inb4 ACTCHUALLY

    • bob_wiley@lemmy.worldEnglish
      538·
      1 year ago

      That’s a double edge sword though. Bleeding edge updates also mean more bugs that need to get worked out, so how seamless the experience is may be up to luck or the amount of effort being put in to keeping up on release notes.

      • nottheengineer@feddit.de
        221·
        1 year ago

        But the good thing is that it’s usually super easy to fix if something does break. The amount of headaches I had with PPAs and snap are worse than having an arch update break something. You can usually roll back the packages with issues (namely anything from nvidia).

          • nottheengineer@feddit.de
            2·
            1 year ago

            Those are valid points, but windows has the exact same issues. Updates break stuff so often that many people have just adopted a habit to never update if they need to rely on their machines. The same is true for me, I spent many hours trying to find a version of the nvidia driver that has no issues.

            • bob_wiley@lemmy.worldEnglish
              2·
              1 year ago

              True. The company I work for is starting to get a little more proactive with OS updates and I can’t tell if it’s good or bad. On the one hand, we get some new features. On the other hand, things are always broken… but things have always been broken because they load them up with so much security software that they fail to function. So I’m not sure if they’re more or less broken than usual, lol.

              • nottheengineer@feddit.de
                1·
                1 year ago

                My company recently enabled windows defender’s ASR and it caused a shitload of issues, so they had to disable it again for half the company.

                Windows also does shit like turning up my volume all the time and some update broke lightshot in a weird way where some people who had it installed before the update can use it, but when you install it after the update, it just won’t launch. This crap is impossible to troubleshoot.

                Meanwhile on Linux, I can fix pretty much everything with a bit of googling and if I can’t figure it out, I can post on the arch forums and get help for free, usually very quickly and by people who really know their shit.

          • snickers@lemmy.world
            21·
            1 year ago

            250 package updates

            Isn’t that more of a ‘stable distro’ issue tho? When you run yay every other day you’ll only ever have a dozen packages updating which makes it easy to troubleshoot any breakage.

            Compare that to distros that upgrade every 6 months with hundreds of packages all at once. I’d say that carries a much bigger risk of something going wrong. I used to do a fresh install of Ubuntu with every new release purely to avoid the inevitable issues of apt upgrades.

            • bob_wiley@lemmy.worldEnglish
              1·
              1 year ago

              It depends on how often you’re running the update. If you’re doing it everyday, it won’t be much, but you’re risk is then daily instead of every 6 months. If you have a deadline to hit, are you going to risk doing an update before you start? Even if the risk is small with 12 packages, if one of them causes an issue, it will throw off your timeline for your other project. If you have deadlines every day/week, updates could get put off for a long time… to the point where you might as well run a more stable distro and can plan the bigger upgrades. It really depends on the user’s needs.

      • AnonTwo@kbin.social
        91·
        1 year ago

        I remember being very frustrated when they rolled out a kernal update this year that broke one of my USB slots.

        I don’t remember anymore which version it was, just that it was very frustrating looking it up to find that it was a known issue but still considered low priority enough that shipping out was fine.

        Edit: after half a year updated everything in arch and 2 of my USB ports still won’t turn on in the default kernel. Gotta remember which one actually works for them if I ever feel like using this laptop…

        • iopq@lemmy.world
          12·
          1 year ago

          Use old versions of software that doesn’t work, new versions of software that does work

          Although it’s only fully possible in NixOS where the deps are not globally installed

      • LordOfTheChia@lemmy.world
        11·
        1 year ago

        For Linux newbies, you can have both Arch and Ubuntu (or any 2+ of your favorite distro installed) by using different root partitions (16-32G) and sharing your home and other partitions.

        Though it may work better if the distros you use have different desktop managers or the same desktop manager on the same major version number (KDE 3.x and 4.x settings don’t mix).

    • whileloop@lemmy.world
      83·
      1 year ago

      Since Manjaro is forked from Arch, it would benefit from Arch’s updated drivers, right?

      • thantik@lemmy.world
        515·
        1 year ago

        Manjaro is amazing if you don’t want to bullshit through a hand-baked install. I understand the point of Arch is to get you more familiar with the linux system in general, but they had an installer and they ripped it out. Manjaro is basically just pre-configured Arch, so yeah. Despite all the purists “Manjaro isn’t arch!!”…in practice, it basically is.

        The Arch installer - for the short while it existed - basically just took care of getting you to a boot prompt with everything already copied over and a working package manager without having to do all the chroot mounting and junk that you’ll only ever do once.

