Why do people say arch derivatives are not for beginners?

Operating Systems & Open Source Linux
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I am still very new to Linux but lets do a quick recap. my first week of Linux was spent switching between different debian derivatives before settling with antergos/Manjaro depending on what ISO worked that month.
i have used either of those for about one and a half year and decided to check out Fedora to have on a backup laptop in case my main work laptop (featuring windows 10) decided to not play ball.

So far i with the AUR i had everything i could need easily in place to install and with a ton of good prepackaged tools+arch wiki i could do most things with little trouble. With Fedora i have had to jump to many more hoops to find programs to use, one of the first was understanding how CORP worked which was just a dumb thing i needed to understand, other than that i had to build more from source/from git. while this is not very hard, yaourt lets you do a search and mass install from the same window and i would call this mush easier. Yes a rolling release distro might not always work and all of that but i have found arch derivatives to just be easier to use.

I am still not very familiar with the way Fedora does things which is to be expected but i just wanted to hear more of why people say new Linux users shouldn’t pick arch derivatives because for me they have been a great way to become more familiar with Linux within a safe space of having everything needed close by.
(disclaimer i was more familiar with computers than most when i started with my use, which might factor into why i might have had relative ease with arch)

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TBH if I was teaching you what to start with and you wanted to go right to arch and that whole section of distros, I really wouldn’t be surprised. As long as you read the documentation and learn about it first you can use whatever the hell you want. But generally I tell people to start with Ubuntu or Fedora and have them fill the shell out like a hermit crab. Figure out how to use it just at basic and move up gradually from there. Some people get it in a week, some take months or years. But once they are comfy with the DE, the terminal, and then the idea that they can do everything they do in their DE in the terminal. Once that shit is opened up to them then they can do whatever the hell they want. They are a full on linux user then, and each system that one or another distro adds on is just one new thing to learn at a time, like the AUR for arch, or XBPS for Void.

To start at arch already isn’t a bad thing, but theres just so many tools to learn how to use first before you learn how the actual system works that you more or less become an ARCH user and not a LINUX user, or at least not a linux user for a long while. You’ll get there, of course, but not in the same 3-6 month period I would normally expect. Probably in a year, and by then Arch will have done some stupid shit that you can’t explain and you’ll want to switch off anyways.

That’s pretty much the reason.

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My first OS was DOS then to windows, Used Mac OS 6 - 9 and Mac OS X.
When I was using windows, I gave Linux a try did not like it went back to Windows, did this every two years till I started using Manjaro two years ago. Debian based Linux I find hard to use, there are a lot of reasons that Debian does not work for me. Tried Mint 4 different flavors Ubuntu 4 different flavors and still dropped them after a week. Tried Manjaro and that is the one I will stick with and recommend to anyone who wants to use Linux, Pacman command for me are easier to remember, and when you need help you get great help, not someone who sort of knows Ubuntu or mint giving you some sort of help. When you have a great OS and the user base is very helpful, then you it is easier to use. Then again this is the os that I like, and other people may find debian easier to use, I did not.

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Because many people like traditions and ubuntu is known as the “traditional linux beginner distro” Which many seem to like about it. I think ubuntu is garbage, compared to modern distros. Even more so when compared to manjaro, solus etc.

Ubuntu developers keep getting (great ideas) which is mostly annoying since they do something that changes half if not the whole experience, like they did with the unity etc.

You don’t have to know much about using manjaro for example, you can if you want, but you don’t have to. Take it in the pace you want or don’t. That’s what’s awesome about it.

Most “people out there” recommend whatever they use, instead of looking broader, community-support-modern-wise. Will recommend either manjaro or solus in 2018, xfce or mate for the lightweights or budgie & gnome for the heavy

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I totally agree that Antergos and Manjaro are perfectly good choices for a starter distro.

The main disadvantage I can see is that the Arch community can be quite elitist. And although the Arch wiki is very comprehensive, there will probably come a time where you need to ask for help. I have seen many people ask for help in the Arch forums and have simple been told to “piss off” because Antergos/Manjaro isn’t pure Arch.

