For a total newbie, Linux Mint or PopOS are probably the best options. But EndeavourOS is getting there. There shouldn’t be any issues during the installation if one sticks to the defaults. Only thing is, it doesn’t come with a graphical package manager out of the box. But once that is installed (I think anyone will be happy to write a single terminal command, at least), I don’t see why it’s any harder to use than any other distro.
Mint, with any DE, does come with a graphical package manager. It’s as easy as any appstore. The only confusion is it suggests both it’s original and flatpack versions to install.
Reading it in a linear fashion, you drop one distro after another without much distinction. I believe it’d be better if you serve EndOS it’s own paragraph since it’s so different.
Arch wiki is the reason I started using Arch. After fixing an install from something I found there for like the 10th time I thought “Why not give it a try”
?? The arch wiki is one of the greatest Linux resources out there. Sure there may be situations where it doesn’t have the answer for something, but for a new user? It has all bases covered.
On one hand, the archlinux bbs had the only exact reference to the issue I was having. On the other hand, no one could replicate it enough to figure anything out. :/
It’s actually really great… if you know how to interpret and apply the information on it to your situation and adapt as needed. A good new user experience it does not make however.
Trying to install a lot of shit, primarily. I figured out that a lot of programs that I wanted were only available (to my knowledge) in .deb format which I couldn't get working in the distro, That and I'm still not used to using the terminal to install anything. Literally the only thing I miss from Windows is using wizards to install things. I understand a lot of this is purely skill issue though.
I found installing pamac and the enabling the arch user repository gives you most things that are debs, that of course involves using the cli to install pamac though
But installing via terminal is so much more convenient compared to those stupid windows installer. Not to mention you don’t have to download all those stupid installers again each time you want to update, unless the devs provide their own update mention in the software itself.
It spits out all the packages with SEARCHTERM in its name or description. The packages are listed like “REPO/PACKAGE” , where REPO tells you if it’s from the official repos (core/extra/multilib) or from the AUR.
Then pick the number of the package from the list and that’s it.
If you want to update all your packages, even the AUR ones just enter yay and press enter on the follow-up questions. If you update with pacman -Syu then AUR packages won’t get updated.
Also Octopi is a nice frontend for yay and pacman. Not as fancy as Discover or Pamac but it does its job well.
Just using endeavour's bundled yay, you can install most packages including deb ones that users have written a "how to install" for. https://aur.chaotic.cx/ would also be nice.
Ugh I had to get an obscure PCIe card working a few years back and it was a huge pain. I believe I ended up having to find the broadcom chipset by model because the generic brand driver didn’t support it, then the arch repos didn’t have the driver for the model, and there were several aur packs available that I had to try one by one. And it was kernel module loaded, so each was a reboot.
Absolute hell of a time, probably about 5 years ago.
My Ideapad Gaming 3 with a 3060 didn’t have Wifi working out of the box.
For awhile I had to install a kernel module everytime I updated Linux to get Wifi working. Thankfully I found what I needed on Github the day I got the laptop.
I’ve got two Linux boxes that I got new, different, wifi cards for recently. Turns out both those cards have the same Intel AX200 chip which has had a variety of problems causing frequent dropouts that the community has slowly nutted out since I’ve had them, including requiring a kernel patch.
The two big ones are a faulty default power saving mode, and problems talking to a Wireless n router when in WiFi 5 mode.
That reminds me, some time ago I tried installing Garuda on a Ryzen 5800H based mini PC but there where so many issues (namely worrisome graphical artefacting, which has never occurred with other distros on the same mini PC) I had to abort and abandon trying it until maybe the next or a future release.
I simply wanted to check out Garuda (arch based, if I recall well). I used the Cinnamon iso with Ventoy (not sure where the issue arose from).
That’s weird. I have had zero issues with it so far (talking about distro specific issues) and I am running this with an AMD APU, Nvidia GPU, prime offloading on wayland. Works like an absolute charm. Though granted, this isn’t quite out of the box, you may not need to be a wizard to figure it out, but I would not recommended this to a noob.
Once you learn about Linux, you go faster than any other noob. And that is very useful for programming/hacking jobs, faster than all those noobs with 0 knowledge about what is what.
I often use Arch in a container, when I need a fhs distro. EndeavourOS is great for desktop use if you don’t want to go through the Arch install process.
DeltaChat is an awesome messenger. It’s federated, quick and simple to use. Also, I didn’t realize DC was on the fediverse for so many years.
The first part is about the meme. Arch has it’s (dis-)advantages depending on the use case.
I wrote the second part because OP mentioned they’ve found the meme “at deltachat”, which is a email-based messenger I use. It’s a topic adjacent to linux as it’s open source software with linux support.
I Arched for like 4 years or so, and now I NixOS. Got somewhat tired of modifying configs in 100500 places and eventually forgetting what exactly I’ve changed 😅
Nevertheless, I still think arch is great, and, as a side note, it does provide a good understanding of Linux on the upper-low level (not like LFS or even gentoo, but still very much viable).
About 3, idk what’s going on with my system, but sometimes after a big yay update, the kde login fails (something about the plasma environment failing to boot or idk I have not debugged it correctly yet), then after a reboot systemd-boot fails to load it and the efi entry dissapears. I’m forced to arch-chroot and reinstall the bootctl. After doing so, sometimes I have to do it again and other times it logs correctly.
Again, not debugged it correctly but it’s not like I did any kind of weird change to any config, just installed some flatpaks, some steam games, and lutris for League, which in the end is basically wine, and a yay update provoking this behaviour is pretty bad.
I’ve had this happen. I never did figure it out, personally. I distro hopped a bit and eventually ended up back on Arch and it didn’t happen again, so I guess it was a bugged install?
Yeah, I’ve taken the routine of logging into tty3 before kde to pipe the journal tal output into a file to debug only the error if it happens. Yeah I know I can fine tune then output to get only the last execution and so on and I have done it, but it was not that clear and this happened after a work day and I wanted to fuck off and chill so the next time it happens I’ll be more through.
I’ve personally encountered mentioned behavior with kde on both arch and kde neon, so I’m inclined to think it’s their f-up. As for sd-boot, I’m not sure: I’ve used it on arch for a short while only, and then just ditched bootloaders altogether for efistub
Yeah, it’s not that big of a deal for me, but damn if this would not be a deal breaker for a regular user, and I ensure you that a regular user would install league and steam or something of the sort xD
Like, I’m a software engineer and arch-chrooting once in a while to launch some commands is nbd, but a regular office worker that hardly runs some commands once in a while in terminals, copied from (safe) random places? Yeah good luck I bet they would just either distro hop or format and reinstall windows.
I could say inability to edit a config file is worth reevaluating of what is a failed piece of garbage here… But it won’t be fair. If you don’t want to deal with configs, go ahead and use chromeos or something :P
I’ve kind of come and gone full circle on this one. It fits in the same space as the terminal, way more useful when you know what you want.
Some config files are a lot easier to get the behavior I want, but editing a poorly formatted (or in some some cases pointlessly complicated) config is a quick nope out.
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