          • somedaysoon@lemmy.worldEnglish
            1·
            1 year ago

            Yeah, this, and I’m glad to see a level-headed response as to why Manjaro can sometimes be problematic. I would often see a site that listed reasons not to use Manjaro parroted on reddit and it was a fucking joke… like every point was either reaching or ridiculous.

            But what you said is very reasonable. It is also why AUR is disabled by default and it is discouraged to use AUR in Manjaro unless you know exactly what you are doing. Because if you enable AUR in Manjaro there is a good chance that you will run into a dependency issue, and there is another chance that this dependency issues breaks your system.

            With that said, I like Manjaro and have it installed on a couple systems. I think they have one of the best XFCE setups out of the box. And a few years ago when I got my new Legion 5 laptop, Manjaro was the only distro that the trackpad worked on. I tried Fedora and Ubuntu and Mint and PopOS, but none of them worked with it at the time.

    • sosodev@lemmy.world
      43·
      1 year ago

      Uh no? You just need the latest kernel which you can install with one click it you use mainline. You’ll also want the latest version of Mesa which you can through Kisak’s PPA. It should take maybe 10 minutes. The average user is going to spend way more than 10 minutes installing and setting up Arch…

      • kameecoding@lemmy.world
        5·
        1 year ago

        The average user is going to spend way more than 10 minutes installing and setting up Arch…

        khm https://endeavouros.com/

        unless you are going to argue that it’s not pure arch in which case I will argue it’s distinction without a difference that matters to anyone but the 0.01%

        • snickers@lemmy.world
          4·
          1 year ago

          EOS is great, my Arch install when it was fresh was pretty much 1:1 EOS after installing the DE (minus dracut, a wallpaper and some helpers like simple=reflector).

          • kameecoding@lemmy.worldEnglish
            11·
            1 year ago

            well yeah, but I don’t want to follow instructions when installing my OS, I want a working OS, I don’t particularly care for setting up networking, I want it to just work, hence endeavorOs, click a few buttons, stuff I would install anyway gets installed and it just works.

            Could I do the install manually? I could. Will I? I won’t. Why? Exactly. Why would I do it when there is something that does it for me.

    • LaggyKar@programming.dev
      34·
      1 year ago

      So you go with OpenSUSE Tumbleweed. Well tested with OpenQA and a lot less effort than Arch, but still has the latest software and up-to-date drivers.

  • bitsplease@lemmy.ml
    733·
    1 year ago

    With archinstall now being a thing, the only downside to using Arch is the fact that people like OP will call you an elitist because they heard those jokes back in 2015 lol

    • DanielPlainview@lemmy.worldEnglish
      112·
      1 year ago

      Came here to say this. Archinstall is great. Arch is my favorite distro by far. It just works, ia minimal, and has all the software you could ever need.

      • bitsplease@lemmy.ml
        81·
        1 year ago

        I’ll be honest, at this point my main reason for using Arch is prety much just habit, but I will say that whenever I hop on another distro for some reason (usual in a docker container) - I always find myself annoyed at the lack of the AUR - though I understand that distros like NixOS also have comparable solutions.

        But between the install script, the AUR and the Arch Wiki, it’s actually an absurdly user friendly distro these days - it’s odd that it still has the reputation as being some thing that only try-hards would use

        • SkyeStarfall@lemmy.blahaj.zone
          2·
          1 year ago

          It got its reputation probably because it’s a very minimalist distro by default, and you can configure everything.

          It’s perfect once you set it up to your liking, but it does give you a proverbial gun you can shoot your foot with.

    • kameecoding@lemmy.world
      6·
      1 year ago

      I would argue a ready to go gui installer is much better for causal users and especially for owners of Nvidia cards it will just work. I used to use AntergOs when that died I tried manjaro, but manjaro is ass and broke my system.

      EndeavorOs is my choice now, just an easy install in a few minutes and you are ready to go, I’d argue it’s even more noob friendly than something like Ubuntu. no need for ppa and shit just use yay and get that spotify, discord, TeamViewer whatever going.

      https://endeavouros.com/

      • bitsplease@lemmy.ml
        11·
        1 year ago

        It’s not “ready-to-go”, but the AUR does absolutely have GUI installers (Example) - the fact that it’s not pre-installed is by design, afterall if Arch came with a bunch of pre-installed optional tools, then it wouldn’t have most of the benefits (lightweight and minimal by default) that makes Arch worth choosing over other distros. I agree that having it pre-installed would make it more user-friendly, and I definetely wouldn’t argue that it’s the most user friendly distro out there by a mile. My point was simply that it’s now

        A) Easy to install

        B) Easy to find pretty much any package under the sun, in an easy to search and install medium

        C) Easy to find a solution to whatever problem you might be facing, or to find comprehensive instructions on the wiki of how to perform any operation.

