I’m a little bit underwhelmed, I thought that based off the fact so many people seem to make using this distro their personality I expected… well, more I guess?

Once the basic stuff is set-up, like wifi, a few basic packages, a desktop environment/window manager, and a bit of desktop environment and terminal customisation, then that’s it. Nothing special, just a Linux distribution with less default programs and occasionally having to look up how to install a hardware driver or something if you need to use bluetooth for the first time or something like that.

Am I missing something? How can I make using Arch Linux my personality when once it’s set up it’s just like any other computer?

What exactly is it that people obsess over? The desktop environment and terminal customisation? Setting up NetworkManager with nmcli? Using Vim to edit a .conf file?

  • dion_starfire@lemm.eeEnglish
    5·
    5 months ago

    This amuses me, since I literally went from Gentoo to Arch because it felt like the same bleeding edge distro without having to wait for the compile time for half of the packages.

    That said, I generally don’t recommend Arch (or Gentoo) to newbies. It’s great when it works, but the number of times I’ve had to troubleshoot some random dependency issue because I took more than a week to update my system would scare any newbie away. It’s a bit like the parable of the cobbler’s kids having the worst shoes, or the mechanic always driving a project car - when you have the skills to fix something, you’re willing to put up with a lot of bullshit that a normal person wouldn’t.

    • Ooops@feddit.org
      1·
      5 months ago

      I think it’s not a newbie but a general user issue. I have learned to recognize the linux newbies for whom Arch is a good fit over time… just by watching which people distro hop until landing with Archlinux.

      PS: And among the typical distro hoppers is really a big chunk of them… because for a lot of them distro hopping is just a symptom of wanting to make the mandatory big system upgrades every few years at best worth it by trying something new. Those should actually get a rolling distro as a recommendation much earlier.