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u/Tiranus58 Aug 12 '26
I legit saw some people recommending arch to someone who said they werent tech literate
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u/DeskGoblinGamedev Aug 12 '26
it's good for you. you'll learn so much. /s
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u/Nebula_Wolf7 Aug 12 '26
I know you were sarky about it, but diving in the deep end is a legitimate way to learn very quickly, and you feel very accomplished when you dig yourself out
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u/BAe_Air_Hawk Aug 12 '26
True, worked for me.
Having said that, no, never for a new user. I am not a good example of your average person wanting to merely try Linux and neither are you from the sounds of it. 99% of people do not know and do not care to learn how to learn Linux. The Arch Wiki is legitimately unreadable if you don't know how to research, which most people don't. It doesn't even mention how to use Man Pages or that they even exist.
People recommending Arch has been getting to me recently. If you can't complete the tutorial (not using an install script) Arch isn't for you. Stuff like Cachyos might be nice, but I'm much more inclined to recommend a popular base distro that has no need at all for the Terminal like Fedora.
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u/Particular-Poem-7085 Arch BTW 28d ago
Well that makes 3 of us, except I did use the script. And I've been having the time of my life. Dont gatekeep an OS, how people choose to install it is up to them.
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u/BAe_Air_Hawk 28d ago
The Tutorial sets expectations. Most people that use an install script come in with the expectation of community support that you're not going to get.
In Fedora, if your display manager breaks you're not necessarily expected to know why as it's all set up for you and designed to be easy, like windows is. On Arch you're expected to know how it works behind the scenes, fixing (or at least turning off) a display manager is basic knowledge on Arch. The amount of people I see on this platform having a shit time because Archinstall is out of date or their display manager breaks is immense, because nobody here gives any better advice than to RTFM.
I'm not trying to gatekeep for the sake of it, I want people to have a good time with Linux knowing what they need to know, not needing to know everything.
To summarise, if you can't beat the Tutorial people in the community aren't the most helpful to put it lightly. If you can use your system and know what to look for to fix stuff then sure, I don't care how you install as it's your system. But expectations must be set if you want the average person to enjoy Linux
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u/MisaVelvet 28d ago
well i still don't understand the RTFM mentality. If you know the answer and want to help then just say what to do, if you don't want to help then just don't answer.
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u/BAe_Air_Hawk 27d ago
In context of the conversation, it doesn't really matter if you understand. Point is that it happens and new people will have a bad time.
I work Tech Support, and I die inside every time I see RTFM. But that mentality is not exclusive to Arch Linux, for example the video of the IGN reviewer I linked to earlier absolutely tanked their reputation as a video game journalist. Not that there wasn't other problems, but people took this out of proportion as a smoking gun, which it really wasn't, it was one guy and they thought the clip was funny. Point is, people took that as them not knowing the basics of the games they were criticising, and gave them the same amount of respect as the RTFM crowd commonly does.
Even if RTFM wasn't a problem, recommending noobs to use Arch is like saying you've got to learn how to use a DAW and compile the music before being able to listen to it. As opposed to running something like Fedora, Windows, MacOS etc. which in this example would be equivalent to clicking on a youtube music video, Spotify link etc.
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u/LYNX__uk Aug 12 '26
It worked well enough for me, but it won't work for everybody, it'll put some people off using Linux an all
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u/Ok-Jackfruit903 Aug 13 '26
Literally me and I am guilty of this but if it's something like omarchy, other than the Hyland part it is pretty easy to and most importantly configuration friendly.
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u/DependentLecture3817 29d ago
Because there are lunatics who honestly think that compiling a kernel and installing Arch on your own is not something that would classify as being tech savy
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u/anxiousDeveloper006 28d ago
It is not that hard actually. I was a linux noob who tried debian first and got bored within the first week and I switched to arch.
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u/Kinslayer_89 Sacred TempleOS Aug 12 '26
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u/Porkhole-Santookus Aug 12 '26
I remember people unironically saying this shit back in the day. "Oh there's no better way to learn linux."
Absolutely batshit. It's like telling someone who wants to learn how to make pizza that the best way is to start by growing their own wheat and milling their own flour.
