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by neilv 451 days ago
Yeah, I don't expect comprehensive and definitive documentation from it, nor copy&paste answers.

But for getting pointed in the right direction about things that have been obscured by the desktop environments, and then left largely undocumented nowadays, the Arch Linux wiki usually points me in the right direction.

Much of it would be pretty confusing to someone who only wanted high-level documentation in terms of the Gnome Desktop or KDE Plasma, though.
2 comments
saghm 450 days ago
> But for getting pointed in the right direction about things that have been obscured by the desktop environments, and then left largely undocumented nowadays, the Arch Linux wiki usually points me in the right direction.

Even as an Arch user, probably at least 80% of my usage of the Arch Wiki is just going through "Troubleshooting" list of previously seen issues and solutions for whatever thing I'm dealing with. I don't go in expecting that everything will work exactly the same for me, but over the years I've ended up with quite a few headaches solved by pasting the right line in the right conf from one of those sections.

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hx8 451 days ago
Oh it's really cool that you've used the arch wiki in that way. I had already done Linux From Scatch before I ran across the Arch wiki, so I was already familiar with concepts like boot loaders, kernel modules, and daemons. I mostly used it to find some sane config file values.
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neilv 451 days ago
Similar here (25+ years Linux experience, including making my own distro). Personally, I use the Arch wiki for pointers to the current way to do system-level things, which has changed over time, with kernel and userland (e.g., all the things systemd changed, and for various kinds of devices), and sometimes for applications (e.g., what programs are currently available to do some small thing).

Maybe the value comes not just because they bother to maintain a wiki, but that Arch Linux tends to select for above-average technical people, even more than Linux in general does. (Even if Arch people strangely don't run Debian goodness; but we benefit from a diversity of perspectives, even if they are unexplained. :)

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