Finally migrated from Windows to Linux. For anyone wondering, what is the state of Linux as your primary OS for home PC\laptop in 2023.
I’ve finalised my Archlinux installation yesterday, I dropped of Linux more than 10 years ago and experience in 2023 in comparison is awesome and beyond even wildest dreams back then:
- For average user looking for more out of the box experience I would suggest something Arch based (people in comments suggest EndeavourOS, please do your research). Archlinux installation took me quite some time
- Almost everything works out of the box, by just installing corresponding package
- KDE Plasma environment is fast and beautiful
- Pipewire audio server (Jack\Pulseaudio replacement) works great
- Wayland window server is not there yet, especially if you have Nvidia with proprietary drivers and want to use VR. Waking up, session restoration and other scenarios have issues. Use X11.
- Wine is great!
- Music making - Bitwig Studio DAW has linux native version, yabridge allow you to use windows VSTs, which are easily installed via wine
- Gaming works out of the box with Steam for majority of titles, some games have native linux version. Performance is great. In worst case windows game might loose 5-15% in performance. Was not case for my titles
- Gaming outside steam is fine too. Use Wine, Lutris, Proton
- VR is a mixed bag. Not everything is there (Desktop view, sound control and mirroring, camera, motions smooth, lighthouses do not wake up os go to sleep. I use my phone to turn them on/off). But if its not the problem for you, quite some titles work. Tried: native HF Alyx, Lab, windows: Beat Saber and Boneworks. For me it’s a surprise, I did not count on it. Performance is great.
So overall my experience is great. Eventually I’m going to get rid of WIndows on other computers and laptops at howe. I can finally wave goodbye to Windows, with lots of ads and bloatware. Alway glad to help with answers regarding installation while my memory and history logs are fresh. ^^
Does Archlinux take some time to set up but then is as easy to maintain as Manjaro or does the struggle never end?
Always wanted to try out Arch but feel intimidated by all the people telling me not to :P
When you set it up - it just works. For me installation took 4-6 of hours (I had to read all the topics), until I had bare bones operating system with desktop env. Just follow wiki installation guide (precisely! I made couple of mistakes, because was not paying attention) and you will be fine.
Rare problems during update I had 10 years ago seems to be even rarer today, just check out feed https://archlinux.org/ before update, or after. You can always rollback any package with pacman using local cache. Lots of solutions are easy to find on the internet.
In my experience, once you’ve got Arch set up, it less work to maintain than Manjaro. On Arch, you have noticeably more frequent, but smaller, package updates. On Manjaro, compatibility issues with the AUR may occur, which happened a few times for me, while that won’t happen on Arch.
Install Manjaro on VM, see how they did it. Then install Arch with the same packages. It is best if you have life example. That’s how I matched my 1st Arch.
These days there’s archinstall script on standard Arch install image. It supports LUKS 2 disc encryption and BTRFS root. If you save your configuration and load it, then retry attempts take no time. Saving configuration is best done to a separate USB stick.
As far as maintenance. It is near zero cost. Check website for warnings then
pacman -Syu
While officially yay is not supported, it is a great tool to keep AUR packages up to date. These days it updates system prior to running AUR updates.
Manjaro breaks more often than Arch, but as a 1st time OS is great.
Beware that, on Arch, “once you’ve got it set up” can be a loaded statement. Once your OS is running and all your programs reinstalled, there will still be a dozen little configuration files somewhere that you don’t know about and that will annoy you until you spend the time to problem solve. If you let those problems linger, it can lead to a “struggle never end[s]” situation. Part of the beauty of Manjaro is sensible defaults. But if you want to try out Arch, you should. It’s not hard; it’s just annoying for a while.
don’t recommend manjaro. instead - vanilla arch or endeavour os
Noob question here. Why so many ppl is against Manjaro? As someone who just tried many distros , Manjaro was the one that just worked for me without errors, untill I was bored to try something else.
I think it’s mostly do with the carelessness of the devs. They’ve let their certificates expire multiple times (and suggested their users put their clocks back as a workaround) and DDOSed the AUR a couple of times by accident. To be fair, I haven’t heard of any foul ups in a long time so maybe they’re being more careful now.
I used manjaro for a while, and it just worked out of the box. The problem is with the AUR. Manjaro is always a little bit behind the aur, and this leads to breakages because a package needs a dependency version that isn’t available. It’s like doing partial upgrades which arch is clear about: don’t do it. The other thing is that this delay is for testing, but there’s been questions raised if manjaro really does the testing justice.
If you stay away from the aur and use flatpaks, manjaro won’t have issues generally speaking. But now there’s an alternative in endeavor-it’s got a nice installer and dumps you into an arch+ environment. Me personally I didn’t find arch difficult to install, so I just went that route.
TLDR: poor project management & bad security and stability even though it specifically promotes itself as stable. Here’s a video I think explains it pretty well https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=5KNK3e9ScPo&pp=ygURbWFuamFybyBsaW51eCBiYWQ%3D
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
https://m.piped.video/watch?v=5KNK3e9ScPo&pp=ygURbWFuamFybyBsaW51eCBiYWQ%3D
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
The biggest reason is instability - packages in its main repo are held back two weeks, while the same isn’t true of anything from the AUR, meaning potential dependency version mismatch. It’s kinda rare for this to be an issue, but it happens enough to make it a subpar choice for long-term usage. More info here
Do they literally just delay everything by a week or make weekly “releases”? Both don’t make anything more stable. I’m confused what their goal is. The weekly “releases” would at least seem like a good idea but you’re just as well risking being stuck with a bug for a week.
https://manjarno.pages.dev/ (kinda ironic that the original manjarno site is dead)
Also https://dont-ship.it/ for Linux mobile where Manjaro shipped broken WIP pull requests
Gaming outside steam is fine too. Use Wine, Lutris, Proton
And Heroic Games Launcher.
