I know my way around a command line. I work in IT, but when it comes to my personal fun time more often than not I'm quite lazy. I use windows a lot because just plugging in anything or installing any game and it just working is great.
But support for windows 10 is ending and I should probably switch sonner rather than later, so I'm wondering if Arch would be a good pick for me? For reference, I mostly game and do Godot stuff in my free time.
Once I have learned Arch, installing and maintaining it is super easy and fast. Troubleshooting a problem if it occurs is also easier because you know more how the system works internally.
But there is another problem I see when using it daily for many different things. I install Arch and week later when sending emoji find out there is no emoji font and I need to install one. Then month later needing to quickly use Bluetooth I realize I forgot to install bluez and some of it's frontend. Then about to print something and now I need to learn how to install CUPS print server. All those things takes few minutes and have the best documentation in the Linux world, but after fresh install I get annoyed for first month or two for stuff that come preinstalled on other distros.
But... That's also why I use Arch. I could run some post-install script from someone or use Endevour, but setting stuff how I want is the beauty of Arch.
but after fresh install
See, there's your problem. If you never re-install this is longer a factor. Sure I had to do those things, but I had to do them exactly once like 8 years ago...
Eh Arch being “hard” is overblown. I’ve honestly spent just as much time troubleshooting windows crap or other distro crap. You just have to learn all the little tricks and whatnot that are specific to arch. It happens over time naturally.
Nice thing about arch is the community. Great documentation and if you find something that doesn’t work - somebody motivated will make it work and share. Example: protonvpn decided “nah we’re not supporting arch”. No big deal, someone in the community has packaged it up and maintains it for us.
Arch users rule
Once you install Arch with the archinstall script and set everything, you'll be fine.
Arch is as hard as you make it be. I run Arch with Gnome using mostly flatpaks and I the only maintenance I have to do with my pc is run
sudo pacman -Syyuonce a day to keep everything up-to-date.Of course you can make it be as hard as trying to swimming in lava, but it's your choice to make like that.
If you're not super patient, I wouldn't personally. If you do end up going with Arch, the first thing you should do is install Timeshift!!!
You will save yourself sooooo much pain and frustration, especially with Arch. Installing a system/feature-breaking update becomes trivial to undo with Timeshift. I've borked my systems multiple times and with Timeshift it took less than 5 minutes to go from a trashed system back to my fully working setup.
Set it to take an automatic snapshot once a day. That way worse case scenario, your system gets reverted to the beginning of the day.
Arch is great if you're patient and willing to learn the right way to do things in Linux.
If you want a "just works" experience though, you should look elsewhere.
Solid advice. Good to mention too: use btrfs as filesystem for a better experience with Timeshift.
If you have an interest in Arch, I'd recommend starting with a derivative distro like EndeavourOS. It'll give you an easy installation process and a desktop that's ready to use.
Then just use it as your daily driver. You'll eventually run into the occasional issue when package X or Y upgrades and breaks something, learn to fix that, and eventually learn the "ins and outs" of Arch. That's how I started, I went from Mint to Antergos, used that for a while, then when Antergos was discontinued (RIP) I converted my install to "pure" Arch and never looked back.
Arch is like buying a Lego and putting it together versus an action figure. If you don't enjoy putting together the Legos then what's the point?
You should probably go with a ready to use distro
Arch has great performance but sometimes you update your system and the [choose something] doesnt work anymore. I enjoyed when i had a ton of time to put into, now that i need something that just works and wont break for no reason its a no for me
My 2¢ is that running Linux, you play the role of user and of sysadmin. On some distros you only put on the sysadmin hat once in a blue moon, but on others you're constantly wearing it.
My Arch experience is a few years out of date; I felt I played sysadmin more than, say, Debian Stable, but it wasn't too onerous. I also had an older Nvidia card, so there were some...fun issues now and then.
I use Debian on my machines now, and am happy. Try some different distributions! Even better, have
/homeon its own partition (better yet, own disk) --- changing distros can be nice and easy without worrying about your personal data.I don't mind being the sysadmin of my own machine (I prefer it, in fact). It's just that I don't want to spend free time troubleshooting some obscure problem specific to my build because I chose an ASUS motherboard and I don't have drivers for my wireless headset or something. At least not when I'd rather unwind playing a game.
Did you find you had a lot of trouble getting new peripherals to work? Things like wireless mouses/headsets?
