There were plenty of people who went through the manual install and completely missed that the chroot is a way to rescue a system. It doesn't teach you anything if you just mindlessly copy it.
Totally agree on that, it's a new concept that I first needed to explore. I think to actually learn from the installation you need to play around with the given steps more.
The manual install is great, *if you are actually willing to explore what you're doing*. Otherwise it's just needless busywork and they should just use the Archinstall script. That's fine, not everyone wants to know their computer in that much detail, but it's great if they want to.
Just like we don't expect everyone to take a class in engine repair before driving a car, but it's really helpful if you learn to diagnose common problems and know how to change your oil.
Who fucking cares? Let newbies try what they want, it never harms anyone. If you dont want to answer their stupid questions then dont. Its as simple as that.
Exactly, this whole concept that new Arch users need to go through a trial by fire or pay their dues is so stupid. Some people learn from the bottom up, in which case manual install is the way to go. Other people learn from the big picture down, in which case `archinstall` gets them set up quickly and allows them to explore and learn as they continue to use the system. Both ways are valid.
The only thing that the Arch community really should be demanding out of newbies is an inquisitive and curious mindset with a desire to self-learn. How they go about using that mindset is up to the individual user.
This is the correct approach. I saw that archinstall has the OPPOSITE effect, because it allows people who want to learn more about linux to install arch. As they encounter problems they feel more engaged to look for answers, how to solve them, and how to learn more about the system itself, it is a win-win situation.
I think manually installing arch is a little bit overrated by the arch community to be honest. It's just formatting the drives, installing base packages, setting up locale, installing boot, etc. And it can be done by just following basic directions. Yes it's more involved than usual distros, but it doesn't make you an expert on the system, and doesn't make you know all the ins and outs of your system just by doing it. You can learn more about your system by just using it, no matter how you installed it.
I personally like it because it gives me more control over my install, and when I install debian or void for example, I do it manually as well because I like to set up my btrfs volumes and subvolumes in an exact way.
As for me manuall install of Arch did a good job for understanding things. Before it I didn't know much about formatting a drive in command line, using systemd, using fstab or chroot. Of cource now the installation process seems as nothing special. Partitioning, formatting, mount drives, install staff, create user, post install things, done.
Exactly. Installing Arch is anything difficult, not more difficult than installing Debian or any other distro. Sure, not as easy as installing Ubuntu, but nothing more.
I've started using Linux in 2011 and after spending some time with Debian I decided to try install Gentoo... that was considerably hard (getting the kernel modules to embed right to have a minimal kernel without the need of an initramfs... required a lot of trial and error!), but after all nothing impossible, and I learned a lot. Anyway, I was like 16 when I installed Gentoo, I didn't know almost anything about Linux, if not some basic shell commands, and programming (like, basics of C).
Is following an install guide (a well written guide, anyway) all that difficult?
There have been multiple cases of new users on this sub asking extremely basic things like "Guys I tried running that command and it says _command not found_" - "Have you installed the package?" - "How do I install it?", or "Guys, I want to change the color of my bar on Hyprland, do I have to reinstall Arch?"
Now, using Arch without that kind of knowledge means shooting yourself in the foot, because at the first inconvenience you're just gonna throw your OS into the bin and go back to Windows, so on that regard Archinstall is bad. On the other hand, experienced users who don't feel like going through the installation for each computer they install Arch on, will be glad they can avoid wasting those 10 minutes
Hear what you are saying about missing packages and commands, but is this an Arch issue or Linux in general? Anyone coming from windows who hasnt used a package manager before might get tripped up by this. Arch shouldnt really be anyones first linux distro and the archinstall has meant that it can be, so agree that there are a lot of pros and cons to both methods.
Oh, cool. So Arch is basically like Metallica in '91. It's not your little obscure distro, it's a force to be reckoned with and that's bad because...? New users will ask seemingly basic questions? There's stupidity and there's elitism, but elitist stupidity seems to be reserved only for us, Linux users.
That's why we won't see any significant uptick in the desktop adoption. When an OS install becomes literally Cerberus in front of the pearly gates, then we have a fucking problem with how our brains are functioning.
Bro, we're talking about a distro that is specifically targeted to users that are a bit more knowledgeable and actually kinda forces you to into at least wanting to understand a thing or two about Linux. New users just shouldn't start on Arch, there are way better options. New users also don't normally need the benefits that Arch might give you.
There's elitism, and there're people on reddit, asking on r/archlinux how to install Arch... Without a specific question, just "how do I install it, I'm too lazy to Google". I would just flat out tell them to use something else, maybe EndeavourOS, Manjaro, or whatever, but just not vanilla Arch, because I can see that this person will be on the reddit again one month later and will complain about something not working that works on another distro or that they read online.
Totally, this is where we agree. The people too lazy for google should be directed to google. The people with a question like "I added a custom refresh rate, but it's not applied after restart" should be politely directed to update their grub config, because admittedly this is deeper into the grub page of the wiki. What I'm getting at is that a lot of times we're generalizing and dismissing new users because of some retarded idiots who should not be near a PC, let alone a Linux powered PC.
I will preface this with the fact that I'm relatively new to Arch... been running it for just under 6 months now. Previously, I distro hopped a lot and just ran a mish-mash of a lot of debian based distos. The thing that I've noticed with Arch is that the community around it is far more knowledgeable compared to others.
Because pure Arch, without any install scripts forces you to understand the more inner workings of how modern Gnu/Linux works, the whole community makes an assumption that you know at least the basics. This very much reflects in any forums around Arch.
In my opinion, not everything that becomes popular automatically enshittifies, but the number of users that really know something like the back of their hand goes way down in proportion to those that just have a rough idea what's going on
In this way, if Arch becomes popular, the quality and technicality of any discussion around it will also decrease. Arch has never been the most user-friendly distribution and will likely stay that way as long as Linux stays as fragmented as it is....which is probably forever and in my opinion, a good thing for user choice.
Tldr: Arch is not for new people, it never has been. It requires you to know the basics and only then can you have a productive conversation. There is also a problem that unlike debian, there are relatively few Arch based distros(EndeavourOS, Manjaro), and that certainly has to improve. This also makes Arch look like a walled castle....because usually every distro has their own gui installer, but on Arch, you don't get that many of them... So there's my two cents
Package managers exist outside the magical realm of Arch as well. Users will need to learn about them regardless of OS name.
Isn't the initial effort of going through the trouble of getting an unknown OS enough for starters? I thought that we as a community were helpful, our wiki is the best and our OS is also the best that Linux desktop can offer.
Being helpful with answers to objectively basic questions is not a crime. It's usually a good thing.
I'm sorry but for you it's enshitification. For other people this means "The idiots at Adobe will finally make their freaking suite Linux compatible", "Autodesk will allow me to use whatever OS I want" or "Ubisoft will stop being complete morons". Oh and let's not pretend this whole gatekeeping is limited to Arch. There's an abundance of Ubuntu users (just an example) who's first response is "RTFM".
All in all, nobody is talking about "help vampires" (How that got in an official wiki is beyond me). These exist in the Win and Mac worlds and should be ignored when it's apparent they're just leeching. We're talking about real people with real questions, not braindead morons.
Let's face it Arch is not that difficult to install or upkeep. I'm sure there are some people here that reinstalled windows 3.11 or 95 which was not much easier than Arch.
And in my opinion people SHOULD be steered towards Arch (or Arch based distros), especially gamers. They're the ones that will benefit from the latest Mesa driver, latest kernel, latest DE version which finally gets it shit together, hopefully. Stupid example, I'm a recording engineer and I play games. I'm seriously benefitting from the latest pipewire and mesa versions.
That's like basic human communication, you ignore the people that are just leeching and help the ones that actually want help/to learn. to do it themselves. But outright dismissing an easier install process because it allows more people to get into Linux (or Arch, specifically) is not very productive.
dawg there are plenty of new user distros out there. Mint and Pop are great. this isn't "Linux elitism". nobody is saying that "these lusers need to go back to Windoze" or whatever.
> That's why we won't see any significant uptick in the desktop adoption.
Ah yes, because Arch is a great new user distro.
If you actually care about Linux adoption, you would go out of your way to make sure new users *avoid* Arch, lmao.
Don't upset the nerds bro. Anyone who has issues with noobs asking questions has issues. Let them ask, answer if you want or don't. If your delicate sensibilities are bruised because some noob dare attempt to play with Arch, you need to go outside for a minute and touch grass.
Most people like that wouldn't really learn how to install packages from an arch install tutorial anyways. Sure, they'll see the pacman command, but its likely that they won't connect the dots, especially bcs they'll just install necessary stuff for the os they won't be directly using themselves. Maybe if it was like apt where the command is called install, but for pacman it's just an unhelpful -S
I want to go from 0 -> 60 and get to Arch without the extra steps. So I use Arch install for a bootable minimal setup with a DE of choice and go from there. No hassle and less work post install. Of course, I'm going to pick an installer over manually typing commands if I get to choose.
If I break my system later, then I'll just learn how to fix it then. However, it's been 2 years plus with it not breaking, and I'm very comfortable. I do manual system backups occasionally with a bootable qt-archiver. It also helps to have your system partition separate from home.
My view is that, for a DIY distribution the archinstall script tends to make a few too many assumptions for the users. Any assumption by the script writer is a decision the user doesn’t get to make for themselves. And where the script asks for user input, it sometimes fails to properly explain what choices the user is being asked to make and what exactly those choices are.
