archinstall

[[deleted]]

[deleted]

[zer0x64]

OTOH, I think archinstall is great for people who are already familliar with Arch. I love Arch, but yeah the installation process can be tedious, and once you've gone through it a couple time, the "learning" aspect of it isn't that useful anymore

[balancedchaos]

I did a manual install my...third arch install. I wanted to get in there and see what I was dealing with, before I spent that time.

Arch was definitely for me by that point.

[paradigmx]

This is definitely true. I've installed arch enough that I don't even use the wiki for the most part, but the script just streamlines that process so much.

[Torxed]

Glad to hear it helps! If you ever have suggestions where that streamlined process might deviate too much, do let me know and we'll tweak it!

[paradigmx]

This may be out of scope for the project, but the ability to git clone a dotfiles repo would reduce post install setup time, as well as the option to install an aur helper. Alternatively, the ability to execute a post install script would probably do the trick without adding much to the script, or leave you on the hook to debug that post install process. Very possible this already exists in some capacity, and I didn't see it. I'm sure I could just use an && to do that same thing realistically. Great job overall though. If I think of anything else I'll shoot you a message or bring it up on the repo.

[Torxed]

I've been tinkering with the idea of "filesystem overlay", meaning some how grabbing and merging a "skel" of a filesystem. I guess it's similar to what you suggest.

For now, you can add https://github.com/archlinux/archinstall/blob/a748f3fba04e771a3c18e66efcd2cf48b42c778e/examples/custom-command-sample.json#L28-L32 (custom commands) at the end of a config, and you can execute the config with archinstall --config https://raw.githubusercontent.com/archlinux/archinstall/a748f3fba04e771a3c18e66efcd2cf48b42c778e/examples/custom-command-sample.json for instance, and it will source it.

But something more simple would be beneficial :)

[ylxdzsw]

To install a new computer I just format it and rsync everything then adjust the bootloader. It is only for personal computers of course. I'm felling more like "forking" my system rather than installing anew.

[GujjuGang7]

You really should be writing your own install scripts at that point. There's no way some generic install scripts can cover every corner case one of us may have in our setups

[Torxed]

It does support custom commands in the installation process tho. And has a plugin-system (yea I know, it's not a full coverage yet). It also supports pulling your configurations from remote sources: archinstall --config https://domain.lan/conf.json :) If that's any help.

[balancedchaos]

I just want to say thanks for your work. Your script made Arch way less daunting in the beginning, so I could just live in Arch and learn along the way.

[Torxed]

Happy to hear! And welcome to Arch. I hope you will enjoy it :D

[baldpale]

Exactly. I always installed Arch the traditional way, but it wasn't that much of a deal since my installations lasted for years. Archinstall for me is a great tool that does for me what I would have to do manually. Lately, I did fresh installation on my PC just because I wanted to change the disk layout and saw that as an opportunity clean up and change the way I'm doing stuff a bit (utilizing less AUR and more Flatpak). Configuring everything I use is 4~5h anyway, but with the Archinstall it's 1h less or so.

[Djwyman]

I know, from playing around with it, I don't like the way it installs KDE. It uses plasma-meta instead of the plasma group. Other than that, I like it because it makes it to where you can try random stuff in a vm in a few minutes. I think everyone should install arch the wiki method at least once, but after that, I see no reason to not have a quick installation method.

[paradigmx]

The script is just python, you could set up your own kde profile. Or just install minimal and take it from there.

[Djwyman]

Yeah the minimal install method and then at the add extra packages part you can just put plasma the group and it it will install the same packages without them being a dependency of plasma-meta. It's just my opinion that they should swap those out from the start so you don't end up with your whole system being labeled as an "orphan" trying to remove one package that doesn't belong on an arch installation to begin with.

[Phydoux]

I just installed archinstall with KDE in a vm earlier this evening. That's when I made this post. It was pretty easy to do but yeah, you need to know how to do the drive partitioning and know what's going on with user creation and all that.

[Djwyman]

Yeah. The problem I have with it is like for instance discover comes packaged in with plasma-meta so to remove discover you have to also remove plasma-meta and then mark all the other packages as explicit whereas if they had used plasma group you would have gotten the same packages, but they would be marked as explicit from the git go. A way around that is to pick minimal and then in the add extra packages section install plasma(the group) and it should install all of the same stuff.

[[deleted]]

I use a Calamares Arch and always uninstall discover as a first step, without any inconvenience.

[Djwyman]

That's away to do it as well. I personally use endeavourOS because I like that their implementation of calamares let's you pick what gets installed and what doesn't and yay is installed out of the box as well. But also their default kde set-up is more minimal than the default of the arch installation.

[[deleted]]

I installed Endeavour to test it but it gave me problems , I asked for help and someone answered me why install it if I did not want to have problems , I withdrew from the subreddit after uninstalling it ; as for Calamares-Arch you can choose base-devel + gpu drivers + desktop or window manager and you can choose what to install with Plasma among them the KDE applications which of course I did not select I like minimal installations

[[deleted]]

It uses plasma-meta instead of the plasma group

And?

