the "i use arch btw" is similar to the "pc master race" meme, a meme, just that, some people do take it seriously but most people use it as a in joke among linux users.
Sometimes there are some memes that I really like, and some that I really dislike. "I use Arch btw" is one of the latter especially since I always see it whenever someone talks shit about Windows. Sure, Windows is shit, but I don't need to know that Linux is better for everything and that one person that likes to say that they use Arch.
I thought you needed to handle every single component of Arch except for the ones you've mentioned which I see a good amount of people using and whatnot. I guess there's a lot more tech entusiasts than I can tell, which is definitely a good side for me.
I thought you needed to handle every single component of Arch except for the ones you've mentioned which I see a good amount of people using and whatnot. I guess there's a lot more tech entusiasts than I can tell, which is definitely a good side for me.
Basic arch's difficulty is that it installs jack for you, to the point of stupidity to a extent imo, it's entirely possible to install arch without network drivers or even i believe a display adapter, hence why i almost never suggest installing vanilla arch unless you want to challenge yourself to build your system yourself.
So 99.9% of all distros are based on 3 specific root distros, which are based on the linux kernel, the main differences between the 3 are update schedule and root package manager and keywords usually (stuff like rpm and yay, if you rarely touch the terminal you won't see this much), they are in order of update schedule from safest to fastest:
1.Debian, by far the root distro with the most spin-off distros, debian is designed for stability, even more stability than windows when microsoft isn't messing stuff up, ubuntu, linux mint, and the gaming based pika os are based on debian, debian as i said before has the slowest update schedule sometimes not updating core components for months.
2.Fedora, fedora is technically a spin off of red hat enterprise for the non enterprise market but became bigger than red hat itself over time, it's something of a middle ground on the update schedule between debian and arch, distros most known from the fedora pipeline are nobara and bazzite, fedora has the smallest amount of distro spins.
3.Arch, arch is bleeding edge and all that entails, it usually updates integral files like gpu drivers and even the linux kernel within a week of release, arch has the second biggest amount of spin off distros, notable ones are all basically easier to install and use versions of arch (usually with software centers to make it even easier), endeavor os, gaming based garuda linux and catch all current favorite of the gaming community cachy os, i believe the more work based omarchy is also based on arch.
I will say this outright, never install base arch unless you want to build basically a arch based distro from kind of scratch, there are definitely reasons to do it if you know exactly what your doing, but for most users who want a working system it's not worth it unless you want to learn or challenge yourself.
Now there are other distros not based off the big 3, like open mandriva, gentoo and slackware, but that's a different topic and of the 3 i think the spins of these don't even make up .1% of the linux distro market.
my other pc have zorin OS, while my main gaming pc will stay with windows 10 as long as possible (at lest 5~10 years), when the time comes and steam discontinue support for the OS I believe in that time the user base of Linux will be large enough for most of the 3rd party programs like anti cheat makers and creative programs to support it, and I will make the jump there, but if I start a new pc build today, I will use Linux on it
my other pc have zorin OS, while my main gaming pc will stay with windows 10 as long as possible (at lest 5~10 years), when the time comes and steam discontinue support for the OS I believe in that time the user base of Linux will be large enough for most of the 3rd party programs like anti cheat makers and creative programs to support it, and I will make the jump there, but if I start a new pc build today, I will use Linux on it
I'm sure there will be a way to bypass it when the time comes, but TBH I don't remember the last time I updated my GPU driver, as long as it works, I don't need to change a thing
Don’t get me wrong, but I think newbies struggle too much to choose their first distro.
I’d suggest just pick any which you think looks cool and works out of the box for you on your hardware. And simply use it. If you face issues or get bored, try another one (or newer one).
For example my first one was Knoppix if anybody still knows what was that. It was one of the early LiveCD, packed with everything fresh KDE, kernel, firmware drivers, tons of software, and it worked well even on most “high-end” PC with CDROM drive of that time. And the boot up screen and desktop looked like from sci-fi movie to me. You could browse files from win disks and save everything to a thumb flash drive or floppy, heh. That was a big thing for those who was afraid to mess up their windoze. Although had to reinstall Win9x/2k once in few months anyway
After you get some experience, the distro vendor will not that important to you anymore, you probably will have just some preferences. This is especially true if you get into modern Linux eco system. You may use appimages, snaps, flatpacks software package sources and even docker images (more advanced stuff) which all distro agnostic. Today I use only browser, file manager and terminal coming from my OS. And media player too.
