In my experience the people with the best tech skills usually struggle with social skills. Not just in the Linux community, I've seen it in way too often in my uni studies as well.

"Arch Linux isn't that hard, it only requires patience, reading and a lot of manual configuration" Thats pretty much the definition of "hard" in the context of software. Great video.

The worst is when I do a Google search for a problem and I get a forum thread as the first result, and the first response is to Google it. Well, I just did, and it let me to this page where someone actually directly answered the question below.

If you're so hung up on how dumb someone's question sounds, the best way to go about interacting with them is to... not answer their question. If you want Arch to be difficult and unforgiving and manual-based SO bad, then make them need to google the question. There are no dumb questions, just a lack of patience from the people who think they can answer them. Poor teachers for an already difficult subject.

The thing that annoys me as a sysadmin is that some Arch Linux users see all tinkering and tweaking as the purpose of using Linux and feel elitist because they are doing that, when Linux actually is a tool, to get done what you want.

I've personally found the server side of the Linux community to be incredibly professional and a lot more mature, even in the way that they help users. They reply to forum threads like theyre solving tickets, rather than showboating their knowledge or getting upset when you don't ask the right way. It's definitely not perfect but there's a noticeable difference.

Calling them dumb questions tells me everything I need to know about Arch users. A wiki is kinda useless if a noob doesn’t even know what to put on a search bar.

If anyone unironically says “real Linux users use arch,” just keep 2 things in mind. 1. Gentoo is harder 2. Linus Torvolds, the creator of Linux, uses Fedora. I love arch, but I do still occasionally like to sit back and enjoy the nice simplicity of mint, fedora, pop os, or….. very occasionally, Ubuntu

I recently moved in a new block, it is really popular among young people, who work in tech or other fancy industries. A few days ago there was some kind of earthquake or something like that. There was a very loud sound and the ground was moving under the feet for a few seconds, some people even got seriously injured. Later I read the local news and they report that the most lightweight arch user just fell off his chair.

I remember one time I was having an issue in FreeBSD and people on r/FreeBSD were telling me to read the handbook, but the problem I was having was not addressed at all in the handbook, it was like a kneejerk reaction for some people just to assume I was lazy or stupid. So this can happen in any tech community, not just Arch.

Never ask an arch user what the age of consent be according to them.

I remember being referred to the wiki, finding the information I needed was literally missing, and being told that missing information on the wiki was "user error" on my part. I moved on to other distros after that.

My biggest problem with people posting unhelpful or toxic answers on forum posts is that it pollutes the search results for all other users which makes it more annoying to find the answer as they have to both waste time reading the daft forum post and terrible answer then continue searching for the answer to a potentially difficult problem anyway

I'm always afraid to ask questions on forums like StackOverflow, because there is always some a**hole answering your question with just insults, or downvoting into oblivion just because you missed reading that one Usenet post from 1992 explaining the issue. And I'm a computer engineer with over 10 years of professional experience. But every time I go online I feel inferior. A common excuse for people being rude in answers is that on forums like StackOverflow or Arch people aren't paid and they are giving people their time. My response to that is if you haven't got time to answer people nicely, you shouldn't probably be on those forums answering questions right now. It goes both ways in that of course nobody can demand volunteers to give you answers on your every question, but at the same time nobody is forcing you to answer questions. You don't _have_ to put up with "stupid" questions if you don't want to. I feel that there are quite a few people on these forums whose intentions are not first and foremost to help, but to show their skills. They're not doing it for the newbies, they're doing it for their own benefit. And that is not a good motivation at all. To properly help people, you have to have a drive to help and a humility to go with it. And just because you are knowledgeable in a subject doesn't mean you're a good teacher. The smartest person isn't always the best teacher, because often they can't relate. Savants who learned Linux at age 3 and programmed their own OS at age 5 probably isn't the best person to help 78 year old Albert update his computer for the first time in his life. Both my parents were teachers their whole lives and my father who was well-liked by most of his students struggled in school himself, especially with math and physics, which were two of the subjects he taught at the high school he worked at. He always said that the fact he struggled made him such a good teacher, because he could put himself into the shoes of his struggling students. I like that you said multiple times in the video that it's okay to for example use Arch, but it's also okay to use something else, and neither makes you "better" than anyone else. The reasons for not using something complex is often not that you can't, but instead that you don't want the hassle. If a chef orders a hamburger from McDonald's, it doesn't mean that they can't cook or that they think that McDonald's is 3-star Michelin dining; they might just want to eat something quick and don't want the hassle to make something super special themselves. I don't use vim because I can't bother to have to learn all the commands (I have poor memory due to disability, so I'm bad at remembering commands and stuff like that). It's not that I'm stupid or that I can't learn stuff (I'm an engineer after all), but I'd rather use nano (or heaven forbid, kate --- yeah, I know, I like GUI's /gasp/ haha).