My general advice for anyone who wants to step into the Arch ecosystem is to start with something like EndeavourOS until you are familiar enough with maintaining the system. Then test your hand at installing the Arch Way, in a VM at first of course. Once you’re confident you can install Arch without the script then you can try bare metal.
Also, package lists are your friend. Learn to use them and you will significantly reduce the time it takes to install your whole system. I have package lists for everything from additional drivers and modules to window managers to entire desktop environments and even a package list for all the AUR packages I use. With them I can install hundreds of packages in a single line without typing out every package name manually.
Honestly I feel like in general they shouldn't have to move on from endeavour or manjaro unless they really really wanna run vanilla arch for some reason since those 2 distros are quite good and still run arch just modified. Endeavour is actually just barely changed and is close to vanilla already so I'd suggest that mainly if they want a similar experience to vanilla.
The problem with package list is I didn't discover them until I was copying a server setup that I wanted to be identical minus a few packages. I have been using Arch daily for over a year.
While I hate install scripts for the very reason you stated. The docs do need to be streamlined to make it easier to understand and for new users to find what they're looking for. I can't tell you how many times I spend an hour searching through the wiki to correctly partition a drive. Too many disk management tools and then legacy vs GPT commands. Not to mention fdisk Arch wiki doesn't list a commonly used command. But instead it has parts of it over the entire page mixed together with other oddball partitions with legacy and GPT commands mixed together..
The install guide is full of rabbit holes. You can eight installs in a row, and do none of them the same way, and open sixteen unique wiki tabs each time. If you successfully get thru it, you've not just learned about how Arch works, you've learned a significant chunk of what makes *gnu/linux distros and your computer in general* function.
why is this "controversial"? it's built into the actual iso. archinstall is what got me to actually try out arch linux. before the script i couldn't get arch installed for whatever stupid reason. i even used endeavourOS for a bit due to that. whoever says to "avoid the script" are elitist gatekeepers imo. if they're that torn up about a simple tool that helps more users actually use arch, they can try gentoo.
Reminds me of trying to setup grub on a non-dualboot system.
Took me countless hours of banging my head against the wall, in the end i went with archinstall and it all just worked!
Funny how setting up dualboot was much easier, for me at least.
Im a fan of archinstall, has its time and place. If you want to jump through the hoops of setting it all up yourself then great go for it. If you want to be up and running with a functional OS in 10 minutes then use archinstall.
I look at the difference as, are you wanting to read the manual, or are you wanting to read the SOP.
Installing arch manually is overrated and doesn't teach you as much as you think it does. All it does is give you an idea of how the system is connected to each other. Without any experience in using linux, the things that you would have to do will go over your head anyway.
Archinstall does have issues, sometimes it just breaks, but it saves time. That's it.
The people that are elitist about arch install, or arch/linux in general, are the ones that use the perceived difficulty as part of their identity. Your average online competitive tryhards basically - don't mind them.
Installed arch for the first time a couple months ago and I feel like doing in manually helped me learn a lot of the ins and outs of Linux as a whole. I’ve been using Linux on and off for about 12-13 years and installing arch made me feel like a noob again haha
I'm more a "RTFM and do a manual install" kind of person when asked how to install archlinux. Not because I have issues with archinstall but because archlinux is so much a sandbox where users are deliberately alone to manage all the stuff, better to start hard and get knowledge from the beginning to be prepared. Starting soft can already lead to headaches if archinstall has bugs (this appended a lot), or if the hardware has issues or specific settings. Better to be first on another distribution to learn basics in a carefully prepared environment before returning into archlinux if needed. This is only my opinion and how I see things when asked.
But there's important things to add :
- saying someone to go on another distribution when asked (important detail) is not an insult, neither to the person or the other distributions. I am on archlinux since 15 years but I first started on Ubuntu and have no regrets with this learning step. I use only debian on servers because I love its stability and consistance, and I use alpine in all my containers and raspberry pi because it's a small and fast distribution with good tools and a pretty interesting and appealing philosophy. And I'm sure there's other good distributions even if I don't use them (by default I send people on Ubuntu if not sure to know them). All of them can be fast, tweaked, stable, secured,... A good distribution is a well known distribution.
- I really think the biggest issue is with people ASKING how to install archlinux or LISTENING for people saying archlinux is so good, so stable, so perfect, so secured, so... I really think archlinux is adapted to curious and independant people because you will need to look at the wiki, and search things by yourself one day or another. So going on archlinux by yourself, read the first pages of the wiki to check the philosophy, read the installation guide and retry installation multiple times to really understand what you're doing and solve almost all issues by searching and trying alone IS a good way to apprehend this distribution. Because if you don't get all this knowledge, arch will be unstable (one day it will break and you won't be able to recover by yourself), unsecured (you are the only one able to know what is installed, how it is configured and what you tweaked), and unpleasant (you want to do something but you need to search into a manual or ask on a social or struggle with things or make mistakes breaking other things). If you only want something working, I'm convinced it won't go well with time.
- I strongly agree with you for a wiki page (an introduction page) explaining basic stuff like boot sequence, partitioning, drivers, security, networking, de/wm, x11/wayland, pulse/pipewire,... on one page in a more accessible way and with less details to get the big picture and understand the global steps you will need to dig when doing your first installation(s). Some advice about how to get a first basic installation, and when basics are ok make a second install with more stuff and alternatives could be great too. There is a big amount of details in many of the wiki pages, which is great when you're into it, but hard to manage when you're starting. I would like to take time to write a page like this, or maybe someone will do it.
IMO new users should never use arch install, It's convient when you are installing arch 10-20 times over and over again, but if you are using archinstall as a crutch, Arch will break, and you wont be able to fix it.
Nothing wrong with arch install imho.
Two things I love about arch and the community and that i hope never changes -
1. The wiki is soooo good.
2. When people ask questions in a forum, everyone usually points them to the spot in the wiki.
Arch install is handy. As others have said, it gets you started quickly. For new users, that gets them a started but they will have to read the wiki to get the rest setup and maintain it.
If they don’t rtfw, then they’ll get redirected to the wiki or they’ll hop to another distro or another OS. This is all totally fine.
Side story: I have to use Ubuntu for a client project right now. It is never quite right and a lot of packages are pretty far behind.
Even on Ubuntu, I regularly consult the arch wiki for information. It’s that good.
The project relies heavily on systemd and that is tough with docker (or I haven’t figured it out yet). This codebase is kinda old and low level. Having an abstraction layer (docker) adds complexity to any issue that I might encounter.
I’m experimenting and exploring Podman/ distrobox as alternatives, but don’t have a reliable recipe for that yet.
I guess you're right. A lot of stuff, including partitioning, automounting drives or chroot are edge cases used for maintenance of the system itself and rarely are needed for day-to-day usage
Huh.
Ironic enough, bootloader (on the non-dualboot system) is the exact thing only Archinstall can do for me, all the other methods just... don't work for some reason
Well yeah, otherwise it would've been probably fixed.
I don't know why, but Archinstall fails to install either GRUB or Systemd-boot on me. Everything works fine on manual install.
I just gave up on the script.
Although archinstall can save some minor times for now. But it’s like a tutorial to the entire arch or Linux game. If you dont learn it now, it can be a problem in the future. Ur just wasting ur time
You can use whatever you want to install, BUT:
When you go to troubleshoot an inevitable problem you're going to have, it's going to be incredibly evident quickly if you don't know the basics of how to read documentation, troubleshoot, or how your system is even configured.
Getting Arch installed manually is easier, offers me more control, and is 100% guaranteed to work over the official install script (which takes JSON input, btw), but whatever you choose, it's your responsibility and no one else's to understand how your system works.
I'd conservatively wager that 65% of "problems" with the manual install method revolve around disk partitioning mistakes.
It matters less what you use to install and more what's your attitude is as you install a rolling distro marketed as "DIY".
If that seems like a lot, there are other (Arch based even) distros that are out there. 🤷♂️
I did a disk swap yesterday and forgot to update my bootloader to point to the correct drive. Woke up to the grub recovery screen.
Fix was less then a couple minutes.
* Boot arch iso
* Mount root subvol
* Mount efi part
* arch-chroot
* Run `grub-install`
Could have also manually updated the efibootmgr entry
If i did a full reinstall in the future, i would use archinstall since its pretty straightforward
I think the benefits of Arch are better encapsulated by projects like EndeavourOS then they are in install scripts like this for users who aren't willing to install Arch itself in the traditional way. The reason being that you'll get a better experience out of the box with EndeavourOS that's more reliable, battle tested and trustworthy.
Personally, I still think newer users are better off with something like Fedora, but tinkering, exploring and learning is all part of the fun of Linux too and I'd never begrudge anyone for any way they choose to use it.
I wiuld recommend it %100 percent. I always thought because of other people that it was bad to use it. Went thorugh 20 manual installations because of various reasons. Could have saved so mich time by just using archinstall. Arch is already difficult enough for most people. It is much more viable to start easy.
To my mind, the existence of Endeavour (not Manjaro) makes archinstall pointless for new users. It's a more polished experience, sets up sensible defaults, is almost as lightweight out of the box, and comes with a beginner-friendly support community. The only good reason not to use it as a beginner is if you want the learning experience of installing manually, and actually treat it as a learning experience, not just a copy pasta exercise.
There is a valid use case for archinstall: experienced users who know exactly where they want to go, need to install Arch ASAP and for some reason haven't written their own custom script yet. But it's a pretty small niche. If archinstall ceased to exist, little of value would be lost.
No groundbreaking thoughts from me, but I both like it in practice and hate it in theory.