        Side note

        especially for owners of Nvidia cards it will just work

        I’m not really sure what you mean by this, I have an nvidia card, and set up my system with proprietary drivers with absolutely no fuss. I know Arch used to have issues with nvidia cards, but I’m not aware of any ongoing problems.

        And yeah I’ve got nothing against Arch-Forks, I think they’re great for anyone who just wants something out of the box. I used Manjaro for years (but like you, left after one too many issues)

        • kameecoding@lemmy.worldEnglish
          1·
          1 year ago

          Nvidia was about the reported difficulties some people have with getting the drivers installed on some distros (not arch)

          then it wouldn’t have most of the benefits (lightweight and minimal by default) that makes Arch worth choosing over other distros.

          I respectfully disagree with this, I’d say the main reasons to choose Arch(-derivatives) over others is the great Wiki, AUR and the rolling updates (which I’d argue make it better for gaming than something like Linux Mint)

          My point, that was admittedly poorly made is that OP is arguing that something like Ubuntu will just work and be 90% as good as Arch.

          well something like EndeavorOs will just work and be 99% as good as Arch, because it’s basically just Arch with some very sensible defaults installed. meaning OPs meme is even more stupid than he realizes.

    • cheer@lemmy.world
      5·
      1 year ago

      Gotta agree with this. The only elitism I see these days is in the people making these types of posts.

    • Draconic NEO@lemmy.world
      1·
      1 year ago

      I feel like archinstall is more of a compromise than a solution for new users. Something that’s more user friendly would be one with a Gui installer like the old Archlinux GUI (that the arch team tried to get rid of), preferably though a netinstall so it’ll get the latest version (Arch is a rolling distro after all) and won’t end up going out of date quickly like the Archlinux GUI Isos did.

  • NickSterling@startrek.websiteEnglish
    45·
    1 year ago

    I’m a big fan of EndeavourOS. I’ve done a manual install of Arch enough times I understand what it’s doing and I don’t care to do it again. Endeavour is configured well enough for my needs.

    • Bankenstein@feddit.de
      21·
      1 year ago

      This supports my claim that EndeavourOS is a just-works custom Arch install, and a brilliant one at that.

      • kameecoding@lemmy.world
        1·
        1 year ago

        it’s the spiritual successor the AntergOs that I was lokking for for a while, Tried manjaro in the meantime and that also just works, until your system ages a bit you do an upgrade and some shit just completely breaks your system.

        EndeavorOs just works, I managed to bork the update one time, but that was my mistake, my mind was on autopilot and even though I read the message about failed package installs I just rebooted, but it didn’t completely bork. my system like manjaro, I recovered it in less than 30 minutes

    • kamenoko@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      3·
      1 year ago

      I did an arch from scratch install, it worked, I liked it, and then I installed Endeavor and loved it. That’s the difference.

    • null@slrpnk.net
      1·
      1 year ago

      Same, I’ve done Arch, it was fun. The grub issue borked my system so I hopped to Endeavour and haven’t looked back.

      There’s plenty of little things it sets up by default (like pacman tweaks) that I’d do in my Arch setup anyways, so it genuinely just saves time for me at this point.

  • vsis@feddit.clEnglish
    392·
    1 year ago

    Sorry, it’s not about being better, it’s about having fun and fitting my specific needs. In the end, Arch is not widely used in the industry, therefore is not really that good.

    Installing arch, gentoo, slackware or even better: LFS is like having a project car: You are not doing it for the performance alone. You are doing it because you learn a lot while having fun.

    I use Arch, btw.

  • 𝕯𝖎𝖕𝖘𝖍𝖎𝖙@lemmy.world
    371·
    1 year ago

    Elitism and gatekeeping is stupid. That said, learning is not. That said, some of us don’t have time to learn how to install linux “from scratch” or even something resembling “from scratch”. That said, I’ll see myself out.

    • droans@lemmy.world
      6·
      1 year ago

      What’s the “just works” distro these days?

      I installed Ubuntu years ago for my home server but it’s become a real pain in the ass.