As an artist who’s recently dipped my toes in the tech community, the comparison is almost night and day. Most artists are very understanding and sympathetic to beginners, where it seems techies are more harsh and gatekeep-ish. Just something I noticed.

>posts video on how he's sad he wasted his 20s online >proud arch user lmao

Veteran Linux user here. I’ve been using nix we used to share it on floppy disc. Before Debian even existed. Back in the day the people that dabbled building Linux were great and helpful people. Because we had to build every package from scratch. We all had a common goal and when people got stuck we helped each other. Now that Linux has become a complete sh!t show and distro nightmare all because of package managers and the different ways to install it the Arch community decided to get on their high horse and think they are so much better because they type a few commands that run scripts to install their distro. They aren’t elitists as the scripts install the system but these young Arch users that have never touched an LFS install or attempted a Gentoo install think they are just the best. That and fighting over what distro is the best. The best distro is the one that works for you and that’s all it should be. Take away your package managers and you’ve got the Linux Kernel and the GNU Tools underneath just like every other Linux distro. So all the fighting and toxicity is for nothing. That’s why Linux will never hit the mainstream and forever be a server distro and will remain in the bedrooms of people that like to make their WM look nice so they can post them up on dotfiles.

Almost all Linux forums are notorious for being toxic. And many of the members don't just simply "volunteer their time for free" as if they're just being altruistic. Instead, they're there simply to be toxic to new users behind the anonymity of a username and keyboard. There's a big difference. People are always going to ask stupid questions. Just because you've used "fill in the blank" distro for X number of years doesn't give someone the right to jettison decency.

Idk why, but I see all arch users as fortnite players.

How do you know if someone uses Arch Linux? Because they will tell you... Over and over again.

As a Linux user (here Debian user), I often find it disheartening when people engage in heated debates about which distribution is the best. In my opinion, it is important to remember that Linux is all about freedom and choice. Each distribution has its own unique strengths and appeals to different users based on their preferences and requirements. All distros cater to different user needs, be it stability, customization or simplicity. It is wide array of choices that makes someone choose some distro. Furthermore, it is essential to recognize that what may be ideal for one person may not necessarily be the same for another. Some may prioritize user-friendly interfaces and out-of-the-box functionality, while others may prefer a minimalistic setup. There is literary no universal "best" distro; there is only what suits each user's needs and preferences. Also about beginner Linux users, it is even more important to emphasize the freedom of choice and the need for supportive communities. Starting out on Linux can be hard especially for those who are new to it. We should not push beginners towards "hard" distros like with a dismissive "just use Arch lol because I use it". Also, it's important to remember that learning in the Linux world, like in any other domain, requires curiosity, exploration, and asking questions. These questions could be "stupid" or "too simple," but we should remember that no question should be dismissed or belittled. Everyone starts their Linux journey with different levels of knowledge and expertise and we should respect them. Being disrespectful in forums (like you showed in the video) just makes the generally Linux community or some distro community look unwelcoming and discourages users from using Linux or that distro. Also it's funny how people are already fighting in comments about "X distro is the best". Seriously I'm at this point getting bored of distro fights.

Even the elite community needs new members. Being an asshole is not justified no matter how elite you are. No one is questioning why Arch is not user-friendly, people are questioning why the people are not people-friendly.

I started using Arch 2 weeks ago, just by going through the installation process it was hard, cause some issues might be due to hardware incompatibility or similar. I had to go through wiki, forums and videos to find out a lot of things and even repeat the whole process of instalation. I asked like 2 questions and I got the answer right away. Although it is good to get help from more experienced people instead of getting called a noob, it is also good that people stop wanting everything spoonfed to them.

the problem is that as a total beginner I often can't even describe the problem I'm having when searching for stuff

There's this annoying misunderstanding Linux people have of Arch where they think using Arch automatically makes you an experienced user. The only two things you need to use Arch is the ability to read and a basic understanding of Linux (which the latter really is optional because the wiki explains everything anyway). I switched from Windows and went straight to Arch Linux with no idea of what I was doing, yet had a fully functioning system within hours. The installation guide is very well made and basically answers any questions one could have. I've heard smooth brains tell me that I should "already know Debian well because you used Arch Linux", as if using Arch somehow is supposed to make me a Linux professional... Also there's nothing wrong with using Ubuntu, Debian, whatever. They're all Linux distros, who cares? Just use the one that you are the most happy and productive with. Shaming others for what distro they use is so silly and pointless and acting like you are superior to others merely because you use Arch is so far off from reality. Also just wanna add that while most people who say things like this are indeed just meming and poking fun, there are definitely those who aren't kidding when they act this way. All in all, I'm not really ever mad about this stuff because it's so trivial and the Arch community is actually quite friendly and helpful.

