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.

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

Do endeavor OS. It is literally just arch with an installer and nothing else is different

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.

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 -Syyu once 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 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 requires a lot of effort to maintain.

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

Did you find you had a lot of trouble getting new peripherals to work? Things like wireless mouses/headsets?

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 /home on its own partition (better yet, own disk) --- changing distros can be nice and easy without worrying about your personal data.

No, it wouldn’t.

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

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

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...

If you want minimal maintence avoid window managers and go for desktop environments. Installing KDe or Gnome you shouldn't have any problems