If you just want to fire up your system with arguably sane defaults and use it, no there really isn’t. Where Arch shines is in providing a mostly blank slate for people with opinions about how their system should be set up. It provides the tools and documentation then mostly stays out of the admin’s way.
Single most concise description of Arch on the internet right here.
Archwiki is probably the best Linux documentation in existance. It greatly lowers the barrier of entry.
Seems like you answered your own question. Arch is not for people who want something that works out of box. If you want a GUI, suspend on lid close, sleep on idle, etc. by default, don’t do Arch. You have to be prepared to debug issues, configure lower level OS features, and read a lot through the wiki and web searches of you are going to use Arch.
I always say I started using arch for the “nerd cred” and stuck with it because of the package manager.
My main reasons for me to use arch are:
- I can configure my system as I want it and if something breaks later I know how things fit together so I can fix them. Arch taught me a lot about Linux in general
- The rolling release getting you new packages quite fast and not requiring you to do one big possibly breaking update once every year/two years (Ubuntu updates used to break for me a lot, I know that’s much better now)
- The package manager makes sense to me in so many ways. Especially compared with the apt-get, apt-cache, apt-key … stuff you used to need. These days just using “apt” makes stuff much easier on Ubuntu as well.
If your new is still recommend Ubuntu as a starting point since installation is quite hassle free and most “Linux” tutorials online are geared toward Ubuntu. And then once you learned some Linux and you know what annoys you in ubuntu you can still switch “fixing” those things in your arch install. If you do go with arch were sure all happy to help.
I think there’s benefits with more recent packages, the package manager (pacman) and the AUR. But if you’re new or don’t have much experience then something like Ubuntu or Mint is a more sensible distro to begin with. At least they start with some applications and such so you know what’s out there and how some things work.
You learn more about the components of your system, and therefore learn more about fixing things or debugging what could be wrong. Arch is only difficult once.
I wanted to say exactly this.
I started out on Ubuntu and it was this scary thing that just worked. If something broke id run to google and see what I did wrong and blindly follow answers that added a lot of crap to my system. I was so afraid of poking anything that lay outside my /home.
Eventually I hopped around a bit and landed on Arch after a few other systems that never really seemed right.
3 years later If I break something I can actually understand why most of the time and if I cant, the Arch forums explain what I need.
Using arch made me slow down trying to fix stuff because there was less to break. And if something broke, it was something that I installed myself and thus knew about. (Apart from some really horrible python and js that refused to be purged back to the fires of hell)
All in all Id never go back to a hand- holdy system, Its my system, yes its wonky as hell sometimes, but I know whats going on there and on tge off chance something vreaks on a deadline, ive got an arch stick with all my important scripts to reinstall my system if needs be.