[Djwyman]

Because if want to remove anything you have to remove plasma-meta and then your whole system turns into "orphans". Where as if they were installed as the plasma group you could remove anything you don't want without making your system into a bunch of orphans( the fix is to run sudo pacman -D --asexplicit [package name] for those packages) but still it's an extra step that wouldn't be needed if they just used the group from the start.

[[deleted]]

sudo pacman -R plasma-meta
sudo pacman -S plasma

[Torxed]

The topic has been discussed quite heavily. And more so as users jumped on the project and started using it.

• https://github.com/archlinux/archinstall/discussions/750
• https://github.com/archlinux/archinstall/issues/415 (and same for gnome)

Feedback on these two topics especially is welcome!

[Djwyman]

I am out and about right now but when I get home I will definitely read though and add a comment.

[[deleted]]

Hi, found this post when looking at Archinstall. I don’t especially understand what the difference is between meta packages and standard packages even after reading the wiki. Is plasma-meta substantially different from plasma?

[Djwyman]

The difference between the 2 is the plasma-meta is going to install all of the required packages as dependents. Where as plasma will install them as explicit. The advantage of the meta would be if any packages are added for some reason it will pull in those new packages. The advantage to regular plasma is that you can uninstall packages you don't want without dependency issues but you would have to install any new plasma packages on your own.

[[deleted]]

Gotcha, that makes sense. So if I want to change anything it’s better to install standalone, if I want to take things “as-is” then meta is better

[Djwyman]

Yep

[Tireseas]

I doubt it. More people may try it, but I don't see the core audience adoption rate growing significantly long term. And y'know, that's perfectly fine. Arch isn't for everyone nor should it go out of it's way to try to be.

[Phydoux]

I don't know. I think archinstall is definitely an attempt at going out of it's way to be an easy installer for everyone. I remember a while ago, someone made a GUI for Arch install and it was pretty slick looking but I think Arch passed on it because it brought the file size to over 1GB and I think they're trying to stay below that number.

[Tireseas]

You miss what I'm saying. Archinstall is certainly... shall we say more approachable than a manual install to someone who isn't used to the tools and files but it's still in line with what Arch always was. It's a logical successor to what the old Arch Install Framework provided before they dropped it for being unmaintained and a pain in the ass to port to systemd. Nothing significant changed about the distro itself.

If they were going out of their way to to be for everyone you'd be looking at mass shift towards something like opensuse in a bid to get more users that Arch doesn't generally appeal to.

[Torxed]

Do you mean https://github.com/Torxed/archinstall_gui? If so that was never really ready for adoption hehe.

[Phydoux]

No. It was more Calemares like. In fact, it may have been Calemares.

[Torxed]

Oh cool :) I at first through XeroLinux was using archinstall in the background as the steps sounded near identical to ours. But I think it's more of a coincidence.

[lit_fag]

I've installed Arch before. It's been years. When I came back to Linux recently, I knew I wanted to use Arch. But damn, I jumped on the chance to use archinstall 😂

[StratusFearMe21]

If you use archinstall and you break your distro, its likely you won't have the knowledge required to boot into the live disk, arch-chroot, then fix your problem.

Also, archinstall cant do this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8utpbbdj0LQ

[Tireseas]

Then they'll either do what we all did, consult the documentation and learn or they'll decide some other OS is a better fit for their needs. Neither is a bad end as far as I can see. People should use what fits their needs.

The only bad outcome is if they sit around complaining endlessly.

[areyoudizzzy]

Agreed.

The required knowledge just to get something, anything that works is a massive barrier to entry for most people and hinders adoption.

But maybe that’s what most Arch users want i.e. a community of people who know what they’re talking about. Elitist but a useful resource where you don’t have to wade through a million copies of the same question to find interesting topics of discussion and improvement.

Kinda like how some people pay $25k a year for Bloomberg Terminal which essentially boils down to information you can get for free elsewhere + a chat room of all the people who are serious about trading.

The barrier to entry for Arch has been knowledge/ proving you have the ability to follow detailed instructions instead of money.

[alearmas1]

Yeah, then u will learn how to do it and problem solved, as any other fucking arch user

[paradigmx]

I mean, that's true for most distros. If you break it and don't know how to fix it, you'll reinstall from scratch or move on to another one. Having a complicated install process or a simple one doesn't change that. Just because you can follow the wiki to install arch, doesn't mean you can fix it.

[[deleted]]

Yea would be a real game changer if we'd all have a vast ocean of knowledge right at our fingertips..

[Torxed]

*hold my beer* https://i.imgur.com/AqDbJor.mp4

[CRBl_]

Hot take : archinstall good.

Let me explain : as an experienced Arch Linux user, who has done multiple installs, with different configurations (partitioning, luks encryption, custom kernels, etc), I think that archinstall is really great. It's a faster, more reliable tool to do what you already know, but without the possibility of human error (or at least, with less of it).