I use an MMO mouse that seems to require the installation of a (admittedly pretty crappy) proprietary software to work on 2.4GHz mode, so that's the big one. I also have use a DS4 for some games. That's 90% of it.
If you're new to Linux, I would reccomend fedora if you don't want to have to fuck with anything, but if you work in IT, you will inevitably want to fuck with stuff more, and arch is great for learning
I just switched over today just to see what its all about. I've been using linux as my only OS for about a year now. Been on ubuntu, pop, fedora, etc... Sysadmin by trade. I am a linux novice I'd say. Not a noob, but not an expert. Still have a lot of issues just figuring out startup/service stuff, etc...
Followed this guide: https://gist.github.com/mjnaderi/28264ce68f87f52f2cabb823a503e673 (I wanted my drive encrytped).
I am up and running and basically back to where I was on fedora 40. I was doing this mainly to always be on the latest. Having to learn pacman and yay. I am finding I can get everything running but it's definitely more involved.
No regrets just it did take a few hours. Not sure if it was worth it tbh at this point. lol
If I need to reinstall arch, I'm going to use endeavorOS. The entire time I was setting it up, I was like "why am I doing this?". I automate everything I can at my job, why am I doing this the old fashion way...
It was really worth it for me. Having control of what stays and what doesn't is a big relief for me. I wanted switch away a few times when something broke but nothing was as smooth and curated like my arch linux setup.
I will say a day or two later I am really enjoying it thus far. A bit turned off by the manual install but now I know exactly what is on my system, like you said "curated" and I am really liking yay.
That's nice to know. I'm low on storage 256gb SSD so minimalism is quite important for me. But you have to be aware that there will be few hiccups especially when you don't update for over a month, so make sure you don't land into that. Also avoid arch linux discord/reddit unless you need help. They are the most toxic, entitled people you have ever seen.
As I was searching for a few questions I had I ended up on the reddit sub. So unfortunately got exposed already to it... toxic is right! Sheesh. Thank you for the tip about keeping up to date. That was sort of a question I had. I'll probably just have it on a scheduled task.
You could search for solutions on reddit but I wouldn't recommend making a post. You also have arch forum which comes up on Google searches and it most likely has the solution anyways. Lemmy arch instance is pretty chill. Have a nice time mate.
Well, it depends on what you want from your OS.
If you want games to work with as little bother as possible then a gaming distro might be a better option. The only distro I tried where games JUST WORK on their own is Nobara. They have lots of patches to make games actually work. If you want to play Windows games on steam then be sure to install It's made by the same guy that makes ProtonGE, which you should definitely install if you want to play Windows games on steam, whatever your distro (if it's not Nobara, you can use ProtonUp-Qt to avoid having to install it manually).
Some games just won't run on any of the distros I tried except Nobara. I'm sure you could get them working fine on Arch or any other distro with some work... but that's work. When it comes to gaming I don't want to go in computer wizard mode, I just want to ride dinosaurs. (Yes I realize the irony of saying that after ditching Nobara on my gaming pc because I would rather have Arch with some games not working than Nobara with everything working)
Other than gaming I'd say it depends if you like being forced to do things yourself.
I'm a very lazy woman who switched from Windows 10 less than one year ago and tried several distro before ending up with Arch, and it is absolute heaven compared to Windows.
Lots of stuff don't don't work on my computer, but not because Arch is broken, I just haven't got around to configuring them (lazy + adhd) or I tried but failed because I have no clue what I am doing (four months on Arch for a grand total of eight on linux, so that's to be expected). But I prefer it that way. When I really need a feature it forces me to learn how stuff work, and that was the point of installing Arch instead of a distro that would do everything for me. I've learned a dozen times more in four months on Arch than in the same time on other distros. Or in 25+ years on Windows... I've still got a long way to go and there are lot of stuff that I can't get working yet (looking at you Wayland portals >_<) but I really like it and I don't think I'll switch (though I'm very tempted to try Nix...).
It you do decide on Arch, please don't listen to people who insist that you shouldn't use the archinstall script because the only "right" way to install Arch is to do a manual install. They're morons. The script is a great way to have a working Arch install quickly and easily, so you can actually use Arch and see if you like it. There's a lot to be learned by doing a manual install, yes. But it's ridiculous to ask people who really want to use Arch to keep using other distros for however long it takes them to learn enough to do a manual Arch install, when they could just use the script and do the same learning while using Arch. If you want to do a manual install go for it, but pressuring people into it is just stupid.