Basic arch's difficulty is that it installs jack for you, to the point of stupidity to a extent imo, it's entirely possible to install arch without network drivers or even i believe a display adapter, hence why i almost never suggest installing vanilla arch unless you want to challenge yourself to build your system yourself.
3.Arch, arch is bleeding edge and all that entails, it usually updates integral files like gpu drivers and even the linux kernel within a week of release, arch has the second biggest amount of spin off distros, notable ones are all basically easier to install and use versions of arch (usually with software centers to make it even easier), endeavor os, gaming based garuda linux and catch all current favorite of the gaming community cachy os, i believe the more work based omarchy is also based on arch.
I will say this outright, never install base arch unless you want to build basically a arch based distro from kind of scratch, there are definitely reasons to do it if you know exactly what your doing, but for most users who want a working system it's not worth it unless you want to learn or challenge yourself.
I will definitely say after you've gave me a bit of what Arch is about, I'll appreciate it since I didn't know most of Arch's main issues can be negated if you're using a distro that has most of the stuff covered for you, such as SteamOS. IIRC SteamOS, despite using Arch is also Immutable, which I'm wondering how the hell is that distro even possible to have something like that. maybe that would be the better solution to my NVIDIA Laptop, but I still wouldn't use Linux on there generally speaking due to Paraec no having hosting capabilities on there. I've tried Sunshine/Moonlight and it does work! it just doesn't have its UI and other things to be exactly as straightforward and easy to learn as Parsec.
2.Fedora, fedora is technically a spin off of red hat enterprise for the non enterprise market but became bigger than red hat itself over time, it's something of a middle ground on the update schedule between debian and arch, distros most known from the fedora pipeline are nobara and bazzite, fedora has the smallest amount of distro spins.
Of all the distro kinds there is, the RHEL lineup has to be the best of the bunch. the perfect middle ground for being consistent whilst staying as stable as it can be. i also see it as a spiritual successor to Debian for how similar the dnf package manager is to apt but done MUCH better than it.
I will definitely say after you've gave me a bit of what Arch is about, I'll appreciate it since I didn't know most of Arch's main issues can be negated if you're using a distro that has most of the stuff covered for you, such as SteamOS. IIRC SteamOS, despite using Arch is also Immutable, which I'm wondering how the hell is that distro even possible to have something like that. maybe that would be the better solution to my NVIDIA Laptop, but I still wouldn't use Linux on there generally speaking due to Paraec no having hosting capabilities on there. I've tried Sunshine/Moonlight and it does work! it just doesn't have its UI and other things to be exactly as straightforward and easy to learn as Parsec.
Of all the distro kinds there is, the RHEL lineup has to be the best of the bunch. the perfect middle ground for being consistent whilst staying as stable as it can be. i also see it as a spiritual successor to Debian for how similar the dnf package manager is to apt but done MUCH better than it.
The main problem with steam os currently is it's built around amd gpu's, making nvidia support not that great.
As for fedora, not sure i agree with that stance, but fedora does kinda have to work since red hat enterprise which fedora is based on, is a paid os that MUST work or red hat loses money.
The main problem with steam os currently is it's built around amd gpu's, making nvidia support not that great.
As for fedora, not sure i agree with that stance, but fedora does kinda have to work since red hat enterprise which fedora is based on, is a paid os that MUST work or red hat loses money.
Yeah I see what you mean. I've only meant that because I had better success getting Fedora to run on my stuff than literally any other distro. it's also the one that I know that convinces me to learn more about the terminal more
I jumped around between quite a few distros before settling on Fedora with cachyos kernel for my gaming rig, but I do really like vanilla Debian as well.
The 'just work' nature of things is more attractive to me now, since I don't have as much time to mess around and tinker as I used to.
Regarding GPU support, Intel and AMD are on excellent level, while the other one manufacturer was always pain in ass (citing Linus: “F@(k you, nvidia!”). The same for motherboard chipsets actually.
All Open Source drivers (kernel modules) work mostly well nowadays, but for some cutting edge cards or cheap crappy silicon chips you may need not only fresh kernel, but firmware blobs too, which might come separately. Check your prospective distro wiki page or forums or simply do web search about your chip model support status. Sometimes those fancy ubuntu or arch forks simply cannot keep up or don’t care or even lacking of any support details.
