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Comment by constantcrying | Hacker News Reader

Arch derivatives have to be one of the worst monkey paws for the Linux desktop.

A person who can not install Arch Linux should not be managing their own Arch installation. Inevitably something will not work right and confusion and disappointment will set in as that person is completely unprepared to help themselves.

Arch derivatives themselves are usually just worse versions of Arch with more problems. Manjaro being the worst offender there. Pushing those onto people, is not a good thing and if someone does not have the basic tech literacy to install Arch, they should not be using any Arch derivative.

No, this isn't gate keeping. It is protecting people from inevitable disappointment and frustration, which can only harm Linux Desktop and Linux gaming.

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Nah. Manjaro sucks because it's just different enough that it breaks a lot of things (like the AUR) but EndeavourOS and CachyOS are just Arch with the edges filed off. Nice installers, sensible defaults. If your argument is that filing those edges off is antithetical to Arch, that absolutely is gatekeeping. EndeavourOS and CachyOS don't put any barriers upon the user, what fixes and guides that work for Arch will work for them and ultimately it's not a whole lot more complicated than Ubuntu is but with much better documentation thanks to the Arch wiki.

SteamOS also clearly has a place as an immutable Arch, hard to argue that it's been a disappointment or a cause of frustration for users, given the narrative has been an overwhelming want from the gaming community for a desktop version. I guess the frustration comes from, if anything, it's narrow scope.

Speaking of Ubuntu, it has atrophed. It used to be that it was popular enough that you could google your problem and someone would have solved it. Try doing that now, you get ancient posts from a decade ago that are no longer relevant. It's not like it's terrible, but I don't see anyone recommend it anymore. Though Mint has it's fans.

>EndeavourOS and CachyOS don't put any barriers upon the user, what fixes and guides that work for Arch will work for them

The Arch project itself disagrees with that, they will not provide any support or make any assurances about what works on other Arch based distros. The edges being filed of is a substantial difference, which sometimes will matter. The distros (by design) include a lot of defaults, which are assumptions Arch does not make and which it assumes users know about.

>SteamOS also clearly has a place as an immutable Arch, hard to argue that it's been a disappointment or a cause of frustration for users, given the narrative has been an overwhelming want from the gaming community for a desktop version. I guess the frustration comes from, if anything, it's narrow scope.

I specifically talked about managing Arch yourself. On the Steamdeck you never have to touch a console to make things work. Valve will provide updates for you, no manual intervention needed. It is also well defined and extensively tested hardware, which does not apply to anything else. No user should use SteamOS outside of the Steamdeck, Valve is clear about that.

Besides my main point still stands. If you can not install Arch, you lack basic Linux literacy. The moment your Arch based distro based, you can not fix it without these basic skills. You will be disappointed and frustrated and unless you are willing to spend a lot of time learning (after which you could just install Arch anyways) you will never touch Linux again.

I specifically said fixes and guides, Arch deriviatives usually have their own active support communities to deal with user support. What your describing also counts for, say, Mint or literally any *-based distro. Nonetheless the Arch wiki is still a useful rescource for solving problems, indeed that was so even when I was using Ubuntu which incenidentlally is how I ended up trying Arch in the first place; I used Arch's resources to fix Ubuntu's problems more than Ubuntu's resources, why not give it a shot?

But I bounced off vanilla Arch's install process and painstaking setup. Tried Manjaro, got hit by successive boot breaking bugs, then found EndeavourOS and discovered they hey, Arch doesn't need to be a pain in the ass or a broken piece of shit.

Arch can be and can continue to be Arch, anything based on it can be something else but also sort of Arch and that's fine and maybe even really good.

You are still completely ignoring my point.

You, presumably, are not new to Linux. You know how to fix your system. The users CachyOS is targeting do not. They will run into walls, get frustrated and leave.

I really couldn't care less that someone like you uses some Arch derivative, because they don't want to spend the 3 hours doing the setup themselves.

Just FYI,the Arch setup is as easy as setting up e.g. Debian, unless you are terminally afraid of using terminal UIs.

From a usability perspective all the popular desktop Linux distros are barely different from each other, the things I do and the way I did them in Arch were basically the same things I was doing in Ubuntu, only with pacman instead of apt. Any operating system that requires the user actively maintain it's system stack will, at some point, likely require diving into a terminal and messing with configuration files.

The people who run into that wall and bounce off of it wouldn't be better served by Ubuntu, but an immutable OS. Fedora Silverblue, Bazzite et al.

Like the Steam Deck, too; though you're wrong about the OS's scope for hardware compatibility. SteamOS supports the Legion Go S officially, but also contains specific patches to support the ROG Ally which they have no affiliation with. Their intent for SteamOS isn't for it to stay on Valve hardware forever.