i think a lot of the time the rtfm posts come off as more toxic than they are intended. rtfm is a fairly important mindset to have when using a distro like arch. a lot of people come to ask questions expecting something they can copy/paste into terminal to fix everything, which in a lot of cases can be done. But if you don't learn what you are pasting and why, you are bound to run into more issues. That said, there is a lot of toxicity mixed into the meme of the arch community.

At least the Mint community is pretty friendly

I, despite using Linux for a few years, consider myself a "noob" user. When I use the system, I want to personalize its appearance a bit, but I also want to just install the softwares and use them with as little headache as possible. The distros I enjoyed using more are Kubuntu, Feren OS, Linux Mint and Zorin OS. I currently use Zorin OS Core on my laptop and Zorin OS Lite on an older laptop, both work great for me, with little to no issues whatsoever, and are very stable.

I've been using Arch Linux for about 5 years. I've filled my system with "frustration-clutter" to a point I didn't understand what was going on anymore, so I recently decided to go for a fresh install. Solving a problem is really spending 2 days to "rtfm" and then you add a couple of lines in the appropriate file(s) in 2 minutes, once everything clicks in your head. But it takes time to comprehend what you read, and I often feel dumb for I didn't figure out "obvious" things earlier. I think a lot of new users become overwhelmed with all the information they need to go through, so they just ask the dumb questions at one point.

It's okay to ignore the comments of new users and not reply at all than replying with a stupid comment tbh . Even if we are being asked a stupid question. Replying doesn't costs . Or does it ? Part of learning is asking questions and the person who is in the process doesn't knows which are good or bad questions. If he knew it he wouldn't be learning it . This is nothing but narcissistic behaviour . Always help out the beginners , or just ignore the comment (ignoring the comment doesn't costs a dime) . and hopefully people will society a bit tad better.

I'm personally a debian user, but make extensive use of the arch wiki and forums. No distro fits everyone and nothing (or at least too little) stuff is distro specific. Like, you can be an Ubuntu user, and enjoy flexibility and customization, and there's where Linux really shines: you may have started with something, but you can turn it into almost anything, and benefit from everywhere. I might use debian, but with a look at my pc it looks like arch. You can use arch and enjoy GNOME. What people should see is the Linux flexibility, and no distro wars, but distro compensations and complementation.

Terry A Davis: "An idiot admires complexity; a genius admires simplicity". Few things to note: 1. Few Linux professionals actually use Arch, choosing Fedora, OpenSUSE, Debian, Fedora, Linux Mint, RedHat and even Ubuntu over it because the latter are generally more consistent in their reliability and compatibility, in turn improving workflow and user experience. What defines a man is not his tools of choice, but rather his skills in spite of them. 2. For bragging rights, Gentoo is more difficult than Arch, and Arch can be installed automatically using Archinstall or ArchTitus, completely simplifying the process. 3. There's nothing special about Arch in of itself other than the availability of slightly different, new and experimental software packages, which can be entertaining to try out, but certainly aren't ideal for the vast majority of people to daily drive.

I am a former Arch user, but I switched to Ubuntu because the rolling release model doesn't work for me. I make music and it's important for me to be able to get an idea out of my head before I lose it. If I want to record a session but can't because my system is broken and I have to load a restore point then there is a good chance that I'll have lost the idea by the time I get things back up and running. Arch breakages aren't as bad as they say, but they are still a lot more common than on a point release distro. Some of the software I rely on (such as pipewire) is quite modern and in my experience building a frankendebian machine usually isn't a good idea if you don't want dependency hell. Hence why I ended up on Ubuntu - I have a task to get done and Ubuntu is the best tool for the job. Arch has its uses but it is not good for every task, and not everybody uses their computer for the same thing.

As a lifetime Arch user, I lament that we indeed have a very toxic community. It's night and day compared to how helpful and open the Ubuntu community is, which is ironic cause Canonical is in the bottom of my list of Linux distributors.

As a front end dev, the problem with answering a technical question is universal to all technical problems. It boils to the open source aspect, where people who are not paid per se for customer service will not generally feel obliged to give you the full customer service experience.

you could have taken the word "arch" away and the video would still be accurate

It's totally ridiculous to refuse to help someone just because they don't do the research themselves. It's certainly no sweat off an Arch user's butt to answer questions if they know the answer, that's what forums are for. I'm an Arch user myself BTW, I just don't bother with the forums because of a large part of the community.