Me, me, me! (Not a power user or developer, but still!)
I am barely new to linux, but even before Windows went down the gutter, I jumped ship.
One thing I don't particularly like about Linux, that the whole development ecosystem hasn't created a solution for, is how unstable the kernel is. Even for distros that are not rolling release, something seems to break every so often that requires a "getting your hands dirty" fix.
It's been an issue for the several years I've used it now, so atleast since I switched, it hasn't been addressed.
One of my friends was turned away from giving the OS a chance because his installation seemed to suffer a cascading series of breakage for zero apparent reason.
The Wayland and Rust rewrite projects could not be completed soon enough...
Post automatically merged:
Oh, and the difficult/maintanance Arch requires definitely seems blown out of proportion.
That title seems to belong to Gentoo, instead.
I jumped around between quite a few distros before settling on Fedora with cachyos kernel for my gaming rig, but I do really like vanilla Debian as well.
The 'just work' nature of things is more attractive to me now, since I don't have as much time to mess around and tinker as I used to.
Well like i said, fedora is fine, i just personally have a disdain for it, function wise it's a good middle ground between arch and debian.
Debian is fine, my personal issues aside, if your not into gaming, using debian is perfectly fine and even with gaming depending on "what" games you play even then it's fine to go debian, if your goal is absolute stability, debian based distros all the way.
Nice grandia avatar btw.
Me, me, me! (Not a power user or developer, but still!)
I am barely new to linux, but even before Windows went down the gutter, I jumped ship.
One thing I don't particularly like about Linux, that the whole development ecosystem hasn't created a solution for, is how unstable the kernel is. Even for distros that are not rolling release, something seems to break every so often that requires a "getting your hands dirty" fix.
It's been an issue for the several years I've used it now, so atleast since I switched, it hasn't been addressed.
One of my friends was turned away from giving the OS a chance because his installation seemed to suffer a cascading series of breakage for zero apparent reason.
The Wayland and Rust rewrite projects could not be completed soon enough...
Post automatically merged:
Oh, and the difficult/maintanance Arch requires definitely seems blown out of proportion.
That title seems to belong to Gentoo, instead.
I don't know what odd hardware your using, but i've literally had only one thing break for me in my year on garuda linux (arch based) that wasn't 100% my fault, and that was kde plasma, specifically a global theme update crashed my DE and i had to reboot kde and delete the theme, haven't had issues ever since, otherwise it's been FAR more stable than windows.
Yeah honestly it feels like it might be more of a hardware issue to me, since i've not had any issues personally and your experience implies it may be related to hardware, either a rare incompatibility, or possibly a short in a usb socket (common cause of BSOD's on windows).
Well like i said, fedora is fine, i just personally have a disdain for it, function wise it's a good middle ground between arch and debian.
Debian is fine, my personal issues aside, if your not into gaming, using debian is perfectly fine and even with gaming depending on "what" games you play even then it's fine to go debian, if your goal is absolute stability, debian based distros all the way.
Nice grandia avatar btw.
I don't know what odd hardware your using, but i've literally had only one thing break for me in my year on garuda linux (arch based) that wasn't 100% my fault, and that was kde plasma, specifically a global theme update crashed my DE and i had to reboot kde and delete the theme, haven't had issues ever since, otherwise it's been FAR more stable than windows.
Yeah honestly it feels like it might be more of a hardware issue to me, since i've not had any issues personally and your experience implies it may be related to hardware, either a rare incompatibility, or possibly a short in a usb socket (common cause of BSOD's on windows).
For starters, my friend is very familiar with MacOS, and I think the proper term to describe him would be 'a power user,' as he develops software for, and on his Macbook.
Since he uses Windows on his desktop for gaming, he wanted to give Linux a try (because Windows has been circling the drain for quite some time now,) and since he was already very familiar with Unix, and I already have Arch installed, I recommended he try Arch out.
My friend and I both use(d) Arch, I installed it using 'archinstall', my friend installed it the old fashioned way. We both use(d) KDE as our DEs. We did not run any mystery commands we read about on tech websites, either. Did not ever use partial system upgrades, we kept our installations up to date, we even installed a package that prevents system updates from applying until you read the latest Arch news on packages that require manual intervention.
