I used linux intermittently in the last 15 or so years, migrating from early Ubuntu versions, to Manjaro, Pop!_OS, Debian, etc. And decided to give Arch a try just recently; with all the memes around its high entry point, I was really expecting to struggle for a long time to set it up just as I want.
Disclaimer: your mileage may vary. I’ve been using some sort of unix CLI since the time I learned to pee standing (last year?), and in case of Arch this prerequisite makes the whole process a lot simpler.
Learning curve
The installation process itself was quite simple. Perhaps the most complicated part was the disk partitioning and setting up the bootloader, as I’ve never done it myself. But then again — on any other OS you kind of have to do the same, except maybe through the GUI and not CLI.
One thing you quickly learn when using Arch — is you always should consult their wiki. Actually, “consult” is an understatement; let me put it this way, on the hierarchy of usefulness: there’s reddit, then stackexchange, then random “how-to” websites, then your logic, and then there is the Arch wiki. Exactly in that order, since your logic may betray you, but not the Wiki. Jokes aside though, they’ve somehow managed to document every minute detail, with specific troubleshooting for almost any combination of hardware out there. This is incredible, and as a person who also spends a lot of time writing documentations — hats off to the devs and the community.
Once you learn how the daemons work, how pacman and AUR packages work — the rest is actually quite similar to any other OS. Except that Arch, even with a bloated DE is frigging fast and eats very little battery. I actually use CLI package installation also in Windows (winget) or MacOS (brew), so learning to use another package manager was not too steep.
Drivers
The main caveats actually come when you want specific drivers for your specific hardware. For instance, the out-of-the-box drivers for my laptop speakers were horrible, with the sound seemingly coming from someone’s redacted (never checked, perhaps it was). But that could quickly be tweaked with the “pipewire/easyeffects” with custom profiles which you may find on the web.
GPU drivers were not really that much of an issue for me (if I actually read the wiki properly). Enabling GPU acceleration in some of the apps (like Blender) required the AMD HIP toolkit installed (they have Arch support) with some minor tweaks in the Blender configs. Similarly, the camera, mic and bluetooth drivers were available as AURs or even native pacman packages.
Caveats
Caveats that come with Arch are actually shared among almost all linux distros (or more specifically — DEs). Support of Wayland, while improving gradually over the years (with a great leap forward in Plasma 6), still sucks majestically. Luckily, for many of the most popular apps (slack, zoom), there are third-party AUR packages supporting Wayland natively (I spent a lot of time looking for exactly that on Debian with no success)! All of the apps I needed I actually found with the Wayland support in AURs, but, again, your mileage may vary.
Takeaways
I’d say if you just bought a fresh out-of-store laptop with no data on it to worry about — you should definitely give Arch a try, even if you’re a beginner. Once you fail a couple of times (like I did), you’ll not only learn a lot more about the behind-the-scenes working of your own computer, but will end up having one of the fastest and efficient OS-es out there, which you will now be able to configure to your exact liking.
Unfortunately, I’ve never been able to really daily-drive Linux (and this Arch experiment is no exception). Don’t get me wrong: I love linux and the idea of having independent open-source and infinitely customizable OS. But unfortunately I professionally rely on some of the apps, that have no viable alternatives for Linux (PowerPoint, Photoshop, Illustrator, Proton Drive).
PS. “but what about GIMP, or Krita, or Inkscape, or OpenOffice, or using rsync for cloud storage, or <YOUR_FAVORITE_TOOL>?” you may ask. Trust me, I tried it all. Every last presentation, raster/vector graphics software out there. Regardless of how much I hate Adobe, their software is top tier, and until GIMP becomes the Blender of graphic design, I can’t really rely use it for most of my purposes :(
Excellent work - I currently run Endeavour on a PC and laptop. This article has almost made me brave enough to try a bare bones build of Arch on the laptop :-)
I have a windows VM to use Affinity (Photo, Publisher, and Designer), a Pro level suite that will be fine for most work, and is pay once, not subscription.
I use office online, as a PWA.
I very rarely have to boot into Windows.
Unrelated - I love that picture. I want it as a wallpaper but it’s way too square. Do you have some source where I could get a higher definition, wider and/or taller version?
unfortunately, it’s a product of imagination of an overpowered progenitor of our future overlords, otherwise known as GPT-4. and apparently, it still does not want to produce 16x10 images (that is, unless you give it a sacrifice in the form of monthly subscriptions). but feel free to use the image for whatever purposes )
As far as I know, you can use ChatGPT without a subscription, but still paid. I found https://nano-gpt.com/get-started the other day where you pay with cryptocurrency per request, I guess someone behind the scenes is paying the subscription and is offering this as a service. The model behind can be chosen. So in case you have some lying around, you can just use that, or if there’s more interest from others, give me the prompt and I’ll pay for it, still have Nano around.