As someone who downloaded his first Linux kernel from the Helsinki University FTP server and compiled it in DOS, I guess I don't need to consider myself a newbie. As an IT professional who considers an OS a tool to get a job done, I won't touch Arch for the simple reason that too much time is spent trying to figure out how to make it do what I need. I use a bunch of distributions based on what I need it to do, but one of my considerations is always how quickly I'd be able to solve a production impacting issue, and Arch always loses out in that consideration.

What is that ricing on 9:34? Do you have a link for those dotfiles? Looked amazing!

I lived in an Ubuntu Server TTY for a while and downloaded the software i needed from the internet with Lynx. So, there's a handful of technical Ubuntu users and I'm glad that Linux users as a whole are so diverse and in my experience, very kind and helpful when I'm struggling with something and we all help each other learn and grow.

The most toxic community I've found thus far has to be the Garuda Linux forums. The devs are straight up hostile and are very quick to blame you or your "ancient hardware" for their terrible optimization. I don't remember what it was exactly, but last year i went to their forum looking for help with something, provided logs and as detailed an analysis i could, and i was met with not even RTFM, but "upgrade your hardware" "how dare you insinuate we aren't perfect" etc. By a top maintainer nonetheless 🙄

In my experience, the problem of toxic/unhelpful/unwelcoming attitude is seen in all distro forums, but it's the exception rather than the norm thankfully. Granted, I haven't dealt with the Arch community yet, but in forums of ~10 different distros, window managers and apps that I've requested help in during my time of learning Linux, I've come across that issue almost everywhere. And the issue is mostly with the assumption that if you read manuals, you will clearly get things right. Which is often not as simple as that, because those manuals are written in a language that assumes you already have a certain degree of understanding of things. When I first started experimenting with installation and ricing of window managers and panels, and I looked at e.g. i3/Polybar manuals, there were instructions there that used terms I did not know the meaning of (e.g. "add a bar boostrap routine to config" - what is bootstrap? What exactly do I type to I add it there?, etc). There is a lack of basic manuals that will explain what the basic things mean (and especially how syntaxes work), before you tell a newb to "do X in Y file". Then there are also things that aren't mentioned anywhere in manuals because they are specific to every user's situation, and you can't realise what the problem is until you brainstorm with actual people. e.g. when I was first trying to make icons work as Polybar workspace titles instead of names/numbers, I did everything the two manuals (for i3 and Polybar) said, but I was getting squares instead of icons as results. I was given some hints on Reddit but it still wasn't working, and then while I was in conversation with another user, they suggested I try a different font, and that fixed it. Neither manual had mentioned anything about icons possibly not working with some fonts, and your head is so loaded with different possibilities of the source of the problem being linked to some string in these new configs/apps you are learning that you probably will not think of something like that. People are already taking a lot of initiative and spending a lot of time from their lives to learn Linux. Let's not make it even harder for them and have clear and newb-friendly introductions to things, so we can grow the FOSS alternative to the corporate software model.

I like that menu on (I assume waybar) on the top left around 10:15, what is it called?

How do I find the cheat sheet? Additionally, is there anything you would recommend doing someone want to get into Arch and Linux in general?

Good video. In my experience as a systems admin and open source spokeswoman, I can tell you this: My first distro was slackware, circa 1998. I did my good share of distro hopping in my early days of my linux user career, but once I was comfortable enough, I stuck with debian for years until adulthood where I permanently switched to redhat-fedora-centos (now rocky) I guess that the toxicity is something common amongst newbie users with no experience in systems administration or corporate behaviour. People with 15+ years of expertise do not play the distro wars. I don't care what distro you use, I care what distros I choose for my production servers or my workstations. In a nutshell, it's something that I observe amongst newbies but not very much amongst seasoned linux users or admins. I do not like arch, ubuntu, or kali (or any debian clone for that matter) but whoever feels like using any of them, good for them! Greetings.

Imagine seeing yourself as an elite, just because you use Arch...

What is the UI at 10:17 ? That looks really cool

Eric can I ask you to please make a playlist type video from start to finish including customization and all the necessary package installation and everything you think is necessary for a beginner to start learning arch the right way?

I started on the Debian based distros & settled on Arch for my gaming build. I run the laptop on Fedora & the Arch wiki helped me with kernel parameters for my OLED. I found that as long as I ask good questions I always get helpful responses from the Arch community.