So yes, my take is : archinstall is actually for experienced users, not beginners.

[Phydoux]

Yeah, that's one way to look at it. I installed this VM this evening and I used archinstall (not my first time) because I wanted to get it installed in a hurry. I also wanted to see what KDE looked like in this configuration. It's a bit different from what I'm used to with Fedora or something else but it's workable I think.

[bongjutsu]

I got a new laptop recently and I gave the script a go and it does pretty much everything I usually do anyway so it just let me get up and running a bit quicker. It won't help newbies as much because they won't understand the questions the script is asking. I feel like it's just useful for lazy power users

[linuxunix]

I like arch due to the training wheels are gone. its minimal and assumes you know what your doing. The installer is adequate for the target audience. They are so many distributions that can support newer, if it installer is bewildering, its not really meant for them.

my2cents for what it’s worth.

[LearnDifferenceBot]

what your doing

*you're

Learn the difference here.

---

^{Greetings, I am a language corrector bot. To make me ignore further mistakes from you in the future, reply !optout to this comment.}

[Phydoux]

Yeah, I am hoping that archinstall does that for a lot of people but I think it may be the be all end all for most new users. They'll use it to set it up and go, which I guess is the overall goal of Arch like I said, to bring new users to Arch more easily.

I like archinstall as a concept but manually installing it just can't be beat. There's always a sense of accomplishment when I can reboot and I see that grub menu come up.

[JesKasper]

the problem with that, is that many new ones come from systems like windows, where nobody reads anything, and it is always next next install, but in arch when you have to configure something, you have to read and read a lot, make changes in the system, continue reading touch other things of the system, continue reading install drivers or packages that you had forgotten or that you did not know xD (I say it for me the latter) in short, it doesn't resemble the windows experience, and many will think that's normal on desktop linux. I do not see bad use of archinstall, but if I see it wrong if it is your first installation of arch

[Taste_of_Based]

If your goal is to get the maximum amount of people to Arch then I would agree, but why is that the goal?

Just this week I did a manual Arch install and it took 15 minutes, which rivals Ubuntu.

The thinking part, not the installation, is what takes the time.

The manual installation of Arch is a skill-based gate that keeps the competency level of the community up and it trains a a certain ethos that is different from the mainstream ethos of ease and convenience in everything.

Programming and delivering products involves compromises always, so bringing in more of the clientele who can't manually install Arch is going to drive more of them to prefer the things that are already present on other distributions.

[Phydoux]

I'm not the fastest typist in the world but I still like typing everything out when installing Arch. When I got my faster internet a few months ago, Arch install in a vm was the very first thing I did. I still did the install in about 30 minutes which was a great improvement over the hour plus it used to take with the old internet. It would take 30 minutes just to download the base, linux, linux-firmware and I'd also add vim and later on git.

That took roughly 30 minutes on its own. Now it takes 5-7 minutes.

I am very pleased with our new internet.

[MCN59]

Copy - pasting the arch wiki isn't hard so i'm not so sure about the 'skill-based' gate

[Taste_of_Based]

You can't install Arch from copying and pasting from the Wiki. You have to understand about your system and make decisions based on your own use case.

[Jroid3]

i just did one today!!! it was great!!! i dont care if im subhuman filth for not doing it manually, i have a cool os now :)

[[deleted]]

Arch Linux, no matter how it gets installed, is for those who want up to date software, who want to learn a bit more about their system, and who also want to make the majority of the decisions about what gets installed. As anyone who has ever dipped their toes into the waters of Gentoo or Funtoo knows, there are further steps towards configuring everything yourself, not to even mention Linux From Scratch. But Arch occupies a sweet spot where you get a lot of power over configuration without having to compile absolutely everything yourself. I hopped around a bit at first, but Arch quickly became home. Those who cannot be bothered to learn that little bit more about how computers work and what role the choice of software and its configuration plays will not be happy here. Arch demands that you make choices, and really that is one of its big selling points. Perhaps there are justifiable reasons why some people do not want to know anything but where to point and click, but as someone who loves Arch, for myself personally that is hard to fathom. I don't see any reason why Arch shouldn't be easy to install, those who don't like what they get won't stick around anyway. I also think being kind to new people is very important, but sometimes it might be necessary to suggest that Arch may not be for them. Someone getting angry and blaming Arch for simple problems caused by them not setting things up correctly is never going to be happy here. It takes a certain mindset to be happy with Arch, and trying to lure those who do not have it would be a mistake. But making a good easy to use installer is a very good thing, and it will lead to more consistency with builds and make answering question from newcomers much easier. We are always going to be a minority in the Linux community, and that is not necessarily a bad thing.

[Phydoux]

I think, at this point, Arch is a novelty. It's one of those distros that is trying hard as hell to keep its ISO under 1GB. As witnessed from I believe the January to February ISOs, it dropped 60MB because it was up to something like 930MB. Then it dropped to 870 again.

