Bullet-proof Arch Linux install process

It's part of their principles [1], it's not for everyone but it doesn't need to be, there's enough distros available that tries to appeal to everyone.

1: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Arch_Linux#Principles

I think of installing Arch as a good exercise for aspiring sysadmins or other people who which to know a bit about Linux tinkering. It teaches one about chroots, bootloaders, partitionning etc and that knowledge may come in handy later.

And for those who already know about this or just want to use Arch, there are many derived distros providing an installer (such as Antergos).

That said the installation process is not representative of the daily use of the system and I actually use Arch mostly because it "just works", with no major versions upgrades to perform every 6 months, no complex/fragile automation stuff that breaks regularly (looking a you apt), and no need to add a ton of unofficial repositories to get non-outdated software.

If you are a power user, setting things up yourself has real advantage. When something goes wrong, I set it up, so I know where it is and how to work with it.

Anything that 'just works' has some magic behind the scenes, and that can go wrong. When it does, you don't have a clue. For most people, that's fine - they'll wait for the person curating the distro to fix it. For a power user like me, I'd like to be able to go in myself and do so.

For what it's worth, I've heard the same things said about cars. A lot of enthusiasts dislike modern cars because - despite being much more reliable and efficient, they are much more complex and hard to tinker with. If you know all about your car, you might be better off with something you can control, if you don't, you prefer something that 'just works'.

Creating an installer that works on every system and allows the user to install every configuration possible is a lot of work, but an installer is something that a power user is only going to use once.

It's a matter of priorities and Arch developers don't see it as a useful effort.

I use Ubuntu instead of Arch. When I run into a problem or want to configure something, I wind up on Arch Wiki. I've considered using Arch because using Ubuntu always makes me hope that there is a simple GUI solution and waste time looking for it instead of just acknowledging that Linux is Linux and the efficient way to fix problems looks like Arch.

Still haven't switched because I don't know enough Linux. But at some point I might.