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Comment by beermonster | Hacker News Reader

Slackware is a complete OS complete with curated set of user land and desktop applications. Although I have a soft spot for Slackware, I’d say arch fills this niche more than Slack: You get the most minimal system as a starting point and build what complexity you need on top - and no more.

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I didn’t look into Kisslinux but the rather obvious problem with Arch is that the installation process scares people away (regardless whether it is hard or not). The terminal/command line is a scary place for people who didn’t use it before. Otherwise I tend to agree that Arch can be absolutely minimal if you want to. Didn’t use Slackware so I can’t comment on that.

> but the rather obvious problem with Arch is that the installation process scares people away

Nowadays it has an installer [Disclaimer: never used it]

For the niche audience that these distributions target, the terminal is not a problem.

And for those that it is there's always EndeavourOS or ArcoLinux

There's an installer now, but what drives me away from using it is it's heavy dependence on systemd utils by default. Of course there's forks that fix it, of course you can do things differently, but yeah. There's distros that offer better with less, and are simpler to set up.

Installers are always opinionated in some way. That's why even though there's now an installer, I won't be using it.

In cases where people simply have to follow instructions, I find the fear of the command line to be disappointing. It is far easier to provide support and that support is far less failure prone simply because you can state exactly what has to be done, rather than describe how to navigate a user interface while hoping that the other person interprets visual cues in the same way.

That being said, there is a deeper problem with the Arch installation process: the user needs to know exactly what they want. I can race through an Arch installation and end up with my desired configuration far faster than I could in any other operating system. Much of that has to do with the ability to dump a list of package names into pacstrap and copying over a bunch of configuration files. There is no fumbling around with a GUI. Yet those who are new to Arch (or, worse, new to Linux) don't have the benefit of that experience. The process is daunting.

I don't know, I've installed installed arch many times and I still occasionally will forget some step or make a typo or something. Then I have to boot the installation image again, remount everything, fix the issue... it's annoying. GUI installers don't really have this problem.

Well, GUI installers are typically severely limited.

I've used Arch for 12 years. But every time I reinstall, it takes me a long, long time to get everything working perfectly. It's painful, and requires a second machine to have the documentation handy. The documentation is good in the sense that it is thorough, but Arch refuses to have a preferred method of install. It refuses to have an opinion.

Rather than a sane default, the installation guide says "Install a bootloader. Click here for a list of 8 bootloaders" "Click here to see 12 different partition managers" etc..

I feel I have to be an expert in every part of the system (Even things I'll never, ever touch again). It would be much better if the install guide chose the default and said "here's a link for other options if you prefer". Once the system is set up, I mostly just run pacup every day, with very few issues. But the install process seems deliberately complicated, and serves as gatekeeping.

I have never really asked this before, but... so what? I was 14. I wanted to learn Linux. You know how I did it? By installing Gentoo while reading the documentation. I worked hard (fueled by curiosity and wanting to learn) and it paid off. Were it as easy as a GUI installer, I probably still would have difficulties and not be able to tell you what ">" and "|" are. I would have way less knowledge if I never tinkered around the terminal.

It may scare people away, but you have to ask yourself: what kind of people? I have been teaching Linux to a couple of people, and some hate reading documentation in general. Make of that what you will. :)

That said, I installed Linux on a Windows user's laptop and she was fine with it because all she needed was a browser and something else I cannot remember. I think this covers many people.

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