New to Arch.

Elit3BigMacMango_2137 · Yesterday 13:46:22

Hello, I am a person that came from Linux Mint to Arch Linux to see if my tiny brain can be responsible for once, and basically I just wanted to ask "How do I NOT break my Linux Distribution with something that I would think that should work on Arch because they worked on my previous Operating System?"

archaea · Yesterday 17:50:47

I learned that by a combination of reading reputable sources and just trying stuff. Anything I'm not sure enough about to just go for on my main system, I'll search the Arch Wiki for related information, then try it in a snapshotted or otherwise semi-disposable virtual machine. There's a lot of room to experiment there because if something goes wrong, I just revert the VM to the last known-good snapshot and either try again or decide to not do that.

Do you have powerful-enough hardware to run a VM?

Trilby · Yesterday 18:20:30

1. Have backups of important personal content (documents, photos, etc).
2. Don't worry, every mistake is an opportunity to learn and can readily be fixed without any loss provided criteria #1 is met.
3. See #1, have a secondary backup too.
4. Use pacman and only pacman for installing software.
5. See #1 & #3, make sure at least one backup is offline and at a different physical location.
6. When all else fails, see #1, #3, & #5

MAYBL8 · Yesterday 21:29:44

Why the jump from LM to Arch?
I know most of the ppl here wouldn't agree with this but I think before going pure Arch you should try something link Manjaro. It's a good way to get your feet wet with Arch before you start using pure Arch.

ismailarilik · Today 11:09:13

MAYBL8 wrote:

Why the jump from LM to Arch?
I know most of the ppl here wouldn't agree with this but I think before going pure Arch you should try something link Manjaro. It's a good way to get your feet wet with Arch before you start using pure Arch.

I don't agree. I jump to Arch from Ubuntu and I think following the official installation documentation is the easiest way to start using Arch than archinstaller or any other Arch-based distro. The first time installation may take 1 week but afterwards you will be able to install it again in a few hours.

For any distro, the problems start to occur when you started to do things which were unnecessary or you didn't know about. Just keep things simple and do not use any command you don't know what it does, then you will be probably fine for a long time (This is how it is for me.).

Shadunix · Today 11:23:32

If you want to install something try to get it from the official repositories using pacman, If that’s not possible you could try Flatpak.
don't go straight to AUR, try to use it as little as possible.
and if you do install something from AUR just make sure to read the diffs.

also don't forget to update your system (sudo pacman -Syu) regularly (i update mine every week or two)

I've been using Arch Linux for almost 2 years, and my current installation has been running for a year and half now without any break or major issue, its working smooth, and doing what i want it to do.

thats almost it for me, and sorry for my bad english

Last edited by Shadunix (Today 11:28:47)

cryptearth · Today 13:16:23

Shadunix wrote:

try Flatpak.
don't go straight to AUR, try to use it as little as possible.

that's probable the worst suggestion to give someone new to arch
in fact: recommending crappack, snitchpack or whatever these called is bad no matter what distro one use - this is also true for ubuntu itself

sure, the aur isn't a kindergardens playground as well, but at least it builds native pacman packages and combined with an aur helper is far easier than those whatever-pack nonesense

Trilby · Today 13:37:16

I second everything in cryptearth's post. I would advise everyone to avoid flatpak and related junk completely or at very least treat it as a measure of last resort, definitely far lower in priority than using an AUR package.

In fact, if you need software I'd suggest the following priorities:

1) Check the main repos and use pacman if it is available.
2) Check the main repos for alternatives that may suffice, and use pacman.
3) Check the AUR for the target package or alternatives, use makepkg and pacman if a suitable option exists.
4) Make your own PKGBUILD, feel free to post on these forums for review of the PKGBUILD, then build / install with makepkg and pacman.
5) Wait for hell to freeze over.
6) Then and only then, consider flatpak.

I think skilled and knowledgeable archers may disagree on whether step 5 should be there as well as whether step 4 should really be above using flatpak, but I'd be quite surprised if many seasoned archers put resorting to flatpak above using an existing AUR package - that's just absurd.

Last edited by Trilby (Today 13:38:33)

Nikolai5 · Today 13:54:16

cryptearth wrote:

Shadunix wrote:
try Flatpak.
don't go straight to AUR, try to use it as little as possible.
that's probable the worst suggestion to give someone new to arch
in fact: recommending crappack, snitchpack or whatever these called is bad no matter what distro one use - this is also true for ubuntu itself
sure, the aur isn't a kindergardens playground as well, but at least it builds native pacman packages and combined with an aur helper is far easier than those whatever-pack nonesense

Hard agree.