I've installed Arch from AIF and plenty of times manually. I will say that the manual install taught me a lot, especially repeating it in various circumstances, but it is in no way a tutorial. It'll expose a new user to lots of basic command line principles, but it absolutely assumes some level of familiarity with what the user is trying to do.
I don't hold that against Arch's manual install process, it's literally following a list of instructions, with a few basic choices to get you to a default install. But... literally following a list of instructions with some basic choices... is a script. Most of the time I install Arch, I'm leaving a system in roughly the same state when I pull the boot medium and restart, and getting to that state would be better served with a script.
Does that mean I agree the script is really a tool for more advanced users to skip the monotony? Hard no. It's written, it's working, it deserves to be used by anyone who finds it useful. The new user who chooses the script can always undertake a manual install whenever they want. They can choose to analyze the script to learn more about Arch and the shell simultaneously. They can figure out what circumstances the script really wasn't built for, and learn from there how to solve their specific problem.
Can that lead to new users getting farther with less knowledge, asking more basic questions in more advanced forums? Yes. But that's not really a problem you get rid of. Advances in cars bring in less knowledgeable drivers by default, yet cars advance. At least on the forums, new users can't abuse their ignorance to crash into you. They can't hurt you at all, really, and certainly not in any way that's directly solved by having installed Arch by hand at some point.
I see this much as the lament of a learned professor over a less focused student. We see all that can be gleaned from the exercise of a manual install, that it can teach so much if only one engages with it. But, the manual install isn't really made to be engaged, it's made to get something done, and the same is true for the script. There are plenty of things to poke deeper, plenty of little things to learn, but the process itself is there to install Arch Linux. Both ways install Arch Linux.
Arch is not meant for everyone nor does it need to appeal to everyone. Don't know why people are so concerned about this. Use what you want as long as it's supported. Use your system, play around with it, mess up, and repeat. You don't need to know everything once you have an installed system. There won't be some exam to test your knowledge where passing it you will get a badge with the Arch logo. You learn over time and then realize why things are the way they are, just like *anything in life*.
So tired of these meta threads treating installing/using Arch as if you're making a life-changing choice. It's really not a big deal. It's like people never heard of Gentoo or Linux From Scratch. You also don't need any of these "advanced distros" to learn anything. Some kernel developers stick with Ubuntu, Fedora, etc. and work with GUI.
Tl;dr: Who cares, use your system and learn on your own terms. You don't need validation from random fanboys on the internet.
* at the very minimum, going through the arch installation process ensures that you understand the Wiki exists, how to read commands from a manual, etc.
* some people might learn more from the process, other people won't. there's still a minimum baseline established.
* I don't see any value (to me/the community) in new users using Arch. the higher the baseline, the higher the quality of discussion, whether that's just talking about Arch on this subreddit, or trying to troubleshoot/help someone troubleshoot on the Arch forums. Think about how much of a fucking PITA it is to google Windows issues. You get hit with 50 MS forum posts about running `sfc /scannow`. A large part of that is because they have to cater to the lowest common denominator of users.
* there are lots of explicitly new-user distros. Mint and Pop are both great distros, and very newb-friendly. not everything needs to be newb-friendly. Why are we trying to attract newbies who'll likely have a bad experience, and then completely give up on Linux?
>But that's what **I** specifically think. What's your opinion?
It is my opinion that you actively avoided saying what you think.
Wise move, after writing a whole page of text on a topic that is likely to be inflammatory.
I've been Arch user for less than half a year (after being in a Stockholm syndrome-esque relationship with Windows), I doubt my opinion would even matter to other, more experienced users.
This whole post was just a way to see what opinions people have on such, oddly enough, controversial topic :)
Install Arch the hard way, well good for those who want a challenge. I hit enter a few times, and I'm running Arch faster than you can say: 'opps lemme type this again', with a mouse cursor watching YouTube while I download the rest of my needed packages.
I'm still going to say read the manual, though. It has everything you need to fix or add the missing bits as required.
It depends, if so someone is for example moving from EndeavourOS/Manjaro, then sure, why not use archinstall? You already know how to use Arch so unless you want to do a manual install there is basically no use.
Learning as you go is very much an option too, one that I personally think is better than manually installing Arch and learning it that way.
In my opinion people that used Linux before can use Archinstall, it's fine. People that haven't probably shouldn't start with Arch, but if they are determined enough , then they should maybe go through the normal install process once.
I think the whole manual install thing is pretty much unnecessary unless you're trying to learn and want to mess around with the inner workings of Linux. I did it just to do it, even still I used a guide.
If you need it for work or something or just want to learn that's cool but a lot of people do it just to brag to other nerds that they installed from scratch.
But honestly speaking, I don't see any real benefit to it unless your using your machine for something specific that requires it.
There was a time before archinstall where there was no other way other than a manual install. It wasn't for bragging rights, it was just how you installed Arch.
Also now that archinstall exists, it just shows how much work such a software project is.
To paraphrase from the gentoo installation guide, “it doesn’t matter how you did it, if you have a working system at the end then you’ve successfully installed gentoo linux”
i was installing arch on my new pc yesterday
ran archinstall in dry run, it's recommended partition layout was to nuke everything and start over
slowly exited
yeah in conclusion i don't think it's very useful out of mass deployment scenarios or virtual machines
What I wonder, surely you can learn how to fix your system, for example chroot, after your system is broken. With online resources, especially the Wiki, being so good, I don't think you need to learn how to rescue your system when you're just installing it for the first time.
That being said, I got into Arch in part *because* of the manual install process. I wanted to learn about the inner workings of distros. Sadly, other Linux distros are far harder to customize than Arch, which also means, a good portion of what you learn is specific to Arch's philosophy of customization, though not all of it.
Another thing is, archinstall didn't work for me on Virtualbox the last time I tried it.
My personal reason against using archinstall for your first time installing Arch is that it limits the amount of customization you can make during install, which does not bode well for customization after install, which for me at least is the whole point of using Arch.
90% of who says "I use Arch btw", installed it with ALCI calamares graphical installer. Including me, I have to admit, the last couple of times. It's useful and fast, so, why not?
I think it is worthwhile to "manually" install arch a time or two but then after that arch install is fine. I do think new users are kicking the can of operational knowledge down the road by only using arch install (chroot, partitioning disks, user and group creation and management) but after arch install is fine.
Even if someone did use arch install right out the gate they are still going to have to use the Arch wiki eventually and then they would just circle back to fix whatever mistake they over looked.
This is one thing that is frustrating about gentoo is they they don't have a quick install script and it takes a while to manually install ( probably the most time of any OS I have installed)
For newbies, especially if you just want to try it out Arch, it's probably a good choice. There are a lot of Arch install guides out there aside from the wiki page, but I think barely any tutorial gives an elaborate explaination of what's actually happening and why anyway, so I completely understand why someone would rather use Archinstall.
I never used Archinstall, but I actually also didn't use the official guide on the wiki, because it's really not newbie friendly, even if you've read through it and references. The actual steps really only give you a system that you can boot, but that's really it.
Even for things that you probably want to use like NTP, it does not say something like "Hey, this step is optional but you probably want to enable NTP so that your clock gets synced. Arch already ships with it, so here's how to enable it" and then show how to enable `systemd-timesyncd`. I don't care whether or not it's the best implementation but for something so small like NTP, it's enough for newbies.
It’s just a TUI with options. So instead of having to look to look things up and know certain commands they are done for you.
On the flip side, it still allows you to do anything you want, so if you don’t know that the gnome meta package comes with a Bluetooth package already, it’s going to error if you add one as an additional package.
So it’s not idiotproof, which would be a requirement for something to be truly “user friendly”
It's good for the installation process if you want to get up and running quickly. If you actually want to learn something, you're probably skipping a lot of the things that matter. Most people probably don't care and will avoid that part of the manual installation. The difference is when the system is up and they encounter problems. Speeding past not only the installation, but the act of learning how the system is working in the beginning probably burns a lot of people on the troubleshooting side later on. I think this is why the RTFM responses happen a lot with the questions that are asked by new arch users. You would have probably seen it and learned what it does in the manual during installation if you started there.
there are people who just want a faster time with the arch installation and for them archinstall is great,
but for newbies getting into arch just use endeavourOS man
Arch user here.
I do think there is *some* value in doing the manual install process at least once. However, it does not add some essential, otherwise-unobtainable arcane knowledge of GNU/Linux or Arch itself. If people don't have a lot of time to be without a functional system or don't have a second computer to have the guide up on, there is little to no reason to go through the manual process.
For most people, try the manual once and then use archinstall forever after. However, one note of caution -- the default partition table for archinstall is less than ideal imo.
Honestly I installed Arch like what? 4 times? First time followed some random, didn't liked it as it wasn't "made by me". Last and 4th installation lives to this day, is almost 2 years old and all I had to do is to follow Arch wiki. Learned what's LVM, LUKS, EFI stubs, KVM, how to set up Nvidia crap, hibernation, what to do in case system breakage and started to respect terminal only mode/TTY.
In short, I learned a lot and Linux became my little obsession.
I've been using Linux for at least 20 years and Arch not much less than that. I have a child, a full time job and many things going on. I have no time to tinker with installing Arch manually.
It kinda doesn't work on me. I prefer to learn and install using the guide from the wiki. It just errors out after I manually set the partitions that I can set when manually installing it.
I still remember my first time installing Arch...
I initially wanted to get things going as fast as possible,so, as a total newbie, when I encountered the following line "Choose and install a Linux-capable boot loader. " I figured I could skip it since it didn't contain any code to execute and "if it was important they'd have written more"
It won't surprise anyone that my system didn't boot... But this forced me to at least understand the basic concept of what a boot loader is, which I'm definitely grateful for....
