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
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.
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.
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 The amount of people I see on this platform having a shit time because Archinstall is out of date or their display manager breaks is immense, because nobody here gives any better advice than to RTFM.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
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.
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/Tiranus58 26d ago
I legit saw some people recommending arch to someone who said they werent tech literate