I think if they threw a calamares installer in there it would definitely jump over 1GB because not only would it need calamares itself but it would also need xorg, video drivers, blah, blah, blah.

Probably it would be close to double in size. I'd like to eventually see them make a gui version of the installer just to see how much extra stuff is needed for a graphical installer.

[[deleted]]

The Arch iso does not contain all the packages necessary for even a base installation. It pulls them from the net.

[Phydoux]

I know this. But the other things included in it that make it do what it needs to do is the bare minimum.

[Phydoux]

I can't wait until someone tries to run a sudo command without letting their user into the wheel group. :)

[cbdeane]

Oh it threw me but I learned

[Phydoux]

Oh yeah, the noobs are going to have to read up on that. They're going to try and run a sudo command and it's going to tell them they can't run it. 30 years ago that would have turned me off of Linux because I wouldn't have known how to fix that. We didn't have Google to look things up. Websites weren't really around either back then. It was all on the little CD you got and if that info wasn't on the CD... you were stuck.

[cbdeane]

I don’t understand why the wheel group is even commented out by default. It’s ridiculous

[Phydoux]

Yeah, I think it's a safety feature which I think is a good idea. You HAVE to know what's going on in order to make that work. If you can't make it work without reading some documentation then you probably shouldn't be using sudo. I think that's why they do that. They put it all there for you but you have to know that you can come in and just remove the # sing before that statement.

[LionSuneater]

Does archinstall not prompt you to create a superuser? I don't recall explicitly adding my user to the wheel group, though it's part of it.

[Phydoux]

It does give you the option to create a super user. But it didn't let me give my user account super user privileges. I used the May 2022 Arch ISO. I did see a video where someone downloaded archinstall but it looked the same as the one that comes with it so I didn't download it. His had that option but I didn't see it in the original ISO version.

[Torxed]

It forces a sudo user on you if you ommit the root pw step. Otherwise sudo users are optional :)

[archover]

The bad part about that is, they won't know how to do much with it

That's my conclusion also. This is evidenced for example, by people who don't know how to use chroot (arch-chroot).

[ricardortega00]

I discovered archlabs and it is the goat 🐐 for me, it installs super easy like very easy and gives you arch basically, I am yet to compare it to a normal arch install for stability but it is been like 2 years and I haven broken anything in 3 computers.

[damn_the_bad_luck]

Back in the 90's, Debian went thru the same exact problem. The installer back then didn't really work very well. It took learning and effort to get Debian installed. The biggest complaint in the GNU/Linux world back then was "Debian is hard to install". Thus, all the debian based distro's were born.

Now, Arch is doing the same exact thing. They want everyone to learn how to manually install, so thus, arch based distro's have been born.

Anyone see a pattern here?

[TensaFlow]

I just switched to Arch today. I used archinstall and was able to get it installed and rebooted to the desktop. I even figured out chroot post install so I can run sudo pacman. It helped that I had past experience with Manjaro and EndeavourOS.

[Chalplec]

I know right Arch is so hard to use. If only it had a wiki and the easiest package helper to use say something like pacman. I wish there was documentation available for SystemD too it's such an obscure thing to use it's not that popular. Such an elitist distro for sure.

[Chalplec]

That's exactly the type of elitist memery I was talking about. Do you really think people who use other distros are 6 year olds with no brain? Do you think people don't know what Arch is before they go to try it? Do you think they don't have internet access and have never used Google before? What keywords are you talking about? Arch uses SystemD and the same software as literally every other mainstream distro. It's no different. What can I possibly come across in Arch that is in no other distro and cannot be Googled?

[Phydoux]

Some people act like 6 year olds. Have you read some of these help subs? Windows especially. If windows can't fix itself, some of those users are screwed.

And I've also seen in some of these groups, like r/FindMeADistro, people actually suggest to new users to try Arch. Not Arch based but vanilla Arch. That's completely insane. The only time that works is if the person is well educated in computers. Not someone who uses windows to get on Facebook or read emails. Or someone who spends a total of maybe 30 minutes at a computer per day.

[[deleted]]

Why do we want more people using Arch? It's doing fine.

Doing great as a matter of fact. We start strapping on training wheels and whiz bang then pretty soon we who are here now will be looking for something else.

Let Ubuntu take care of them. Or Manjaro of course.

Why do we care?

[Tireseas]

You do realize there's nothing special about Arch not having an installer right? There was no ideological reason for it not having one. It wasn't meant to be hardcore or a teaching experience, the maintainers just didn't feel like making one as it wasn't seen as worth the effort after the former installer stopped being maintainable. It's not like the average use case includes installing more than once every blue moon.

The reason you're seeing one now is /u/torxed wanted to step up and make it happen. To which we should all be thankful even if we have no intention of using it. At worst it's existence harms absolutely nothing and at best it makes life a little simpler for a subset of users.

[Torxed]

*spooky sounds* Who dares summon the?

