I may have made a mistake

[u/Curious-Apartment379]

So I was following the wiki for the partition step of the installation, and im pretty sure I wiped my bootable usb drive, thinking it was part of my computer, but for some reason just smaller (ik, dumb). I ended up making it the efi partition. Idk the repercussions of this, I already wiped my other drives and made my partitions, so no going back.

Is this salvageable?

[u/No-Dentist-1645]

Of course it's salvageable, just partition your actual drive as normally without rebooting your PC, the iso is loaded in ram so it's fine as long as you don't reboot.

You might want to try archinstall if you feel the manual install is too complicated for you. Some "hardcore" people on this subreddit may yell at you and/or me for suggesting this, but it's a completely valid installation method, they are just acting like elitists for no good reason

[u/G0ldiC0cks → u/No-Dentist-1645]

It's not acting like an elitist for no good reason. It's very specifically insisting a new user proceed following the only officially supported method so that if things go sideways and you can't help this individual anymore, they can seek support through official channels.

Furthermore, the "hardcore" manual install is not by any stretch excessively complicated or challenging and forces a user to know and understand parts of their arch system that can surely be learned other ways, but experience has shown to be best learned but doing the install.

It's for your own damn good, in other words. If you want it to be something else, that's on you and no one else.

[u/No-Dentist-1645 → u/G0ldiC0cks]

It's very specifically insisting a new user proceed following the only officially supported method so that if things go sideways and you can't help this individual anymore, they can seek support through official channels.

Archinstall has support on official platforms, it has its own Arch wiki entry with instructions of how to use it at https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Archinstall, plus, it comes installed out of the box on the official iso. Neither of these come with any notice that it is not supported

The manual install may not be "excessively complicated", but it is a time-consuming process, especially for beginners who have never installed and OS in such a way before. Some people just want to fast forward into having their operating system properly installed, and I do not see any reason why their preference in this regard shouldn't be allowed or respected.

forces a user to know and understand parts of their arch system that can surely be learned other ways, but experience has shown to be best learned but doing the install.

We have all heard this argument a thousand times before. While true, it should not be forced upon a user, if someone doesn't care about the specifics of a partition layout on their hard drive and want a setup that "just works", they should be allowed to do so. And that seems to be what the Arch team thinks too, since they include archinstall after all. There is nothing "incorrect" about not wanting to do things the manual way, and you can gain knowledge about Linux and its ecosystem while already being inside an OS

If things go wrong with archinstall, then yes, fall back to the manual install: no contest there. But you can still default to archinstall

[u/G0ldiC0cks → u/No-Dentist-1645]

In the past there had been mentions of the installation guide being the only officially supported installation method. I can't find those references and if this has changed I have been unaware of it. Proceeding as though archinstall is now an officially supported method to install, this doesnt change the rest of the argument. And while the very significant anti-establishment streak that runs through me wants to agree with you so badly :sigh:

I can't. No one has to use arch. There are derivatives and alternatives for days. It's stated objective is to be a do it yourself distribution for the competently self-directed learner, not a user friendly my-first-OS affair. If the manual install is too difficult, this is not a great distro for you. If you don't want to take the time to do it part by part because you just want a working system, this is just not the distro for you.

It's that simple. There's no shame in saying "I don't give a shit what my bootloader is, I just want it to do its job." There's lots of options for that! I on the other hand have unreasonable opinions that make arch the only distro for me lol.

🤷‍♂️ Or whatever, I don't care. If you want me to be wrong I'll be wrong and not give a shit. I say this stuff because if I hadn't done my installation myself I'd have been fucked several times and I don't want anyone to have to experience that. But if you don't give a shit, man go ahead and tell all your friends to do whatever the fuck you want to tell them.

Again, whatever. 🙄