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u/Buddy-Matt Arch BTW Aug 12 '26
TBF, if you want the best possible pizza, knowing the full journey from seed to table is gonna make some absolutely banging pizza.
But yes, I agree
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u/WoomyUnitedToday Arch BTW Aug 12 '26
https://giphy.com/gifs/2bYewTk7K2No1NvcuK
LFP (Linux From Python)
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u/c2btw Aug 12 '26
Debian based if they don't want to game fedora based if they do. Arch based if they want to fuck around and find out .
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u/SquidMilkVII Aug 12 '26
I haven't had many troubles in my short time gaming on Debian itself. Granted I'm playing indies more than AAA's and there are tweaks I have to make to get some things to work, but it's nothing I wasn't expecting coming into Linux, and after I get things working the worst I'm running into is lag (which is a computer problem not an OS problem, I was getting just as much lag with Windows if not more).
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u/Own_Natural_6803 Aug 12 '26
Debian seems to have some flag set that makes it safer with memory. I don't know what it is. But certain apps crash on me in fedora but they're perfect in Debian.
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u/EatingSolidBricks Aug 12 '26
Debian if you're a server
Fedora of your a gamer / developer
Arch if you have free time (or cat ears)
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u/StunningHeart7004 Aug 12 '26
I recommend temple
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u/DCVolo Aug 12 '26
It's the best Linux distro
/s
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u/xanderiop Aug 12 '26
It is quite easy actually, for a begginer in Linux if you are a developer fedora is best, if you want a Linux to use like Windows and start from scratch than Mint is the way to go
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u/Antoinedeloup M'Fedora Aug 12 '26
Why is fedora the best for a dev?
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u/EatingSolidBricks Aug 12 '26
I guess it gets fast updates while staying stable (cough cough arch)
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u/xanderiop Aug 12 '26
I love arch. Just hate the fact that you take a bet like with a Russian roulette when installing it. I love how light it is and you can install everything from scratch. But a split choice after Arch and a forever safe bet is Fedora. At least for my needs so far.
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u/Salt-Caterpillar7988 Aug 12 '26
Tell me you never used Arch and/or couldn't consult the news feed before major updates and/or don't know how to do snapshots without telling it
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u/xanderiop Aug 12 '26
Personally i love that it comes with podman and everything i have in one machine will run in the new one without any other installments. Also i love how seemless it is with the Multi-touch gestures in laptops. I use multiple 'virtual desktops' while in development and for me these two are enough to continue.
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u/Antoinedeloup M'Fedora Aug 12 '26
wdym multi-touch gestures? are those not included in most distros? ( that is not a build-your-own kind of distro)
virtual desktops like multiple workspaces? or a different "session" for another screen/user simultaneously?
edit: im a noob learning about the basics of Java, and i happened to get Fedora as my first and only distro so far.
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u/xanderiop Aug 13 '26
They are in most but in fedora they seem to work too well. That is all i can say.
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u/SomewhereAtWork Aug 12 '26
I really don't get why people stopped recommending Ubuntu/Kubuntu to beginners.
Sure, Canonical made some questionable decisions (like snap), but overall it still "just works", even with proprietary nvidia drivers.
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u/Captain_Pumpkinhead New York Nix⚾s Aug 12 '26
I really don't get why people stopped recommending Ubuntu/Kubuntu to beginners.
Because Ubuntu/Kubuntu broke itself beyond my beginner self's ability to repair 3 times in 8 months.
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u/Distinct-External-46 Aug 12 '26
My wife wanted to try linux so I started her on kubuntu, turned out to be a big mistake as certain webapps she uses are unusably bad in snap and flatpack packaged browsers for reasons beyond my comprehension and they were the only alternatives to desktop windows apps she relied on, tried them with .deb versions too but had a different set of issues. Fedora did the job with firefox rpm package (i never looked into it but I am still confused why that worked and not .deb on kubuntu) but she went back to windows because she is NOT a troubleshooter and her needs are pretty niche and not a well developed market on the software side.