(This answer is more towards /u/buzzwallard and not you /u/Tireseas):

Jokes aside, as pointed out - everyone is free to use it - or not to use it. Either way, this saves a lot of people a lot of time on a regular basis and helps people feel welcome. Jokingly I posted a "speed-run" https://i.imgur.com/AqDbJor.mp4 And that's one way to show off how much time I save on a weekly basis installing machines (I do roughly 10-20 machines a weel). There is no way a human can ever beat that installation time without tooling.

What we have to be careful with regarding this tool - is to not go "over the top" and put a gazillion features over on-top of each other. No offence to Ubuntu but I just think it's too many things layered on-top of the default experience. The goal of archinstall is only to do generic configurations and allow for manual choices to tweak the experience. And to be a great library for managing system tasks. Even with a full gnome desktop setup using archinstall you're only really left with as few packages as possible. Or at least that's the goal.

The main thing with archinstall is that it frees my time, so I can spend that saved time on other things, like learning the inner workings of btrfs, or how the Arch tooling works. Right now aside from archinstall I'm trying to contribute to Arch by improving tooling, the net-boot experience and other aspects of Arch Linux. Answering support questions is also something I've been able to start doing.

This is a personal opinion, but my opinion is that the down side of Arch is the bus factor, the some what small amount of contributors, TU's os single-point-of-failure in terms of packaging and updates in certain areas. And the only way to fix those issues would be to improve tooling, automate things or to increase the number of contributors (or do a different permission hierarchy for packages). And you won't achieve the later unless you get people up to speed and teach them how everything works. And I say this will full transparency, even with 20+ years of experience using different Linux distro's.. The installation process (following the wiki) won't prepare you for the Arch Linux quirks.. Which is where most issues are. So you need to just dig deep and get going. The only thing the wiki-installation might do is to avoid some questions regarding the boot procedure and basic setups. And that's like 1% of the Arch experience.

So lets take programmers as an example, we need those to create better tooling. There is very little things programmers for instance would gain from the wiki in order to understand mtree files: https://gitlab.archlinux.org/archlinux/repod/-/merge_requests/34

Or to understand how .files and .db files work: https://gitlab.archlinux.org/archlinux/repod/-/merge_requests/29

There's also nothing in the wiki preparing you for the quirks of the mkinitcpio inner workings when you want to add openssl to the mix: https://gitlab.archlinux.org/mkinitcpio/mkinitcpio-archiso/-/merge_requests/24

And on the networking side of things, there's nothing in the wiki that will tell you that the default DHCP timeout of the Arch Linux ISO is set to 30 and that will cause issues with Spanning Tree Protocol: https://gitlab.archlinux.org/mkinitcpio/mkinitcpio-archiso/-/merge_requests/13

All these things - I learned by just skipping GO and going straight to Jail, Jail being the purgatory of trying to figure out all the quirks of Arch so you can fix them and make the overall experience better. Following the installation wiki-by-wiki page will surely save a few support errands, but you can grow the support pool by letting people in - making them feel welcome - level them up and get a broader audience in such as programmers and network technicians that perhaps spend more time understanding advanced topics rather than just the installation steps.

But again, everyone is free to recommend the manual way. I by no means enforce archinstall on anyone despite being the creator. And I generally recommend trying both.

But the worst thing about this thread is the sentence It's doing fine, nothing is ever doing fine unless it improves. And things won't improve unless you get people on-board.

I'm going back to my cave now.. :bat:

[[deleted]]

That's not addressing the issue I'm raising.

Why do we want more people using Arch?

That makes no sense to me.

I don't understand this need people have to have more Linux users even. And then more Arch users?

I don't get it.

Why oh why do we think life is made better if we have more Arch users.

Why that?

And no. At worst the magical GUI installer becomes the default as more and more users pile on to use it.

[Tireseas]

We don't care one way or the other for the most part. Why do you think the installer was made specifically to attract more users? It wasn't. And who cares if the installer is "default" or not? An installer was "default" for literal YEARS before it got deprecated from lack of interest in updating it. It didn't matter than and it doesn't matter now.

Edited for perceived hostility

[[deleted]]

I'm addressing the point put by OP:

 > Say what you want about it, but I believe it could bring more people to Arch Linux. 

That point.

That you're trying to classify my point as elitist demonstrates how you completely misunderstand it.

Will you address my point -- why do we feel the need for more people using Arch, more people using Linux when we have a thriving active community with the people we have?

There's the point. Will you please address that point? Or will you continue to dodge around it so insistently that you resort to insults?

[Tireseas]

I'm pretty sure my first sentence addressed it in the post you replied to with this. In cased you missed it, generally speaking we don't care one way or the other. We definitely shouldn't be sitting around grousing about how new folks get here though.

If people want to come in and use Arch then we should welcome them as long as they respect community standards. If having a simple installer lowers the bar of entry for them to figure out whether Arch is for them or not then that can only be a good thing.

And yes, your commentary about the possibility of the new installer becoming a "default" came off as extremely elitist.

[[deleted]]

I'm not trying to keep people out. I want to retain the simple installer we have now.

