Installing arch without archinstall is way too much fucking work. I’d much rather spend time fixing the 10% greater likelihood of encountering issues post install than doing all that fucking bullshit manually. The command line is better for a lot of things but configuring partitions and mount points is not one of them. I demand a fuckin gui for that stuff.
That’s why I went with EndeavourOS - nice installer, some changes and tweaks to the default settings, but after that it uses the arch repositories and there’s no difference to arch anymore afaik.
The rationale in the OP is that with archinstall, an inexperienced user will have no idea where to even begin diagnosing any issues post install. Whereas installing manually is sort of a barrier to entry that ensures you know what you’re doing.
It’s been a while since I installed arch manually, but wouldn’t that only help you understand a bit on disk partitioning and some basic commands like copying files/chrooting? You generally learn that stuff the first time your install breaks on any distro
That’s a stupid reason to make an installation as painful as possible. I can follow the installation wiki but I just don’t have time for this. And an inexperienced user can follow the wiki or another how-to and finish the installation but still be lost if something breaks later on.
It’s not being made “as painful as possible”, it’s just manual. Arch isn’t a distro that’ll preconfigure things for you so everything’s plug’n’play, it’s a distro that’ll give you access to everything and the power to use it however you like, but with that comes the expectation and responsibility to manage those things.
Installing arch manually is simply a good lesson in how your system is set up, what parts it’s made up of, in part because you’re free to remove and switch out those parts.
And sure, there’s no magic bullet to make sure a new user understands everything they did, but I think in the end, if you’re not willing to read, learn and troubleshoot, you might just want a different distro.
Installing arch without archinstall is way too much fucking work. I’d much rather spend time fixing the 10% greater likelihood of encountering issues post install than doing all that fucking bullshit manually. The command line is better for a lot of things but configuring partitions and mount points is not one of them. I demand a fuckin gui for that stuff.
That’s why I went with EndeavourOS - nice installer, some changes and tweaks to the default settings, but after that it uses the arch repositories and there’s no difference to arch anymore afaik.
I’ve done it both by the book and arch install. Arch install is just nice.
This is why arches based distos are taking off. They help with picking packages etc to save time.
The rationale in the OP is that with archinstall, an inexperienced user will have no idea where to even begin diagnosing any issues post install. Whereas installing manually is sort of a barrier to entry that ensures you know what you’re doing.
It’s been a while since I installed arch manually, but wouldn’t that only help you understand a bit on disk partitioning and some basic commands like copying files/chrooting? You generally learn that stuff the first time your install breaks on any distro
That’s a stupid reason to make an installation as painful as possible. I can follow the installation wiki but I just don’t have time for this. And an inexperienced user can follow the wiki or another how-to and finish the installation but still be lost if something breaks later on.
It’s not being made “as painful as possible”, it’s just manual. Arch isn’t a distro that’ll preconfigure things for you so everything’s plug’n’play, it’s a distro that’ll give you access to everything and the power to use it however you like, but with that comes the expectation and responsibility to manage those things.
Installing arch manually is simply a good lesson in how your system is set up, what parts it’s made up of, in part because you’re free to remove and switch out those parts.
And sure, there’s no magic bullet to make sure a new user understands everything they did, but I think in the end, if you’re not willing to read, learn and troubleshoot, you might just want a different distro.