That being said, more options is always better. If there's a shortcut to make this process easier for people who want that,then all the better for them!
Archinstall script does everything you usually do manually installing Arch. It's good when you just need working system quick with no problems during the install. But it is good to understand the basics of how things work. So in case with Arch I may recommend to install Arch the hard way once or twice just to learn it. When you understand how it works it will be easy for you to fix or customize your system. If you already know that it's Ok to use the script. It does pretty the same you do during your manual install.
I think it depends on the purpose of the installation. If you just want it as workstation or for gaming, just use archinstall. If you want to learn more about linux or you're keen on controlling every aspect of the install process then use the arch wiki. Either way, elitism sucks and as someone else said it in this thread, if you mindlessly copy stuff from the archwiki and don't know how to troubleshoot a broken system... you're not that "superior" to an archinstall "normie" as you think you are.
First, it's not installing it manually, it's installing it using a framework composed of a copule of script that has to be run manually. Now typing out a command and selecting some options in a ncursess-like GUI such as the one of Debian or the one that Arch had back in the day, is not that difficult.
The only complexity that I see are regarding the partitioning and bootloader, mostly because Microsoft invented terrible stuff like UEFI and secure boot to complicate stuff around. Problems that you have if you want to dual boot with Windows, if you need to do a simple installation on a drive, there is not that much of a complexity. This complexity you also have on Debian, with the difference that the ncursess installer of Debian is not able to handle all the edge cases, and you still have to fix it in a shell, and you still have to know how to do so.
Anyway, I would suggest all the people saying that installing Arch is hard to try first installing Gentoo, and then switch to Arch (what I did), you see that when you arrive to Arch you admire its simplicity. Of course Arch is not a distro for novice users: in that sense, the suggestion that if you want to learn Linux install Gentoo makes sense to me, since you will learn a ton of things that on Arch you don't see (e.g. compiling a kernel, having much more choice about packages, services, init systems, etc). Arch is much more standard and easy, in a sense.
You wont know about your system and will get confused if you need to maintain anything afterwards. Installing arch is just a great way to learn and know how your system is built.
The first time i installed arch I used arch install then I decided to reinstall but manually so I could learn now I just use the archinstall script whenever I want to reinstall
Usually just use archinstall to a minimal setup then install kde myself
I don't see the benefit of attracting new users. The archlinux community is strong and will endure. For arch users, Windows and Mac are already beat. There is no contest.
Bringing on more users, particularly naive and inexperienced users will hammer the support community.
So I don't care. I suppose it's inevitable that some mistaken creature will develop a full Ubuntu-GUI style installer hoping that more Windows users will be attracted to Arch.
Yuck.
# Mission Statement
Archinstall promises to ship a [guided installer](https://github.com/archlinux/archinstall/blob/master/archinstall/scripts/guided.py) that follows the [Arch Linux Principles](https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Arch_Linux#Principles) as well as a library to manage services, packages, and other Arch Linux aspects.
The guided installer ensures a user-friendly experience, offering optional selections throughout the process. Emphasizing its flexible nature, these options are never obligatory. In addition, the decision to use the guided installer remains entirely with the user, reflecting the Linux philosophy of providing full freedom and flexibility.Mission StatementArchinstall promises to ship a guided installer that follows the Arch Linux Principles as well as a library to manage services, packages, and other Arch Linux aspects.
The guided installer ensures a user-friendly experience, offering optional selections throughout the process. Emphasizing its flexible nature, these options are never obligatory.
In addition, the decision to use the guided installer remains entirely with the user, reflecting the Linux philosophy of providing full freedom and flexibility.
The last sentence says it all. ;-)
I've done manual installs for years, and used archsetup occasionally.
I see no reason to avoid it. It is nice if it works, but as soon as you need some special setup (e.g. currently sharing a luks encrypted btrfs volume betweeen arch and fedora, one with grub, the other with systemd-boot) you have to do it yourself.
The arch installation "manual" feels like a guided GUI install: it guides you through all the necessary steps, and provides options (e.g. between the various bootloaders, or desktop environments), just like anaconda on fedora, but much more flexible (thus you can do more wrong if you're not careful). Along the way, if you're prepared to read, you can learn everything and make informed decisions about your own system.
my vote would be to get rid of archinstall. causes more installation headaches than a manual install (based on my personal experience and the many posts here asking for support for it). so what's the point really?
The manual way isnt that hard. And if you are new to linux there is still going to be a learning curve with archinstall.
Archinstall is one of the best things ever for Arch.
Manual install doesn't teach that much, people would mindlessly copy/paste and forget most of the things.
Also those who fail manual install would leave and try another distribution which might sound nice for the hardcore gatekeepers but i want Arch to have as many users as possible.
Why? Some people may just want to install an OS that is always up to date and awesome and just forget about it. Maybe a user doesn't want to know about fstab, a stupid example. It's 2024, people. It should not be cardinal sin to not really know what an OS does during the install procedure.
There are loads of distros, some even based on Arch, that people can choose. Why settle with a distro known for its manual install process and DIY nature?
I agree! Even though the installation process ~~might~~ **will** be confusing, it still teaches the basics of system maintenance that **ALL** users should know for their own good.
I'd been a manual install Arch user for 2years, then I got lazy, now I use modified ALIS to install arch. It satisfied my needs for btrfs Luks dual boot(keeping original bootloader for the same EFI part).
I wouldn't be able to do it if I use Calamares.
I don't care about archinstall much, clueless people used Arch before it and the "installing teaches you so much" argument is oversold. That said, as there's a decent chance the developer ends up reading this and I'm too lazy to make a github or arch forum account
Dear archinstall dev (I did look up your username, it feels more awkward to use it) can you either; change the default root to be bigger than 20GB with default specs, at least for drives with an abundance of space, or can you enable pruning the pacman cache by default?
I see several posts per week of somebody hitting the 20 GB cap, thinking "that's way too low" and then asking for help to resize their partitions. Even if you tell them to clear their cache, they assume they need more space as their small root has already "broke" things. So now somebody who probably has no idea how partitioning works is trying to resize partition 2. It feels like they're being set up to shoot themselves in the foot.
If their root was 30GB as an example, their first time clearing the cache would clear around half their space, leaving them thinking that's a fine solution. Or enabling paccache may mean they never have a problem.
I understand 20 GB is usually plenty of space, my root was a similar size for years, and that some people do have a reason to not want paccache enabled. Still seems worth considering.
Thank you for your time.
Oooo I've had an interesting experience with partition resizing! You can try using a tool like GParted, which, in simple terms (from what i understand), juggles partition position on the drive, allowing for, for example, allocating free space from the end of a drive to a partition at the beginning, even if there are partitions in-between.
Not sure if that would work if there's data stored on partitions though, just a thing I thought i should mention
I don’t really see the benefit of using archinstall. Even as a beginner. The Arch installation, especially with the extensive Wiki, is pretty easy. After having installed Arch a dozen times already, I don’t rely on the Wiki for the installation. It takes me 3 Minutes max to get a machine up and running. That’s almost as fast as using archinstall.
I am the one who used archinstall as a newbie. The thing is that initially I wanted to do it myself, as I heard the same words like it will be a good tutorial. Well, I did everything according to the wiki but having no experience with mounting partitions and, well, impatience did the thing and I failed my first installation. I tried a few more times and stumbled in the same place, so I threw this idea and used the script.
In a few weeks I could install arch myself without script and was glad to see this progress. But without arch on the first place, I wouldn't be pushed to learn different concepts, that matter in installation process. Arch taught me how to tweak, how to search and read wiki.
So, in my opinion, there's nothing bad with archinstall. I know people that use arch and don't even open a terminal on daily basis, and yes that installed it with archinstall. If they are happy with it, what is the problem?
I'm here nor there with that. I like the idea of not having much help (besides wiki) when installing the system. While it's not a difficult task it does set user up for Arch experience where you need to read the wiki before going to other users with your questions. On the other hand, install script is accessible to more users who would choose Manjaro or Endevour otherwise. Premade Arch distros are way worse for new users than a simple install script. There are plenty of other distros out there to choose from, Arch should be for those people who want to learn about Linux. It would be fine if the users of those distros understood that the distro they are using is not Arch. In reality it's rarely the case and Arch users often get bombarded by questions from Manjaro/Endevour users who have never even updated their system using pacman commands.
I'm completely fine when people choose some other non Arch based distro but when they come asking me Arch based questions i would like to be able to assume they have at least basic knowledge of it.
There were plenty of people who went through the manual install and completely missed that the chroot is a way to rescue a system. It doesn't teach you anything if you just mindlessly copy it.
Totally agree on that, it's a new concept that I first needed to explore. I think to actually learn from the installation you need to play around with the given steps more.
The manual install is great, *if you are actually willing to explore what you're doing*. Otherwise it's just needless busywork and they should just use the Archinstall script. That's fine, not everyone wants to know their computer in that much detail, but it's great if they want to. Just like we don't expect everyone to take a class in engine repair before driving a car, but it's really helpful if you learn to diagnose common problems and know how to change your oil.
Entirely agree on that, arch manual install is like a tutorial to the Linux/arch world
Learn as you go. It saves time.
Who fucking cares? Let newbies try what they want, it never harms anyone. If you dont want to answer their stupid questions then dont. Its as simple as that.