2:06 I want to point out for anyone, that Arch linux actually has a guided installer, it's just that the wiki refuses to acknowledge it out of elitism, so most people never know about it. I confidentially say that because the getting started page used to be incredibly useful but they gutted it for literally being too useful, only to make it "open 20 tabs under the pretence that you make sure you know everything about this one thing" 4:40 It's not hard to use to be honest, you need a lot of free time to research and do stuff (which is why I only recommend for laptops or VM), but the hard part of Arch is when something breaks (which it does a lot) for some esoteric reason. It's partly why I refuse to use it and use something like Mint instead, bleeding edge is cool but having your computer be kaputt and spending 2 weeks fixing it, isn't cool. 5:35 Yea that's fair, I think the elitism kind of makes it sound like they are calling you retarded, but in reality it's different things for different people. I think the most eye-opening part is when someone has a massive elitism-boner for Arch, often them saying "You aren't cut out for Arch" often means "I have way too much free time". What you said was fine by the way, very nice way of explaining what's actually meant.

Coming from Slackware, Arch was pretty easy to pick up. Also I would say the Slackware Community can be more toxic than the Arch community (in my experience), IDK, the vibes Slackware Community gave me while using it was much more "Holier Than Thou" than Arch community has been. I think Arch and the Arch community has kind of been poking fun at itself for a long time. I remember when I first looked at Arch it said if I wanted to install it on my Kerosene powered cheese grater, to check the wiki, it was funny and fun, and Arch has always kind of been that way, in my experience.

The thing about wikis is, while they're great how-to's they have little to offer someone who has encountered a specific error message when trying to run a specific program that was just installed without any errors. Yes, that's what logs are helpful for but they often just give a bit more information. This information is often useful in just doing websearches for specific problems, which usually hits on the same or similar problem someone else has encountered and resolved. Sometimes though, one may find a post mentioning their specific error which never does get answered in the thread. So ya have to keep trying to narrow or broaden searches, using different search engines, etc. I never post questions in forums but often find answers there. The issue with Arch users being how they are is, that sometimes people make assumptions that aren't always true and just say RTFM when RTFM doesn't help at all on a particular problem. In general, someone who asks a very basic & simple question that could be easily answered if they just searched rather than post a question probably deserves an abrupt answer, but rudeness is never called for. Just answer back "The answer is in the wiki," or whatever, no need to be pissy about it. People will take the time to write a snarky response rather than ignoring it altogether. I really think some just scan the forums looking for those things just because they enjoy trolling others.

As someone who has worked in tech for nearly 30 years, I feel like we have left the golden age, about 5 years ago. I see the code quality dropping rapidly and software design quality also falling. I see packages making major breaking changes for no reason except they just didn't like the naming or other ridiculous reason. It feels like the whole point of software design is lost on this generation. The whole point is to manage change in a way to eliminate or the least reduce breaking change. Instead, the attitude I see is "we wanted to change this library so we did". And then they don't clearly document how to resolve the breaks partly because they never bothered to test compatibility beyond their own packages. Basically, open source software is becoming its own cathedral.

Most Ubuntu users: People ranging from beginners to advanced users who seek productivity. Most Arch users: Teenagers ranging from beginners to intermediate users, who installed Arch using tutorials or archinstall, don't have much going on in their lives and have plenty of time to deal with the problems that constantly arise. Some of them believe they are superior just because they use Arch, and a few even consider themselves gods because they use tiling window managers.

As someone that has a strong preference for Arch / Arch based distro's, I do have respect for Debian and Fedora, even if they're not something I'd ever use on my main pc, which uses newer hardware, and I want the ability to get new updates as soon as they're available. I use Arch (technically EndeavourOS) btw

How do you get to have such a beautiful UI? Is it the result of hours of customization?

This was quite informative. I've always maintained the attitude that if a person is sensible they will use what is useful without worrying what people might think. I've installed Arch in the past. I really enjoyed the Wiki. It's so useful that I consult it now and then even though I'm not currently using Arch. I don't care at all about the community (no offense, you guys are awesome). I was trained to do research early in life so I don't usually need help. When I get bored, I mess around with FreeBSD. I'm an old guy and nostalgic.

Ive only recently moved to Arch after using Ubuntu for a few years, the only real difference is package managers, its still the same system underneath and very easy to pick up. This is my first time using a window manager tho, hyprland is awesome. Arch appears to use the installation process as the gate, most ubuntu users could easily use arch if they could install it. The manual install process isnt as difficult as it looks when you see a lengthy wiki article, half of it can be skipped by just setting up partitions in advance.

