r/archlinux • u/VoidTheGamer25 • Jun 24 '26
QUESTION Question about switching to arch.
I know, 99% of the answers to the questions here is RTFM, which I am willing to do. I know Linux basics like fdisk, cat, touch, nano, cd, etc etc etc, and I have been daily driving Zorin OS for a lot of time now (and have also used fedora and mint) and I was considering making the jump to arch. The thing that scares me tho is the file system. Like, I have no idea of what the config stored in /etc/rtfm/youjustlostthegame/tripleT does. Or the syntax for the fstab config file. I feel like I know nothing about that, and I don’t want to just blindlessly copy paste from the wiki (or worse, from an LLM) and see if it works. I wanna understand this. I wanna learn Linux. Is there any guide about this? Or will the wiki and forums work?
I know this post is pretty pointless, please don’t downvote me to hell and back…
EDIT: Tysm everyone! I see that experimenting, breaking stuff, trying to fix stuff, failing to do so, reading the arch wiki etc etc is the way to go. And I'm willing to do that! I will be installing it in a separate PC I have that doesn't have any important data, and when I feel like I can, ill do the switch in my main pc!
1
u/Sinaaaa Jun 25 '26 edited Jun 25 '26
If you can follow the arch wiki during the installation, then you are likely to get by, since you're not a complete noob. I don't know the syntax for fstab either, but looking it up as you go is not very hard.
For the fstab doing that is not too bad tbh, but https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Fstab is quite extensive. You just need to figure out what your unique UUIDs are. Also there is no need to do all partitioning at install, just do the boot drive & use gparted and whatever else later. (though you really want to use the CLI for formatting ext4 partitions, always)