Of course Antergos and Majaro both have their own community forums, but they aren’t as active.

On the other hand the Ubuntu community are much more understanding.

Just my experience anyway

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I am still a bit new to Linux myself and I started with Arch and I can say it wasn’t the best experience, but Antergos/Manjaro take the only “hard” part of Arch away. The AUR and minimal install of Arch is the only reason i use it. I think that people recommend Ubuntu, Mint, and Fedora (etc.) because learning their package managers are more useful in production. In IT jobs and in computer science it is much more common to see those distros, so learning how their package managers and software works is more useful at first than knowing the deeper configuration parts. The other large reason is because they have been around for a long time and have lots of backing. Fedora and Ubuntu are not going anywhere so it seems and are used widely in production.

The worst part of using Arch is the mentality surrounding it and the community can be toxic (but all can be). For whatever reason a few Arch users ( not all most are cool people) think that learning to partition drives and run some commands somehow makes them “better” or “elite”. Outside the Arch community a few (once again very few but vocal people) people question why anyone would use Arch assuming that even if you are not an arch elitist that you are one and that any reason to use Arch is just to be a Linux hipster.

TL;DR
Community/mentality behind Arch, Usefulness in production and backing/age. From my option still new to Linux, but this is what I have seen in the last year or so.

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7

The main reason is it would be built from scratch, not from Antergos/Manjaro GUI install. Also Arch updates and can break a lot of stuff. Every time you run pacman it could break. I think about changing all the time. Being an administrator I sometime get to the point were I just want it to work without having to work.

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The main reason why manny Linux people dont recommend Arch,
or some of its derivatives to new users is very obvious.
Arch is a rolling release distribution, and with rollings release you also get the latest bugs.
Arch based distribution have a much larger risk of fails and breaks.
And most new users arent tech savy and familier enough yet with Linux to deal with that crap.
Thats the main reason why allot of the experienced Linux users,
recommend something that is based on LTS release model like Ubuntu.
Because its less likelly to fail, and the support on the Ubuntu side of things is massive.

Arch and their derivatives definitelly have their strong points aswell.
The AUR is the shining star wenn it comes to finding software packages.
But it is also its downfall, because the AUR isnt maintained that well,
as official repositories.
So its even more likelly that a package could do harm to a system.
Arch and their derivatives are simply more geared towards experienced users, who know what they are doing and looking for, wenn it comes to packages and stuff.
I know that Manjaro makes Arch allot easier for newer less experianced users.
But still, Manjaro has a fairlly chance of breaking, and it will.

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9

Manjaro is a rolling release, but it does not mean you have to update the moment an update comes out. You can take the time to read the forums and see what will break and decide to wait for an update. Or you can take every update that comes out and see what breaks, ask question on forums on how to fix the break, then see if you can fix it. I found that there was more learn on Manjaro, some frustrating but for the most part an education that has helped me understand linux better.
For me bashing my head against a problem and learning how to fix it is kind of fun, and if that means you have to bash your ways into an elites group to get the job done so be it. For the most part I ask my questions on this forum and for the most part do not get much elites here.
And for me Pacman commands work, reminds me of DOS commands. Did not learn the commands for Ubuntu, they where to long and after miss typing the line three times, you just learn to copy and paste what ever commands you learn, and there fore learn not much. Then packet managers their is one big mess on the Ubuntu / Debian side. Not even an amazing video could help them fix that. I watch 3 10 min videos on Manjaro did the install, and understood what was going on with the packet manager and Pacman commands, enough to build on that info and get it to work for me. Now if I coulld get Manjaros packet manager and Pacman commands on Debian then I would say that Debian is more beginner friendly. Working with DOS for years might be where my bias comes from, but that’s why we have many flavors of linux.
Most of all this forum is one of the reasons I learned about Manjaro and many thanks to the people here that do suggest it as an option. Would not try Arch because it is more then I want to spend on a OS, but I am thankful that is was made because we would not have Manjaro. Now we just need a distro that takes the best of Debian and the best of Arch and puts them together.
Have a day