>From a usability perspective all the popular desktop Linux distros are barely different from each other

Obviously false. Rolling release distros like Arch require far more intervention. Why do you make up nonsense like that?

I'd say "far more intervention" is massively overstating the supposed problem, in practice I haven't noticed a whole lot of difference over the last few years. I run sudo pacman -Syu, I restart and it works. For those that do run into problems, there's community support available just like there is for Ubuntu as well as a bounty of resources for Arch in general.

None of this requires some trial by fire bullshit on part of end users.

In all likelihood once a year an Arch distro requires intervention by someone who knows what he is doing. For Debian that is zero, unless you are switching versions.

You forgot all the times that debian requires you to run terminal instructions just to add a new repo, to get a specific type of software that's new for a specific feature you want, instead of one that's ancient and crusty. And then the inevitable conflicts that result when you try to upgrade a system that is trying to ship two versions of e.g. openssl concurrently because the one new program needs network access and a new version of GLIBC.

I ran a single Arch Linux install concurrently for 7 years before 2020 (i.e. before the rot took hold) and needed to use the terminal to fix things less than I ever did Ubuntu around the same time period.

Well yeah; if you exclude the main maintenance task of a non-rolling distro, the rolling distro looks like it has more maintenance.

No. I run a rolling release distro, void, for years and never had to fix anything caused by system updates. It is not nonsense at all to state that this exists.

I would suggest to look a bit more at other distros outside the arch bubble before claiming such an opinion.

From all things far from truth, this is the farthest.

> Speaking of Ubuntu, it has atrophed. It used to be that it was popular enough that you could google your problem and someone would have solved it. Try doing that now, you get ancient posts from a decade ago that are no longer relevant. It's not like it's terrible, but I don't see anyone recommend it anymore. Though Mint has it's fans.

I think this is largely because most of Ubuntu support is through StackExchange and they tend to moderate the usefulness out of it. Every new issue is closed as being a duplicate, even when the linked "duplicate" is years old and not even resolved.

Ubuntu went through multiple changes in the software stack that those answers can be outdated and inapplicable.

It’s also ridiculously unstable. The “multiple months to backport a 1 line zfs corruption fix” incident was the last straw for me, but they also did stuff like break syslog and out of the box dns resolution months into LTS releases.

I've been mucking around with a friend's old laptop this week and have gone through the install process for both EndeavourOS and Windows 11. I've been blown away by how much easier Linux (and Arch-based Linux to boot) has become compared to Windows.

With EndeavourOS, I'm asked a few basic questions about my keyboard, language, timezone, DE and where I want it put. With Windows, I'm clicking through endless pages asking it not to do a whole load of hostile crap, before having to spend the next hour or so carefully removing bloat and checking settings.

Same playing with my nephew yesterday. He's 8 and has just got his first laptop (also Win 11). He complained about how confusing it is, and I'm not surprised because his screen is full of junk. The poor kid had a stock ticker on his bar!

EndeavourOS just works out of the box and gives a simple, clean starting point to build on. I was amazed by how much more usable a supposedly beardy distribution is than the normie offering.

Its only Monday, but calling an Arch installation “basic tech literacy” is the funniest thing I’ll read this week.

>Its only Monday, but calling an Arch installation “basic tech literacy” is the funniest thing I’ll read this week.

Booting from an USB Drive understanding a few menu options is in fact what I would call "basic tech literacy".

Most would disagree. I think it's easy to take for granted how much work, experience, and knowledge goes into being able to use a computer at all.

Maybe parent commenter should root-cause why they think it's Monday first

Probably because they, unlike you, are able to read comment datestamps?

EDIT: this is fascinating. On web, their comment shows as 1 hour ago. But on my mobile app, their comment shows as 3 days ago. Looks like the HN mods second-chanced this article, and it edited all the old comment timestamps as a result?

Maybe we're all just having a case of the mondays

The behavior does match what I've seen in articles which have been second chanced.

Gotta be some bug because I've seen a thread 4 days ago on mobile that was yesterday shown as new on desktop with comments that I clearly read already dated also as new, posted within hour.

I agree that people who aren't at the point where they can install Arch easily based on the wiki guide are likely to have an inferior experience using it as opposed to something in the Debian / EL families.

That said, I learned a lot by constantly screwing up Arch installs I had no real reason to be doing. Eventually I learned to appreciate projects like Debian or Enterprise Linux a lot more.

I think that people choosing to do this stuff are doing it because they want to learn. I'm not convinced a few kids being precocious and getting in way over their heads "harms Linux Desktop". I think it's more likely that this is the next generation of Linux Desktop enthusiasts who could help make the dream a reality.

>That said, I learned a lot by constantly screwing up Arch installs I had no real reason to be doing. Eventually I learned to appreciate projects like Debian or Enterprise Linux a lot more.