I wouldn’t recommend Arch to Linux beginners, though. It’ll take quite a bit of tinkering to get to work and you have to develop a pretty detailed understanding of the whole thing. Which is absolutely fine, of course, if this is what you want to do. But if you just want something that works with minimal hassle, try Mint.
Yes, I find this obsession with Arch on Lemmy very weird. It’s certainly not a distro for beginners. Ubuntu (let the hate flow), Mint, Fedora, and many others would be better choices.
If it is what you like, fair enough but I feel that it is encouraged around here as a default for both beginners and advanced users, which is bizarre. It’s too complex for beginners and not optimisable enough for very advanced users. I don’t hate it but I hate to see it become the standard.
Compared to gentoo for instance, packages are not compiled depending on the HW they are installed on. So, not enough resource optimisation and customisation for some users
Of course, any distro is customisable if you spend the time to do it voluntarily, but by default it’s not the way it works
I used to use Arch Linux. It’s really good, honestly, especially if you want to know how the OS components work from inside or make something custom. For anything else, I would recommend Debian and its non-snap-based derivatives (Linux Mint Debian Edition or Tuxedo OS, or KDE Neon).
From my personal experience Arch is several months ahead of other distros and depending on the package and sometimes has everything you need already included for gaming.
I believe this is due to the Steam Deck.
However for ease of use, I agree there are other better distros. Fedora is only 2ish months behind arch in terms of graphics drivers and Ubuntu… has the latest proton from steam and lutris since proton isn’t installed from the local app stores.
Arch is several months ahead of other distros
Source for that? It’s one of those weird, wild affirmations that go around regarding Arch. Ahead in terms of what? Integrating the most up-to-date kernel or something?
Is it because of the rolling release model? But it’s not the only one to have rolling releases.
I find Mint to be the most obvious choice for beginners who don’t use Lemmy.
Anecdotally, Mint broke file permissions and then the mounting points for my home server setup. And I find Cinnamon to be quite ugly imho.
I tried Fedora and Debian and much prefer those two vs Mint. Also, KDE is incredibly beautiful on the Steam Deck.
P.S. Fedora and Debian work with secure boot OOTB. Helpful for a laptop install. I know you can make it work with Arch and Mint as well, and there’s issues+opinions with secure boot, but I just wanted something to work. I am not as adept with linux and the guides assumed a particular level of experience with it.
It’s because it’s bleeding edge, extremely well documented and extremely popular. Bleeding edge is exciting and you’re gonna end up on the arch wiki anyway regardless of distro, so you may as well go to the source.
Do mind though it doesn’t mean it’s easy, like at all, and I fundamentally agree, there’s a million better choices for first timers.
you’re gonna end up on the arch wiki anyway regardless of distro, so you may as well go to the source.
Absolutely not. I’ve never used a distro that required me to check the forums or wiki of another distro.
it’s bleeding edge
What now? I feel I have fallen asleep and just woke up at a marketing meeting at my job.
I had to help a friend install the VMware kernel modules, since VMware is weird and VirtualBox sucks for virtualising Windows. I had to guide him through it step by step, making sure his commands were exact.
He’s only started using the terminal properly. Hell no, I’m not going to recommend Arch to him.
I think it depends on what the said beginner is after. If they just want something that works then sure archlinux isn’t the best option, but if they want learn more about linux then there’s nothing wrong with installing arch. When I was new to linux, I found the beginners install guide on the archwiki to be very helpful and learnt a fair bit about how things work. I think you then have a good overview of how your system works and therefore have a better idea of what needs fixing when things break.
Endeavor OS solves most of those problems. Out of box experience is fantastic, and the installer is the best I’ve ever used.
That being said, I still wouldn’t recommend it due to the Arch package maintainers willingness to break userspace.
You will do a system update and it will break something. Most recent for me was Python packages. I updated my system and suddenly pip stopped working because they decided to follow PEP-668 and force the user to install packages using pacman.
The rationale given was allowing the user to install packages outside of the distro’s control can potentially break system tools like Fedora’s DNF, which is python based.
Now, I’ve done this on Fedora, it’s not fun. But you know what else? FEDORA DOESN’T EVEN ENABLE THIS FEATURE YOU FUCKING IMBECILES.
There is a certain kind of beginner I would recommend Arch to, those rare folks who really do learn best from the bottom up. Candidates must also see “computers” as a hobby, and have separate hardware from their daily driver they’re installing/learning Linux on.
Sure. If you want to tinker and look under the hood, Arch is great. But if you just want stuff to work, there are better alternatives.
Honestly, I’m still not sure I would recommend Arch to those people. I think most of those people would be better off on something like Gentoo or NixOS (depending on the class of weirdo we’re talking about). Arch in my experience is just more painful than it needs to be. Like, honest to god, there is no reason the user should have to fiddle with the keyring when updating… Figure it out.
Last used Linux over 10 years ago when I was in college for ITNA. It didn’t work out for me and I drive trucks for a living now lol. Computers/gaming has always been my hobby though. Decided a few weeks ago to try out Linux again on a spare computer I have. Started with EndeavorOS and broke it somehow. Went to mint for like a week and couldn’t get used to it for some reason and decided to try EndeavorOS again. Been using it for about a month now as my primary and only using the windows PC for gaming and it’s been great. Does take some tinkering and googling to get it how it want it from a fresh install though which I’ve had to do a couple times now because of hardware failures lol
I switched because w10 got too heavy for my old shitty laptop. Now I got new shitty laptop with w11 and will soon it will be cured by Linux.
My old laptop will retire as server.
