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> If someone made an Arch installer that automatically set up networking and persisted the setup, as well as partitioning/mounting, I would be on board.

Netctl gets bundled in the install images because it is small. But after you have finished your installation, you can abandon it. No distro that I have come across handles partitioning and mounting automatically. I have come across a few that offer to wipe the entire disk and install themselves the way the distros prefer.

> it takes like an hour to read through the entire wiki page

I have installed Arch a few times on my machines, and I can't remember all those steps. The idea is to print it out (or open it on another screen) and follow it step-by-step. Arch is meant for people who are willing to do a lot more than execute some 10 commands to set up partitions and networking. After the initial effort, it is the least painful distro that I have used.

But isn't offering to wipe the disk handling some of the partitioning work for you. It may just not be offering you the layout you like. Some installers offer to let you manually partition the disk and specify the various parts you care about, not many but some.

> If someone made an Arch installer that automatically set up networking and persisted the setup, as well as partitioning/mounting, I would be on board.

But then, it wouldn't be Arch any more. There'll inevitably come a user that wants a different partition scheme not contemplated (nfs /home? LUKS? LVM across all present drives? etc).

As far a networking: it's even worse. There's several choices of what you can use to manage your network (wicd, NetworkManager, netctl etc). An installer that supports all those, with all possible network configurations, would be a huge pain. It's just easier if the user picks a tool, installs it, and configures it.

It'll also help you greatly in future when you need to reconfigure it, fiddle around, of break it.

> Maybe if you're a full-time sysadmin you're familiar enough with ifconfig, fstab etc.

No need for ifconfig, you do have a lot of helpers, as mentioned above.

> But then, it wouldn't be Arch any more. There'll inevitably come a user that wants a different partition scheme not contemplated (nfs /home? LUKS? LVM across all present drives? etc).

The old no installer way could still be present. Just give people an option, is what I'm getting at. I'm pretty sure you can manually configure everything in the Debian installer if you choose to.

Your point about networking - there being multiple tools and letting the user choose which to use - is more understandable. However, it's still something I've come to expect to configure once and never again (apart from choosing which wifi to connect to when I'm at a new place).

What about Antergos or Manjaro?

"Manjaro forgot to upgrade their SSL certificate, suggest users get around it by changing their system clocks."

https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/31yayt/manjaro_forgo...

Okay, this is nasty.

Or Evo/Lution.

Antergos looks promising, I'll try that next time.

I think ArchBang tries to do that. It might be a nice in-between for a new arch user's first time. Then again, I think I had a set of other problems when I tried it. I have spent a decent amount of time trying to understand all the steps of the process just so that I can troubleshoot without immediately needing to access the arch-wiki. The knowledge is nice to have, and building familiarity with the system one uses should never be seen as wasted time :)

I second the recommendation of ArchBang. It's a very lightweight LiveCD (~500MB) with a GUI installer that works pretty well. If you're comfortable on the cmdline, you could search the official archlinux forums, though. There are quite a few arch setup scripts floating around. You could try this one for btfs on luks: https://github.com/atweiden/pacstrapit

    ./pacstrapit start --bundle    "full"                \
                       --username  "newusername"         \
                       --hostname  "yourhostname"        \
                       --partition "/dev/sda"            \
                       --processor "intel"               \
                       --graphics  "nvidia"              \
                       --disk      "ssd"                 \
                       --luksname  "infinity"            \
                       --locale    "en_US"               \
                       --keymap    "us"                  \
                       --timezone  "America/Los_Angeles" \
                       --concealed

I don't really want a desktop environment + applications installed - as long as networking and disks are in place I can install what I need and set up my configs.

You're asking for something Arch will never provide. Having a "next > next > next" installer defeats the entire purpose of Arch.

I once shared the exact same wish, and I never truly adopted Arch until I installed it 3-4 times on one of my secondary computers. It is only by taking that path and practicing that I truly learned to appreciate what it is that Arch gives.

I'm sure you'll have that experience too, some day.

Oh yea, Arch is not for the lazy, that's why it's fun!

Well arch did have a menu system that was pretty close to next > next > next before the new pacstrap way of installing was done. You still had to do quite a bit more work than say installing ubuntu but it was quite a bit easier to get started with than it is now.

I don't really see that the current install way is any better, most users will just blindly follow the beginners guide and either give up if it doesn't work (or since it is likely to work) have a system setup with very little understanding of why they did what they did.