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 :(

  • lemmyreader@lemmy.mlEnglish
    431·
    9 months ago

    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.

      • lemmyreader@lemmy.mlEnglish
        5·
        8 months ago

        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

        • hayk@lemmy.mlOP
          3·
          8 months ago

          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 )

          • lemmyreader@lemmy.mlEnglish
            1·
            8 months ago

            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.

            Awesome.

  • Pantherina@feddit.de
    32·
    9 months ago

    OpenOffice is dead since years, Libreoffice is what is used today :D

    Btw Inkscape is said to be quite good. GIMP 3.0 will have color profiles and nondestructive filters.

    I used Libreoffice Impress instead of Powerpoint recently.

    • you will need to learn the core concepts new, master slides etc.
    • once you have your own templates, presentations will be very nice
    • you dont get AI bullshit templates so more manual work but more authentic presentations
    • same for hunting down icons, stock images etc.
    • for collaborating OnlyOffice is used, integrated into Nextcloud. OnlyOffice has a Desktop Client, but I dont see the reason, Libreoffice is more feature complete.
  • prole@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    12·
    9 months ago

    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.

    • Petter1@lemm.ee
      1·
      9 months ago

      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 😇

      • AwkwardLookMonkeyPuppet@lemmy.worldEnglish
        1·
        8 months ago

        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.

        • Petter1@lemm.ee
          1·
          8 months ago

          Yes you can

          But what Arch makes Arch is that it can be whatever you want it to be. Mine is fully bloated, lol

    • hayk@lemmy.mlOP
      1·
      9 months ago

      honestly, i like the idea of Arch being completely bare bone. you can then keep track of everything you install afterwards, and that helps a lot when later you try to troubleshoot any issues, since you know exactly what’s installed, what’s modified, and what’s running in the background.

  • neatchee@lemmy.world
    12·
    9 months ago

    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

      • penquin@lemm.ee
        4·
        9 months ago

        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.

    • Petter1@lemm.ee
      3·
      9 months ago

      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.

      • neatchee@lemmy.world
        1·
        9 months ago

        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?

        • Petter1@lemm.ee
          2·
          8 months ago

          I don’t know how much EOS 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)

        • AwkwardLookMonkeyPuppet@lemmy.worldEnglish
          1·
          8 months ago

          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 or EOS.

              • neatchee@lemmy.world
                1·
                8 months ago

                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?

                • AwkwardLookMonkeyPuppet@lemmy.worldEnglish
                  2·
                  8 months ago

                  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

                • octopus_ink@lemmy.mlEnglish
                  1·
                  8 months ago

                  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.

    • hayk@lemmy.mlOP
      2·
      9 months ago

      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.

      • neatchee@lemmy.world
        1·
        8 months ago

        I’d be interested to hear from someone like you on their “one month later” experience re: upkeep and compatibility

        • hayk@lemmy.mlOP
          1·
          8 months ago

          This has been some time ago. Because of the apps I mentioned I had to transit after a week of usage. But in that week, it was kinda nice. I don’t think from the upkeep standpoint it’s too different from other distros. Like I said, the main hard-to-overcome issues come from hardware support, often due to vendors unwilling to release drivers for Linux. But most of the major vendors (intel, amd, nvidia, etc.) have decent linux support nowadays, even not considering the myriad of open-source drivers.

          I was also genuinely surprised with how well DEs nowadays support touchpads, and how customizable the gestures can be. That being said, ofc like I said, some of the apps do not release Wayland support (mainly the electron-based ones).

          In short, lots of things are a bit more complicated than on Mac or Windows, but a lot of other things are much more straightforward and customizable.

    • mub@lemmy.ml
      2·
      8 months ago

      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.

    • AwkwardLookMonkeyPuppet@lemmy.worldEnglish
      2·
      8 months ago

      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.

  • fxdave@lemmy.ml
    10·
    9 months ago

    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.

    • hayk@lemmy.mlOP
      91·
      8 months ago

      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.

    • hayk@lemmy.mlOP
      3·
      8 months ago

      In the old days laptops were rare and accessible only to selected few. The others in the background were just admiring the flawless handwork the arch user is displaying with the command line.

  • gwildors_gill_slits@lemmy.caEnglish
    7·
    9 months ago

    I had the same experience. Despite all the doomsaying online I found the installation and configuration process pretty straightforward thanks to the quality documentation.

  • Ansis@iusearchlinux.fyi
    7·
    9 months ago

    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?

    • hayk@lemmy.mlOP
      4·
      9 months ago

      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 )

      • Laser@feddit.de
        2·
        8 months ago

        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.

  • Responsabilidade@lemmy.eco.brPortuguês
    82·
    9 months ago

    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

    • hayk@lemmy.mlOP
      1·
      9 months ago

      i experimentally found that peeing standing (handstanding to be precise) is the ultimate way, so i learned how to do that (like i said, was last year)

  • vort3@lemmy.ml
    61·
    9 months ago

    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 :-(

    • Quik@infosec.pub
      8·
      9 months ago

      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.

      • vort3@lemmy.ml
        1·
        8 months ago

        I’m not sure how it can be even remotely compatible without the fields support? It’s not even possible to have something as basic as current chapter name (heading) in page header/footer. This is essential. Also, LibreOffice has this.

  • Diplomjodler@feddit.de
    5·
    9 months ago

    Where would one find custom Pipewire profiles for specific speakers and would those work for an unwashed Mint peasant like me? I have external speakers for my PC but the sound has room for improvement. I tried tweaking with Easyeffects but that is not really that easy if you have no idea about sound engineering.

    • ditty@lemm.ee
      3·
      9 months ago

      Also wondering this. My razer laptop’s speakers have noticeably worse sound quality on pop_OS than on Windows

    • hayk@lemmy.mlOP
      1·
      9 months ago

      in my case it was kinda easy, since they were actually linked in the Arch wiki directly!!! but, yes, i guess in general it might be an issue. maybe look for keywords such as “easyeffects profile <YOUR SPEAKERS>” or something along these lines. you can also play around a little with the app to find the settings that work for you.

  • MigratingtoLemmy@lemmy.world
    5·
    9 months ago

    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!

    • hayk@lemmy.mlOP
      9·
      9 months ago

      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

  • Baggins@beehaw.orgEnglish
    4·
    9 months ago

    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 :-)