Trial by fire
Went to a family-run Indian place in Cornwall looking for vindaloo, but the guy talked me down to a madras. Good thing cuz it was right on the edge of my tolerance level. I couldn’t have eaten their vindaloo.
Goat vindaloo 👌
Worked out for me🤷♂️
Mint, Fedora, Pop_OS!..these are good distros to start on. Some people start and end on these.
CachyOS, Arch, Manjaro…these are not what you throw at a newbie.
Get them some nix
I think it really depends on the person (and a few other “luck” factors). Like, if they are truly generically computer savvy enthusiasts, they might actually have better luck on an Arch derivative. I’ve seen hardware compatibility issues plague a machine until it got Arch on it - sometimes that bleeding edge has what you need already and you don’t have to hunt for it.
I still like the play of suggesting new people download every distro that piques their curiosity, put them all on thumb drives, and spend a weekend giving them a go. But, if they aren’t willing to do that, then throw Mint or Bazzite at them and hope all their hardware just works because they probably don’t fit into the category above.
Except Manjaro. I feel like at least 70% of the Arch family hate is actually Manjaro’s fault. I’m glad it works for some people and they can use and enjoy it, but I just don’t have the faith in it to recommend it.
Like going to Japanese restaurant and asking for a whole plate of pistachio ice cream
Watched an older relative of mine once stick his finger in the blob on his plate and eat a big ‘ol chunk of it thinking it was avocado. We thought he was done for
So, where is Dan Hurd going there, and will he find gold again?
Trick question. He always finds gold.
This isn’t what I expected on this com
One time I was eating at an Indian restaurant that had a 5-star heat scale, and then “Indian hot” which was just another level beyond the scale. I ordered 3 star heat and my buddy ordered “Indian hot.” The waitress confirmed 3 times that was what he wanted (we’re white).
I was impressed that my friend was managing his meal pretty well so I asked if I could try it to compare. It wasn’t any hotter than mine. I’m sure the chef took one look at him and was like “I’m not remaking this dish when that white boy can’t eat what he ordered.” Not like my friend would’ve been a dick about it or demanded another dish, but yeah I doubt he could’ve handled the heat level he asked for. In the end, the food was great and my buddy didn’t feel cheated and didn’t destroy his guts.
Indian place I used to live near had a similar system. Each time, I ask for Indian hot. They confirm. What they bring is not Indian hot. They ask about it, I tell them “this is really good, but next time, I’d like hotter”
This goes on for freaking forever before he finally makes a dish that’s genuinely hot, and it’s great, but I can do more. Lol. The next time I come in, I tell them hotter than last time, and he says he’ll make it like he does for his own mom.
Lit me up. It was really good. Not too hot for me, but hot enough that I’m pushing my limits. He asks after the meal, and I tell him it was hot enough. He says “good. I won’t make any hotter! That’s hot enough!” Haha
This has happened to me repeatedly at Thai places and it was honestly infuriating the first few times it happened. Luckily, I found out that at Thai places they usually have a spice tray they can bring out on request as long as you are eating at the restaurant instead of takeout. It became my common thing to expect to do so after my first bite when eating at places. At home I have my own dried peppers so I can make food as silly hot as I want.
Oh hey Dan Hurd!
But Arch doesn’t use Hurd.
I’ve been working on Linux since '96. As time goes by I keep drifting more and more towards boring and stable distributions. I just don’t want to be bothered with a system that needs me to groom it constantly.
All roads lead to Debian Stable.
I use arch because it is the boring but stable system. Rolling release means you just keep updating it and it works forever rather than having to do big bang upgrades between LTS versions that always break something
Nah. It just means that the breaking updates could surprise you at any time.
With a LTS version upgrade, I can plan for the potentially breaking updates. I can set aside time when my schedule is free to do the big update and work through any potential bullshit. It won’t interrupt my work.
But in a rolling release, you’re still going to get that same breaking update … but with no warning this time. It might come at a crucial time when you’re trying to get other work done, forcing you to stop your more important work and fix your computer first.
And that’s not even counting the number of breaking updates. A relatively ‘bleeding edge’ rolling release distro like Arch is going to include much newer software versions that haven’t gone through as much real-world testing and bug reporting as the stale old packages in a LTS release. The price you pay for more updated software is that it’s less thoroughly tested software and more likely to include undiscovered, unfixed bugs.