It’s definitely AI, so the original is probably square too
Same for me. Arch is great and I’m happy with it, but I need MS Office (I know about Libre Office, but there are files that are made in MS Office and I have to work with them) and at least CorelDraw (at least until SVG spec allows tab characters in text objects) to fully work in Linux. Until then, I have to use Windows :-(
Have you tried OnlyOffice? Their main selling point is compatibility with all of the Microsoft Office formats, so maybe that would suit your use case.
Isn’t LibreOffice able to open and export to MS files?
Yeah I had to go back to Windows since MusicBee and Apple Music had issues with VMware and have no viable Linux alternative. (Cider is a MusicKit/web version frontend, and has the same issues as the web version unfortunately)
PS. “but what about GIMP, or Krita, or Inkscape, or OpenOffice, or using rsync for cloud storage, or <YOUR_FAVORITE_TOOL>?” you may ask. Trust me, I tried it all. Every last presentation, raster/vector graphics software out there. Regardless of how much I hate Adobe, their software is top tier, and until GIMP becomes the Blender of graphic design, I can’t really rely use it for most of my purposes :(
The Trust me, I tried it all. and mentioning OpenOffice in one paragraph doesn’t feel quite right. OpenOffice is obsolete. Instead there is ONLYOFFICE and LibreOffice as open source choices for Linux users, available as Flatpak, Snap and probably AppImage.
like i mentioned above in the comment, i really meant to say OnlyOffice (but i also tried Libre, and a bunch of others)
Okay. Your Arch Linux review ends with naming your favorite options which include Proton, Microsoft and Adobe. As you don’t seem to mind using closed source software, did you have a look at WPS Office (Some Linux distributions include this), SoftMaker Office (Available for Linux and Android), Zoho Office ?
As for The GIMP (People have complained about its project name, but developers refused any changes) : From what I read Krita and Inkscape seem more promising. Krita has David Revoy as open source advocate, vocal on Mastodon : https://www.davidrevoy.com
I used WPS, it was worse than Libre from the usability, plus quite bloated with all sorts of stuff (luckily, I don’t have to pay for the Office, and will never actually do that willingly). Haven’t used the other two, however, will have a look, thanks!
Both GIMP and Krita are very nice and decent, just not powerful enough for many things I need photoshop for. Inkscape is actually much closer to Illustrator (not as powerful, but still), so that might be the only one with the “getting used to it” issue.
Actually, one other thing I should have mentioned, is that I also transited from using Premiere Pro to Kdenlive (and sometimes even Blender for very light video editing). Kdenlive is an amazing success story for KDE, hope that happens to Krita as well.
PS. The name GIMP sounds amazing! Love it, they should never change it )
This haha
OpenOffice released a new version last December.
https://openoffice.apache.org/blog/announcing-apache-openoffice-4-1-15.html
Apache, please just stop whatever you are doing. Rewrite your webserver in Rust or something.
Can’t argue with that.
Nobody should use OpenOffice. It is just an an ancient version of LibreOffice at this point.
The name OpenOffice is much better. Many people every year probably get pulled into OpenOffice without realizing what it is. I hate that Apache is just sitting on that codes and pretending it is still active.
Some people say that OnlyOffice has the best Microsoft Office interoperability. If LibreOffice is not good enough, maybe give OnlyOffice a try.
I never really understood the desire for Arch
You trade a little system stability for bleeding-edge package access.
It seems to be geared toward people who want to constantly maintain there system. I’m surprised at the number of people who like to tinker and often break the OS they daily drive. I use Linux because it protects my freedom and is low maintenance.
I guess the benefit of Linux is freedom of choice
One of the simplest ways to safeguard against breakage is to have your /home on a separate partition. I realised I wouldn’t need to backup and reformat it from the beginning, I just need to wipe the root drive and reinstall again.
It’s made even easier by writing an installation script. Simply put, you can pipe a list of packages into packstrap and use a little convenience package for pulling a partition scheme out of a file.
I like to tinker and I’m aware that things will break so I have these tools that let me rebuild the system again in as short a time as possible.
I’m surprised at the number of people who like to tinker and often break the OS they daily drive.
People who don’t use Arch or a derivative (or have tried once but didn’t stay long enough to get comfortable with how it works) seem to think this happens much more than it does
I run the command “yay” once a day if I think of it, every few days if I don’t.
