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Can anyone care to explain why this is downvoted? I'm upvoting now so it may not continue to appear that way, but (besides that I loathe downvoted comments with

Can anyone care to explain why this is downvoted? I'm upvoting now so it may not continue to appear that way, but (besides that I loathe downvoted comments with no responses): I'm a Manjaro user specifically because of the easy install. It's not that I'm not capable (Linux/sysadmin internals are interesting to me and I am often going down rabbit holes and exploring distro differences) but it's just that (a) when I want to install an OS I usually want to be up and running fast and (b) I'd like something with more conventions so when things do inevitably go wrong it's a bit easier to reason about the system relative to other users. So I'm wondering if my next install should be Arch or one of the other Arch-based distro -- is archinstall not a 15 minute install or does it have some other pressing issue?

c-hendricks 3y ago
archinstall is fine. Especially if you don't have to do much complicated with the partitioning. It will get you a system pretty quickly. The Arch community has a lot of toxicity. Maybe there's some sunk cost from people getting Arch installed the hard way, but it's full of the attitude that Arch should be hard.
- memefrog 3y ago
  I've seen hundreds of comments over the years making the same claim as you. I've never seen an instance of this alleged toxicity. The attitude people display is not "Arch should be hard" but that Arch provides excellent resources to learn how to use the system yourself, and that the Arch way is for you to figure things out yourself. Expecting to be handheld will result in people reminding you of this, often quite directly. But in my view, what is more toxic than people saying 'RTFM' is people destroying a community with low-effort "help me now!" spam devoid of proper debugging details or any evidence they've read the documentation and tried to work it out themselves before asking for help. Nobody says "Arch is a great first choice of distro" except with the explicit qualifier "if you want to get your hands dirty and read a lot of documentation". So nobody that comes to Arch has any excuse, in my opinion, for not bothering to learn how to do it. Again this isn't the attitude "Arch should be hard". It's the attitude that you shouldn't expect other Arch users to spoonfeed you when they've already provided a comprehensive wiki and installation guide and there are searchable forums full of troubleshooting you can refer to. Arch isn't made hard on purpose, but as a natural consequence of the way it is structured (minimally) it is difficult for a completely new user to get going unless they read the documentation. Ironically, projects like archinstall prove that difficulty isn't a goal but an unfortunate side-effect: they're perfectly happy to make things easier if it doesn't compromise the integrity of the project. They're not going to automatically install a desktop environment for everyone just to make things easier.
  - jcpst 3y ago
    This has been my experience. I’ve been using arch for ten years. The deepest I’ve had to go is search the forum if I couldn’t figure out something from the wiki. The wiki is so good that it’s common to come across it and find your answer for your linux question even if you are using a distro other than arch.
  - boomboomsubban 3y ago
    I'll just add to this, the reason there was no installer for around a decade was that nobody involved with Arch wanted to maintain an installer as their hobby. It was never an elitist thing, to me it's quite reasonable to not want to spend your free time on something you don't enjoy working on nor do you use. Eventually someone joined the community who did want to maintain an installer, so now they have archinstall.

c-hendricks 3y ago

archinstall is fine. Especially if you don't have to do much complicated with the partitioning. It will get you a system pretty quickly. The Arch community has a lot of toxicity. Maybe there's some sunk cost from people getting Arch installed the hard way, but it's full of the attitude that Arch should be hard.

memefrog 3y ago
I've seen hundreds of comments over the years making the same claim as you. I've never seen an instance of this alleged toxicity. The attitude people display is not "Arch should be hard" but that Arch provides excellent resources to learn how to use the system yourself, and that the Arch way is for you to figure things out yourself. Expecting to be handheld will result in people reminding you of this, often quite directly. But in my view, what is more toxic than people saying 'RTFM' is people destroying a community with low-effort "help me now!" spam devoid of proper debugging details or any evidence they've read the documentation and tried to work it out themselves before asking for help. Nobody says "Arch is a great first choice of distro" except with the explicit qualifier "if you want to get your hands dirty and read a lot of documentation". So nobody that comes to Arch has any excuse, in my opinion, for not bothering to learn how to do it. Again this isn't the attitude "Arch should be hard". It's the attitude that you shouldn't expect other Arch users to spoonfeed you when they've already provided a comprehensive wiki and installation guide and there are searchable forums full of troubleshooting you can refer to. Arch isn't made hard on purpose, but as a natural consequence of the way it is structured (minimally) it is difficult for a completely new user to get going unless they read the documentation. Ironically, projects like archinstall prove that difficulty isn't a goal but an unfortunate side-effect: they're perfectly happy to make things easier if it doesn't compromise the integrity of the project. They're not going to automatically install a desktop environment for everyone just to make things easier.
- jcpst 3y ago
  This has been my experience. I’ve been using arch for ten years. The deepest I’ve had to go is search the forum if I couldn’t figure out something from the wiki. The wiki is so good that it’s common to come across it and find your answer for your linux question even if you are using a distro other than arch.
- boomboomsubban 3y ago
  I'll just add to this, the reason there was no installer for around a decade was that nobody involved with Arch wanted to maintain an installer as their hobby. It was never an elitist thing, to me it's quite reasonable to not want to spend your free time on something you don't enjoy working on nor do you use. Eventually someone joined the community who did want to maintain an installer, so now they have archinstall.