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[–] 41 points 2 months ago (28 children)

I like to ask Linux people "Would you recommend Arch for a newbie?" Not because I have any intention of using Arch, but their answer to that question helps me judge the quality of their advice going forward.

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  • [–] 22 points 2 months ago (4 children)

    It really depends on whether they're an enthusiast excited about it or they're just trying to ditch windows...

    9/10 times, no.

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  • [–] 13 points 2 months ago (3 children)

    And believe it or not, the 1/10 case: also no.

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  • [–] 16 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (8 children)

    I don't recommend things based on if people are new to it or not. I recommend things based on if they read and are willing to learn or not.

    If you don't read, arch is not a good distro for you.

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  • [–] 8 points 2 months ago (3 children)

    If you don't read, nothing is good for you, you'll kill all distros if you don't care and aren't willing to learn

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  • [–] 3 points 2 months ago* (2 children)

    Agreed. Also I would rather read the archwiki than loads of outdated faq posts when troubleshooting an issue.

    I guess a lot of accurate text is intimidating compared to a concise message that is very confident.

    I've also seen people just refuse to read an error message. I think this is from using Microsoft products that never have accurate error messages.

    Anyway, I hope people willing to learn try a whole bunch of things, and don't give up at the first problem because that is how you learn.

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  • [–] 12 points 2 months ago

    Eh, rolling release distros are great for gaming. I recommend it enthusiasts (noob or not) and gamers. If you just need a rock solid platform for a server or browsing the web / word processing then sure slap some Debian or Fedora on there and call it a day.

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  • [–] 9 points 2 months ago (5 children)

    Honestly, if you are new to Linux and are making the switch because you enjoy customisation and tinkering, a manual Arch install is the way to go. It's fun and you learn a lot, while still having a good OS.

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  • [–] 10 points 2 months ago* (2 children)

    Guys stop this nonsense. I spent 2 hours in wpa_supplicant trying to fix Wi-Fi because I missed a package containing regional wpa shit.

    You all vastly under estimate how quickly a novice may be overwhelmed.

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  • [–] 5 points 2 months ago (1 child)

    It's still a bad place to start. Go try a curated experience or two before you try building a system from the ground up.

    That also means you're less likely to end up with a final bloated system with 7 DEs, 16 shells, 4 file manager, and every piece of software installed that sounded cool because you wanted to try them all out.

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  • [–] 3 points 2 months ago (2 children)

    you can try it. i personally recommend you install it without the archinstall script once so that you learn a bit about how linux works, and if you dont want to learn so much stuff at once, either install it through archinstall or choose a different distro. you're probably going to learn some stuff once something breaks, though that could take a while

    of course though, i'd only say that to someone who shows a lot of enthusiasm for linux. if they simply don't want windows, i'd just recommend fedora

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  • [–] 7 points 2 months ago (1 child)

    I think it depends on how we define a newbie. No experience with linux at all? Hell, no. They'll likely fail and never touch it again. Someone who understands some basics and really wants to learn? Go ahead.

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  • [–] 3 points 2 months ago

    I recommend it for learning/entertainment/passtime - I don't see why anyone cant fuck with it on a vm or spare partition. Not for dependency though.

    But i generally recommend people strive for some degree of independence in most things, as a good fallback.

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