9:49 plz tell me what os you are using and about the theme... Plzz

Never ask a question online. Postulate an incorrect opinion, and someone is guaranteed to correct you. I'm an Arch user, and I'll help anybody I can, but then I'm still learning myself. In IT we are all students first, it changes quickly so we have to keep up.

If I ever ask questions on Reddit or anything, it's usually because this is a fresh problem that started because of a new update. If not, I typically failed to properly Google my issue. Sometimes finding the proper keywords is difficult. Especially if your problem is very hard to explain. I always appreciate the people who know where to look for these things pointing me to a wiki page so I can learn how to fix my problem next time. Also, sometimes I get inspiration to try new things that I wouldn't have thought of without the information on that page.

I have daily driven arch for 3 years now, I kinda just set it up once and kept it up to date, haven't really ran into any real issues. Took me about a weekend to get everything up and running but i have probably saved that time using a setup that doesn't waste my time every day. Still snappy and doesn't need a mouse which is very nice when you have a clean desk / free seating policy at work :)

I used to do that in my work as well. When people asked obvious questions I reply with the relevant page in the manual because it does 3 things, 1) helps them find their answer 2) helps them learn how to find answers themselves 3) helps reduce the number of questions I get.

arch linux users having a mental breakdown when they realize gentoo and LFS have users:

Everyone knows all gigachads use Artix

Hey! Sorry for the off topic and it might look weird but can i ask you who is the character in your thumbnail? I'd like to turn her into an ascii art for my terminal. Thanks for all your work and vids!

My experience in French archlinux community is totally different. They are open and answered my questions that are not related to arch. Very good experience with passionate people.

I remember when I was laughed out by some kids on the forums for using Arch Linux with GNOME. I tried Manjaro and Fedora some time ago, but I settled down with my own solution. I used the archinstall for my first setup and then tried doing the stuff manually. The archinstall was really helpful for me when it came to my keyboard layout and the NVIDIA graphics drivers.

I love Arch Linux, and I think playing around with it along with other distros in my younger years played a big role in becoming the programmer that I am today. That being said, in my current life situation I couldn't see myself going through the time and hassle that it takes to get a simple operating system going with Arch. I will absolutely opt for something like Linux Mint that I can get spun up in less than 10 minutes and that just works.

It's like going camping vs staying at a mountain spa resort. If you find yourself in the woods and you forget to bring anything, then the next time you go in the woods, it'll be on the checklist. And I feel that even archinstall not considering man pages to be necessarily to be a key part of this learning experience.

I am a Linux Noob. I just tried Pop OS in my life, but I'm TIRED of Windows and its bug. I want to switch and I know a lot about PC. Any idea of what distro to try for a Laptop (i7 13620H and RTX 4060) that I use mainly for gaming and work (office and web browsing)? It should just support Nvidia Optimus to have a decent battery and should be a good performer in games, nothing more, I can learn and explore the web and the community of the distros you will suggest :)

What is the window manager/general setup used at 9:38. Looks quite nice, and thought about switching for a long time anyway. Is this yours or is there a github for the setup?

I wrote a huge comment but then realized this video addressed more or less everything I wanted to say. P.S: Arch was my first and only distro so even though I may be biased and inexperienced in other distros, I just wanted everyone to know that anybody, absolutely anybody can use arch as a daily driver if they are patient and read through everything. I learned because I had to do trial and error, because I RTFM'd. If I got direct answers I would never learn anything and would have to keep asking forever.

what terminal or desktop environment do you use? 3:18 and 9:54

As a linux noob who actually has arch as first distro (i got conned by my friend) one of the main reason you gotta ask on forums is because you cant even comprehend the wiki

Lazy gatekeepers solve nothing and if they're so irritated by people asking questions they shouldn't respond at all.

7 years or so ago I decided to move to linux from windows. As a C++ dev I thought I'd go for Arch, you see the parallels. After having my teeth pulled out several times over I thought it better to start with Mint and have never looked back.

Honestly I love the look of Arch, from the videos it has (in my eyes) the prettiest UI of all operating systems I've ever seen. The activity bar at the top, the animations and the way the windows are organized in 9:57.. that's just so straightforward and eyecandy. But I have no clue about it. I don't know whether you could also get this overlay on different distros or anything else. And honestly: I'm one of those guys who doesn't want to invest the time. As you said: It's totally fine and personal preference. I'll stick to Ubuntu as it is easy to set up, straightforward and provides me with all the tools I need to get my shit done. I always even have Windows (even though I hate it, as it's so freaking slow) as a dual boot for programs that run only there. In the end: Do what suits you. And don't be a dick about it. People are different.

Tbh this makes Arch Linux sound even less appealing than before.

