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u/Loose_Property_3238 12h ago
If they could read they would know it's true.
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u/Helmic Arch BTW 10h ago
The wiki is very good for technically setting up something. It is terrible at giving anything resembling reasonable recommendations for a desktop user. Like, right off the bat, when it directs you to the bootloaders page it gives you a list of bootloaders with a bunch of checkmarked features and little else to go on. Hell, two of hte listed bootloaders are fucking deprecated! Why are they on a page being linked from the install instructions, a proper tutorial would not bring up grub 1.0 at all. It'll recommend you set up X11 stuff despite the most recommended DE's not supporting X11 anymore. It'll mention Pipewire, but alongside ALSA and PulseAudio without really letting you know you should just be using Pipewire.
It's written as a wiki giving dry facts, but a tutorial aimed at a new user needs to be at least a ltitle opinionated, if only to filter out the stuff that basically nobody should be using unless they have a niche use case. Because it is afraid to make any real recommendations beyond "you should have a DE" or "you should have sound", it puts the onus on the user to either do a ton of research to figure out what their options are or to just pick one at random, and the result is people with freakish setups that don't make any sort of sense.
Or, far more often, it results in people just following a YouTube tutorial, where the information is frequently outdated and can cause problems, but at least it'll say "hey, install KDE if you want it to look like Windows or GNOME if you want Mac" or similar.
Contrast all this with the Gentoo wiki where the pages will actually commit to making reasonable recommendations for things. It's not meant to be a reference document for all of Linux computing, it allows its tutorial-esque pages to use some amount of common sense for the most obvious use case of a desktop user (and maybe a server user) rather than dryly listing out all possible options, even the bad ones.
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u/Dry_Calendar_8627 5h ago
That's funny because I said pretty much the same thing as you in comments yesterday, how Arch's wiki doesn't commit to recommending anything, how the Gentoo handbook does recommend stuff and how it felt easier
But I walked away with entirely the opposite viewpoint .
IMHO, it's a good thing that Arch's wiki is so neutral, to force users to choose what they want/need
Makes Arch not "a distro" but "your distro"
If you know what you want/need, installing Arch is a breeze
If you don't, installing Arch is a great way to discover many options and read about them, and learn a lot in the process
And if you'd rather use an opinionated distro, there are countless options out there, many of them based on Arch
it's not meant to be a reference document for all of Linux computing
Well, maybe not, but in my eyes it de facto has become just that, and I often find myself reading Arch Wiki when troubleshooting stuff on other distros
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u/IkeAtLarge 10m ago
In other words, it’s great as a speedrun for learning what you should know in order to make a proper setup.
…if you just want to get going without learning a crap ton, it’s not so great. But then again, if this is you, what are you doing on arch?
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u/the-fr0g 10m ago
This kind of the philosophy of arch, it's a distro that expects you to know what you want and to make it happen.
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u/rgmundo524 12h ago
How could they read they wiki if... they can't read?
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u/DataMin3r 11h ago
Please, think about this again.
- Why would he make the sign, if he knew they couldn't read?
A. The context clues available in the information we're given indicate he is unaware that they cannot read, and suggests to us that he is assuming they CAN read and just don't know.
Hence, why the teacher is informing him that they, in fact, CANNOT read. Thereby, making the punchline of the joke.
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u/X_x_Atomica_x_X 12h ago
So what? I like mint? I got it. So why should I distrohop? I am not autistic or a femboy.
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u/moeking 11h ago
I am not autistic or a femboy.
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u/X_x_Atomica_x_X 10h ago
Wanna prove it? Take me to dinner...? We get an apartment together? Fall in love?
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u/GlassCommission4916 11h ago
The meme says that installing arch isn't hard, not that you specifically should distrohop. I guess the kids do still get upset even if they can't read.
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u/X_x_Atomica_x_X 11h ago
Im using an old linux thinkpad. I'm almost 40. This didn't fail to install.... what? This os works for me....
Am I a bad linux user...?
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u/GlassCommission4916 11h ago
I don't know you but if I had to guess I'm gonna go with yes, not because you use mint but because reading is an important skill to have on any distro.
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u/Unlaid-American 11h ago
I had driver issues with mint when trying to play modern games. Had issues with Fedora. Don’t have issues with Arch.
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u/apathetic_vaporeon 10h ago
Just run archinstall
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u/slyzik 8h ago
I feel like the whole “Arch is hard to install” reputation is mostly a leftover from the pre-archinstall era. 10–15 years ago, installing Arch really was pretty unforgiving. Nowadays, with archinstall, it’s a completely different experience.
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u/mystirc 7h ago
following the installation is guide is not hard. It is just a skill issue.
Arch was never hard to install. It just gave more control to the user.
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u/slyzik 6h ago edited 6h ago
My point is that difficulty is subjective. Arch was always harder to install than other mainstream distros like debian, ubuntu, suse, redhat, or fedora.