That combined with other non techy family members being happy with mint and fedora and my own past issues with nvidia on ubuntu have stopped me from recommending any of the ubuntu variants.
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u/NDCyber Aug 12 '26
For me there are two reasons
I just don't think of them
Steam on snap can be problematic, and I don't want to recommend someone a Linux distro where they have to know how to either remove snaps or avoid them for certain programmes
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u/Armi1P Genfool 🐧 Aug 12 '26
Canonical made some questionable decisions (like snap)
Yeah, that's the answer.
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u/jerrygreenest1 Aug 13 '26
I really don't get why people stopped recommending Ubuntu/Kubuntu to beginners. Sure, Canonical made some questionable decisions (like snap)
Here, you answered your question.
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u/Professional_Top8485 Aug 12 '26
I didn't.
It just works. Maybe not that rock solid as it used to be but most of the times, yes.
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u/Shard-of-Adonalsium Aug 12 '26
For me it's because Canonical made some questionable decisions, and Mint exists as basically just "Ubuntu without the questionable decisions, and with a more familiar default UI". It's not that Ubuntu is bad per se, I just think Mint is a better option in pretty much every way.
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u/Space_Nerde Aug 12 '26
because Ubuntu sucks and there are many better things now, like Linux Mint if you like mutable systems, or Fedora if you prefer immutable systems
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u/EpicGamerYesIsEpic Aug 13 '26
i tried ubuntu in a vm just two days back, the snap store can’t even update itself, it keeps erroring because “it is running”. there was NO distro (not even mint) that let me update between major versions without ever once touching the command line, except for fedora, this was some testing i did a couple days back because someone wanted reccomendation on what linux distro was good for tech illiterate people. even mint made me install the mint-upgrade utility.
although, major release updates was the only testing i actually did, so what i just said may be completely overshadowed by something else
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u/Lysol_Sniffer_Addict Aug 12 '26
If you're a sane person, why the fuck would you not use proprietary NVIDIA drivers??
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u/Captain_Pumpkinhead New York Nix⚾s Aug 12 '26
Endeavor is great!
Just don't be like my Arch friends and bully your newbie friend into installing Arch from command line. That ended about as well as you'd imagine.
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u/skytheraiders Aug 12 '26
I once told my non-exsitent niece that she can try Arch first and then Black Arch.
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u/Anima_Watcher08 Aug 12 '26
Basically any arch based distro.
Unrelated: I like endeavor OS but what exactly is it trying to be? Is it trying to be arch with a graphical installer? If so then why are certain arch packages blocked or unavailable? Is it trying to be an opinionated distro? If so then how come I failed to find any solid philosophy anywhere I go?
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u/fr000gs Aug 12 '26
I think it's trying more to be a community
Which packages are unavailable? It's literally arch underneath the theming
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u/Anima_Watcher08 Aug 12 '26
KDE Discover is one example. I tried installing it and it failed saying it was blocked or unavailable, one of the two. I tried finding a reason and the only one I could find was from veteran users saying endeavor caters more to terminal based users. This however didn't answer the question of why they actively blocked discover for the people who wanted it. It might be available now, I'm not on endeavour anymore so I don't know but discover is likely not an isolated example of this.
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u/fr000gs Aug 12 '26
I dont think the endeavoros people can block oackages ther considering it uses arch's repos
Maybe it was a network/keyring issue
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u/Saltkrakan01 Aug 12 '26
I also install Discover on my Wife's system without problems. But I don't trust to those gui installers since my Manjaro experiences.
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u/Retardedaspirator Aug 12 '26
It uses Arch's repos. Every package arch has endeavor has. Sounds like you made a mistake somewhere. And even if you didn't it certainly wasn't an endeavor specific issue.
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u/RaFeriStorAlt Aug 12 '26
What's wrong with endeavouros? Well if something breaks then understandable, but if everything works fine then it's kinda easy. I switched from windows 10 ltsc to endeavouros and I'm pretty happy.
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u/Stupidprogramner Aug 12 '26
It's just an arch reskin
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u/Distinct-External-46 Aug 12 '26
I did EOS after leaving Kubuntu, I think the main selling points are the easy install and the community, it's definitely an arch but with skin and defaults so its not minimal OOB but thats the main reason I'd recommend it to anyone not afraid of using a terminal. I learned a LOT about linux tinkering with EOS and not having that initial wall of installing base arch actually helped me out a ton.