A little less often than that, whenever I think of it, I spend 5 minutes checking for pacnew files (admittedly THIS is potentially a pain compared to other distros, but EOS has a tool that makes it pretty easy)
That’s pretty much it.
Technically you should check the main Arch/EOS/Manjaro page before updating because in the rare event that manual intervention is required there will be instructions there. I usually don’t, and haven’t had a showstopper from it yet.
I can’t remember the last time it took me longer than download time + 5 minutes to upgrade my EOS system, and that includes the recent transition to Plasma 6.
Yeah I don’t want to have to take time to maintain my system. Manual intervention is not something I would ever want to do.
If you like it that’s fine but it is a weird thing to brag about.
It seems to be geared toward people who want to constantly maintain there system
That is where your assumptions are wrong. It is for people that know how and want control over their setup. But after the initial setup maintenance is no worst that any other distro - simpler even in the longer term. Just update your packages and very occasionally manually update a config somewhere or run an extra command before hand (I honestly cannot remember the last time I even needed to do that much…). Far easier than needing to reinstall or fix a whole bunch of broken things after a major system upgrade that happens every few years on other distros.
People that like to tinker and break their system can do that on any distro. That does not mean it is high maintenance, quite the opposite in fact as it is easier to fix as Arch is generally easier to fix when you do break something (so does attract people that do like to tinker). But leave it alone and it wont just randomly break every week like so many people seem to think it does.
- Community-driven distro
- Bleeding edge software
- Rolling release instead of point release (so no borked version upgrades)
- Amazing software availability
- Highly Customizable
- Documentation and community support
There are other distros with the same points, they’re not unique, save for the wiki. A lot of users of other distros refer to the Arch wiki. The AUR is much celebrated but I personally found it annoying having to carefully vet every package and having moved to another distro I don’t miss it.
I think the main reason to choose Arch is it’s for tinkerers/hobbyists. Its community is very enthusiastic which is always nice, though many can become a bit obnoxious on forums.
I suppose it can’t be to bad as it seems to be pretty popular
Have you seen how the AUR works?
Yes, it is not conference inspiring
Sorry, I don’t understand what you try to say here…
Damn auto complete
Out of curiosity, how did you piss before?
Aye, well, the Arch install process is almost like a rite-of-passage in learning more about Linux. Do Gentoo next, and good work!
Out of curiosity, how did you piss before?
lying on my back like all normal people
Do Gentoo next, and good work!
was planning Nix to understand the whole reproducible build idea, but Gentoo is a good suggestion too! will try that
What is your opinion on gravity?
A free-falling observer lives in a locally Minkowskian space-time, so feels no such thing. So I like my metric flat.
I had the same experience. Despite all the doomsaying online I found the installation and configuration process pretty straightforward thanks to the quality documentation.
Try donating projects you would like to use. If your adobe subscription amount is going to gimp and inkscape, you are buying yourself into the future of freedom. If you buy adobe, you will limit yourself more and more.
How much do you think I earn to afford paying for Office or Adobe? :) i’ve never paid for any of those, even though I’ve been using Adobe since CS5.
As for donating: i agree, for now i sometimes help in contributing to the codebase in a bit smaller apps i actually can fix things in.
As a Photoshop replacement, there’s Photopea.
It’s not as heavy duty, but the layout/tools are pretty much the same so it feels significantly more intuitive of you’re used to the PS way of doing things than Krita, GIMP, etc .
Nice write up! Though… the sound coning seemingly from someone’s … someone’s what exactly?
You don’t want to know.
arse!
Ah yes, I expected as mich but was hoping for something more… intricate?
from someone’s … posterior? … latter end? … tuchus? arse is a bit more descriptive, eh?
Tuchus? It is 5AM here and I already learned a new word, thank you kind internet stranger!
As a casual Linux user this confirms exactly what I always thought about Arch: there are significant benefits that I would appreciate but I cannot afford the time and energy investment.
If I didn’t have a job, I would absolutely make it happen. But in the limited time available to me I just have too many other things I’d rather be doing
Just install arch using archinstall (cli app to install arch automatically) and after that use yay instead of pacman
Don’t know how that needs more time than any other OS to be honest.
If it’s that simple to solve every time-sink mentioned in the OP, why isn’t that available by default? Or why isn’t there a distro flavor that is just that?
I don’t know how much HOS is helping with the drivers that don’t come with kernel or need proprietary firmware files, but you can easily get them from AUR. Most difficult part is installing yay from AUR because you don’t have yay yet to install yay vom AUR using yay, lol.
