> The appeal was that even though I know how to set up arch on my own, it takes about 2 hours or so.
I've used Arch on and off for about eight years. The first time I set it up, it took about 2 hours. I just tried again last week, and it took all day.
They used to have a super-basic installer, but it sped things. They removed that in favor of detailed instructions on archwiki. Now, they've basically obliterated the install instructions. Whereas it was once a step-by-step guide with call outs to more detailed pages, now it is just a set of stubs that send you to other detail pages. And it is not opinionated at all.
Want a full-disk encryption setup, but haven't installed arch in couple years? Be prepared to spend a lot of time researching everything that goes into that stack, with very little guidance as to what is typical practice.
The "hard" parts of installing Arch are partitions and boot loaders. The old walkthrough gave you a basic method that many people just copied to get a working system, but they had no idea how those areas functioned leaving them screwed should they encounter any problems.
If you want community chosen presets, why are you opting for Arch? And if you don't want presets, knowing how partitions and boot loaders function is necessary. This is also why encryption is a bitch, it adds tons of complexity to partitions and boot loaders.
Because it has fast, rolling-release updates, little changes from upstream, and any package you will ever need (either in the repos or the AUR).
There are many things nice to arch apart from the basic install. You can install very minimal debian systems, very minimal centos systems, very minimal gentoo systems. All with this and that bootloader and partition layout. It's not what people usually pick a distro for.
>Because it has fast, rolling-release updates, little changes from upstream, and any package you will ever need (either in the repos or the AUR).
Which of these is missing from say Solus, Debian Rawhide, or OpenSuse Tumbleweed, not to mention the various Antergos like distros. The differences between distros past the base install really is smaller than people realize, and often people pick distros based on misguided assumptions.
I think you meant Debian sid and Fedora Rawhide there.
I know Debian fails on "little changes from upstream". Antergos obviously fails nothing because it is arch beneath. But it is dead now. Manjaro, the only other popular arch-based distro, has its own problems: https://web.archive.org/web/20150409040851/https://manjaro.g...
With the rest, lets make a little test. Lately I've been using a program called syncplay: https://syncplay.pl/
On Arch, you can find 3 different versions of it in the AUR: syncplay (latest stable, 1.6.3 at the time of writing), syncplay-git and syncplay-server-git https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/?O=0&K=syncplay
I haven't found an online form to search packages on Solus, but after booting an ISO I can see it is there! https://u.teknik.io/EQOck.png (although a bit outdated, 1.5.2 from a year ago)
Of course, this is a stupid small test. But it is so easy to create and share arch packages, and the user base is so large, that it is almost never the case that what I need doesn't have a build script already, or that the packaged version is too old.
And when it does happen, and there is no build script, it is very easy to make one and share it with the world. Or when I really need the bleeding edge for a certain application, I can look for -git packages.
I know that on debian checkinstall can help you avoid an /usr/local unpackaged mess, but I have no idea how I'd share that with others.
In short, yes, the ideas between all of these distros are pretty similar, but as far as package availability goes Arch tends to win due to low barrier of entry for packages, and user base size. Its install process is shit, but thankfully I've only needed to do it a couple times.
Oh, and it probably wins on documentation as well. The Arch wiki is just huge.
Arch is basically made for Linux experts, and the installation process is the barrier to entry, to prove your worth (or at least drive).
Fundamentally, installing Arch really isn't any different for us that install Debian or Fedora from scratch, from within another environment, without using the hand-holding installers. The only difference is using `pacman` instead of `apt` or `dnf`.
This is true. Though to be fair a brief Google does reveal some turnkey full disk encryption instructions noted by others. Just would be nice to have them on the wiki. Of course there's nothing stopping us adding those ourselves.
I've used Arch on and off for about eight years. The first time I set it up, it took about 2 hours. I just tried again last week, and it took all day.
They used to have a super-basic installer, but it sped things. They removed that in favor of detailed instructions on archwiki. Now, they've basically obliterated the install instructions. Whereas it was once a step-by-step guide with call outs to more detailed pages, now it is just a set of stubs that send you to other detail pages. And it is not opinionated at all.
Want a full-disk encryption setup, but haven't installed arch in couple years? Be prepared to spend a lot of time researching everything that goes into that stack, with very little guidance as to what is typical practice.