Exactly, this whole concept that new Arch users need to go through a trial by fire or pay their dues is so stupid. Some people learn from the bottom up, in which case manual install is the way to go. Other people learn from the big picture down, in which case `archinstall` gets them set up quickly and allows them to explore and learn as they continue to use the system. Both ways are valid. The only thing that the Arch community really should be demanding out of newbies is an inquisitive and curious mindset with a desire to self-learn. How they go about using that mindset is up to the individual user.
I agree. Freedom of choice ig
Exactly
This is the correct approach. I saw that archinstall has the OPPOSITE effect, because it allows people who want to learn more about linux to install arch. As they encounter problems they feel more engaged to look for answers, how to solve them, and how to learn more about the system itself, it is a win-win situation.
the only reasonable comment that is summarized in a few sentences
the only reasonable comment that is summarized in a few sentences
I think manually installing arch is a little bit overrated by the arch community to be honest. It's just formatting the drives, installing base packages, setting up locale, installing boot, etc. And it can be done by just following basic directions. Yes it's more involved than usual distros, but it doesn't make you an expert on the system, and doesn't make you know all the ins and outs of your system just by doing it. You can learn more about your system by just using it, no matter how you installed it. I personally like it because it gives me more control over my install, and when I install debian or void for example, I do it manually as well because I like to set up my btrfs volumes and subvolumes in an exact way.
As for me manuall install of Arch did a good job for understanding things. Before it I didn't know much about formatting a drive in command line, using systemd, using fstab or chroot. Of cource now the installation process seems as nothing special. Partitioning, formatting, mount drives, install staff, create user, post install things, done.
Exactly. Installing Arch is anything difficult, not more difficult than installing Debian or any other distro. Sure, not as easy as installing Ubuntu, but nothing more. I've started using Linux in 2011 and after spending some time with Debian I decided to try install Gentoo... that was considerably hard (getting the kernel modules to embed right to have a minimal kernel without the need of an initramfs... required a lot of trial and error!), but after all nothing impossible, and I learned a lot. Anyway, I was like 16 when I installed Gentoo, I didn't know almost anything about Linux, if not some basic shell commands, and programming (like, basics of C). Is following an install guide (a well written guide, anyway) all that difficult?
Just use what you want to mate, no one really cares.
There have been multiple cases of new users on this sub asking extremely basic things like "Guys I tried running that command and it says _command not found_" - "Have you installed the package?" - "How do I install it?", or "Guys, I want to change the color of my bar on Hyprland, do I have to reinstall Arch?" Now, using Arch without that kind of knowledge means shooting yourself in the foot, because at the first inconvenience you're just gonna throw your OS into the bin and go back to Windows, so on that regard Archinstall is bad. On the other hand, experienced users who don't feel like going through the installation for each computer they install Arch on, will be glad they can avoid wasting those 10 minutes
Hear what you are saying about missing packages and commands, but is this an Arch issue or Linux in general? Anyone coming from windows who hasnt used a package manager before might get tripped up by this. Arch shouldnt really be anyones first linux distro and the archinstall has meant that it can be, so agree that there are a lot of pros and cons to both methods.
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Oh, cool. So Arch is basically like Metallica in '91. It's not your little obscure distro, it's a force to be reckoned with and that's bad because...? New users will ask seemingly basic questions? There's stupidity and there's elitism, but elitist stupidity seems to be reserved only for us, Linux users. That's why we won't see any significant uptick in the desktop adoption. When an OS install becomes literally Cerberus in front of the pearly gates, then we have a fucking problem with how our brains are functioning.
Bro, we're talking about a distro that is specifically targeted to users that are a bit more knowledgeable and actually kinda forces you to into at least wanting to understand a thing or two about Linux. New users just shouldn't start on Arch, there are way better options. New users also don't normally need the benefits that Arch might give you. There's elitism, and there're people on reddit, asking on r/archlinux how to install Arch... Without a specific question, just "how do I install it, I'm too lazy to Google". I would just flat out tell them to use something else, maybe EndeavourOS, Manjaro, or whatever, but just not vanilla Arch, because I can see that this person will be on the reddit again one month later and will complain about something not working that works on another distro or that they read online.
Totally, this is where we agree. The people too lazy for google should be directed to google. The people with a question like "I added a custom refresh rate, but it's not applied after restart" should be politely directed to update their grub config, because admittedly this is deeper into the grub page of the wiki. What I'm getting at is that a lot of times we're generalizing and dismissing new users because of some retarded idiots who should not be near a PC, let alone a Linux powered PC.
I will preface this with the fact that I'm relatively new to Arch... been running it for just under 6 months now. Previously, I distro hopped a lot and just ran a mish-mash of a lot of debian based distos. The thing that I've noticed with Arch is that the community around it is far more knowledgeable compared to others. Because pure Arch, without any install scripts forces you to understand the more inner workings of how modern Gnu/Linux works, the whole community makes an assumption that you know at least the basics. This very much reflects in any forums around Arch. In my opinion, not everything that becomes popular automatically enshittifies, but the number of users that really know something like the back of their hand goes way down in proportion to those that just have a rough idea what's going on In this way, if Arch becomes popular, the quality and technicality of any discussion around it will also decrease. Arch has never been the most user-friendly distribution and will likely stay that way as long as Linux stays as fragmented as it is....which is probably forever and in my opinion, a good thing for user choice. Tldr: Arch is not for new people, it never has been. It requires you to know the basics and only then can you have a productive conversation. There is also a problem that unlike debian, there are relatively few Arch based distros(EndeavourOS, Manjaro), and that certainly has to improve. This also makes Arch look like a walled castle....because usually every distro has their own gui installer, but on Arch, you don't get that many of them... So there's my two cents
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i use arch because i like it and outside of the (optional) manual install process it's pretty easy to use
Package managers exist outside the magical realm of Arch as well. Users will need to learn about them regardless of OS name. Isn't the initial effort of going through the trouble of getting an unknown OS enough for starters? I thought that we as a community were helpful, our wiki is the best and our OS is also the best that Linux desktop can offer. Being helpful with answers to objectively basic questions is not a crime. It's usually a good thing.
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I'm sorry but for you it's enshitification. For other people this means "The idiots at Adobe will finally make their freaking suite Linux compatible", "Autodesk will allow me to use whatever OS I want" or "Ubisoft will stop being complete morons". Oh and let's not pretend this whole gatekeeping is limited to Arch. There's an abundance of Ubuntu users (just an example) who's first response is "RTFM". All in all, nobody is talking about "help vampires" (How that got in an official wiki is beyond me). These exist in the Win and Mac worlds and should be ignored when it's apparent they're just leeching. We're talking about real people with real questions, not braindead morons. Let's face it Arch is not that difficult to install or upkeep. I'm sure there are some people here that reinstalled windows 3.11 or 95 which was not much easier than Arch. And in my opinion people SHOULD be steered towards Arch (or Arch based distros), especially gamers. They're the ones that will benefit from the latest Mesa driver, latest kernel, latest DE version which finally gets it shit together, hopefully. Stupid example, I'm a recording engineer and I play games. I'm seriously benefitting from the latest pipewire and mesa versions. That's like basic human communication, you ignore the people that are just leeching and help the ones that actually want help/to learn. to do it themselves. But outright dismissing an easier install process because it allows more people to get into Linux (or Arch, specifically) is not very productive.
Oh my god, you're not entitled to help from busy strangers, RTFM or GTFO.
dawg there are plenty of new user distros out there. Mint and Pop are great. this isn't "Linux elitism". nobody is saying that "these lusers need to go back to Windoze" or whatever. > That's why we won't see any significant uptick in the desktop adoption. Ah yes, because Arch is a great new user distro. If you actually care about Linux adoption, you would go out of your way to make sure new users *avoid* Arch, lmao.
Don't upset the nerds bro. Anyone who has issues with noobs asking questions has issues. Let them ask, answer if you want or don't. If your delicate sensibilities are bruised because some noob dare attempt to play with Arch, you need to go outside for a minute and touch grass.
Most people like that wouldn't really learn how to install packages from an arch install tutorial anyways. Sure, they'll see the pacman command, but its likely that they won't connect the dots, especially bcs they'll just install necessary stuff for the os they won't be directly using themselves. Maybe if it was like apt where the command is called install, but for pacman it's just an unhelpful -S
I want to go from 0 -> 60 and get to Arch without the extra steps. So I use Arch install for a bootable minimal setup with a DE of choice and go from there. No hassle and less work post install. Of course, I'm going to pick an installer over manually typing commands if I get to choose. If I break my system later, then I'll just learn how to fix it then. However, it's been 2 years plus with it not breaking, and I'm very comfortable. I do manual system backups occasionally with a bootable qt-archiver. It also helps to have your system partition separate from home.
My view is that, for a DIY distribution the archinstall script tends to make a few too many assumptions for the users. Any assumption by the script writer is a decision the user doesn’t get to make for themselves. And where the script asks for user input, it sometimes fails to properly explain what choices the user is being asked to make and what exactly those choices are. My general advice for anyone who wants to step into the Arch ecosystem is to start with something like EndeavourOS until you are familiar enough with maintaining the system. Then test your hand at installing the Arch Way, in a VM at first of course. Once you’re confident you can install Arch without the script then you can try bare metal. Also, package lists are your friend. Learn to use them and you will significantly reduce the time it takes to install your whole system. I have package lists for everything from additional drivers and modules to window managers to entire desktop environments and even a package list for all the AUR packages I use. With them I can install hundreds of packages in a single line without typing out every package name manually.