Sadly it is true for some individuals out there regarding Arch. I had this really obscure problem that I couldn't really solve, I got segfaulting when updating the system related to bsdtar. One of the replies I got from one of the snarky ones was a rules quote of "No paraphrasing errors" and a link to the rules. Of course that guy went away and got pretty silent when I posted the Pacman output that had what he thought was paraphrasing literally written out as a pacman error, so quietly into the woodwork he went to never be seen again. I got it fixed, posted what the problem was so the next poor chap at least has a clue of where to go and may even get a snicker in the best case of a rule quoter getting put in his place. My reason for going with Arch was, I grew tired of having to rebuild my systems on every distro upgrade because of breakages, a rolling distro and fresh packages was just too alluring to pass up for my desktops and home servers.

I do IT for a small buisness, and some of my colleagues prefer Linux because that's what our servers run on. It feels seamless for them, it's effective for their daily tasks, so on and so forth - but we also have Data Entry and Sales teams, comprised of returning workers who do not have the time, energy or inclination to pick up a distro. So, we also have a Windows pool. No issues there. Where there *is* an issue is when I hear one of my colleagues talk down to one of the Sales guys. A few weeks ago, I collated all the denigrating comments I'd picked up and called for a team huddle. I reminded them who we're working for, and how unreasonable it is to expect seniors verging on eighty years using us as a rebound career to pay the bills to adapt to Linux when they could barely work our WebUI for customer interviews. I reminded them how they hated working with our sometimes-condescending Sales associates in car dealerships, and put them in front of the fact that they were behaving like the assholes they themselves hated. If you work IT, you're the last resort of people who just want to get their work done and who cannot be expected to reason their way out of file permissions or kernel updates. I told them that if I caught another disparaging comment flung towards the Windows pool, HR would hear about it. It's almost been a month, now, and the Data Entry team noted a serious uptick in general courteousness. Windows or Mac, Arch or fucking Linux Mint; we're all human and we're all doing our best to survive. Contempt of any sort is good enough for kids in a recess yard; not adults being asked to show an ounce of professionalism.

I feel like a lot of people see linux distros as 'who can be the best in all things' but when really its more of 'which tool is best/do you like best for the job' Ubuntu is amazing for servers I've found. the snaps in a server environment make a lot of stuff including maintinence and updates no brainers, but on a desktop scenario I've found the snaps are still frustrating to deal with. (inconsistant copy paste behaviour, slow startups, out of date libraries, etc)

As someone who decided the best way to learn how to use my favorite approach to Linux was to start actually using the Version of Linux I wanted which is Gentoo, Arch Linux is pretty based Artix is even cooler from what I can see, but Arch Wiki has become invaluable even on the Gentoo Side whenever Gentoo fails to document something completely, same with askubuntu for using tools like irssi...

People thinking trolls on r/linuxmemes that spams "arch btw" all days are arch users

Your channel is so underrated! Top tier linux content, solved many of my issues, and teaches better than most other youtubers (in this sector) out there. Hope you'll grow as you deserve 👌

What you think about garuda linux ? Window 11 most of the time its extremely slow and i was thinking about giving a chance to garuda because people say its friendly compare with others

I kinda made the same journey I think, I used Ubuntu for quite some time but it really didn't fit after a while and when I think 20.04 came along that was the turning point, I shopped around a bit. I always liked tinkering and finally settled on trying out Arch. It took some time to get it up and running the first time. It didn't run great.. There was alot of things that was broken. My fault, following directions would have been good. But since then I've gotten to a point where I have one of the most stable systems I've ever had. No comparison. It takes a lot of time out of you but it's very rewarding aswell..

I think Arch is good for new Linux users who are keen on really learning how a system is built. LFS and Gentoo are other good options here. I fit into that category a couple decades ago. I recently tried Arch out for a year or so on my main home system, because hey, I'm an elitist, so I should use Arch right? Ultimately I came away fairly unimpressed. As a practical distribution I think it's kind of a joke quite frankly. It likes to break itself, it cannot be safely auto-updated, no selinux profiles. Updates blow away your kernel modules and no grub entries are made for past kernels, which has cause some youtubers to spew out cope like "you must reboot immediately after every update!". So when you update, it often breaks the live system. It's a not a great feeling when you look back to what many linux distros were doing decades ago, and find these basics missing, while youtubers try to spread copium about how it doesn't matter and whatnot. I think Arch is cool, as I said, mainly as an educational tool, when you want to get everything out of the way and build things from scratch. Though I don't really understand why people want to use Arch instead of Gentoo, at least with Gentoo you can get some extra speed out of it. But at the end of the day a lot of work goes into feature complete distros like rhel, ubuntu, fedora, suse and such, and as an individual you *will not* do better, and you'll be missing some of the more difficult to implement wins. Arch does have great documentation though! Just don't think it's for "elitists" I'm quite confident that most elitists have better things to do than re-implement basic distro features. The wider Arch ecosystem, like Manjaro, has done I think more harm than good. The way Arch works is fundamentally not suitable for a general purpose desktop. The future is a smaller stable core distro, plus some combination of sandboxed application packaging and containerization. It sure has hell isn't running random scripts off the AUR...