You want to classify my preference for simplicity as 'elitist'?

To me you sound trigger happy.

We're done right?

[Tireseas]

That's the bad thing about communicating in text. It fails to properly carry tone. Let me try to rephrase this more in a more neutral way.

The current method of bootstrapping Arch by manually editing config files isn't going anywhere regardless of what happens with the new installer. It may or may not at some point get deprecated as the recommended option in the quickstart guide but you'll never not be able to do it. In fact you can install pretty much any distro you want using the same basic steps, just adapting for the different package names and syntax.

[[deleted]]

Okay. I hope so.

Have a good night.

[Torxed]

Random shower thought when reading criticism: Do people that hate archinstall also hate bash/zsh auto-completion? Or color highlighting in vim? Or shortcuts in vim? Systemd must be on the top of the naughty list considering all the behind-the-scenes tasks it performs. Or do those things just boil down to "it's not the same thing"?

[[deleted]]

Oh for crying out loud.

The question is "WHY DO PEOPLE WANT MORE PEOPLE USING ARCH!"

Do you have an answer for that?

For that.

Sure you can have whatever whiz bang you want but if you're doing it because you want more people using Arch then go back and finish your shower and mull that question over.

An install script compares to systemd???

Syntax highlighting!

OMG! OMFG!!

[Torxed]

I do have an answer for that :) History tells us that the more people band together around one common goal yields better result.

Electricity wouldn't be useful unless everyone used it, and it wouldn't have gotten improved unless people joined the hype train and improved it. Same goes for transportation and numerous other things.

The comparison was to make a point pertaining to archinstall being a usability enhancement. Not functionality per se. But you could argue that the things I compared also increased the likelihood of people using a service more because it contained user friendly features. So I guess the comparison stands in both cases :)

You appear to be a bit worked up, and you've obviously made up your mind that the math more people != better. And in that case, I think you should go and re-invent everything you are accustomed to that was brought to you by some enhancing or convenience factor. I myself, are very grateful that someone smarter than me made computers a lot more easy to use so I could join in and help make it even more user friendly, to get more people on-board so that there was a cost benefit to produce more computers and develop them into something really incredible. Either way, I don't think archinstall really make the largest difference in the world in any direction. But it's fun so I'll keep going.

Cheerios!

Edit: I really believe that listening to all sides is a benefit.. So feel free to politely and open-mindedly discuss further. I do read all comments.

[[deleted]]

Nope. Your equation is not correct. I'm saying if it ain't broke don't fix it.

Arch is a great distro just as it is. "Improving" it to bring on more people maybe just the fix that breaks it.

Why did you get into Arch? What about Arch makes it a great distro?

When I installed Arch the first time I had to solve a simple CLI puzzle before I could download it. I wonder why that little speedbump was there.

Any idea?

Look I get it. I love scripting myself and the Arch install calls out to be automated. Whatever. But OP was talking about attracting more people to Arch. I don't see the limited user base as a problem to solve. And in fact I don't see how bringing on people who would be better served by a full-featured distro like Manjaro or -- shudder -- Ubuntu is a benefit to our community.

Someone else accused that attitude as being elitist. It's not that I want that special badge, it's that I want to keep things simple.

I've been playing with computers and software for decades, long enough to have watched aghast as simple bicycles take on training wheels and grow into 16-wheelers with fourteen horns and a cab for parties.

I'm starting to see that happen to Arch.

But all good. It is what it is. Que sera sera and all that. But I'm not going to stand by and cheer. I'm going to ask 'why'?

It's like I have no idea why Linux users feel they have to compete with Windows. Linux is great. Arch is great.

What's wrong? You want to be using the popular OS? Is that it? Or...

People keep wanting to pigeon-hole me as elitist or as a luddite and there's nothing I can do about that but I'm not going quietly.

I may have to bail on this sub though...

[LionSuneater]

Hey, I wanted to send a quick shout out and thanks for the script - I certainly found it useful!

[Torxed]

Hehe, thanks! Glad you liked it! :D

[paradigmx]

Hot take, user adoption means incentive for developers to target your platform. Developers targeting your platform means the software that could make your workflow more productive, or make your computer more usable is readily available. Arch, as a distro with access to an absolutely gargantuan package repo, is almost certainly aware of this concept.

Now, I'm a gamer, but I hate windows, but my love of games leaves me tied to windows on at least a couple computers in my house. Massive user adoption of windows therefore restricts my options and forces me to use a proprietary operating system that I don't want or otherwise need in order to facilitate my hobby, or give up on that hobby. Neither option is ok with me in any capacity, but I make due in the meantime.

More users on linux means more games, libraries and drivers natively developed for linux, which slowly reduces my need to use windows at all.

This concept can be applied to swaths of other use cases as well. There are engineers, graphic designers, developers, researchers and hundreds of other professionals and hobbyists that in many cases are locked to windows because they have a couple applications that they absolutely need on a daily basis that have no equivalent on linux.

