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.
archinstall is fine. Especially if you don't have to do much complicated with the partitioning. It will get you a system pretty quickly.
The Arch community has a lot of toxicity. Maybe there's some sunk cost from people getting Arch installed the hard way, but it's full of the attitude that Arch should be hard.
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.
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.
Installing Arch is easy as long as you don't want to do anything clever. As soon as you want to do something like setting software RAID up, it becomes much less easy :P. At least that's been my experience.
Maybe with my next laptop I'll try Arch properly, but it was too much of a pain last time I tried to install it with my current setup.
Installing Arch Linux requires seems to require both knowledge and time. I haven't installed myself, but I've seen friends and people in the Internet describing it that way.
If you want to quickly try something similar, I'd suggest Manjaro Linux, which is based on Arch. It really feels like Arch but with non-minimal defaults for those who don't want to set up everything themselves.
The arch beginners' guide on the wiki will walk you through the installation process even if you don't know what you're doing. Still not as easy as Ubuntu, but should be feasible.
Yeah, Arch Linux is definitely not for beginners. The install process alone is hands-on and requires users to be experienced with command line configuration. Arch is for power users who want a ports-based Linux with great package management (pacman).
In my opinion, the selling point is that arch requires you to take interest into how it works and some level of understanding of the major parts.
To get a working arch install you'll be taken through The Install Guide that summarises the steps necessary to have a base install with links to relevant specialised articles. Once you have a bootable system, they provide links for further customisation if your system.
The amazing thing is that by contrast to ubuntu et al. you're by default left with the strict minimal bootable linux system and anything else you want/need on your machine, it's explicitely your responsability to ensure proper operation (dependency versioning, program specific configuration and maintenance). It's fairly overwhelming initially, but the tools arch gives you to cope with the "it's your mess" are second to none (pacman/yaourt is amazing)
Honestly you don't need any particular skills to install Arch. Just time and access to the instructions. It's a neat way to spend an afternoon once, but I just switched to Manjaro too on future installations,
This is essentially the process used for installing the base system in Arch. As usual, the Arch Linux wiki page on this topic [1] is a good resource, even if you're using a different system.
If you want to learn more about how a typical Linux system is organized, but don't have the time or patience to go through the Linux From Scratch book [2], installing and configuring Arch once is pretty insightful and also kind of fun.
Since the last time I had used Arch, not only had they added systemd, but they had also killed AIF (Arch Installation Framework). Most of it is easy, like partitioning, but I had to figure some stuff out that I really didn't want to figure out, like the command for getting Grub working.
But between the official and unofficial install guides, I got it working.
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.
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.
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