One of the primary advantages to using Arch is that you don't need to go anywhere near flatpak.

My advice echoes others, treat the arch wiki as gospel above the advice of any online guides or YouTubers who have been using the system for a week and given up.
The backup advice given is important yes, you don't need to pick one backup solution over another, just as long as you do *something*, be it as simple or complex as you like.

I would highly recommend keeping a USB stick, dedicated to just having the Arch ISO on it to use as a recovery tool, it may not get used much, but if you don't have another computer capable of producing one when needed, you'll be stuck without it should anything happen. This and the backup advice is the same for any operating system.

Don't use yay. At least not until you have enough information to argue back to me that you should use it. If you want something off the AUR, build it via makepkg and install via pacman.
People have their own desired setups, I personally have a directory ~/Programs/AUR/ and inside that I have directories for each AUR packages I am currently using, e.g. ~/Programs/AUR/teams-for-linux
I use a 'helper' tool called "auracle", that doesn't perform any actual actions like yay does, but it can check for updates via `auracle outdated`. To which I then go into that directory, perform a git pull, check the changes, and then run makepkg.

In years of using Arch, I've never had any package dependency related issues, that you sometimes see here from beginners following guides that tell them to use yay, and for a beginner its hard for them to mentally separate core, extra and multilib from the AUR.

You'll be perfectly fine, if you simply follow the wiki's suggestions for things you don't know, and if you still don't know, ask here.
Arch is easy once you get started, and you'll realise that soon enough.

Most of the "difficulty" comes from a users choice of desktop environment, and packages they choose to manage things like networking, etc. NetworkManager 'just works' but many don't use it, favouring something else that requires more manual config for example.
So there are choices you can make to make life easier or harder, but that's up to you, based on what you know, what you're interested in learning and what you want to do.

You'll see a lot of conflicting advice because everyone tends to set their Arch system up in their own way to a point. I prefer to keep things as simple as possible. I use ext4, I have two partitions / and /boot, I use KDE Plasma.
But then I also have very little drama using my system, I rely on it for work, something which some people are reluctant to do, but the reality for me is that in three years, I've not been in a situation where I've been stuck.

I also moved from Linux Mint, I love it, and still donate a small amount to it, but one pain point for me was needing to supplement an LTS repository with up to date programs via flatpaks, app images, manually built from source, etc, and then have to manually manage them.
Arch removes this problem, at least for me. Every piece of software installed on my PC is managed by ALPM. (except steam games, but steam itself is installed via ALPM too).

seth · Today 14:24:44

Trilby wrote:

5) Wait for hell to freeze over.

Happened a week ago in TX

Shadunix wrote:

don't go straight to AUR, try to use it as little as possible.

There's nothing fundamentally wrong or dangerous w/ the AUR - it is just very important to understand that you cannot blindly trust it but then you're also not guaranteed to put blind trust into questionable source.
It is therefore easier to avoid the AUR in favor of the (implicitly trusted) repos and pick your AUR package selection carefully because you're increasing your personal maintainer duties with them.
Choosing other sources of questionable trust is not a viable solution to this.

Flatschpak gets promoted as more trustworthy because **flathub** does some (modest!) filtering (unlike the AUR where you're going to be the hard filter) but comes w/ a baggage of architectural downsides and if you're using some™ flatschpak you found somewhereontheinternet™ that's about as trustworthy as blindly building an AUR package.

MAYBL8 wrote:

before going pure Arch you should try something link Manjaro

Those are different approaches.
Manjaro and other arch derivatives are like ubuntu except rolling releases and maybe you get to see the distro-specific approaches in the arch flavor, but most likely not - because not having to deal w/ the system structure would be the primary reason to use a derivate.
The spirit behind arch is rather to explore and understand how the system in front of you is set up - if you've little experience w/ POSIX systems at all, that can be a bit much all at once, but in that case you're probably better off starting to look under the hood of the working point release in front of you and or explore arch in a parallel setup. Otherwise there's little reason to use an arch derivate as stepping stone.

Arch Linux

#1 Yesterday 13:46:22

New to Arch.

#2 Yesterday 17:50:47

Re: New to Arch.

#3 Yesterday 18:20:30

Re: New to Arch.

#4 Yesterday 21:29:44

Re: New to Arch.

#5 Today 11:09:13

Re: New to Arch.

#6 Today 11:23:32

Re: New to Arch.

#7 Today 13:16:23

Re: New to Arch.

#8 Today 13:37:16

Re: New to Arch.

#9 Today 13:54:16

Re: New to Arch.

#10 Today 14:24:44

Re: New to Arch.

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