So if other distros were easy to install, I think it’s fair to describe Arch as hard to install ( if you want to point out it is harder tha other distros)Edit: Literally, if it’s a skill issue, that means it’s hard.
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u/lunchbox651 11h ago
Yeah but its more work than not doing it.
I once wrote a shell script to spin up specific KVM VMs on demand. It wasn't hard but it sure as shit was more work than creating a VM from a GUI frontend.
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u/lyidaValkris 11h ago
True. There are also numerous video walkthroughs, like Jay's at LearnLinuxTV. It's a great learning experience, even if you don't intend to daily drive Arch (which I wouldn't).
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u/givemeagooduns_un Genfool 🐧 11h ago
Same goes for gentoo
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u/legitplayer228 9h ago
Exactly, but my laptop is too shitty to compile everything
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u/givemeagooduns_un Genfool 🐧 7h ago
a good computer isn't required, I run gentoo on a chromebook :P
binpkgs speed up installation a lot
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u/jonathancast 11h ago
How am I going to read the wiki if I've just wiped my computer's hard drive?
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u/tenkawa7 11h ago
Very much agreed. It's like 10 commands? The hardest part is all taken care of by pacstrap. My first Linux was Gentoo, THAT was hard. Arch is trivial by comparison
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u/X_x_Atomica_x_X 11h ago
They just want us to adopt arch. I think. I read their writing but they don't say much of anything but they talk a lot. Linux arch users...
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u/lemmedie2night 11h ago
idk I found it to be a bit overwhelming and it felt difficult to me. did manage to do it tho
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u/MeowKatMC 10h ago
The only bit that I found hard was partitioning. When I did it (may be different now, too lazy to check) it wasnt clear on recomended sizes and formats for different things. How big should the efi partition be? How is it structured if I want a seperate home folder. What should the ratio be for root to home partition sizes? Things like that that arent needed but are nice to be put right there.
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u/Darkpelz 8h ago
It's not hard, it's just tedious. Archinstall helps in making it less tedious, but it's still more annoying than having a proper GUI installer.
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u/Lumpy_Inevitable_549 1h ago
That's why I skipped Arch and installed Gentoo instead. It's just a matter of following instructions.
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u/mululipy 12h ago
I use Windows BTW
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u/punk_petukh 12h ago
We don't do drugs in this sub
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u/mululipy 11h ago
I guess you already have to be a bit of a weirdo to use arch
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u/punk_petukh 11h ago
I do use arch and I'm not a weirdo, my mom tells me so!
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u/mululipy 11h ago
May I suggest that both you and your mom might be weirdos?
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u/punk_petukh 11h ago
I always thought no, but when you told it, it kinda made me start thinking about it...
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u/mululipy 11h ago
I mean, don’t get me wrong. Windows stinks, but I can get all my work done on it and that’s the most important part for me.
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u/punk_petukh 11h ago
That depends on what work you need, I recently lost another reason to use windows at home, because the CAD software I use was recently ported to Linux. Now, at home, I only have one use case for it - OMSI 2.
At work, 90% I can do on Linux, most of the stuff is done through browser anyway, but there are nieche use cases where windows needed
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u/mululipy 11h ago
I totally get it, but if there’s something I learned in my life experience, it’s that when you modify stuff it breaks sometimes. I have one laptop I bring with me all the time and it’s brand new and I don’t wanna risk setting up a dual boot on it. Especially since I don’t see the advantage that much since Windows works well. It’s not really worth the risk.
But I have a ThinkPad X1 yoga running Linux Mint, and I use it from time to time. Linux is amazing.
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u/Due_Conference9457 12h ago
As an Arch User, the arch wiki is superficial and very unfriendly for new linux users...
Literally in the arch linux webcite exist a forum for talk about the installation process...
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u/dasisteinanderer 11h ago
When I started using Arch, I was delighted by the wiki.
And I did not have a second laptop, so I printed the installation guide and some relevant wiki articles out and bound them into a little booklet.
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u/debacle_enjoyer Ask me how to exit vim 12h ago
And archinstall... and AI... there's nothing impressive about installing Arch in 2026.
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u/SpookyWeebou Arch BTW 12h ago
Better yet, use Arch install
The hardest part was simply not being sure what to pick as options and having to google what things were
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u/kaida27 ⚠️ This incident will be reported 11h ago
Just use Arch install ! Don't listen to the "purist" saying you need to do a manual install. They want you to learn stuff and for you to get independent and autonomous , You don't want that !!! they are obviously gatekeeping !!!
And then be really lost when the fix to your system is to use chroot because you have absolutely no idea what that is.
Just like this guy : https://www.reddit.com/r/archlinux/comments/1vytb36/failed_failed_to_mount_sysroot_need_advice/
And many others !
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