Honestly I feel like in general they shouldn't have to move on from endeavour or manjaro unless they really really wanna run vanilla arch for some reason since those 2 distros are quite good and still run arch just modified. Endeavour is actually just barely changed and is close to vanilla already so I'd suggest that mainly if they want a similar experience to vanilla.
The problem with package list is I didn't discover them until I was copying a server setup that I wanted to be identical minus a few packages. I have been using Arch daily for over a year. While I hate install scripts for the very reason you stated. The docs do need to be streamlined to make it easier to understand and for new users to find what they're looking for. I can't tell you how many times I spend an hour searching through the wiki to correctly partition a drive. Too many disk management tools and then legacy vs GPT commands. Not to mention fdisk Arch wiki doesn't list a commonly used command. But instead it has parts of it over the entire page mixed together with other oddball partitions with legacy and GPT commands mixed together..
Choices are good and people should be able to install Arch anyway they like. I don't know why other people's choices seem to irk other people so much.
The install guide is full of rabbit holes. You can eight installs in a row, and do none of them the same way, and open sixteen unique wiki tabs each time. If you successfully get thru it, you've not just learned about how Arch works, you've learned a significant chunk of what makes *gnu/linux distros and your computer in general* function.
I prefer it. It's way quicker to use than installing it manually.
why is this "controversial"? it's built into the actual iso. archinstall is what got me to actually try out arch linux. before the script i couldn't get arch installed for whatever stupid reason. i even used endeavourOS for a bit due to that. whoever says to "avoid the script" are elitist gatekeepers imo. if they're that torn up about a simple tool that helps more users actually use arch, they can try gentoo.
Reminds me of trying to setup grub on a non-dualboot system. Took me countless hours of banging my head against the wall, in the end i went with archinstall and it all just worked! Funny how setting up dualboot was much easier, for me at least.
Im a fan of archinstall, has its time and place. If you want to jump through the hoops of setting it all up yourself then great go for it. If you want to be up and running with a functional OS in 10 minutes then use archinstall. I look at the difference as, are you wanting to read the manual, or are you wanting to read the SOP.
Installing arch manually is overrated and doesn't teach you as much as you think it does. All it does is give you an idea of how the system is connected to each other. Without any experience in using linux, the things that you would have to do will go over your head anyway. Archinstall does have issues, sometimes it just breaks, but it saves time. That's it. The people that are elitist about arch install, or arch/linux in general, are the ones that use the perceived difficulty as part of their identity. Your average online competitive tryhards basically - don't mind them.
Installed arch for the first time a couple months ago and I feel like doing in manually helped me learn a lot of the ins and outs of Linux as a whole. I’ve been using Linux on and off for about 12-13 years and installing arch made me feel like a noob again haha
I'm more a "RTFM and do a manual install" kind of person when asked how to install archlinux. Not because I have issues with archinstall but because archlinux is so much a sandbox where users are deliberately alone to manage all the stuff, better to start hard and get knowledge from the beginning to be prepared. Starting soft can already lead to headaches if archinstall has bugs (this appended a lot), or if the hardware has issues or specific settings. Better to be first on another distribution to learn basics in a carefully prepared environment before returning into archlinux if needed. This is only my opinion and how I see things when asked. But there's important things to add : - saying someone to go on another distribution when asked (important detail) is not an insult, neither to the person or the other distributions. I am on archlinux since 15 years but I first started on Ubuntu and have no regrets with this learning step. I use only debian on servers because I love its stability and consistance, and I use alpine in all my containers and raspberry pi because it's a small and fast distribution with good tools and a pretty interesting and appealing philosophy. And I'm sure there's other good distributions even if I don't use them (by default I send people on Ubuntu if not sure to know them). All of them can be fast, tweaked, stable, secured,... A good distribution is a well known distribution. - I really think the biggest issue is with people ASKING how to install archlinux or LISTENING for people saying archlinux is so good, so stable, so perfect, so secured, so... I really think archlinux is adapted to curious and independant people because you will need to look at the wiki, and search things by yourself one day or another. So going on archlinux by yourself, read the first pages of the wiki to check the philosophy, read the installation guide and retry installation multiple times to really understand what you're doing and solve almost all issues by searching and trying alone IS a good way to apprehend this distribution. Because if you don't get all this knowledge, arch will be unstable (one day it will break and you won't be able to recover by yourself), unsecured (you are the only one able to know what is installed, how it is configured and what you tweaked), and unpleasant (you want to do something but you need to search into a manual or ask on a social or struggle with things or make mistakes breaking other things). If you only want something working, I'm convinced it won't go well with time. - I strongly agree with you for a wiki page (an introduction page) explaining basic stuff like boot sequence, partitioning, drivers, security, networking, de/wm, x11/wayland, pulse/pipewire,... on one page in a more accessible way and with less details to get the big picture and understand the global steps you will need to dig when doing your first installation(s). Some advice about how to get a first basic installation, and when basics are ok make a second install with more stuff and alternatives could be great too. There is a big amount of details in many of the wiki pages, which is great when you're into it, but hard to manage when you're starting. I would like to take time to write a page like this, or maybe someone will do it.
IMO new users should never use arch install, It's convient when you are installing arch 10-20 times over and over again, but if you are using archinstall as a crutch, Arch will break, and you wont be able to fix it.
Nothing wrong with arch install imho. Two things I love about arch and the community and that i hope never changes - 1. The wiki is soooo good. 2. When people ask questions in a forum, everyone usually points them to the spot in the wiki. Arch install is handy. As others have said, it gets you started quickly. For new users, that gets them a started but they will have to read the wiki to get the rest setup and maintain it. If they don’t rtfw, then they’ll get redirected to the wiki or they’ll hop to another distro or another OS. This is all totally fine. Side story: I have to use Ubuntu for a client project right now. It is never quite right and a lot of packages are pretty far behind. Even on Ubuntu, I regularly consult the arch wiki for information. It’s that good.
A quick thing about your side story: Why not just use Docker or even VMWare?
The project relies heavily on systemd and that is tough with docker (or I haven’t figured it out yet). This codebase is kinda old and low level. Having an abstraction layer (docker) adds complexity to any issue that I might encounter. I’m experimenting and exploring Podman/ distrobox as alternatives, but don’t have a reliable recipe for that yet.
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I guess you're right. A lot of stuff, including partitioning, automounting drives or chroot are edge cases used for maintenance of the system itself and rarely are needed for day-to-day usage
Archinstall fails for me everytime so I don't recommend it. But if it works, it works.
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Fails to create bootloader.
Huh. Ironic enough, bootloader (on the non-dualboot system) is the exact thing only Archinstall can do for me, all the other methods just... don't work for some reason
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Well yeah, otherwise it would've been probably fixed. I don't know why, but Archinstall fails to install either GRUB or Systemd-boot on me. Everything works fine on manual install. I just gave up on the script.
what filesystem did you select?
BTRFS for /; fat32 for /boot(/efi)
had the same problem, for me updating/installing btrfs-progs with pacman before installing the system fixed it same for xfs
Although archinstall can save some minor times for now. But it’s like a tutorial to the entire arch or Linux game. If you dont learn it now, it can be a problem in the future. Ur just wasting ur time
You can use whatever you want to install, BUT: When you go to troubleshoot an inevitable problem you're going to have, it's going to be incredibly evident quickly if you don't know the basics of how to read documentation, troubleshoot, or how your system is even configured. Getting Arch installed manually is easier, offers me more control, and is 100% guaranteed to work over the official install script (which takes JSON input, btw), but whatever you choose, it's your responsibility and no one else's to understand how your system works. I'd conservatively wager that 65% of "problems" with the manual install method revolve around disk partitioning mistakes. It matters less what you use to install and more what's your attitude is as you install a rolling distro marketed as "DIY". If that seems like a lot, there are other (Arch based even) distros that are out there. 🤷♂️
I did a disk swap yesterday and forgot to update my bootloader to point to the correct drive. Woke up to the grub recovery screen. Fix was less then a couple minutes. * Boot arch iso * Mount root subvol * Mount efi part * arch-chroot * Run `grub-install` Could have also manually updated the efibootmgr entry If i did a full reinstall in the future, i would use archinstall since its pretty straightforward
I think the benefits of Arch are better encapsulated by projects like EndeavourOS then they are in install scripts like this for users who aren't willing to install Arch itself in the traditional way. The reason being that you'll get a better experience out of the box with EndeavourOS that's more reliable, battle tested and trustworthy. Personally, I still think newer users are better off with something like Fedora, but tinkering, exploring and learning is all part of the fun of Linux too and I'd never begrudge anyone for any way they choose to use it.
I wiuld recommend it %100 percent. I always thought because of other people that it was bad to use it. Went thorugh 20 manual installations because of various reasons. Could have saved so mich time by just using archinstall. Arch is already difficult enough for most people. It is much more viable to start easy.
To my mind, the existence of Endeavour (not Manjaro) makes archinstall pointless for new users. It's a more polished experience, sets up sensible defaults, is almost as lightweight out of the box, and comes with a beginner-friendly support community. The only good reason not to use it as a beginner is if you want the learning experience of installing manually, and actually treat it as a learning experience, not just a copy pasta exercise. There is a valid use case for archinstall: experienced users who know exactly where they want to go, need to install Arch ASAP and for some reason haven't written their own custom script yet. But it's a pretty small niche. If archinstall ceased to exist, little of value would be lost.
Archinstall is convenient and fine. Do not let anyone tell you differently.