I do not think hardware is the problem, either. It wasn't like we installed any esoteric or poorly supported hardware, or bought parts from seedy suppliers or manufacturers, either.
It could very well be a case of PEBCAK; but since we both did it by the book and consulted only the official wiki, I do not understand what we did/are doing wrong. Even looking at his bash history and system logs, I could not find any obvious mistakes or probable causes to his installation breaking over time. In any case, he got frustrated with Linux and gave up since there did not seem to be any obvious cause to everything breaking.
For starters, my friend is very familiar with MacOS, and I think the proper term to describe him would be 'a power user,' as he develops software for, and on his Macbook.
Since he uses Windows on his desktop for gaming, he wanted to give Linux a try (because Windows has been circling the drain for quite some time now,) and since he was already very familiar with Unix, and I already have Arch installed, I recommended he try Arch out.
My friend and I both use(d) Arch, I installed it using 'archinstall', my friend installed it the old fashioned way. We both use(d) KDE as our DEs. We did not run any mystery commands we read about on tech websites, either. Did not ever use partial system upgrades, we kept our installations up to date, we even installed a package that prevents system updates from applying until you read the latest Arch news on packages that require manual intervention.
I do not think hardware is the problem, either. It wasn't like we installed any esoteric or poorly supported hardware, or bought parts from seedy suppliers or manufacturers, either.
It could very well be a case of PEBCAK; but since we both did it by the book and consulted only the official wiki, I do not understand what we did/are doing wrong. Even looking at his bash history and system logs, I could not find any obvious mistakes or probable causes to his installation breaking over time. In any case, he got frustrated with Linux and gave up since there did not seem to be any obvious cause to everything breaking.
This is why i don't think people should install arch unless they are challenging themselves, arch isn't hard to run but vanilla arch is extremely prone to issues due to needing constant upkeep.
If you try linux again i'd suggest cachy os if your going for arch, linux mint if debian and nobara or base fedora if you go for a red hat distro, DO NOT install vanilla arch, you need to know arch through and through to prevent issues on it.
Also you didn't mention exactly what broke on your install, i'm no expert but it sounds like something went wrong in the update schedule.
If you use arch, generally i'd suggest using the chaotic aur over the normal aur if you can, i tend to find it more stable.
This is why i don't think people should install arch unless they are challenging themselves, arch isn't hard to run but vanilla arch is extremely prone to issues due to needing constant upkeep.
If you try linux again i'd suggest cachy os if your going for arch, linux mint if debian and nobara or base fedora if you go for a red hat distro, DO NOT install vanilla arch, you need to know arch through and through to prevent issues on it.
Also you didn't mention exactly what broke on your install, i'm no expert but it sounds like something went wrong in the update schedule.
If you use arch, generally i'd suggest using the chaotic aur over the normal aur if you can, i tend to find it more stable.
I did not know Arch requires more knowledge and experience than that. I kept reading in many comments and forums all over, that it is perfectly usable and somewhat straight-forward as long as you follow the Wiki. Wish I knew that ahead of time, oh well.
In that case, could you recommend a rolling-release distro that has the following:
I did not know Arch requires more knowledge and experience than that. I kept reading in many comments and forums all over, that it is perfectly usable and somewhat straight-forward as long as you follow the Wiki. Wish I knew that ahead of time, oh well.
In that case, could you recommend a rolling-release distro that has the following:
For more ease of use distros cachy os for overall usability and good gaming, garuda linux if you want a gaming desktop focused one, endeavor os is basically vanilla arch with some extra assists, which isn't a bad thing.
I should probably preface the problem with arch linux isn't that it's broken, far from it, it's that it requires you to install everything, so if you don't know 1 obscure dependency, like a library runtime, a program won't work, most more simple to use distros in the arch ecosystem automate some of this, they are all arch, but they take alot of the pain of arch away from it.
Also, the chaotic aur is far more stable and preferred for normal users over the base aur(the aur isn't bad, but it's more closer to a complete wild west and rarely, has a viral package, though they usually get caught fast), i believe both cachy os and garuda linux use the chaotic aur as a default.
Just out of curiosity, what’s “gaming focused” distro? Is it full of pre-installed latest versions of open source games, emulators and Wine wrappers, or something?
I’ve seen some fan made LiveCD/DVD ISO images, like you burn it and boot it up and ready to play anywhere. Is it like that?
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