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10

Thanks for all the responses and i am sorry for not coming back earlier, i love using arch distros. I still just tell people to check out your ubuntus or mints depending on who i am talking to and what type of UI they are used to because that is the general consensus. i do think that an important thing to do if you are going to recommend arch based distributions that they are willing to learn. i am sure it has GUI tools but i didn’t really touch them much or if i did i normally would just install mate control panel, so right from the start i set out to figure out how to use this command line which i have always been told is a scary place which could break your computer.

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I agree it really is a personal thing, and it highlly depends on the users,
basic skills and knowledge.
Arch, Manjaro, OB revange or Antergos are definitelly cool distributions.
And if the user has some basic level of skills, then they will probablly figure it all out pretty quicklly.
Arch and its derivates are definitelly not bad distro´s.
They just serve a certain nicé of users, with some base knowledge.

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12

If you give someone a PC with Linux on it and they have a problem they are not gonna post a question, they will call you or ask you at work.
I learned the hard way that people with an MS-DOS machine will look at format.exe and say “I wounder what that does?”
Nowadays no one at work knows I like computers, and they never will :slight_smile:

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13

My experience with arch was tried two times and over many months I found X broken and stuck at a console.

Now if I had a second PC to google craft my way out of stuck at console I could have dealt with it.

But I did not so arch after 2 times punching me to console. Got ditched. Now at the same time of switching to linux I saw AMD putting out code. So I bought and AMD GPU…one year later and AMD CPU and Fedora with my meddling has never dropped me out of gnome in 2 years. I have always been able to google answers on the PC with problems. Thats is a thing.

If you want to go into gentoo or arch and have a backup screen to google answers to why its broken then sure. If on a solo PC you need something reliable.

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14

Theres nothing wrong with Arch derivatives at all, as long as they work its still arch, Manjaro lags behind a little compared to say Antergos but its still fine.
The idea of it not being for beginners is because its a manual install, if a beginner wants to do it they should go for it they will learn a lot just don’t comment on the arch forums as they can be a bit elitist there.
If you want to use an alternate arch go for it and enjoy, don’t let others dictate your choice, they should only help and advise.

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The reason people do not recommend, Arch Derivatives (aka Arch-Based Distros) is because Arch Linux in general as a distro is Rolling Release.(Though realistically… more closer to Bleeding Edge, than Rolling Release) and packages tend to be more buggy or just plain broken compared to other distros like Fedora, Ubuntu and Debian.

However what separates Arch Linux and something like Manjaro and Antergos is the maintainers. they both use the same package manager, though some maintainers will release updates faster than others. Manjaro could be running Kernel 4.16.3 while Antergos could be running 4.16.2. however usually both will be up to date within a week or two.

I will argue, Arch Linux period has the easiest package manager to learn though. which is one reason to use it. but overall at the end of the day they are all “the same crap”. the exception being that Arch must be built manually as apposed to Manjaro and Antergos, which gives you a nice little installer for you.

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A big reason (and this is why i don’t even run, or hold much interest in arch, despite using Linux on and off since 1996) is that any sort of commercial software you find will be packaged for:

Ubuntu LTS
RHEL
CentOS
or
Fedora

pretty much in that order of likelyhood.
Could you get product X to run on Arch? Probably. Will it work out of the box with the instructions from the software vendor? Maybe not.

All the linux operating system derivatives are pretty friendly these days (for the packages included in the distro), what i look for is what will run the apps i need (some/many of which are outside of the distribution’s packages). And thats why at work, i’m currently on Ubuntu (fedora at home) - because it is an officially supported platform for VMware Workstation (both for local virtual machines and management of ESXi/vCenter), etc.