By the time the same package update finally makes it to some stable LTS distro, more of the bugs have been discovered, reported, and hopefully fixed … before you ever even see it.
(Not to say that nobody should run cutting-edge rolling release distros. I’m glad you guys are out there. You’re the ones reporting those bugs that end up getting fixed before it makes it into the LTS version. If everybody was running LTS stuff, it would lose that advantage because nobody would be testing things before they make it to the LTS.)
Overall, I think cutting-edge rolling release is fine for a computer that doesn’t really matter, like a gaming PC. (And you’ll probably get a gaming performance boost from having the latest and greatest versions of things.)
But for an essential computer that you need for doing important things, a LTS stable release is the way to go 100%.
You can write a whole essay of theory, but my experience is running several arch devices for years and years with no problems and having ubuntu distro upgrades break so badly I just reinstall completely every single time.
Another hiccup is that LTS are not actually running stable packages. They are running Frankenstein versions of packages with backports that are not supported by the project maintainers, because the software has to be maintained for security if nothing else.
It just means that the breaking updates could surprise you at any time.
I keep hearing this but in my roughly 20 years of running Arch that’s happened no more than a handful of times. And usually because I missed an announcement. I don’t know what y’all are doing to your systems but Arch has been incredibly solid for me.
And complete distro version upgrades like with CentOS/Debian have always been such a fucking massive hassle. And CentOS often deprecates hardware shit I need which of course I never find out until after I run the update and the shit won’t ever boot again.
this
you can just choose to use software that isn’t dev/nightly versions, and you’re fine
unless you want to see stuff break… then you install all of the nightly versions and have stuff break sometimes!
100%, I already gave a job and hobbies thanks.
Polishing dotfiles is a valid hobby, and can be fun now and then, but when I need to do actual work I reach for my debian laptop.
that reminds me. i need to commit and push my latest vimrc.
Surely you need to make a cron job to do this on changes? 😅
Yep.
In 2002, I used Gentoo.
In 2026, I use Kubuntu.
(I should probably switch since Canonical’s policies are increasingly bothering me, but meh, I can’t be bothered to reinstall more than once a decade.)
I should probably switch since Canonical’s policies are increasingly bothering me, but meh, I can’t be bothered to reinstall more than once a decade.
Just like me, for real!
I’ve used Debian since 2001 or so. I reinstall whenever I have a new computer, unless I’m decommissioning another computer at the same time.
Same. I settled on Debian around 1999 and stayed there. A brief side trip to the ope source Solaris.
imho that’s kinda why i went ios for my phone. i dev in linux, deal with robotics, hardware, signals, “security” and whatnot to get paid. i just want something that works.
Nowadays you dont even have to use iOS/android to get something that just works, GrapheneOS for example also is fully there already (apart from NFC payment but that’s really the only thing)
Eh. You already can’t pair it with your Volkswagen (or was it Volvo? one of those car brands), a lot of Banks won’t fuck with it and just won’t let you use their app or website, and Google is actively trying to kill it off (whether they’ve said it out loud yet or not, it’s happening). I’ll be interested to see where it is in the next few years, hope it manages to keep going and all, but I am much more personally invested in a properly working Linux mobile option that works on a modern phone with all of the modern amenities.
Both my banks work (one local, one international) and both my cars work (Volvo and Audi)
GrapheneOS for example also is fully there already
There are some caveats to that. You do have to jump through some hoops to for instance get RCS working. I think it is worth it to feel like I’m actually in control of my device, and I would even recommend it to friends and family that I’m willing to play tech support for, but I can’t truthfully say I would recommend it to an arbitrary non technical person
You used to have to jump through hoops for RCS, now it’s a toggle, they’ve come a long way with that
That is true. The fact you have to even do that is a lot for some people though. There are other things as well such as wifi calling and visual voicemail not working out of the box for all carriers.
Man, that Indian restaurant reference is just fucking spot on
One of my biggest mistakes was ordering “spicy” level Thai food. Took me about a week to finish it because I could only handle one bite every few hours.
One local Thai shop had the sense to offer both “
$nationalityspicy” and “thai spicy”That’s pretty universal at Thai places. There’s hot and then Thai hot.
When my wife and talk about spice level, we clarify if it’s white-boy spicy or Hispanic spicy.
The Venn diagram is a circle?
Lmao. I’m from the Middle East and we eat spicy food regularly, but Indian spicy is on a whole new level for me. I’ve had their “hot” once and never again. I always get “medium”.