With my answer prior I wanted to tell, that you do not have to spend a lot of time installing arch if you use archinstall (it is ready to use in the archISO)
If it’s that simple to solve every time-sink mentioned in the OP, why isn’t that available by default?
Because a lot of people like setting everything up themselves and having full control over everything they install.
Or why isn’t there a distro flavor that is just that?
There is, Manjaro.
Then why wouldn’t I just install manjaro?
See the first point.
So then I’m still exactly correct about my assessment of Arch? That is too much of a time investment for me and the closest I will want to get is manjaro?
I can’t tell if you really want to have an argument about Arch or are sincerely curious.
Arch expects you to be pretty involved in deciding what runs on your system and maintaining it. That may or may not be for you. After learning how to use it, I found it really wasn’t particularly bad. Having said that, my years spent with Arch were years ago - I’ve been on derivatives since because I don’t really want/need the level of control provided by installing Arch.
If you don’t want such a steep learning curve and are OK with some choices being made for you, maybe you want Manjaro, but given your comments so far, I’m not sure whether any Arch derivative is a good choice for you.
Maybe it’s just not how you like to do things. Even Manjaro says “hey check our weekly update thread” before you update, to see if you might need to intervene at update time, though IME you rarely do. (Ran Manjaro without a reinstall for years on one laptop.)
Currently I use EOS, and as the other post has said it kinda splits the difference. I had to do a little more setup for myself after an EOS install than a Manjaro install, and maintaining it is closer to maintaining vanilla arch, but I don’t consider it a timesink whatsoever. It will be until you know what you are doing.
I guess I take a little umbridge to your use of “timesink” as some kind of pejorative. Everything is a timesink until you know what you are doing with it, and less so when you do.
If you are curious, try them. If you are going to get upset and say they are trash the first time you need some sort of manual intervention, then probably it’s better for you to try/stay on some other distro, but it doesn’t happen often, and it’s usually easy (if you aren’t afraid of a wiki and the terminal) when it does.
If you want an argument, I’m not your guy, I’m just trying to answer the questions you seemed to be posing.
I love Arch, but I’m an old school nerd who likes fiddling with my computer. If you’re the type of person who just wants your shit to work with minimal fuss, then you’re probably right that Arch isn’t the right distro for you. Someone else said that Manjaro has actually migrated pretty far from Arch over the years, so that may not be right for you either now. If you want to try Arch, but don’t want to spend time setting it up then it sounds like EOS is probably a good place to start, but I’m not familiar with EOS at all. That will probably still require some additional configuration for anything special you have going on like custom sound cards, or old printers. I’ve been using Pop_OS on my gaming desktop for a few years now and it’s a really hands-off OS that brings a lot of the cool parts of Linux without requiring much fuss or customization. It is a port of Ubuntu though, so if you want an Arch experience then EOS is the way, or Manjaro for a neutered Arch experience but a little less hands-on. I don’t actually have any first-hand experience with Manjaro or EOS though, I’ve only read about them. If you have a few hours to try them out then you might end up finding a new OS that improves your digital life. Some other people might be able to give you more information, or you can just go for it! Hopefully that helps a little. Sorry I don’t have all the answers.
Edit EOS is short for EndeavourOS , so you don’t get lost looking at other stuff with the same acronym
Arch is for people who want to fiddle around with computers during their free time.
Source: was one of those people for a long time and still am occasionally. I use Arch on an old laptop and it’s pretty awesome. But I use Pop on my gaming desktop because it’s stupid simple.
totally understand it. it took me about a full day to setup everything the way i liked (i’m also quite picky when it comes to usability), but honestly the next time i do it, i can probably do it in a couple of hours, since i now know all the ins and outs.
I’d be interested to hear from someone like you on their “one month later” experience re: upkeep and compatibility
That’s what EndeavourOS is for. Essentially it is just Arch with a fancy install, plus some minor tweaks and packages you’d probably install in Arch anyway.
The AUR and the wiki is what makes iArch so good. All other Linux distros rely on good forums and public guides, which means you need to be on Ubuntu or Debian for there to be enough content out there to help you if you get stuck. But with Arch most stuff is answered by the wiki or with a package from the AUR. Also the community is generally very helpful and direct in forums and Reddit posts making finding solutions much easier, in my experience, than other distros.
Anyway, I love Arch.
Then just use endeavour os. It’s basically Arch but with a preset configuration already decided for you.
I use endeavouros. It’s great after you set it up. It doesn’t really give much help. It’s still barebones almost like arch. I even had to install bluez on KDE to get my Bluetooth working. Best thing about it is the installer. In case things go south, you can easily reinstall. And now that arch the install script, it shouldn’t be an issue.
