Its just not a good choice unless you really like to configure your Linux.
Yep, you have no clue.
For workstations that my staff (who are not interested in Linux or PCs at all) have to use
Nice Motte & Bailey fallacy retreating from the ridiculous statement that “…its down there with arch as a usable OS…” to try and seem more reasonable now.
If I don’t want to fuck with the OS and if setting it up takes more then 15 min then its not a good choice, but please tell me to “get gud” about what I value in an OS. I am sure that is why so many people use arch over other distros, the kind support.
Nice Motte & Bailey fallacy retreating from the ridiculous statement that “…its down there with arch as a usable OS…” to try and seem more reasonable now.
That is why it is not a useable OS, 100% the fact that laypeople have to daily drive it. There was no retreating from me, not at all, I stand by my statement that arch is not a usable OS for workstations. And before you try and say that “for workstations” is some sort of moving the goalposts, I made the statement on arch not being usable in a comment about putting distros on my stores workstations.
The problem is that you didn’t state your premises very well, making your argument harder to follow. (You also argue very broadly.)
You first argued that Arch is not a usable operating system, which is a bold claim given that it’s one of the most popular Linux distros. While you did mention a workstation before, the claim regarding Arch wasn’t obviously connected to that, implying that Arch is not useful for any purpose.
When asked to back up that claim you talked about workstations for nontechnical users (which hadn’t been mentioned before). That didn’t match your earlier claims; you made a broad statement and then defended a narrower one. That’s indeed a motte and bailey argument even if you simply forgot to mention some details.
Also, if the users are nontechnical they’re probably not the ones who administer the workstations so they don’t need to care about technical details as long as you can provide a desktop and the applications they need.
After that you declared that any OS that needs more than 15 minutes to set up is useless, which amounts to pretty much all of them unless you don’t engage in any configuration at all. And, well, it’s another bold claim. It’s basically on par with “Mint is completely pointless because unlike Alpine I can’t use it to ship 5 MB Docker images”; you’re basically declaring that your specific use case is equivalent to any use case any Linux user will ever have.
A coherent version of your argument would be “I don’t like Arch because when I set up workstations for Linux-averse users it was much more work than Mint and I prefer something that’s quick and easy to set up”. And fair enough, that’s a perfectly valid reason for you to prefer Mint over Arch. But it’s not an indication that Arch is worse in general or even unusable. It’s just a bad fit for this specific use case.
You first argued that Arch is not a usable operating system, which is a bold claim given that it’s one of the most popular Linux distros. While you did mention a workstation before, the claim regarding Arch wasn’t obviously connected to that, implying that Arch is not useful for any purpose.
The statement was made in a comment that was in its entirety:
“I made the mistake of going with Pop_OS for one of my stores workstations. Its been an almost endless amount of frustration with all the stupid shit Pop has done. Is it better then windows? sure, but its down there with arch as a usable OS in anything outside of an LTT video.”
There are 3 or 4 total sentences in the whole thing and the very first one is laying out that this whole thing is about workstations. I don’t know how much more I could do other then literally plan for this argument that you started.
As far as not mentioning nontechnical users, fuck right off with that, all users are nontechnical unless otherwise stated. Anyone who has had to set a computer up for anyone other then themselves knows this. I did not make the comment assuming that someone would get bent out of shape and look for any “win”.
Also, if the users are nontechnical they’re probably not the ones who administer the workstations so they don’t need to care about technical details as long as you can provide a desktop and the applications they need.
They have a stick with mint on it and I can and have walked them though reinstalling mint from a stick and then have them connect to the back up system to retrieve the files used for work. The stores are 250 kms apart, you can not in good faith tell me arch is appropriate unless you have an administrator on site (and if I was that administrator I would likely strike you). I used to make rollup disks to do this, but hey guess what has more or less gone away? I can have the workstations up and running in 15 min with a mint stick, with default install options. That is important to me and frankly a lot of places. There are quite a few distros that can do this as well, this is not a feather in mints cap. Configuration is not a thing that needs to be done unless it needs to be done, to think otherwise is just admitting the unconfigured distro is not any good.
A coherent version of your argument would be “I don’t like Arch because when I set up workstations for Linux-averse users it was much more work than Mint and I prefer something that’s quick and easy to set up”. And fair enough, that’s a perfectly valid reason for you to prefer Mint over Arch. But it’s not an indication that Arch is worse in general or even unusable. It’s just a bad fit for this specific use case.