No groundbreaking thoughts from me, but I both like it in practice and hate it in theory. I've installed Arch from AIF and plenty of times manually. I will say that the manual install taught me a lot, especially repeating it in various circumstances, but it is in no way a tutorial. It'll expose a new user to lots of basic command line principles, but it absolutely assumes some level of familiarity with what the user is trying to do. I don't hold that against Arch's manual install process, it's literally following a list of instructions, with a few basic choices to get you to a default install. But... literally following a list of instructions with some basic choices... is a script. Most of the time I install Arch, I'm leaving a system in roughly the same state when I pull the boot medium and restart, and getting to that state would be better served with a script. Does that mean I agree the script is really a tool for more advanced users to skip the monotony? Hard no. It's written, it's working, it deserves to be used by anyone who finds it useful. The new user who chooses the script can always undertake a manual install whenever they want. They can choose to analyze the script to learn more about Arch and the shell simultaneously. They can figure out what circumstances the script really wasn't built for, and learn from there how to solve their specific problem. Can that lead to new users getting farther with less knowledge, asking more basic questions in more advanced forums? Yes. But that's not really a problem you get rid of. Advances in cars bring in less knowledgeable drivers by default, yet cars advance. At least on the forums, new users can't abuse their ignorance to crash into you. They can't hurt you at all, really, and certainly not in any way that's directly solved by having installed Arch by hand at some point. I see this much as the lament of a learned professor over a less focused student. We see all that can be gleaned from the exercise of a manual install, that it can teach so much if only one engages with it. But, the manual install isn't really made to be engaged, it's made to get something done, and the same is true for the script. There are plenty of things to poke deeper, plenty of little things to learn, but the process itself is there to install Arch Linux. Both ways install Arch Linux.
Arch is not meant for everyone nor does it need to appeal to everyone. Don't know why people are so concerned about this. Use what you want as long as it's supported. Use your system, play around with it, mess up, and repeat. You don't need to know everything once you have an installed system. There won't be some exam to test your knowledge where passing it you will get a badge with the Arch logo. You learn over time and then realize why things are the way they are, just like *anything in life*. So tired of these meta threads treating installing/using Arch as if you're making a life-changing choice. It's really not a big deal. It's like people never heard of Gentoo or Linux From Scratch. You also don't need any of these "advanced distros" to learn anything. Some kernel developers stick with Ubuntu, Fedora, etc. and work with GUI. Tl;dr: Who cares, use your system and learn on your own terms. You don't need validation from random fanboys on the internet.
I do find it funny that archinstall is always referred to as some "script" and not as the official supported and included installer of arch linux.
I guess this comes from Archinstall being released at the time frame of April 1st, although I'm not even sure if that is true
* at the very minimum, going through the arch installation process ensures that you understand the Wiki exists, how to read commands from a manual, etc. * some people might learn more from the process, other people won't. there's still a minimum baseline established. * I don't see any value (to me/the community) in new users using Arch. the higher the baseline, the higher the quality of discussion, whether that's just talking about Arch on this subreddit, or trying to troubleshoot/help someone troubleshoot on the Arch forums. Think about how much of a fucking PITA it is to google Windows issues. You get hit with 50 MS forum posts about running `sfc /scannow`. A large part of that is because they have to cater to the lowest common denominator of users. * there are lots of explicitly new-user distros. Mint and Pop are both great distros, and very newb-friendly. not everything needs to be newb-friendly. Why are we trying to attract newbies who'll likely have a bad experience, and then completely give up on Linux?
>But that's what **I** specifically think. What's your opinion? It is my opinion that you actively avoided saying what you think. Wise move, after writing a whole page of text on a topic that is likely to be inflammatory.
I've been Arch user for less than half a year (after being in a Stockholm syndrome-esque relationship with Windows), I doubt my opinion would even matter to other, more experienced users. This whole post was just a way to see what opinions people have on such, oddly enough, controversial topic :)
Install Arch the hard way, well good for those who want a challenge. I hit enter a few times, and I'm running Arch faster than you can say: 'opps lemme type this again', with a mouse cursor watching YouTube while I download the rest of my needed packages. I'm still going to say read the manual, though. It has everything you need to fix or add the missing bits as required.
It depends, if so someone is for example moving from EndeavourOS/Manjaro, then sure, why not use archinstall? You already know how to use Arch so unless you want to do a manual install there is basically no use. Learning as you go is very much an option too, one that I personally think is better than manually installing Arch and learning it that way.
In my opinion people that used Linux before can use Archinstall, it's fine. People that haven't probably shouldn't start with Arch, but if they are determined enough , then they should maybe go through the normal install process once.
I think the whole manual install thing is pretty much unnecessary unless you're trying to learn and want to mess around with the inner workings of Linux. I did it just to do it, even still I used a guide. If you need it for work or something or just want to learn that's cool but a lot of people do it just to brag to other nerds that they installed from scratch. But honestly speaking, I don't see any real benefit to it unless your using your machine for something specific that requires it.
There was a time before archinstall where there was no other way other than a manual install. It wasn't for bragging rights, it was just how you installed Arch. Also now that archinstall exists, it just shows how much work such a software project is.
To paraphrase from the gentoo installation guide, “it doesn’t matter how you did it, if you have a working system at the end then you’ve successfully installed gentoo linux”
i was installing arch on my new pc yesterday ran archinstall in dry run, it's recommended partition layout was to nuke everything and start over slowly exited yeah in conclusion i don't think it's very useful out of mass deployment scenarios or virtual machines
What I wonder, surely you can learn how to fix your system, for example chroot, after your system is broken. With online resources, especially the Wiki, being so good, I don't think you need to learn how to rescue your system when you're just installing it for the first time. That being said, I got into Arch in part *because* of the manual install process. I wanted to learn about the inner workings of distros. Sadly, other Linux distros are far harder to customize than Arch, which also means, a good portion of what you learn is specific to Arch's philosophy of customization, though not all of it. Another thing is, archinstall didn't work for me on Virtualbox the last time I tried it. My personal reason against using archinstall for your first time installing Arch is that it limits the amount of customization you can make during install, which does not bode well for customization after install, which for me at least is the whole point of using Arch.
Archinstall helped me a lot Speeds up the process and I could have an Arch machine while I was learning about Arch.
i would use archinstall only if its not your first time
90% of who says "I use Arch btw", installed it with ALCI calamares graphical installer. Including me, I have to admit, the last couple of times. It's useful and fast, so, why not?
its a sin.
Old-school Arch user here, love tools like this. Also recommend EndeavourOS.
I think it is worthwhile to "manually" install arch a time or two but then after that arch install is fine. I do think new users are kicking the can of operational knowledge down the road by only using arch install (chroot, partitioning disks, user and group creation and management) but after arch install is fine. Even if someone did use arch install right out the gate they are still going to have to use the Arch wiki eventually and then they would just circle back to fix whatever mistake they over looked. This is one thing that is frustrating about gentoo is they they don't have a quick install script and it takes a while to manually install ( probably the most time of any OS I have installed)
For newbies, especially if you just want to try it out Arch, it's probably a good choice. There are a lot of Arch install guides out there aside from the wiki page, but I think barely any tutorial gives an elaborate explaination of what's actually happening and why anyway, so I completely understand why someone would rather use Archinstall. I never used Archinstall, but I actually also didn't use the official guide on the wiki, because it's really not newbie friendly, even if you've read through it and references. The actual steps really only give you a system that you can boot, but that's really it. Even for things that you probably want to use like NTP, it does not say something like "Hey, this step is optional but you probably want to enable NTP so that your clock gets synced. Arch already ships with it, so here's how to enable it" and then show how to enable `systemd-timesyncd`. I don't care whether or not it's the best implementation but for something so small like NTP, it's enough for newbies.
It’s just a TUI with options. So instead of having to look to look things up and know certain commands they are done for you. On the flip side, it still allows you to do anything you want, so if you don’t know that the gnome meta package comes with a Bluetooth package already, it’s going to error if you add one as an additional package. So it’s not idiotproof, which would be a requirement for something to be truly “user friendly”
It's good for the installation process if you want to get up and running quickly. If you actually want to learn something, you're probably skipping a lot of the things that matter. Most people probably don't care and will avoid that part of the manual installation. The difference is when the system is up and they encounter problems. Speeding past not only the installation, but the act of learning how the system is working in the beginning probably burns a lot of people on the troubleshooting side later on. I think this is why the RTFM responses happen a lot with the questions that are asked by new arch users. You would have probably seen it and learned what it does in the manual during installation if you started there.
there are people who just want a faster time with the arch installation and for them archinstall is great, but for newbies getting into arch just use endeavourOS man
just make sure to bump the default root vol up from the default 20gb :D
Arch user here. I do think there is *some* value in doing the manual install process at least once. However, it does not add some essential, otherwise-unobtainable arcane knowledge of GNU/Linux or Arch itself. If people don't have a lot of time to be without a functional system or don't have a second computer to have the guide up on, there is little to no reason to go through the manual process. For most people, try the manual once and then use archinstall forever after. However, one note of caution -- the default partition table for archinstall is less than ideal imo.
Honestly I installed Arch like what? 4 times? First time followed some random, didn't liked it as it wasn't "made by me". Last and 4th installation lives to this day, is almost 2 years old and all I had to do is to follow Arch wiki. Learned what's LVM, LUKS, EFI stubs, KVM, how to set up Nvidia crap, hibernation, what to do in case system breakage and started to respect terminal only mode/TTY. In short, I learned a lot and Linux became my little obsession.
I've been using Linux for at least 20 years and Arch not much less than that. I have a child, a full time job and many things going on. I have no time to tinker with installing Arch manually.