Installing Arch is the least of its issues, and endeavour doesn’t help you with anything else.
Disagree, actually. The Endeavour defaults are really good and they have a really helpful, newbie-friendly forum.
Plus I have personally found the stereotype of Arch being difficult to maintain to not be true at all. I just installed the
linux-ltskernel package and setupbtrfs-assistantfor system restore and it’s been quite low-maintenance. I had way more issues with Fedora, come to think of it.Yeah, the defaults are pretty good, that’s why I used it the longest out of arch and derivatives.
Btrfs does help out a lot, but the last time I installed derivatives, only garuda defaulted to it. Endeavour without it wasn’t fun at all.
That really depends on a lot of factors. I’ve used Arch on multiple devices and had it freeze, crash, fail to boot, and had a bunch of other minor issues. It’s usually something that I could fix in a few minutes, except for like that bad GRUB release.
One day I remembered that I previously used mint for 2 years and it never froze, crashed, or had any sort of issue. So now I’m on MX and just use nix to install bleeding edge packages I need. Maybe I don’t have the newest DE, but I know it won’t break randomly, just possibly once every ~2 years after a major release upgrade.
Yeah, Fedora was a massive pain for me as well. But I installed it as a friend’s first distro, and it’s been working just fine. Although I think it might’ve been even better to use RHEL/MX instead.
I’ve been using some sort of unix CLI since the time I learned to pee standing (last year?)
Well, if you’re a woman that’s a huge thing, pee standing!
If you’re a man, pee sitting (at home/friends home), please… It makes cleaning very, very simpler and the bathroom doesn’t smell like public restroom
Out of context but good advice.
Unfortunately, I’ve never been able to really daily-drive Linux (and this Arch experiment is no exception). Don’t get me wrong: I love linux and the idea of having independent open-source and infinitely customizable OS. But unfortunately I professionally rely on some of the apps, that have no viable alternatives for Linux (PowerPoint, Photoshop, Illustrator, Proton Drive).
There are viable alternatives for Linux as you mentioned. But non are going to just be drop-in replacements for those tools. There are a lot of graphics design tools out there now that are just as powerful as Photoshop for what most people need. But the big issue is they are different in just enough ways that it can be a challenge to switch to them once you are used to the way Photoshop and the other windows only tools work. This is just something you are going to have to get over if you want to try Linux longer term.
But it can be far too much to switch all at once and with a completely new OS as well. So don’t. Instead start using these tools and alternative on your Windows install now. Start trying out different ones (there are a lot, both open and closed source), and giving each a decent attempt to use. Start out with smaller side projects so you don’t interrupt your main workflows and slowly over time start learning and getting used to the different way these other tools work. If you make some effort to do that while on Windows then the next time you try out Linux they wont seem as bad. But if you keep sticking with Windows only software on Windows you are going to find the same issue every time you try to switch.
agree, yes, especially the ProtonDrive configured through rsync: i really need it to be reliable, since i often travel and absolutely need my documents synced automatically with my PC. even in the early versions of ProtonDrive windows/mac app, it was often not syncing, and i would find myself on the road need to download a few gigs worth of slides and pdfs.
I just switched to Linux for the first time last year, and I’ve been using EndeavourOS, which I’ve been told is like Arch with training wheels, and my experience has been fantastic. In case anyone wants a slightly easier way to peek at Arch.
Honestly EndeavourOS is Arch once it is installed. As I have said before, EOS is more of an alternative installer with sensible defaults. 99.9% of the packages installed will be from the Arch repos or the AUR. Even the kernel is vanilla Arch.
I can install Arch. If I am bringing up a new system, I almost always reach for EOS instead. EOS has switched to KDE as the default DE. I still prefer XFCE myself.
Why not just use archinstall? Is way faster 😁
Do you mean the script? That’s pretty much what Manjaro is to my knowledge, Arch with an installer script.
Hu? No, manjaro breaks if you use the AUR with it, at least any time I tried, lol Manjaro has drifted far from arch since it’s start of existence. What you are talking about sounds more like EOS.
I don’t use Arch at all but isn’t EOS using Calamares? You click a few times, selecting language, timezone and click install, then go make a coffee while it installs. Difficult to be way faster than that. You can save maybe 30sec by not having any options.
Instead of fancy EOS GUI installer you can just use the archinstall pythonscript by typing sudo archinstall in the tty console of the booted archISO, I see no difference in the results 😇
Are there commands to exclude packages you don’t need or want? Part of what makes Arch special is that you get only what you need and nothing else.
