• @[email protected]
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    567 months ago

    You’ve heard good things about arch solely because you’re on Lemmy. Using arch means you’ll be dedicating about 50% of your working time towards tinkering and making it fucking work, which is fun don’t get me wrong- unless you have actual work to do.

    Ubuntu is solid but a little sluggish, I’m personally an advocate for Mint as far as something you can drop a windows users in and they’ll generally figure it out.

    • NotNotMike
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      207 months ago

      Seems like the general consensus in this section is Mint, so I’ll give that a look over for sure

      • @agent_flounder
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        67 months ago

        Mint is a good recommendation. I’ve used it for most of a decade because I just want my system to work.

    • just some guy
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      157 months ago

      I don’t get this. For each of my devices running arch, the only tinkering I’ve encountered were for nitpicky customizations I wanted, which I have to do on another distro. After the arch installation completes it’s given me a fully functional desktop

    • Your opinion about Arch is outdated at best. I run Arch, and I don’t think I needed to do any tinkering in the last few months. For first time Arch users, I’ll recommend them to just use EndeavourOS. I have it on my laptop, and it’s basically Arch, but with a hassle free installation process.

      • @[email protected]
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        77 months ago

        Same for me, installed arch with archinstall, it installed faster than windows does, and I haven’t had to modify anything or tinker with anything. Even Steam games work out of the box with compatibility mode

    • @Sanguine
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      77 months ago

      50%?? Been daily driving for over a year and system maintenance is nowhere near the levels it’s hyped up to be. Every once in a while the update requires manual intervention which can be solved by reading the email arch sends out before any of these atypical situations (register to be on the mailing list). Other system set up tinkering is well documented in the arch wiki.

      Anyone interested in playing games on Linux should be exploring a rolling release distro even if for nothing more than access to updated GPU drivers as soon as they come out.

      Don’t forget the utiltiy of the AUR.

    • @[email protected]
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      57 months ago

      EndeavorOS might also be a good option, from what I’ve heard. It’s Arch based, but easier to install and use. I recently switched to Garuda, also Arch based, but focused more on the gaming community.

    • @frankgrimeszz
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      27 months ago

      Manjaro is an okay middle ground. It’s got the benefits of Arch but a bit more stability. It still breaks, but maybe once a year. I get work done on it.

      • @[email protected]
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        17 months ago

        Manjaro fell out of popularity a few years ago – in addition to some drama with the handling of community donations, they do some weird stuff like hold back all Arch package updates by 2 weeks for “additional stability”… But really it’s just an extra 2 weeks where you don’t get potentially critical security updates. I also think the way they handle the AUR is reckless and leads new users to install unstable or poorly maintained packages without realizing it

        It’s still a viable distro, but generally I think Garuda beats it in every category: still based on Arch with a focus on gaming, but without the useless delay or the other issues that Manjaro has.

        • @frankgrimeszz
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          7 months ago

          The AUR was disabled by default on my install. I use flatpak for a lot of stuff so I’m probably pretty up to date with my most used programs. Where did you hear about this community donation scandal?

          All the petty downvotes makes me think Lemmy has become a bit too much like Reddit. The whole “downvote everyone’s opinion that isn’t my opinion” is pathetic.

          I don’t really care about what’s popular. With all my installed programs I use to get shit done, I can’t distro hop every other month like some people.

    • voxel
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      17 months ago

      I don’t really like mint’s desktop environment

    • @[email protected]
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      07 months ago

      That’s a big exaggeration. Is Ubuntu a better choice for a newb? Yes. Do some people gravitate toward Arch because of the freedom in tinkering it offers? Also yes. But Arch has had simple graphical installers for years now, not to mention the wraparound distros like Endeavour that bundle extra software for a more complete OOTB setup. Arch is a viable choice for a new Linux user and really doesn’t require tinkering for a working setup.