Same. I grew up eating habanero and jalapeno peppers, but Thai and Indian hits different.
Same here, but I just realized how much I loved the Thai and Indian level of spice and now I’m the weirdo whose home garden is 75% “super hot” peppers.
I like to ask Linux people “Would you recommend Arch for a newbie?” Not because I have any intention of using Arch, but their answer to that question helps me judge the quality of their advice going forward.
Honestly, if you are new to Linux and are making the switch because you enjoy customisation and tinkering, a manual Arch install is the way to go. It’s fun and you learn a lot, while still having a good OS.
It’s still a bad place to start. Go try a curated experience or two before you try building a system from the ground up.
That also means you’re less likely to end up with a final bloated system with 7 DEs, 16 shells, 4 file manager, and every piece of software installed that sounded cool because you wanted to try them all out.
Guys stop this nonsense. I spent 2 hours in wpa_supplicant trying to fix Wi-Fi because I missed a package containing regional wpa shit.
You all vastly under estimate how quickly a novice may be overwhelmed.
I have multiple times partitioned the wrong drive. With a graphical installer.
I now physically remove the SSDs I don’t want to partition.
I don’t recommend things based on if people are new to it or not. I recommend things based on if they read and are willing to learn or not.
If you don’t read, arch is not a good distro for you.
*judges the quality of your advice going forward*
You should always judge the quality of advice others give, especially random internet bozos.
If you don’t read, nothing is good for you, you’ll kill all distros if you don’t care and aren’t willing to learn
Agreed. Also I would rather read the archwiki than loads of outdated faq posts when troubleshooting an issue.
I guess a lot of accurate text is intimidating compared to a concise message that is very confident.
I’ve also seen people just refuse to read an error message. I think this is from using Microsoft products that never have accurate error messages.
Anyway, I hope people willing to learn try a whole bunch of things, and don’t give up at the first problem because that is how you learn.
It really depends on whether they’re an enthusiast excited about it or they’re just trying to ditch windows…
9/10 times, no.
And believe it or not, the 1/10 case: also no.
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Eh, rolling release distros are great for gaming. I recommend it enthusiasts (noob or not) and gamers. If you just need a rock solid platform for a server or browsing the web / word processing then sure slap some Debian or Fedora on there and call it a day.
you can try it. i personally recommend you install it without the archinstall script once so that you learn a bit about how linux works, and if you dont want to learn so much stuff at once, either install it through archinstall or choose a different distro. you’re probably going to learn some stuff once something breaks, though that could take a while
of course though, i’d only say that to someone who shows a lot of enthusiasm for linux. if they simply don’t want windows, i’d just recommend fedora
I think it depends on how we define a newbie. No experience with linux at all? Hell, no. They’ll likely fail and never touch it again. Someone who understands some basics and really wants to learn? Go ahead.
eh if you’re REALLY interested in linux you can do it with no prior knowledge
though i guess you can’t be that interested in linux without knowing anything…
I’d say no but you’ll probably end up there eventually. At least for me I went crunch bang++, popOS, fedora, arch, bazzite, cachyOS, now thinking about arch again
Hey, it can work, I’ve installed Mint for my father. Thrown him in head first!
And I’m not sure if he realized he’s not running Windows anymore.
Arch taught me how to fuck my computer and now its my main squeeze.
Unironically, I don’t get how anyone lives with something like Arch.
Do you guys have to reinstall the OS every few months? How do you deal with the accumulation of crap and weird settings over years?
I tried Fedora and I found even that was annoying because you’ve got 50 different
servicedandservicectlthings to manage, which all have their own implicitly managed state, and some require committing changes through custom CLIs to update them (I have more than once forgot to push my boot settings — whatever that’s called, I’m a noob and was following guides).I don’t think I can go back from NixOS and immutable distros. I really like that it’s hard to forget my firewall has an open port for service xyz, because the port is defined in a nix file with the service configuration.
I’m not saying the arch way or standard Linux way is wrong, not at all. It’s just incredibly not something I enjoy and it makes me feel not confident about the state of my computer.
Did this comment come from 2002? Everything literally just works. My arch box feels as stable as my Debian servers. Computers are fun again. I can’t choose my player color on Spellmasons, thats the one issue I have run into.
'Cause no other computer will let you
touchit, let alonesudoit.sudo touch me nowit’s like nobody even knows about
fingeranymoreGood thing too, it’s not secure. Lots of germs transmit by
fingering.
