Arch user here to help

Hi everyone :wave:

My name is Justin I’ve been working with linux for just under a decade now. I started out with Ubuntu unity in it’s early days then moved to linux mint then arch linux.

I have barely had breakages on my machines running arch normally the more packages you have the more chance you can run into breakage so the best thing is to KISS and only have what you NEED installed.

I find the arch fourm can be rude and full of many elitists. Looking over the installs I find endeavourOS to be basically arch vanilla minus the help tools from endeavour in their repo such as akm, mirror updater, yay pre-installed and a easy click command to update (sudo pacman -Syu)

If you have any questions ask away :smiley:

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Welcome.

There’s a lot of Arch users here. Many of us use both.

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Welcome mate

Welcome to the forum @justinc :partying_face: :enos_flag:

Welcome to the forum, @justinc.

I find that people often say that, always without any evidence. I’ve never had such an experience on the Arch forum. Whenever I asked a question there (which is not very often) I always got a helpful answer. They expect you to read the wiki and do some research yourself before asking a question. They also expect you to run Arch Linux, which you’ve installed and configured yourself. I think those are reasonable expectations, not at all “rude” or “elitist”. The fact we don’t have such expectations here should not reflect poorly on Arch. We just have different communities.

Sure, you may make a point that EndeavourOS is just Arch with an installer, but people on the Arch forum do not have to know or care about that, and we have a fully functional forum here, so there is really no need for our newbies to go there and bother them. I think it is quite understandable they get upset at that (and that may give the impression of rudeness and elitism).

However, I’ve seen threads on the Arch Forum where people go out of their way to help a complete newbie who asked a really stupid question (one that is entirely covered by the wiki), but he asked it in a polite way and got a polite, friendly reception.

So when you say “rude” and “elitist” I assume this is coming more from the general reputation that forum has (which is, in my opinion, unfair), and not from personal experience.

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Believe it or not, that’s one main reason I don’t want to go to Arch.

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The Arch forum is not a friendly place - although they often help, and nearly always CAN help. Unfortunately, sometimes some of the membership gets hold of the wrong end of the stick, and the results are NOT pretty! They have the right of it with their requirements, though - and I would have no problem with it except for being attacked in error (an assumption that the build wasn’t done the Arch way, or was even a (shudder) alternative derivative!

My question was well-researched (including the wiki), presented with logs and documented attempts at resolution (just like my previous, successfully if indirectly answered post) but someone decided it wasn’t, and went off. Despite being on an original Arch way install, I had added a repo or two (PPA habit?) and they decided this meant it was not a valid question. Most unsettling! And, they never did answer, and I still have no idea how/why the behaviour occurs.

Now, of course, I have no need of their forum for most things, and have become used to the occasional cropping up of that particular problem and have a workaround at hand. Never assume a default friendly mode - it can change in a heartbeat!

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I had it happen to me mate was treated like an idiot when I didn’t understand certain things when I started after spending 3 days to RTFM and other things

I eventually figured it out myself and I am lazy so I use the arch python install script instead of doing it the ‘traditional’ way as I find it quicker as I can get arch up and running in less than 10 minutes

Thanks @kjw @fbodymechanic @smokey for welcoming me sorry if I missed anyone

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Don’t worry about acknowledging them - the number may grow!

Don't worry - be happy!
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Hi Justin,

Welcome to this vibrant and friendly community. That has been my experience in the short time here.

Yes, it’s almost like they are waiting for a newbie to fall into one of their carefully laid traps, so they can either pounce, or make some snide comment that’s bound to gets the gallery tittering, but does nothing to forward the movement. When they do answer, I notice they answer questions with questions. almost RTFM. As an experienced distrohopper, I walked from it.

That may account for many of my past breakages. Too many packages I have just installed for curiosity and forgot about them and don’t use or need them.

I still prefer pacman rather than using helpers.

We may be calling on you sooner than you think.

Michael

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Welcome @justinc
I agree with you and i have never used the Arch forums. Just read them!

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Welcome to the community :beers:

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This comment merits it’s own thread.

Michael

Welcome @justinc

:+1:

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BlackandwhitePortlyEel-size_restricted

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Zackerly! That’s why I won’t ever install sumfink like Garuda.

be as elitist as you want, it doesn’t bother me. i’m a windows poweruser elitist. but this could change. the last time i tried a linux was about 10 years ago and i hated it, i’m trying to transition into a linux os again by giving it another go.
i have it in mind to install endeavour on virtualbox, take it for a test drive and start using it for cross-platform software development. if it works out, i’ll install it on my #2 and use it there for a while before eventually transitioning a linux distro onto my #1 (i guess this will happen when MS forces me to “upgrade” to 11).
so i guess my question: is endeavour a good choice for this? some other arch? some other base (MX seems to be the top distro on distrowatch as of this writing, endeavour at #2)?
i want an easy start but with infinite configurability. i know my way around an os and a command prompt.
any pitfalls to avoid?

Somewhat difficult to combine - possible, but difficult. The easy start systems are typically harder to modify as you wish later (MX for example). Obviously biased here, but any Arch is max configurable, and our version is Arch, with a couple of little helpers available along with a useful and friendly forum (which is relatively rare!).

The plan seems reasonable - and I’m sure MS will force an update soon - along with trying to force an MS account on you (if you haven’t got one yet) - they don’t want to work too hard to track you…

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Depends

What are you developing in?