Which percentage of people do you think would have done the same? Especially if those people just wanted a way to escape from Windows?

>this is the next generation of Linux Desktop enthusiasts who could help make the dream a reality.

I am all for it. But these distros should set realistic expectations and should be clear and upfront that willingness to engage with technical topics is mandatory.

This has been my experience too, with the exception being SteamOS. Arch and variants all inevitably break, usually after an update because I missed some patch note about a config change or something. Maybe non-Valve Arch+derivatives are better if used as a daily driver which are subject to more attention from the user, but I’m not convinced they’re that well suited to dedicated gaming boxes that need to just work without much fuss, especially for those not already versed in the ways of (Arch) Linux.

Other distros bring their own problems of course but that’s another topic.

That matches my experience with Cachyos, it's a rolling and cutting/bleeding edge distro which means it maybe cuts you occasionally. They still seem to be finding their way with some aspects like changing what bootloader they want to use (I'm not sure how much difference it makes to the maintainers, but it seems a little like bike-shedding for a distro which is out in public), and there's some changes which are forced on them like the nvidia drivers splitting between open/closed.

That's in contrast with what I perceive with a lot of gamers (seeing as Valve is being mentioned a lot) where they see a PC as a deluxe console with steam as the UI, and seem to be desiring a high level of polish. That's in combination with signalling that they're using the latest and greatest, tweaking to get the most out of their rigs, showing off their pretty color coordinated builds, and somehow are expected to dive into linux (and the freedom it brings) when there's hostility to running more than one client/store/downloader/gaming package manager. Some aspects of PC gaming seem weird to me.

IMO bootloaders deserve more attention than they’ve traditionally gotten in mass-targeted distros. GRUB is ugly and to less technical users, initimidating. With modern EFI stacks the ceiling for UX is much higher.

Grub doesn't have to be ugly. Mine loads into a 4k framebuffer with a nice graphical setup. Only issue is secure boot and fonts don't seem to play nice so those are still basic monospace.

“If someone does not have the basic tech literacy to install arch”

I think there is a big jump from the tech literacy to install Arch and the tech literacy to maintain an Arch system over time. These derivatives feel like they are there to help solve the latter.

No, it isn't gate keeping, its just pure arrogance. My replay is not to change your opinion, but to encourage others, that come across your BS, to try, fail and finally succeed in whatever they want to...

I somewhat agree with your comment, but there is definitely a space for something in between Ubuntu and a full-fledged Arch distro installed by hand. As in, not for beginners, but for intermediate users who want a taste of Arch without a strong commitment. Where I agree with you is that this approach has indeed failed several times before (Antergos and more recently Manjaro), but who knows, CachyOS may be different.

Why? Any intermediary user can install Arch and is able to find their way through documentation.

These distros also target completely new people, with very little or even zero, Linux experience. Someone like that is not done any favors by putting him in front of a pre configured Arch. They will run into problems they can not solve without substantial time commitments and that will lead to frustration and disappointment.

At the very least these distros should be honest about what they are. From the top of the CachyOS Website: "Whether you're a seasoned Linux user or just starting out, CachyOS is the ideal choice for those looking for a powerful, customizable and blazingly fast operating system."

This is doing a complete disservice to their potential users. This is ot the "ideal" distro for someone who never touched Linux.

Honestly, CachyOS was _much_ easier to install and maintain than older versions of ubuntu were, when i first started using linux (the free cd ones), next next next, select some boxes, done, everything works.

Eh, I can't really agree. I'm totally capable of installing Arch, I've installed Arch and Gentoo and all kinds of random distros in the past, but the reason Manjaro is on my living room PC is because it's basically here to run a web browser and I wanted the lowest effort rolling release distro to install. Did I still have to do some annoying things at a low level to deal with some weird wifi and audio stuff? Yes. Was it easier and faster than ground up Arch? Yes.

Are there better options? I wouldn't be shocked. But it wasn't worth my time to do a big comparison. (Note that I would not necessarily install Manjaro today, but I do think wanting a more out of the box Arch is totally reasonable.)

As someone who has been happy with both Arch and Gentoo for non-gaming purposes, my hot take in 2025 is that I cannot recommend good old Debian enough. Homebrew/cargo for bleeding edge software, but since that lives in my home folder it doesn’t affect or interfere with the rock solid experience of Debian. I use Lutris for Windows-exclusive games, and actually have better performance than in Windows thanks to Microsoft’s unholy levels of bullshit in their OS.

But yeah: Debian truly “just works”, with the caveat of initial setup for Nvidia cards. And I would say that certain Gnome extensions are kind of mandatory as well, but the IX of installing those is ridiculously good for what they are.

And if you want to experiment or play with shiny tools, there's toolbox and distrobox.

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