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by alexvitkov 997 days ago
The Arch install is literally 1. partition your system 2. mount / 3. run 1 command to actually install the system 4. install grub

Sure, it's a bit gatekeepy if you haven't done it before, but it teaches you a lot of useful things about how a Linux system works, that you'll undoubtedly need if you plan to use Arch.
1 comments
nsonha 997 days ago
Imagine any other consumer product boasting about teaching you things, instead of just do what it means to do.

Also am I dumb? Why do I need to be taught these things again and again every damn installation?

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alexvitkov 997 days ago
You don't need to be taught again and again, you should just know it. I haven't had to install it in years but I bet I can get an usable system in 10 minutes.

I wouldn't mind a graphical installer but my point is that the install process reflects the experience of actually using it - it's a tinkerer's system, and from time to time you'll need to spend an hour reading the Wiki. If you're not willing to do it for the install, you'd probably also be miserable using the damn thing - the system is honest with what it is from the get go, and I don't think that's a bad thing.

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FireInsight 997 days ago
That's because Arch is not a consumer product. It is an enthusiast Linux project, perhaps a bit too hyped up, that is usually manually installed because that's the way it is.
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orangepurple 997 days ago
It's manually installed because you build it up to be exactly what you want. If you don't know what you want - use Ubuntu.
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capableweb 997 days ago
> Imagine any other consumer product boasting about teaching you things, instead of just do what it means to do.

Plenty of consumer products does just this? Raspberry PI basically spawned an entire industry around this very idea. Bunch of analog musical instruments does the same, some even come with signal graphs and such to teach you the insides of the instrument.

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conor- 997 days ago
You can write your own installer script that will set things up exactly how you want to do it, which many others have done so before, if going through the manual process every installation is tedious.

There's even the (not so official) archinstall script built into the live ISO if you want a guided installation process.

But the core philosophy of the distro is that it targets users with a certain base-level of competence in working with Linux and provides them a simple, close to bleeding-edge distro; so it does do what it means to do.

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