chatGPT will eliminate the need of asking a rando for help on a forum

10:13 damn it look so cool, if I wanted to have the exact same, where should I start ?

I'm curious about what makes Arch the "best tool for the job," specifically as opposed to Fedora or Debian. I totally understand why the distros Grandma can use, like Ubuntu and whatnot, aren't the "best tool for the job," but when it comes to all the "barebones" distros that the user is free to install whatever desktop environment they want on, it seems like the biggest differences end up being the release model and the package manager - do either pacman or the rolling release model really put Arch that far ahead? And I'm not asking this because I have my own strong opinion; I'm asking this because I honestly struggle to understand what puts one distro ahead of the others. Are there really any package managers that don't excel at this point? Does having all the bleeding edge features of your packages end up mattering all that much? Etc.

Any "ideology" that doesn't have humbleness as its core value ends up having a community like this. Anyway, I have one question. I've recently noticed that Vim won't expand fully inside my TE. I've browsed the internet and found out that this is impossible to fix other than matching the color of your terminal and your Vim background. However I've found a guy on r/unixporn that uses Wayland and he doesn't seem to have this problem. I'm not sure why would this matter since it's still inside a TE, but that's interesting. Did you "fix" that issue by matching colors of TE and background of Vim or is there some other workaround? It kind of bothers me since I really like to have transparent TE background and opaque background while working in Vim. TEs draw their characters in a grid. The dimensions of each cell, and thus of the grid itself, are determined by the font. If those dimensions don't match those of my window then I get gaps around the useful area. That's what I understood. Is there a way to "sync" TE size grid and font cells? Thanks for your videos, they're really helping. Greetings from Serbia.

i always tried to fix things my self first by searching the internet not asking on forums but i don't want to dive too deep into DIY. That is why i use Ubuntu because it give enough access while still simple to install and use. It also has lots of guides about things in case something breaks.

I've often told people to check "man tar" or whatever when it is obvious that they haven't looked at it yet. I'll even tell them where in the manual, and other things in it they might need. I'm trying not to be that guy, but learning to use the manuals is important in Linux, so I will continue pushing people towards them.

i spent a whole day setting up arch with xfce4. it took me 3 tries due to NetworkManager not being installed bc of me not using the installer script right. that same day i broke my install trying to replace lightDM with sddm (idk why) so i just reinstalled endeavouros. thing is WMs are alien to me, and those environments work the best on arch. its 2023 i just want an easy vanilla arch install with a bunch of DE/WM options. im a big fan of minimal installs and the AUR but im also a stoner and completely dumb.

This is the same thing as Vim users for me. I never got the time and interest to learn it, so I just kept using nano and today I'm way more proficient on using it than Vim, but whenever I mention using Nano and preferring it over Vim, the torrent of shit that results is quite surprising. "OMG, YOU SHOULD STOP USING IT, VIM IS MUCH BETTER, YOU'RE DOING IT WRONG" and things like that. 😂 😂

Not a tech expert, but from a people perspective, this usually happens when a small community gatekeeps their expert knowledge and wants to keep it to themselves instead of sharing what they have learned to other people. They see themselves as better people due to knowing more than the average man, when in reality it only shows their inflated egos and selfish desires to be better than everyone else. But good thing this doesn't always happen with the majority of communities that I see, so that's that. Morals though, on the other hand...that's a different topic.

Arch Linux had installer long time ago which simplified installation for the most part, in times when SystemV init system was still an option on Arch. But now installation is similar to gentoo, although gentoo is much more complicated in a sense it requires more dedication to not mess something, because you need to manually write almost everything, including compiling of kernel.

9:53 yoo tis is so cool ! what do i need to know to do this ? please provide resources

the funny thing is that arch holds your hand a lot and doesn't give you real choice. Pre-compiled binaries, forcing systemd, etc. There was actually a TUI installer a long time back, and they got rid of it to make it run on the command line (at least the last I checked). I've had much much much more breakage when updating an arch system vs. a gentoo system. (This is worded in a flame-baity way, but it's really why I switched off of arch.)