[printf_alex_]

My first (arch btw) linux install it took me a whole week to install correctly in the first place, yet to show the DE. This was with prior experience working with linux. I personally liked that it was complicated since it was a good learning experience (much better than the oversimplified Ubuntu install anyways)

[wkat4242]

Arch makes things complicated by not having defaults. Leaving the user to pick a network management tool, partitioning scheme, many other things. It's all very well documented and aimed at understanding one's system. I give them that. But in some ways it seems to be intentionally complex for the sake of it. And the one thing I did want to change: systemd, is the one thing you can't. It took me 2 days to get a desktop running and I still ran into weird stuff.

On the contrary, FreeBSD also dumps you on a command line. But it does have defaults for most things and it took me only a few hours you set up because everything is guided better with the defaults in mind.

I really like the idea of a stable base OS with rolling software also, and the ports collection (which is quite similar to the AUR). But there's more ways to do manual and arch's isn't necessarily the best IMO.

[zozbot234]

If you like having a "complicated" install, why not install Debian manually using debootstrap? It's pretty much the same thing, but it leaves you with a much better supported system afterwards.

[matheusmoreira]

Debian has versioned releases and thoroughly patched, extremely old software. Arch Linux has rolling releases and mostly unpatched up to date software.

They couldn't be more different.