I wished I had Manjaro available when I started using Linux originally. Mint and Ubuntu made me very lost initially. I hated ppa’s, I literally never (and still don’t really) understood them. Arch makes significantly more sense to me and my biggest issue was always trying to figure out where to get software. When I learned that there was the Arch repos and the AUR and that was it, I immediately felt at home. I actually think arch based in a great starting point these days.
7 Likes
I agree with you that Arch is great for beginners, and especially EndeavourOS, as it’s super easy to install. It just requires a certain mindset. It is not for everyone.
It think the choice of a distro depends more on someone’s personality than on (current) skill and knowledge. Some people love frequent updates, some hate it. Some think the world has ended if something changes on them or stops working the way they are used to, others enjoy the tinkering with the system, breaking it and fixing it. Some don’t care about customisation, some really enjoy it. Some are okay with RTFM, some are almost illiterate and need a video tutorial… and so on…
Of course, there are many distros that are unsuitable for beginners, because installing and configuring them requires experience with Linux.
3 Likes
Well, I learned something today. 
pamac-all building as we speak.
I’ve been using Ubuntu and/or its variants and offshoots since 4.10 (Warty Warthog, the one with the naked people), but I’m also an Arch newbie having come here by way of Garuda, actually. (Discovered eOS after I had trouble getting Garuda to install on one of my older systems.)
Personally, I didn’t have a great deal of trouble with transitioning to an Arch-based distro. If I had one wish for the eOS developers, however, it would be to consider adding chaotic-AUR and pamac to the base installation. I know that this is a terminal-centric distro but I think that those two constitute a basic ease-of-use consideration.
BTW, Synaptic has been pretty much replaced everywhere by various pamac-like applications which present a store-type interface.
1 Like
My granny used Linux from scratch
3 Likes
I do not think this will happen since the point of eos is to be as close as possible to arch, and using packages from the arch repo. AUR is not officially supported by arch as you may also know. I will have to try pamac, I tried it on manjaro a while back. I guess it is easy to install via yay, just one command.
1 Like
I think that the developers have addressed the pamac by default questions on multiple occasions. A quick search should yield some results there.
As for chaotic-aur, I certainly hope this would never he added by default. If an individual wants to accept that risk I think it is their choice but it isn’t something the distro should force on users by default. See here:
2 Likes
To me it boils down first to what package management one prefers to use, then DE, then the ricing etc. I guess this is what sets long linux users apart.
The beauty is really that using the command line permits managing different distros as admin, which is a plus when managing rhel and debian servers for example. The CLI gives you direct access to your system. Many newbie internet sites/articles try to sell linux with gui and mouse clicking as alternative to windows, but the terminal is sort of awesome to use. Not for all tasks of course.
personal for the avarage Joe that mostly do is putting on the computer webbrowsing and not to much linux mint or any other lts based distro wil do… are you more a hobbyist thats become another story… 
The idea is to keep as close to pure Arch as possible. This distro stems from Antergos which tried something similar and it was in the end what ruined the distro. Both considerations are only a few commands away. It also adds more stress on the maintainers since the team here is very small.
3 Likes
Garuda Linux is exactly what you’re looking for. Join their forum and you’ll get help installing it.
EndeavourOS is just not that.
2 Likes
My apologies. I don’t think I realized the larger issues.
1 Like
The big problem, vanilla Arch the Arch way aside, is not Arch as a platform; the big problem is that most third party documentation assumes that you are using either Ubuntu or Fedora. Period.
Go to a printer manufacturers Linux support site? “Download the .deb file or the .rpm” if you even get a choice, most of the time it’s just .rpm.
Just to learn to search the AUR to see if a driver is already packaged for you is a step that is important, and unfortunately virtually never suggested on the Arch wiki or official forums.
My point here tho is that a full-featured Arch based distro (unlike EndeavourOS I must say) like Manjaro is just as easy to use as MX linux, Pop! or Ubuntu. It’s just that you can’t neccesarely trust the suggestions at askubuntu for everything.
I started my (modern) Linux journey with Antergos. I had ZERO issues with it that i wouldn’t also have with Ubuntu or Fedora.
I have had much bigger issues with the stability of Fedora than any arch based distro I have tried. But i would never suggest a non-full-featured, Non-graphical-installer Arch based distro for a beginner.
3 Likes
There is no need to apologise. We all have our own preferences. For example, I’d like Frogatto and Friends to be installed by default (and a working version at that, not like the one from the official repos, which crashes when you leave Pato’s house).
The thing is, not everyone wants that, and the beauty of EndeavourOS is that it’s a minimalist distro which you can modify to your own liking. No bloat, except what you yourself add.
Garuda Linux, on the other hand, is already preconfigured and very opinionated, but with mostly sane defaults. It’s an excellent distro which I think you’d really like.
2 Likes
I actually have Garuda running on a couple of laptops and do like it.
2 Likes
With arch as a base at endly you decide what you use 
so adding another repos from the wiki is freedom to do no need to take another distro special for that… only understand basic parts and the risk.
With endeavouros and arch you are at the end free to do what you want adding a repo it is possible why not…
at the end there is no user friendly distro, is just what you ecspectations of a distro and what it must do.
2 Likes
I’ll second that! I tried out EOS because I was curious about arch, EOS had good reviews, and I liked the forum. I’m staying because of the AUR. No more PPAs! No more downloading tarballs! Literally everything I want or need is already on the AUR. This is too easy.
4 Likes
A few years ago and I got caught up in the network claims that Mint is quite tolerant of the user. But after the system completely collapsed twice within 1.5 years, I began to look for an alternative.
On my powerful Windows laptop, I installed many Linux distributions in a virtual machine. And at the same time launching them and performing the same actions, I looked at what I like and what I don’t like. And oddly enough, the choice fell on Antergos And I have never regretted choosing an Arch-based distribution.
Now, after the closure of the Antergos project, I am on this forum And I can say (this is my point of view) that I do not experience any difficulties, no serious problems. And my installation never collapsed
5 Likes
I agree with you whole heartedly. I was on Antergos also and never had many problems even with cinchi. I learned to know when there was an issue and got around them.
3 Likes
Yes, that’s one of the biggest benefits of Arch-based systems. They are relatively simple, compared to, say 'buntu-based systems.
I was using Ubuntu (Kubuntu, to be precise) for years, and I’ve learnt only a fraction of what I’ve learnt in just a few months using Arch-based distros. As a noob, when something breaks on Ubuntu, you typically have no idea what you did to cause that, and what you should do to fix it. The system is superficially more user-friendly, but the cost of that is added complexity beneath the surface. On Arch, you know exactly what you did to cause the problem, and after reading the Wiki you get a solid understanding of how that part of the OS works. At least enough so you can fix it and not repeat the mistake that caused it to break.
It’s this KISS philosophy of Arch that I find really appealing.
7 Likes
I used anno Suse as a beginner as a Linux distribution.
2 Likes