Last night I was feeling bored so I download Arch and installed it on a virtualbox vm. Now I won’t say that installing it was extremely difficult, but it wasn’t the easiest thing either like other Arch users would make you think. While following the installation page I did have to refer to videos a couple of times for clarification on some of the processes (no I didn’t just copy a video from start to finish, pinkie swear). I assume that the wiki was written assuming that the people installing the operating system were more advanced and they made assumptions on what they assumed people already knew, but idk. I can’t say that it was a piece of cake for someone like me who’s only used Linux for just over a month.
All in all I’m still glad I tried it, I installed it on my first try and it took me like 3 hours to go from nothing to having a window manager and some other programs installed and running and I’m quite proud of myself. It has taught me quite a bit. But yeah, I’m still gonna keep sticking with EndeavourOS for future installs if my system borks. I mean, 3 hours installing Arch vs 10 minutes installing EndeavourOS? It’s a no-brainer for me.
Gonna delete the Arch vm because I have no use for it now.
The only thing about installing Arch that I found difficult (or more like unnecessarily tedious, to be honest) was partitioning the drives using the tools provided on the Arch ISO.
Even if I were to, for some reason, switch back to vanilla Arch installed The Arch WayTM, I would probably again use a live ISO from EndeavourOS or Manjaro (or even Buntu) just to run Gparted and prepare the drives, before booting up the Arch ISO image and continuing the installation in the terminal.
The rest of it is, in my opinion, fairly straightforward, simple and just a matter of following instructions.
These are my sentiments exactly…
I still have 1 laptop running vanilla arch, but I don’t think I’ll bother again if it happens to break.
First time always takes longest though… I’ve done it about 4-5 times now, and in about 20-25 minutes I have a running desktop now
I think the overall speed depends on when you call it done! (and the speed of your internet connection). I’d say installed, maybe 7 minutes - with DE, maybe 10 minutes - configured and loaded up, close to an hour! I don’t use EnOS for the time savings - more the lessening of time-wasting… and the forum!
There’s absolute truth in that
Luckily on most of my devices I use a tiling WM, combined with lightweight software, so for me it’s just a matter of copying over my dotfiles, and installing a few programs.
No prob - I have the setup for adding things from the AUR too, but I got that all from modifying Arcolinux D scripts - they are a bit more complicated…
After a few installs. . . I just use archfi now. It’s basically exactly what I end up with anyway, and I can’t miss a step while following along the wiki. Is it the Archway? Not so much. Only downside, I can’t ask for help in the forums. Which I wouldn’t anyway, so it’s not really a downside.
Endeavour is definitely the 15 min Arch though. If I go on vacation for instance, I will just bring an EnOS USB in case I ruin Arch beyond easy repair and fix it when I get home.
The ease of installing - is why I switched from Arch to the predecessor of Antergos distribution - a name I have long forgotten - but I do remember it was primarily by spanish developer(s).
One of the best installer scripts I know of is the aif script from Carl Duff back in 2015. A close second is Archlabs installer by Nate Maia.
I have recently fixed some bugs in aif - I just found another one related to pacman key database - and trying to revive that simplicity.
I only find this funny because I, who usually argues the point that GUI tools are often more efficient, use CLI commands to partition my disks whenever I am not using an installer…
Yes, I’m sure it would be more efficient to do it in the terminal, and I find it completely convincing that, if I were to do it on a more regular basis, I would benefit from learning how to do it in the terminal.
The thing is, I don’t partition my drives every day, I do that maybe once in a couple of years. I learnt to do it in Gparted, when I was a Buntu user, so now I prefer to use the method with which I am the most familiar and which is the least likely to cause me any issues or headaches.
Are Ken Thompson, John Mashey, and Stephen Bourne looking down upon me from their celestial UNIX throne? Have I betrayed everything I ever stood for? You could perhaps make that argument, but I remain unconvinced…
This is exactly why I prefer to partition via the terminal - it’s how I did things when I started, so I’m more familiar with it. It feels more comfortable to me. And in the end, we all gravitate towards what we feel more comfortable with.
I don’t use EnOS for the time savings - more the lessening of time-wasting… and the forum!