      • anamethatisnt@lemmy.world
        2·
        1 year ago

        For a server I would second checking out Debian 12/Bookworm. It has been real solid for me. I run a qemu/kvm/libvirt virtual host and then run my services in virtual Debian servers. Makes them easy to backup and allows me to reboot my Jellyfin server without taking down my Game server and vice versa.
        I guess running a container system would be the modern way of doing the same thing.

      • MooToYou@lemm.ee
        21·
        1 year ago

        For Debian based, Linux Mint. For Arch based, either Manjaro or Endeavour

      • Draconic NEO@lemmy.world
        1·
        1 year ago

        Yeah Canonical really shot themselves in the foot when they started forcing snaps upon people, especially considering just how broken and buggy those snaps are. The snap version of VLC refused to play files on an external hard drive when I tried it and there was no fix for that either.

        Note: On the flatpak version you can change the permissions with Flatseal allowing it to work on external storage.

      • 𝕯𝖎𝖕𝖘𝖍𝖎𝖙@lemmy.world
        110·
        1 year ago

        Mac OSX. (Though it’s unix, not linux)

        No but really, I can’t think of anything I would recommend more to a linux newbie than Ubuntu, because for the most part it “just works”. But, it is still linux… so to that point I ask what is it about ubuntu that doesn’t “just work” for you? Are you running it on old or specific hardware? Does it actually work fine, but you don’t like ubuntu for other reasons? Would you consider yourself a linux newbie?

        Ubuntu has LTS releases, which are the closest thing I can think to for “just working” for a long time.

        • Uranium 🟩@sh.itjust.works
          4·
          1 year ago

          Hard disagree, Ubuntu for me has become slow and generally in my experience has never been able to replace my windows install; when I finally did replace my windows install it was with manjaro which had a few issues (nothing to do with user friendlyness), due to my living situation I’m currently exclusively using my steamdeck with its steamos which has been fine so far, the only thing it’s missing without enabling pacman is openvpn

          • 𝕯𝖎𝖕𝖘𝖍𝖎𝖙@lemmy.world
            1·
            1 year ago

            This is what I mean by the concept of “just works”… as I read what you wrote, I’m reading that Ubuntu just works for you, it’s just that - like any system - it got bogged down over time. If you’re saying Manjaro has a way of preventing the system from being bogged down over time that’s something else, but I’m not sure that’s what you’re saying. Manjaro is a rolling release, if I’m not mistaken. When I tried manjaro it “just worked” until I fucked up the rolling release by not updating it in a while and letting packages get so far out of date that updating it became a real pain in the ass. This isn’t a problem with ubuntu - what is a problem with ubuntu and most other distros is that you don’t get the latest packages without compiling from source, a problem that does go away with a rolling release distro, provided you stay on top of it.

            What “just works” for some people doesn’t “just work” for others.

            • Uranium 🟩@sh.itjust.works
              2·
              1 year ago

              Sorry, I could’ve been clearer!

              Ubuntu when I first tried it back when it was ubutntu 9.04 was amazing as it was different but it wasn’t anywhere as user friendly as manjaro or most other OSes are now. At the time it was miles ahead of the competition, but that gap has closed significantly.

              But the point being is that I tried with 9.04, 12.04 and probably a couple later releases and the system never stayed functioning for long, and became slower that it seemed to be with earlier releases, whereas I found the snappiness/relative ease of installation etc with a different OS.

              I think what I’m saying is: when Ubuntu was the only offering for user friendly Linux it was amazing, but now that it’s not the only flavour striving to provide that experience it feels clunky and outdated.

              And I too made that mistake with manjaro at one point, borking the install by not consistently updating it.

              What “just works” for some people doesn’t “just work” for others.

              Couldn’t have put it better myself

        • droans@lemmy.world
          4·
          1 year ago

          I can’t stick with Ubuntu anymore.

          Just today, I ran apt upgrade followed by an autoremove. I wasn’t paying attention and didn’t realize until afterwards that it removed GDM and the NVidia drivers along with about 80 other packages. And this isn’t the first time I’ve run an update only for it to break something vital.

          • 𝕯𝖎𝖕𝖘𝖍𝖎𝖙@lemmy.world
            3·
            1 year ago

            I understand the frustration. I guess I’ll just say make sure if you choose a new distro, that it specifically prevents the thing you just ran into. I’m not sure you’re going to find one. I don’t know your specific case, but I wonder if you were using some built-from-source components as well as some apt packages.

            Something you may want to consider which may help prevent the situation you just ran into is to use something like ansible. This lets you write a specific configuration of how you want your system to be (probably determined after some manual setup) and let ansible figure out how to get your system to that state. Ansible is recommended because it’s free and simple to use, but it’s also a RedHat product so I’m not sure how good those claims will be in the future. But the concept of configuration-as-code is a damn good one, and one that will help you from running the same setup commands if you setup a new system or bork something about your original setup.

