Linux

While not answering the question, the first "user friendly" arch based distro I tried out was endeavour and I remember going back to vanilla arch after realizing how bloaty it was.

i've been customizing linux for 15 years. it's nice to just sit down with something that works.

I've ran vanilla Arch multiple times in the past, and each time it was for the 'fun'of building out my system, this was mainly back when I was a uni student.

These days however, I just want something that works well for my use case.

Not a masochist and Arch is the only distro I'm aware of that comes close to Windows in terms of package availability (i.e. if it exists and is either open source or prebuilt I can get it on Arch). Cachy specifically for their optimized custom kernels, but lately I've been really wishing they had a bigger team and were sponsored, as some packages can lag behind for quite some time. Same for packages in the Arch repo.

I've been using bare Arch for a while but after five or so installs I couldn't be bothered anymore and realized that EndeavourOS is basically doing exactly what I'm looking for.

So it's mostly the installer.

Because the PC enables me do do my hobbies (gaming, 3d modelling and printing), the PC itself isn't my hobby. If I spend more time tinkering with the OS than having the OS run the things I actually want to do, I'll go do something else.

I tried pure Arch. Installed it and then realized I have to set up everything myself and lost all motivation. Didn't know about archinstall at that time. Found CachyOS and stuck with it. It runs perfectly and I see no reason to switch.

I used EndeavourOS for a long time. I liked it mainly for the Sway config making it all so nice out of the box. And of course the easy install.

I’ve spent far too much of my life configuring computers. I want to do as little configuring as possible. Also, I’d heard that Cachy had custom kernel changes that made pretty much any game run better.

Games run phenomenally, not sure why I’d go try anything else. (Bazzite, mint, zorin did not work with my setup)

I do it because if I can save myself some busywork and have a ready to go and maintain system...From after an install, I much prefer that. I don't see the point of installing purely vanilla Arch. There are use cases where this would make sense, but I honestly cannot be arsed. Garuda Linux takes the pain in my arse out of Arch, makes it fun to use. Easy to keep up with .pacdiffs, merging when appropriate (or skipping pointless mergers because they build the damn distro, so they stop pointless busywork from bothering users).

I get access to the latest software and kernels, smooth performance, and all I have to do is pay attention to breaking changes (implement the fix post update) in exchange. It's a pretty damn fine deal. The safety nets that Garuda Linux provides over traditional Arch (which is historically minimal by design) is a better deal in my opinion. However, if I had the drive; I feel like I am beginning to understand the workflow enough to potentially reproduce something similar (not one to one) on a vanilla Arch install.

Now don't get me wrong, the archinstall script is pretty cool, the only bane about it is needing to be connected to the internet. Connecting via a command, rough AF. I honestly might've misspelled that command and not noticed during a frantic moment (it was a floptina moment for me, so, Arch isn't to blame). Garuda Linux lowered the barrier, just enough that I got my foot in and got really comfortable with manual interventions and the like. But they also kept it high enough to isolate me from the AUR, but let me have their nice properly managed ChaoticAUR instead.

Last time I installed Arch I just told Codex to build an ISO with my favorite stuff, flashed the physical media, and started using it. Now that's a one step setup