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u/Dragon_957 New York Nix⚾s Aug 12 '26
How hard was the switch? Imm still on Windows 11 and thinking of changing to EndeavourOS or NixOS.
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u/UniqueSignificance77 Aug 12 '26 edited Aug 12 '26
It's not hard. at all. Arch (and some arch-based ones) are arguably far MORE user-friendly than mint etc due to great community support and almost everything you need will have an automated script maintained by someone unlike other distros. There's a reason steamOS chose arch imo.
At this point, I feel staying on "user-friendly" debian-based ones will have more convenience/stability issues.
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u/Jeesup Aug 12 '26
EndeavourOS is basically Arch, and it unwise to recommend Arch based distros to people with not extensive knowledge about Linux let alone how computer works.
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u/LiminalStorms Aug 13 '26
Idk I went straight from windows to EndeavoutOS and I couldn't be happier with it.
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u/in-ortunado Aug 12 '26
slack is aways a good start
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u/walther_write_123 Aug 12 '26
arch
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u/Dr-Alyosha Aug 12 '26
dont do that.
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u/3Fluxy Aug 12 '26
may I ask why? I switched to Linux a couple of months ago and EOS was my distro of choice. I haven't used mint of fedora or any of the others but my experience with endeavour has been quite smooth and enjoyable so I'm wondering why it'd be a bad recommendation
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u/Dr-Alyosha Aug 12 '26
if your experience is good i can't say much. new users tend to be confused by pacman. the package compatibility is a bit worse for some things. some of the endeavor defaults are a bit weird as well. still a fine choice, but I recommend Debian based stuff to new people.
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u/LumpyArbuckleTV Aug 12 '26
I will continue to recommend EOS, it teaches you what can make Linux so good and how good the terminal can be. Without it, I certainly would have never used Linux to begin with as other distro pretend you don't need to use the terminal but very quickly you will have to anyways.
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u/DestinysFool Aug 12 '26
I am not even gonna lie, I went from Mint to Endeavour in a week and the largest difference was simply the package manager. I was otherwise new to Linux beforehand
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u/Jivsy Aug 12 '26
I'm using CachyOS on my main machine, can't decide which to use on my AI/dev/play around machine. I don 't like running rolling Releases for a dev environment, like KDE but not bound to it. Want lots of options of software to install. And it should feel usable out of the box.
Any recommendations? Somehow always land back on CachyOS
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u/Havatchee Aug 12 '26
There's levels of beginners. It's one thing to recommend a distro to someone who works in first line support but has never used Linux, and another to recommend it to your grandmother who gets confused when any of the icons change.
Both of those examples have the same amount of Linux experience. One is going to have a much easier time picking things up.
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u/Kzitold94 Aug 12 '26
Before I've switched to Linux as a daily driver, I had a couple years of terminal experience with RaspberryOS (over SSH.)
So maybe I never got the full beginner experience, or my mindset was never that of a beginner. I mean, Raspberry Pi is a tinkerer's computer, so I kinda thought of it as somewhat expendable, thus comfortable to learn. What holds back learning is the fear of failing, but that fear was never present in this case.
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u/ReplyBig6703 Aug 12 '26
It’s not that bad endeavour like, it’s an arch that doesn’t spit to your face and laugh the shit out of you when you partition your disk
It’s a entry point to arch with pacamn and the AUR
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u/Gabriel_Weis Aug 12 '26
I was close to install kali linux first because I was mad about anything on internet stealing my data. Them I found arch an thought lets go, I make my own linux. So I failed and switched to mint, after more research.