            I’m sure more passionate people can argue the finer points of apt vs yum vs pacman vs whatever. I don’t really care too much personally because when I run into that problem, I blame myself and not the OS. I’ve cut myself enough times to know that, at least.

        • Draconic NEO@lemmy.world
          3·
          1 year ago

          I wouldn’t really recommend Ubuntu because it forces something as buggy and broken as snap on to users, as in they modified apt to install the snap version of a package instead of the package version of the package.

          Not to mention the fact that it tends to break things after upgrades like what one gentleman said in regards to removing the NVIDIA drivers.

  • Jamie@jamie.moe
    33·
    1 year ago

    Depends on the user’s needs. If you need bleeding edge software, like for gaming, a just works distro can be more work. I loved using Linux Mint, but trying to use the latest kernel, drivers, wine version, and whatever else on a stable release distro becomes pain fairly quickly.

    • thepianistfroggollum@lemmynsfw.comEnglish
      4·
      1 year ago

      In case you didn’t know, you can get Mint’s Cinnamon desktop on other Debian distros. You used to be able to do it on RHEL, but last I checked the project was abandoned.

      • Jamie@jamie.moe
        2·
        1 year ago

        When I originally moved to Arch, I had a 1:1 clone of my Mint experience. I installed Cinnamon and had backed up Mint’s themes to just put them into the proper place again. Aside from not installing a number of applications on Mint that I didn’t often use, there was no difference in UI at all.

        I only swapped off Cinnamon because I wanted to test other compositors to try and resolve my screen tearing issues which were probably actually NVIDIA’s fault. These days I’m on KDE Plasma and don’t get screen tearing anymore.

  • Ooops@kbin.social
    353·
    1 year ago

    Okay, we won’t tell them…

    And we also won’t tell you that Arch actually is one in the category of “it just works”, so you can keep parroting memes.

  • SoapyYogurt82@lemm.eeEnglish
    30·
    1 year ago

    I’ve been using Linux for years. Good thing people have so many different options and your distro choice is ultimately your own.

    Fuck anyone who makes the tired old “true Scotsman” argument in this context.

    • limelight79@lemm.ee
      6·
      1 year ago

      I used to spend hours compiling my Slackware kernel to contain only the things I needed.

      It was a lot of wasted hours…

    • faintwhenfree@lemmus.orgEnglish
      3·
      1 year ago

      Oh it is, when I was in uni I had the time of my life with arch, now once I’m working, married and juggling few other interests and suddenly, I have so little time to actually build exactly the way I like it in arch, and I’ve resorted to picking a just works distro on my machines. And I feel the learning curve had also flattened out for me, more effort I put now, less I learn. So I understand even enthusiasts at some point in life may choose to just go the less work route.

    • AnUnusualRelic@lemmy.worldEnglish
      1·
      1 year ago

      It’s fun for a while, but when you’re a few years, or decades in, you don’t want to dick around with your OS, you just want to use it and mostly forget about it.

      Yes, writing modelines for X was (kind of) fun. I don’t miss it though.

  • berg@lemm.ee
    13·
    1 year ago

    I use Arch for the AUR (e.g. lazyness)… The wiki is great as well.

    • aberrate_junior_beatnik@midwest.socialEnglish
      2·
      1 year ago

      The AUR is the reason I don’t use Arch. It’s a huge pain in the ass and the opposite of lazy. I truly don’t understand this comment.

      Maybe I’m misunderstanding the point of the AUR, but my understanding of it is that it fills a similar role as PPAs/third party repos in debian/ubuntu. To use the AUR, you have to first:

      1. Install base-devel.
      2. Install an AUR helper (unless you want to do all this fully manually). But the AUR helpers are themselves on the the AUR so you have to learn to use it and go through all these steps yourself at least once.

      Then, for every package you have to:

      1. Download the package build file. (The AUR helper can do this for you)
      2. Review the package build file. AUR helper tools don’t let you skip this step, despite it being mostly security theater.
      3. Install the build dependencies. (The AUR helper can do this for you)
      4. Compile the software on your own machine. (There are some binary packages on the AUR, but it seems most are source packages). This takes time and replicates work, wasting electricity. This step must be done as a normal user. None of the tools I found will de-escalate privileges if you are already superuser for the build step.
      5. Install the resulting package using pacman, as a superuser. Note that if you have an AUR helper, you have install sudo and run as a user that has sudo privileges.