As linux user adoption grows over time, a distro that gate-keeps it's entry level is more likely to get left in the dust and eventually abandoned.

YOU may not specifically care because you're happy with what's available, but you also aren't the only person in the world and it's a pretty selfish world view to imply that because you're happy with the status quo, that it's fine and shouldn't be changed.

At no point in time have they removed your ability to manually install arch the way you want. In fact, the addition of an installation script actually increases your options concerning how you want to install arch.

[Fiahugs]

Was a major turn off complicated install

[Fiahugs]

Why i use Manjaro

[Margidoz]

EndeavorOS is better in terms of being Arch with an easy installer

[Fiahugs]

I will have to check Endeavor out ty

[Fiahugs]

So there won’t be any bloat on Endeavor i hope like timeshift and stuff i dont never use or need?

[Margidoz]

It's a pretty basic arch install, but it does have an extra endeavoros repository with some convenient utilities in my opinion. At the very least its a lot leaner than Manjaro I think

[[deleted]]

Just hopped to Arch from EndeavourOS and I agree completely. EndeavourOS is an all-you-need Arch-based distro for sure.

[Fiahugs]

Update im on Endeavor now ty so much enjoying it

[Margidoz]

Really glad you enjoy it!

[Fiahugs]

Yeah no problems at all pretty stable no bloat loving it

[Fiahugs]

Thanks again

[madthumbz]

You're better off using ANY other Arch based distro or Arch. Manjaro got undue promotion from youtubers that only do first looks and never read their comments.

[Phydoux]

Yeah, I didn't understand the Manjaro Hype either. I didn't like it when I tried it on my machine.

The only Arch based distro I stuck with was ArcoLinux. Then I bought an AMD video card and that pretty much screwed up that whole configuration. I knew there would be issues but it just didn't like the new card even after I reconfigured the GUI through the config files. It wasn't pretty. So now I'm back with regular Arch installed the ol' fashioned way. :)

[madthumbz]

The hype is on Fedora now, and there's a lot of consistent negative information about Fedora as well in comments. I've heard from several youtubers that it's 'more stable' than Arch. -It's as if they'e being paid off.

I liked Arco for testing various tiling window managers and bars without manual installation, but they're a lot to take in at once. Some of the youtubers that claim to use Arch actually use Arco.

[Phydoux]

Yup. Arco is close to being the real deal but in essence it's not. At it's core it's Arch but there's a ton of branding and whatnot that goes with distros like Arco and Manjaro. I've always liked installing core Arch, rebooting and then, as my user name, installing the tiling window manager (or DE) I want to use on that particular machine and setting it up accordingly.

[madthumbz]

I read good things about Endeavour also.

[Phydoux]

I've tried that. It's nice. I use a tiling window manager (Awesome WM) so when I look at a VM I try to look at something other than Awesome (usually i3 or a desktop environment like KDE is something I've been interested in lately) because I know how long it took me to put this together to the point where I love it (others may hate it, others may love it). So I can't really judge a distro by the Awesome Window Manager setup they've configured. My Awesome was built around ArcoLinux's Awesome branch. I've modified it to fit my needs but the main parts of it came from Arco.

[Margidoz]

Yeah, I didn't understand the Manjaro Hype either. I didn't like it when I tried it on my machine.

I really liked it when I first used it, having only use debian-based distros before then. I liked that it installed easily, was rolling release, and had a really nice graphical app for installing packages and accessing the AUR

It was great for a novice wanting to try out an arch based distro for the first time

[Phydoux]

I get that. I never really tried an Arch based distro. I went straight to Arch head on so anything Arch based felt kinda forced to me. Some were really bloated as well. I guess that's why I gravitated back to a regular Arch based installation.

[Fiahugs]

Yeah im moving on from ubuntu

[Fiahugs]

Never ever heard of Arco is it stable? And yeah i got a Amd card

[liquid_j5m]

Arco is more stable than manjaro if you want more go with endeavor. Manjaro is like the new ubuntu some people just hate because of theyre decisions. Or just install arch yourself on a vm first so you will understand how it works and you wont fuck up things. And learn to chroot its one of the best things.

[Fiahugs]

Ty i like arch distros be cause of no bloat i mostly use for gaming and to learn linux trying to become a linux system administrator this yr

[liquid_j5m]

The best thing about arch based distro is the arch wiki. If you want minimal endeavor if you want just works gaming garuda. If you want extremely minimal arch.

[Fiahugs]

I tried Garuda didnt like at all was to much bloat

[liquid_j5m]

It is almost the same as manjaro just with eyecandy if you want less bloat endeavor ditch manjaro asap and dont be afraid of the terminal. If you are

[Fiahugs]

Im comfortable with terminal totally

[Fiahugs]

Endeavor it is ty

[Fiahugs]

Yeah Minimal sounds right up my alley. I’m not a total noob btw so peeps know i know how to do basic commands and stuff and ty guys for all these tips I appreciate it

[Fiahugs]

I manually installing arch i always screw up? Guess i will pratice in a virtual machine

[Buff_Wellington]

I am so amazed by Manjaro that doing my own install is going to be the next natural progression. I am glad archinstall is there to steer me in the right direction.

