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this post was submitted on 26 May 2026
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Please do not recommend Arch-based distros to newcomers. At some point, something minor or major is going to break, and they're not going to be able to fix it. Give them something Debian-based to learn the ropes (or not). It's not going to break down on them as easily.
Also, just a follow up reply: I'll do what I want, thanks.
If you have a struggle with it thats on you, I've found it easy to get working and keep working. Even all my games through steam and lutris.
Don't assume everyone will struggle with reading error messages and googling.
EndeavourOS was my first distro, and I had a great experience. Learned a ton (sometimes by completely breaking everything. Time Shift saved my ass many times).
I'm sure not everyone learns things the same way, but breaking shit and having to learn how to fix it was the best way I could have learned about how Linux works
I think these people are having skill issues or reading comprehension issues. Arch is not hard. Infact, its less bs than de-snapping an ubuntu install.
I'm happy that things did work out for you, and indeed, "breaking shit and fixing it" is part of the rites of passage on Linux.
That said, I guess you're part of the "tech-savvy tinkerer" crowd. This demographic will handle these things gracefully and take every breakdown as a learning opportunity.
Coming from this demographic, it's easy to forget that there are people out there that deem computers mere tools, not a hobby. These people expect things to "just work", and any breakage is an annoyance, a road block, a "this Linux thing sucks". Set them up with a tinkerer's distro, and you will make them thoroughly unhappy. Not because they're wrong. Not because we're wrong. Just because of a mismatch of expectations.
So, dear penguins: let's not blindly advertise our pet distro to whoever asks (or doesn't). Let's look at who is before us, and provide them with the best experience possible. In a lot of cases, due to the influx of "just works" users, this may mean something stable in order not to put them off.
Skill issue. People cannot just passively expect to understand a complicated thing without applying themselves.
If they can't use a computer, they can't use a computer.
Using != fixing.
Do you need to learn how to drive ("use") a car? Absolutely. Do you need to have intricate knowledge of its inner workings and be able to fix even the smallest component in case it breaks? No. That's for enthusiasts.
Hard disagree. Less people should drive, they have no mechanical sympathy and scant grasp of what they're doing.
Its just as a society we've decided to enable them because it meant we could sell cars.
I dunno man, less shits broken here than on Ubuntu.
Debían based except Ubuntu, Even Ubuntu flavours like kubuntu are fine just not Ubuntu.
Wait, why did you use "í?" It's just "Debian."
Autocorrect does weird things.
I’m out of the loop, Ubuntu has been broken/unstable?
No but they have been steering towards practices that makes people uncomfortable.
They are slowly replacing part of their ecosystem with proprietary modules or modules with permissive license and people have seen this behaviour enough to know what the end goal is
*yet
How old is your system?
I've put endeavour on a bunch of desktops and various thinkpads of a variety of vintages, including very modern.
I dunno man, it just works. I buy conservative technology choices and vendors and shit just works.
The hardest thing in my life is getting WWAN to work reliably OOTB on thinkpads with cellular.
Edit: No, the hardest thing in my life is asking people "Is wayland in the room with us right now?" because I've yet to have a machine running wayland.
You misunderstood my question. How old are those installs? Chances are they're not very old.
Arch-based systems like EndeavourOS are rolling releases with minimal testing. They'll work fine at the start, but errors will accumulate over time. Breakage is not a question of if, but when, and when that happens, Arch assumes you're a savvy user who knows what youre doing and able to fix your stuff. If you aren't (and newcomers to Linux normally fall into that category), you're going to have a bad time.
Whatever the hype around Endeavour or CachyOS is: I wouldn't recommend any of them to Linux newcomers for this very reason. Instead, it's wise to give them a stable Debian-based OS to make themselves comfortable with Linux. Once they have arrived, they may or may not experiment with other flavours of Linux.
I've not had the experience you've had.
It feels like you're just gate-keeping Linux because you apparently had a bad experience. It doesn't sound like you've used an Arch-based distro in a while (or if you have, it was Manjaro - there has been a host of problems over there that will take a lot of time and effort to rebuild community trust, imo).
We've got 2 desktops and 2 laptops in our house all running Arch-based distros, the oldest being a little over 4 years old without any "breakage". Two of the users had not even seen Linux prior to this, and one of them is not at all what I would consider "computer savvy".
I can't speak for vanilla Arch, but all of the "Arch with helpers" distros I've ran had pretty simple buttons to deal with system maintenance. Additionally, I've seen firsthand the difference a rolling-release distro can make over a "stable" release for game and hardware compatibility. It's generally much easier to get (and keep) all the hardware working correctly on a gaming laptop in one of those arch-based distros than Debian or Mint, especially if it has an nvidia gpu. I couldn't in good conscience recommend anything debian based to someone in that boat personally.
The use of the system matters A LOT when recommending a new distro. For some grandparents that just browse facebook and send e-mails - yea I'd probably just put Debian or LMDE on their system. I'm not sure I would make the same recommendation to anyone else though.
As a new user I tried all the "easy" distro and they all just fucked me over really hard, they favor ease of use by restricting the user so anytime I went to do anything I just kept running into repeated minor problems. When I tried endeavor it #just works and with snapshot software you can always rollback most distros as far as I know so there is no reason to not reccomend a Linux distro that doesn't hold your hand unless there is something suepr specific the person needs that for some reason is the only thing capable of doing it reasonably well.
Yeah, thats the vibe I have with Endevour/Arch.. its just "get the fuck out of my way and let me do my work/play vidya game".
I hate snaps and flatpacks, just make real packages guys its not hard.
Never ran into anything like that. I'm hungry for more details.
It sounds you've never done that yourself. It's not hard if you know what you're doing, but it's not trivial either and may require use of a boot stick, dealing with disk encryption through the terminal, chrooting... and that is not the kinds of hoops I'd expect a newcomer to have to jump through just to fix their system.
I don't expect a newcomer to set up the snapshotting themselves, we have technology for this.
I don't mean they literally restrict you as much as they give you more hoops.