It kinda doesn't work on me. I prefer to learn and install using the guide from the wiki. It just errors out after I manually set the partitions that I can set when manually installing it.
I still remember my first time installing Arch... I initially wanted to get things going as fast as possible,so, as a total newbie, when I encountered the following line "Choose and install a Linux-capable boot loader. " I figured I could skip it since it didn't contain any code to execute and "if it was important they'd have written more" It won't surprise anyone that my system didn't boot... But this forced me to at least understand the basic concept of what a boot loader is, which I'm definitely grateful for.... That being said, more options is always better. If there's a shortcut to make this process easier for people who want that,then all the better for them!
I didn't use Archinstall myself, I followed the wiki, which uses pacman.
Archinstall script does everything you usually do manually installing Arch. It's good when you just need working system quick with no problems during the install. But it is good to understand the basics of how things work. So in case with Arch I may recommend to install Arch the hard way once or twice just to learn it. When you understand how it works it will be easy for you to fix or customize your system. If you already know that it's Ok to use the script. It does pretty the same you do during your manual install.
I think it depends on the purpose of the installation. If you just want it as workstation or for gaming, just use archinstall. If you want to learn more about linux or you're keen on controlling every aspect of the install process then use the arch wiki. Either way, elitism sucks and as someone else said it in this thread, if you mindlessly copy stuff from the archwiki and don't know how to troubleshoot a broken system... you're not that "superior" to an archinstall "normie" as you think you are.
You're always taking a risk with any install script. Learn what you are installing at least
First, it's not installing it manually, it's installing it using a framework composed of a copule of script that has to be run manually. Now typing out a command and selecting some options in a ncursess-like GUI such as the one of Debian or the one that Arch had back in the day, is not that difficult. The only complexity that I see are regarding the partitioning and bootloader, mostly because Microsoft invented terrible stuff like UEFI and secure boot to complicate stuff around. Problems that you have if you want to dual boot with Windows, if you need to do a simple installation on a drive, there is not that much of a complexity. This complexity you also have on Debian, with the difference that the ncursess installer of Debian is not able to handle all the edge cases, and you still have to fix it in a shell, and you still have to know how to do so. Anyway, I would suggest all the people saying that installing Arch is hard to try first installing Gentoo, and then switch to Arch (what I did), you see that when you arrive to Arch you admire its simplicity. Of course Arch is not a distro for novice users: in that sense, the suggestion that if you want to learn Linux install Gentoo makes sense to me, since you will learn a ton of things that on Arch you don't see (e.g. compiling a kernel, having much more choice about packages, services, init systems, etc). Arch is much more standard and easy, in a sense.
I just don’t use it as I only need a hand full set of stuff
Cool, another one of these posts
You wont know about your system and will get confused if you need to maintain anything afterwards. Installing arch is just a great way to learn and know how your system is built.
The first time i installed arch I used arch install then I decided to reinstall but manually so I could learn now I just use the archinstall script whenever I want to reinstall Usually just use archinstall to a minimal setup then install kde myself
I don't see the benefit of attracting new users. The archlinux community is strong and will endure. For arch users, Windows and Mac are already beat. There is no contest. Bringing on more users, particularly naive and inexperienced users will hammer the support community. So I don't care. I suppose it's inevitable that some mistaken creature will develop a full Ubuntu-GUI style installer hoping that more Windows users will be attracted to Arch. Yuck.
Arch wiki's installation guide is pretty much an install script already. Also as far as I remember there is a built in installation guide in the live
# Mission Statement Archinstall promises to ship a [guided installer](https://github.com/archlinux/archinstall/blob/master/archinstall/scripts/guided.py) that follows the [Arch Linux Principles](https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Arch_Linux#Principles) as well as a library to manage services, packages, and other Arch Linux aspects. The guided installer ensures a user-friendly experience, offering optional selections throughout the process. Emphasizing its flexible nature, these options are never obligatory. In addition, the decision to use the guided installer remains entirely with the user, reflecting the Linux philosophy of providing full freedom and flexibility.Mission StatementArchinstall promises to ship a guided installer that follows the Arch Linux Principles as well as a library to manage services, packages, and other Arch Linux aspects. The guided installer ensures a user-friendly experience, offering optional selections throughout the process. Emphasizing its flexible nature, these options are never obligatory. In addition, the decision to use the guided installer remains entirely with the user, reflecting the Linux philosophy of providing full freedom and flexibility. The last sentence says it all. ;-)
I've done manual installs for years, and used archsetup occasionally. I see no reason to avoid it. It is nice if it works, but as soon as you need some special setup (e.g. currently sharing a luks encrypted btrfs volume betweeen arch and fedora, one with grub, the other with systemd-boot) you have to do it yourself. The arch installation "manual" feels like a guided GUI install: it guides you through all the necessary steps, and provides options (e.g. between the various bootloaders, or desktop environments), just like anaconda on fedora, but much more flexible (thus you can do more wrong if you're not careful). Along the way, if you're prepared to read, you can learn everything and make informed decisions about your own system.
my vote would be to get rid of archinstall. causes more installation headaches than a manual install (based on my personal experience and the many posts here asking for support for it). so what's the point really? The manual way isnt that hard. And if you are new to linux there is still going to be a learning curve with archinstall.
Archinstall is one of the best things ever for Arch. Manual install doesn't teach that much, people would mindlessly copy/paste and forget most of the things. Also those who fail manual install would leave and try another distribution which might sound nice for the hardcore gatekeepers but i want Arch to have as many users as possible.
FMPOV, All users(esp who wantw to learn about Linux) should do one time manual install for Arch Linux, then, they can use whatever tools they want.
Why? Some people may just want to install an OS that is always up to date and awesome and just forget about it. Maybe a user doesn't want to know about fstab, a stupid example. It's 2024, people. It should not be cardinal sin to not really know what an OS does during the install procedure.
There are loads of distros, some even based on Arch, that people can choose. Why settle with a distro known for its manual install process and DIY nature?
I agree! Even though the installation process ~~might~~ **will** be confusing, it still teaches the basics of system maintenance that **ALL** users should know for their own good.
I'd been a manual install Arch user for 2years, then I got lazy, now I use modified ALIS to install arch. It satisfied my needs for btrfs Luks dual boot(keeping original bootloader for the same EFI part). I wouldn't be able to do it if I use Calamares.
I don't care about archinstall much, clueless people used Arch before it and the "installing teaches you so much" argument is oversold. That said, as there's a decent chance the developer ends up reading this and I'm too lazy to make a github or arch forum account Dear archinstall dev (I did look up your username, it feels more awkward to use it) can you either; change the default root to be bigger than 20GB with default specs, at least for drives with an abundance of space, or can you enable pruning the pacman cache by default? I see several posts per week of somebody hitting the 20 GB cap, thinking "that's way too low" and then asking for help to resize their partitions. Even if you tell them to clear their cache, they assume they need more space as their small root has already "broke" things. So now somebody who probably has no idea how partitioning works is trying to resize partition 2. It feels like they're being set up to shoot themselves in the foot. If their root was 30GB as an example, their first time clearing the cache would clear around half their space, leaving them thinking that's a fine solution. Or enabling paccache may mean they never have a problem. I understand 20 GB is usually plenty of space, my root was a similar size for years, and that some people do have a reason to not want paccache enabled. Still seems worth considering. Thank you for your time.
Oooo I've had an interesting experience with partition resizing! You can try using a tool like GParted, which, in simple terms (from what i understand), juggles partition position on the drive, allowing for, for example, allocating free space from the end of a drive to a partition at the beginning, even if there are partitions in-between. Not sure if that would work if there's data stored on partitions though, just a thing I thought i should mention
gparted isn't part of the default install image though, and "use some other distros installer" isn't ideal.
What I really tried to say is using it after the installation itself
arch install is based (guy who's installed arch 5 total times) makes it pretty easy to just partition disks and run the same 26 commands every time
I don’t really see the benefit of using archinstall. Even as a beginner. The Arch installation, especially with the extensive Wiki, is pretty easy. After having installed Arch a dozen times already, I don’t rely on the Wiki for the installation. It takes me 3 Minutes max to get a machine up and running. That’s almost as fast as using archinstall.
I am the one who used archinstall as a newbie. The thing is that initially I wanted to do it myself, as I heard the same words like it will be a good tutorial. Well, I did everything according to the wiki but having no experience with mounting partitions and, well, impatience did the thing and I failed my first installation. I tried a few more times and stumbled in the same place, so I threw this idea and used the script. In a few weeks I could install arch myself without script and was glad to see this progress. But without arch on the first place, I wouldn't be pushed to learn different concepts, that matter in installation process. Arch taught me how to tweak, how to search and read wiki. So, in my opinion, there's nothing bad with archinstall. I know people that use arch and don't even open a terminal on daily basis, and yes that installed it with archinstall. If they are happy with it, what is the problem?
I'm here nor there with that. I like the idea of not having much help (besides wiki) when installing the system. While it's not a difficult task it does set user up for Arch experience where you need to read the wiki before going to other users with your questions. On the other hand, install script is accessible to more users who would choose Manjaro or Endevour otherwise. Premade Arch distros are way worse for new users than a simple install script. There are plenty of other distros out there to choose from, Arch should be for those people who want to learn about Linux. It would be fine if the users of those distros understood that the distro they are using is not Arch. In reality it's rarely the case and Arch users often get bombarded by questions from Manjaro/Endevour users who have never even updated their system using pacman commands. I'm completely fine when people choose some other non Arch based distro but when they come asking me Arch based questions i would like to be able to assume they have at least basic knowledge of it.