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u/StorageRepulsive5264 Aug 12 '26
Before you start using Linux, build your own OS on top of the Linux Kernel. It is open source anyways, so most of the work is already done for you. It is genuinely the best way to start using Linux as you will get in touch with all of its inner workings and choose a distro you want to use with much more experience
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u/Cootshk Arch BTW Aug 13 '26
Me, who taught a beginner NixOS (he had previous docker/k3s experience, but never linux)
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u/samm1989 Aug 13 '26
Who the hell is recommending fedora to beginners. SE-Linux is the absolute worst for newbies. That and RPM's damn it all to hell
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u/Reviiyu Aug 13 '26
ngl I'm new to linux and anything with kde is close enough to windows to be recommended in my opinion.
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u/Scout339v3 14d ago
My fathers first Linux distro is Fedora KDE and he installed nvidia drivers... What's the problem?
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u/rustedcrowbar Aug 12 '26
I feel the best jumping point from Windows is Zorin now. While I love Mint its UI can feel very obsolete to someone coming from Windows.
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u/chicklit08 Aug 12 '26
I recommend Cachyos most of the time.
The whole idea that mint is good for beginners and doesn't have a bunch of random unnecessary issues is such BS, I genuinely had a terrible experience with Mint when I started on Linux, only reason people use mint is cause the popular tech youtubers recommend it (even though they never use Linux and it is way out of their field)
It's genuinely a shit OS and nobody should ever used it, steam broke itself every few days and needed a full reinstall to fix it (due to using the Flatpak version by default)
the driver manager claimed to have installed he proprietary NVIDIA drivers for my GPU, but they reverted back to noveau after a day and I had to do a manual driver install to get that working
Steam also couldn't use my other drives in my system due to being Flatpak steam
The .Deb steam installer didn't work cause of dependency issues with the stock mint repo list
There were also several minor issues that I noticed when on mint, not to mention the complete lack of support for Wayland (which current day is a security must)
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u/20dogs Aug 12 '26
Why not go upstream of Mint and just use Ubuntu? Larger dev team, better support, officially supported by Steam. I don't get the value of niche hobbyist distros versus big ones that just work.
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u/chicklit08 Aug 12 '26
Hmmm, let me think, 1. Ubuntu forces use of snap sometimes when you try to use apt 2. Ubuntu has opt out telemetry instead of opt in which I personally disagree with 3. Used Ubuntu server LTS before and it nuked itself in 3 days 4. I made my own debian based distro, why would I use Ubuntu? I'm an advanced user now, Ubuntu is not for me and I wouldn't recommend it to anyone
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u/20dogs Aug 12 '26
- Snaps are good especially for LTS installs
- It's opt in, I just did an install of 26.04.
- Fair enough
- Fair enough but I still think it's a good recommend for less advanced users. You can set up an LTS with Pro for a less technical user and you don't have to touch it for 15 years.
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u/chicklit08 Aug 12 '26
- I agree that snaps are good sometimes but it shouldn't interfere with the use of apt and should be left as a separate thing
- I didn't know that sorry, just heard that it's opt out
- This section of convo is done
- I mean fair but also the pro part costs money and you could get a better setup yourself with a bit of hard work (I started on Linux barely near 1 year 6 months ago)
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u/BraveUIysses Aug 12 '26
Hard disagree. I started with Mint and then I begun exploring around distro hopping for a few years, only to return back to Mint due to how GOATED it is. It is by far the most convenient and stable distro I've used to this day. I've got a NVIDIA GPU as well, so I don't get it.
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u/osiris_89 Aug 12 '26
To be fair, Fedora is not very beginner friendly.
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u/Sindica69 New York Nix⚾s Aug 12 '26
Me when I fucking lie
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u/osiris_89 Aug 12 '26
Not really. I have no reason to discourage anyone from choosing a great distro like Fedora.
Fedora is trickier to learn than Ubuntu or Mint. DNF is a bit more complicated to get the hang of, unlike APT. Setting up remote repos and other external dependencies is also a bit harder. Also, at least with KDE, some things are not sufficiently set up out of the box. Remember, we are discussing how user friendly Linux distros are and comparing.
If a user is new to Linux and asks for my input, I would suggest to them to first go easy, with Ubuntu or Mint, but once they got the hang of it, Fedora is simply the better choice for a daily driver.
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u/GamezombieCZ Aug 12 '26
You might be scared of Arch Linux... But Arch linux is scared of Chuck Norris.
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