I ran Redhat (before RHEL) and Debian (Before ubuntu existed) for years along with slackware and a bunch of others. So i don’t choose ubuntu out of lack of confidence with the platform. It’s just simply the path of least resistance for my well supported work-desktop hardware. I can spend less time wrangling with software to get it installed and working and more time actually doing my job.

If you’re a beginner and really looking to get your hands dirty to learn by doing - sure, Arch or another less mainstream distro is perhaps appropriate. But if you just want to get things working with a minimum of fuss in order to lessen the transition pain, Ubuntu is probably the easiest way to go as a beginner.

That said, if you have more bleeding edge hardware, i’d definitely suggest Fedora over ubuntu LTS in general, as Fedora gets support for new hardware in the official repository much more quickly.

TLDR: my suggestion for Ubuntu would be purely political/3rd party support rather than technical (i.e., distro X is technically better than Ubuntu, etc.). Don’t care if distro X is 3 milliseconds faster at whatever task when i waste time even googling whether or not an application i need that is officially supported on ubuntu or fedora will work on it.

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17

See, that’s all well and good, but as a beginner who just expects stuff to work with as little hassle as possible, and doesn’t want to be diagnosing random application breakage that may or may not be due to their administration of the device, that’s just a pain in the ass. Also as a beginner, you probably have no idea what update(s) are likely to break your machine in the first place, or what updates are even to be considered “risky”.

Sure, it might help you learn how to troubleshoot the platform, but it results in you spending less time actually getting whatever it is you want to do with your PC done.

I’m not saying that no beginner should ever run something like Arch or Gentoo or whatever other non-mainstream distro - just be aware that as above, rolling release tends to break stuff, and if you can’t get a third party program to work on it, you’re going to need to do at least some of the legwork yourself.

If you were to say, call VMware support for example to troubleshoot why VM workstation broke on Arch or Mint or whatever, they’d just say “sorry, that isn’t a supported platform” and you’d be off to internet forums or IRC and waiting some indeterminate amount of time before you can get a working solution.

edit:
I say this as someone who started on slackware 3.1 and compiled his own kernels, etc. to get sound cards, etc. to work… sure you can learn at lot, but compiling software, etc. is just grunt work that someone else is already doing. Better to spend your time doing less wheel reinvention and put your efforts into something more productive (imho).

Also as an aside. Back in the dark ages, with X11R6 (XFree86 - pre x.org - pre video driver detection, screen/input device setup, etc. - had to manually hack the config files) and dial up connections, getting a working X11 session with a Window manager that didn’t suck hard (e.g., not TWM or FVWM out of the box) and Netscape working over dial-up was a several day mission as a beginner. But we didn’t have to worry about third party commercial software breaking, because there wasn’t any outside of Netscape Navigator :stuck_out_tongue: You kids have it easy :smiley:

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No idea. Manjaro has a few GUI programs that make it really easy for n00bs, way easier than Ubuntu in my mind. And whenever I tried to run Ubuntu or Debian it shot itself in the foot. Never had that on Manjaro.

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Manjaro is the only Arch based distribution that i personally like.
However unlike you, i did not really had all the best of luck with it.
From my personal experiance with it, wenn freshlly installed it runs pretty nice for a couple of weeks.
And then it slowlly starts to show its issues, like updates breaking the gui and all sorts of things.
And i think that since the change on the head development team it only became worse.
I know that manny of those issues are related to an untrustworthy gui update manager like pamac and octopi.
And that its certainlly better to use the terminal to install the updates.
However this is not something that a general beginner user with not much knowledge would feel comfortable about i guess.
And that is one of the reasons why i personally would not recommend Manjaro for beginners.
Allthough Manjaro basiclly tries to mimmick Ubuntu in terms of making Arch more open and toutchable to new users.
Like Ubuntu basiclly does to Debian.
And at some degree they definitelly accomplish that approach.
But still they need to do some more checking on the Arch packages before rolling them out.

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I am using pamac for everything. Works great for me.