasionally, but most seem to be caused by Windows
  - noirbot 4y ago
    The issue was more around me already having a bootloader and boot partition set up (rEFInd) that worked fine, but trying to get Arch to be bootable from that pre-existing one while still setting up swap and the other partitions it wanted. I also spent a really long time dealing with the fact that my motherboard clock was out of sync, so when I was setting up pacman, it couldn't validate certs because of the clock issue, but not being able to install packages made it really hard to fix the clock sync issue.
    - fareesh 4y ago
      Windows messes with the clock every time you boot into it - there's an entry in the wiki with a bunch of different solutions
rickstanley 4y ago
Do you use any preconfigured distro like EndeavourOS and Manjaro or from "scratch"?
- fareesh 4y ago
  I just followed a YouTube video whenever I was confused about something and did it from scratch

noirbot 4y ago

I always hear this and really want to jump in, and then I wasted a full week trying to get Arch to dual-boot on my Framework laptop and just couldn't get it to work. The Arch wiki installation instructions regularly were out of date with the current installer and told you to use flags that didn't exist when setting up your disks. I assume I'd love it once I got it installed, but for everything I hear about how good the AUR and the Arch Wiki are, it's been nothing but trash to get set up in my multiple attempts.

groestl 4y ago
That's true, it was hard so set it up the first time and get all the details right. However, since then, my Arch Boxes have been an absolute breeze to work with (and my history includes Suse, Debian, Ubuntu, Gentoo, even LFS, ...)
- noirbot 4y ago
  Installation when you're not working from a completely bare hard drive seems to stymie so many Linux distros. I keep finding myself back on Ubuntu and Fedora because they seem to be the only two that put any effort at all into making sure you can dual-boot without spending hours reading manpages and hoping a wrong flag won't destroy your bootloader and other OS.
pacifika 4y ago
Perhaps manjaro would be a better fit? Similar to arch but with a good instaler
- noirbot 4y ago
  I've been curious about that. Any time I ask about it, a lot of Arch folks come out to explain why Manjaro is terrible and makes all kinds of bad choices similar to the ones TFA is about. How much of that is real vs. overblown purism about Arch?
  - RealStickman_ 4y ago
    If you want Arch with a simple installer, use EndeavourOS. Manjaro has a history of DDoSing the AUR, letting various website certs expire multiple times and holding back any package updates for two weeks (even security updates), but also shipping WIP github patches without notifying users properly. https://manjarno.snorlax.sh/ https://manjarno.snorlax.sh/ https://dont-ship.it/ https://dont-ship.it/
    - noirbot 4y ago
      Yea, that's an interesting lead. I only just learned about Endeavor today but may give it a try. In theory, I really like the idea of the pure "build it yourself" of Arch, but when the docs aren't good enough to get a professional developer through doing it correctly in under 10 hours, I'm not sure what to do. Kernel/Driver stuff isn't my forte, but if your target user has to be, that's rough. That mostly aligns to what I'd hear about Manjaro before. I'd successfully installed it before, but when part of the point of Arch is how good the AUR/Pacman is, hearing that it seems to mess up both of those is a big turnoff.
fareesh 4y ago
Was the problem specific to dual booting? I booted off the USB and installed GRUB. I've had issues with dual booting too occasionally, but most seem to be caused by Windows
- noirbot 4y ago
  The issue was more around me already having a bootloader and boot partition set up (rEFInd) that worked fine, but trying to get Arch to be bootable from that pre-existing one while still setting up swap and the other partitions it wanted. I also spent a really long time dealing with the fact that my motherboard clock was out of sync, so when I was setting up pacman, it couldn't validate certs because of the clock issue, but not being able to install packages made it really hard to fix the clock sync issue.
  - fareesh 4y ago
    Windows messes with the clock every time you boot into it - there's an entry in the wiki with a bunch of different solutions

rickstanley 4y ago

Do you use any preconfigured distro like EndeavourOS and Manjaro or from "scratch"?

fareesh 4y ago
I just followed a YouTube video whenever I was confused about something and did it from scratch