There is no situation where you are setting up workstations for users that are not Linux-averse outside of a Linux development environment, in which case those users will not like that you set up arch for them, as if they are arch fans they will also want to do their own configurations.
That all being said, if I had the time and desire I could see making a arch rollup sort of thing custom made for an organization. I just don’t need to as a distro like mint has everything the store needs already there by default.
Yep, you have no clue.
Nice Motte & Bailey fallacy retreating from the ridiculous statement that “…its down there with arch as a usable OS…” to try and seem more reasonable now.
If I don’t want to fuck with the OS and if setting it up takes more then 15 min then its not a good choice, but please tell me to “get gud” about what I value in an OS. I am sure that is why so many people use arch over other distros, the kind support.
That is why it is not a useable OS, 100% the fact that laypeople have to daily drive it. There was no retreating from me, not at all, I stand by my statement that arch is not a usable OS for workstations. And before you try and say that “for workstations” is some sort of moving the goalposts, I made the statement on arch not being usable in a comment about putting distros on my stores workstations.
The problem is that you didn’t state your premises very well, making your argument harder to follow. (You also argue very broadly.)
You first argued that Arch is not a usable operating system, which is a bold claim given that it’s one of the most popular Linux distros. While you did mention a workstation before, the claim regarding Arch wasn’t obviously connected to that, implying that Arch is not useful for any purpose.
When asked to back up that claim you talked about workstations for nontechnical users (which hadn’t been mentioned before). That didn’t match your earlier claims; you made a broad statement and then defended a narrower one. That’s indeed a motte and bailey argument even if you simply forgot to mention some details.
Also, if the users are nontechnical they’re probably not the ones who administer the workstations so they don’t need to care about technical details as long as you can provide a desktop and the applications they need.
After that you declared that any OS that needs more than 15 minutes to set up is useless, which amounts to pretty much all of them unless you don’t engage in any configuration at all. And, well, it’s another bold claim. It’s basically on par with “Mint is completely pointless because unlike Alpine I can’t use it to ship 5 MB Docker images”; you’re basically declaring that your specific use case is equivalent to any use case any Linux user will ever have.
A coherent version of your argument would be “I don’t like Arch because when I set up workstations for Linux-averse users it was much more work than Mint and I prefer something that’s quick and easy to set up”. And fair enough, that’s a perfectly valid reason for you to prefer Mint over Arch. But it’s not an indication that Arch is worse in general or even unusable. It’s just a bad fit for this specific use case.
The statement was made in a comment that was in its entirety:
“I made the mistake of going with Pop_OS for one of my stores workstations. Its been an almost endless amount of frustration with all the stupid shit Pop has done. Is it better then windows? sure, but its down there with arch as a usable OS in anything outside of an LTT video.”
There are 3 or 4 total sentences in the whole thing and the very first one is laying out that this whole thing is about workstations. I don’t know how much more I could do other then literally plan for this argument that you started.
As far as not mentioning nontechnical users, fuck right off with that, all users are nontechnical unless otherwise stated. Anyone who has had to set a computer up for anyone other then themselves knows this. I did not make the comment assuming that someone would get bent out of shape and look for any “win”.
They have a stick with mint on it and I can and have walked them though reinstalling mint from a stick and then have them connect to the back up system to retrieve the files used for work. The stores are 250 kms apart, you can not in good faith tell me arch is appropriate unless you have an administrator on site (and if I was that administrator I would likely strike you). I used to make rollup disks to do this, but hey guess what has more or less gone away? I can have the workstations up and running in 15 min with a mint stick, with default install options. That is important to me and frankly a lot of places. There are quite a few distros that can do this as well, this is not a feather in mints cap. Configuration is not a thing that needs to be done unless it needs to be done, to think otherwise is just admitting the unconfigured distro is not any good.
There is no situation where you are setting up workstations for users that are not Linux-averse outside of a Linux development environment, in which case those users will not like that you set up arch for them, as if they are arch fans they will also want to do their own configurations.
That all being said, if I had the time and desire I could see making a arch rollup sort of thing custom made for an organization. I just don’t need to as a distro like mint has everything the store needs already there by default.