Installing Arch is a great way to learn. As you go step by step you'll learn the parts of the OS, and kind kind of grok why they're there (and when you'll inevitably skip a step, you'll learn more). It's also a great system to have total control over your OS. And since you built it yourself you can fix it yourself.
If you want to learn the entire Linux ecosystem, I can't recommend Arch enough.
From personal experience, don't try to install Arch on your machine unless you have another internet-capable device in hand. You're going to reach for ArchWiki several times.
Of course, ArchWiki is an incredible resource with great examples, so as long as you have it, the process is mostly painless.
Arch is kind of an intermediate Linux in terms of how much it will rely on your configuration. Not quite Gentoo, but far, far, far away from Ubuntu.
You should really try Arch. I was initially hesitant, because of the whole 'Build you own Linux!' thing, but after doing it once I learned LOTS and realized that it was not near as difficult as it sounds.
There is excellent documentation in the Arch wiki, and the forums are helpful. And I have to say, installing arch linux taught me more about linux than anything else that I have ever done.
I agree. Arch Linux configuration is educational and well worth the few hours it takes on your first try, but you should definitely have another computer with the wiki open while you do it.
The Arch install is literally
1. partition your system
2. mount /
3. run 1 command to actually install the system
4. install grub
Sure, it's a bit gatekeepy if you haven't done it before, but it teaches you a lot of useful things about how a Linux system works, that you'll undoubtedly need if you plan to use Arch.
The setup process for Arch is challenging, but it can be a rewarding exercise if you want to have a better understanding of how a Linux system is put together. It's like Linux from Scratch, but less time consuming, and you end up with a system that you can actually use when you're finished.
But yeah, once it's set up, and you've figured out how things typically work in Arch (e.g. you install a package first, but nothing is enabled by default - you have to decide how you want it to start), it's a great system. You'll learn how to actually use systemd, and will generally have a better feel for how everything is supposed to function, which will make you better at investigating things when they break, or when they don't work out of the box, even on other systems.
Also the Arch wiki is an amazing resource regardless of what you're running.
I don't necessarily have any reservations about recommending Arch to a beginner, but you do have to be curious and willing to learn. People who tried Linux and then got frustrated because some piece of software didn't work quite right out of the box probably wouldn't enjoy using Arch.
I think of installing Arch as a good exercise for aspiring sysadmins or other people who which to know a bit about Linux tinkering. It teaches one about chroots, bootloaders, partitionning etc and that knowledge may come in handy later.
And for those who already know about this or just want to use Arch, there are many derived distros providing an installer (such as Antergos).
That said the installation process is not representative of the daily use of the system and I actually use Arch mostly because it "just works", with no major versions upgrades to perform every 6 months, no complex/fragile automation stuff that breaks regularly (looking a you apt), and no need to add a ton of unofficial repositories to get non-outdated software.
> install arch from scratch if they want to learn about how computers work
15 years ago it was "install gentoo to learn how computers work" but all it really teaches you is how the gentoo/arch install procedure works, or, more likely, how to type in commands from a HOWTO one after another.
As a Linux noob I decided to try Arch Linux 4 years ago because I wanted to actually learn how the various parts work that make out a whole Linux distro (things like the bootloader, systemd, various desktop environments etc). Other distros give you everything ready out of the box, which made it hard for me to actually dig deeper under the hood, because I had no clue where to start. With Arch Linux you more or less build a whole Linux system from the bottom up.
Following the Arch guides to get a fully working system was easy enough for a complete Linux noob like me. But you still need some basic knowledge about computing, for things like networking, file systems, drive partitioning and such. If you learned this knowledge from other operating systems then Arch Linux is fairly easy to setup by just following their guide.
Arch looks like it's got a lot going for it, and I sometimes find myself looking at their documentation when I'm trying to shoehorn a package into ubuntu. Even though I used Gentoo linux for a long time, very similar to Arch in lots of ways, I haven't been able to install and configure Arch successfully on my computers. I'm sure if I spend a lot more time on it, I'll be able to do it, but I just don't have that much time to spare, so I stick to ubuntu and variants. But I really do like what I see on Arch.
If you want to understand how the parts of a working Linux system come together build Linux From Scratch once, fully manually while going through every step.
Arch Linux is like every other binary Linux distribution, only more difficult to admin for no reason. Hell if you squint hard enough even Gentoo has more of a reason to exist. A package managed that is source code first.
Some people like to know how things work, they like to take things apart and rebuild them. Linux From Scratch (the distro) might be the extreme of this but Arch seems to strike a decent balance.
Also, you do get more vanilla software from these distro. It's a lot less likely that someone modified the software to work with their distro idiosyncrasies. Sometimes that's a big plus.
I used Gentoo around 2002-2005 or so and I learn a great deal of what I know about Linux through the experience. I now run Ubuntu or Debian cause there are other things I want to learn about ;p
I’d recommend going for it, and as others have said, be prepared to read the Arch Wiki, a lot.
I think what’s most important would be to simply have the guts and the inspiration to keep going, even if you think you’ve lost all hope. Personally, I started out my Linux journey with Ubuntu, then distro hopped and tried PopOS, and Ubuntu-based distro with extra things here and there. Then, I took a Linux course online (for free) and gave me general fundamentals, it advertises as the “The Start from scratch Linux course”. After that and spending tons of time on Reddit and seeing post after post and the memes about ‘I use arch btw’ I decided to try it out. It was definitely fun and a tad time consuming at first, but after that I’ve learned a ton more about Linux and how things work. I’ve only had a broken system a couple times. Again, the ArchWiki is your friend.
Heck, even just reading the installation guide gives you a better understanding of how a Linux machine operates.
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