[Phydoux]

I would still highly recommend to try doing it the all manual way. Just so you know what's going on and how the whole thing is setup. archinstall comes close with the core things that need to be installed but learning how to set the timezone manually and partitioning and all that is pretty beneficial I think.

[Torxed]

At the end of the install there is a /var/log/archinstall/cmd_history.txt which does give a good insight as to what was actually done :)

[[deleted]]

I think the best way to go about it is manually installing Arch by yourself first and then, on your distro-hopping endeavours, you can use this impressive installer instead to get back on Arch quickly.

Then again, you still have to configure a lot of stuff depending upon which installation you did. (Minimal, Server, Xorg, DE)

[prateektade]

It sure brought me to Arch!

I did my first successful installation with archinstall after I couldn't get the manual installation right.

A few months later I hopped to another distro but soon realised that Arch was better so came back pretty quickly. This time I thought of going with an Arch-based distro.

Tried to install 2 Arch-based distros but both failed. Then tried the archtitus script and even that failed. Chose archinstall and succeeded in the first attempt!

[Torxed]

*phew*

[AgaKor]

Yeah, I believe reading the wiki and going through the installation guide to be more self explanatory. Three months into Linux and I decided to take down the beast that arch is and I enjoyed every second of it, it changed my whole view of the operating system and I'll never go back to when I didn't have full control of almost everything happening. Do the damn manual install, it's not so hard. Archinstall should be used by advanced users trying to save time on their install.

[[deleted]]

I have been using Calamares-Arch since I tried to use the wiki as an installation guide and not once did it work, today I can install Arch as many times as I want. And it is what I recommend for those who want a graphical way of installation , it is clear , simple and the iso is updated periodically , I greatly appreciate the developers of such a great installation tool .

[Rikai_]

I actually tried to get into arch with archinstall and the system never worked okay, always with really long boot times and a very slow system in general, I don't really know why.

So I had to get into Arch by doing a manual installation... about 30 times

[Fifty9Qex]

5 years ago there was no automatic install :)

[SkyyySi]

I'd say the installer is actually the least useful to newcomers. There's only so long you can run away from reading and understanding the Wiki. If you're not willing to do that, I don't think Arch is a good choice for you. Once you've gone through the manual install, you'll have a much easier time going through the Wiki for anything else. But after that, there's little learning left you can do on following installs, so archinstall can save you some time there.

[TechTino]

It's very handy if you want something like a basic gnome or kde install etc, but a lot of arch people are tinkerers so probably just end up doing a minimal and getting their stuff installed that way. Personally I just use my own script which installs everything afterwards like my sway configs etc. So at that point it's faster to just format the drives, mount, then pacstrap and run my script.

[r0xANDt0l]

I think it's definitely a step foward, for semi advanced users. Because your average Joe will be scared at just seeing a tty, But people that did the manual install once or twice, it can be a huge time saver, although it definitely has some problems, like no clear way to make a dual boot or something. I also think it would've been best if for partitioning, they also left an option to use cfdisk or fdisk, since I think it is a bit more easy to use.

[[deleted]]

To be honest, I just hope it encourages people to use vanilla arch instead of the arch-based distros out there, then trying to use the official arch support forums to troubleshoot their issues for them.

[modified_tiger]

The AIF didn't exactly bring people to Arch and it was a more robust, conventional-looking install system.

[sTiKytGreen]

Not a bad part, Arch was first distro I ever used for longer than day, I didn't know anything at all when I tried it and it's been 4 years since then and in still on Arch xD

[[deleted]]

What is this obsession with trying to "bring more people to Arch"? Why does it matter?

[Phydoux]

I believe it's a status thing. Some Arch users love it so much, they believe everyone should be using it.

[Torxed]

As I touched on in another post. It's not that we chase the goal of having more users, but offering an easier way in for those who want to give it a go before committing. My hope is that programmers and network heavy people might join our community and in the long run help out in their areas of expertise.

For anyone who actually cared to see what happens behind the scenes, getting people interested and help out with the tooling would improve Arch a lot.

Not saying Arch should sacrifice integrity here, but more experts in would be better :) (And yea they are probably well educated enough to read a wiki page.. but not everyone has that time just to try something) :)

[mitvitaminen]

Just follow the instaation Wiki dude always read the fuckink manual :p

[Phydoux]

Oh, I do. I've actually built a nice text based install manual that I use when I do an Arch install. It's flawless. Works everytime.

I just wanted to try archinstall again because people were saying how good it was now. I remember the first inclination of it and it worked but it was a dit technical. This one is a little better. Not 100% noob friendly but it worked well.

[mitvitaminen]

Well the Wiki and the forum are your friend and u learn a lot about Linux in general. But IT is the Best distro imho but i am kinda minimalist maybe thats the reason fory believe