      Then, every time you want to upgrade the software, you have to do it all again.

      Admittedly, this is not a ton of work. But having to do it for every package and every upgrade is a very real hassle, when most of the time I just want to be using my computer.

      Contrast this to a PPA/third party repo in debian/ubuntu.

      1. Search for the repository.
      2. Copy/paste the commands to enable it.
      3. apt update && apt install package

      … and you’re done. You get seamless automatic upgrades. There’s no compilation or need to install extra build dependencies. It’s so much easier.

      I truly do not get why Arch users put up with the AUR.

      • CriticalMiss@lemmy.world
        2·
        1 year ago

        the AUR is a catch-all scenario. Looking for a PPA to add is a nightmare. Every time I set up a new machine (yes yes i know ansible exists but i do this rarely) i need to add the docker repos each time and its so annoying to repeat this with every software u need. with AUR i yay -S the package i need and it installs.

      • berg@lemm.ee
        1·
        1 year ago

        Just use yay. But fair enough, it’s not everyones cup of tea.

  • riodoro1@lemmy.world
    219·
    1 year ago

    Op is butthurt because other people dont use his distro.

    Yet he complains about “arch elitists”.

    Oh, and by the rest of his posts and comments he’s a real piece of shit as well, what a surprise.

  • U de Recife@literature.cafe
    176·
    1 year ago

    I read the arch elitists as a slur directed to the arch user. So in my arch-user brain, that became akin to a prejudiced label, like ‘ageism’ or ‘ableism’. Is there a kind of ‘archism’?

    Yes, I had to put some work to have my computer running. But that was so long ago that I don’t even remember when or how it was. So now that statistic is screwed. I don’t think about my install 99% of the time (I do think about it when I topgrade it weekly).

    But I do get it. This is supposed to be a joke, and an easy one. As my comment reveals, I’m not the target audience. If I was fuming, I would be Tom on that bottom picture. Maybe I woke up in a more philosophical mood and got myself carried away by my initial question. I don’t know.

    For the poster, I want to wish them a wonderful day. Thanks for the thought-provoking meme you shared.

    • happy_camper@lemmy.world
      111·
      1 year ago

      This is going to sound weird, but hear me out; I’ve gotten so very unused to the concept of comments that don’t really serve a purpose, or form one cohesive whole. There’s no cheap jabs, no witty one liner. No great philosophy or instruction, not even any content filled with the poster’s passion for the topic they’re discussing. It’s just so…everyday, common.

      Oh how I’ve missed this slow kind of internet, where content is added perhaps weekly, and the discussions around it are just fleeting thoughts of passersby, the technical possibility to respond being the only real invitation to reply at all. A stark and permanent reminder that none of this really matters, and there’s a life to live outside this screen. This whole reddit fiasco has perhaps been one of the greatest things to have happened to my online life.

      Re arch,–because at this point I feel almost like trespassing without acknowledging the topic before I derailed my train of thought–I could never wrap my head around the hours needed and pages of wikis read to come to the same destination already offered out of the box by so many other distros. To me, an OS is just a baseline for other tools that I need. If using one specific distro gets me into my tools faster, without having to pour hours into installing them, then it’s a no brainer to me to just go out and use that distro. I could change them visually, but really the icons and the colors shown in nautilus (or whichever prepackaged alternative) are of no significance to me.

      Maybe I’m getting old. I used to love spending hours just to fix and move minuscule things on my devices. Nowadays, I just pick whatever will take the least time to get stuff done while causing me the fewest headaches, which is what sitting at a computer has become for me anyway.

      • U de Recife@literature.cafe
        3·
        1 year ago

        Oh, now I’m excited. Thank you for engaging.

        You make a great point. Why be slave to a tool, right? If the box is just the way to get to what you really need to do, you aim at what you want to do and not the box. So, setting up Arch Linux, in that sense, is a bad investment. I’m ok with that.

        Now let’s think about it this way. Because I set up my box the hard way, whenever the box fails for some reason, I’m better equipped to find what’s wrong with it. Since I lost the of fear of dirtying my hands to achieve what I need, I wear the mechanic jumper on and I go about doing what is need to get it going again. Setting the box, in this sense, was an investment in myself. I now have the knowledge. And we all know that from France is Bacon.

        So both things can be true. You are right; I am right. So now the question is: why the cheap joke? And you’ve answered already in the first paragraph of your comment.

        Anyway, thank you for bringing more food for our thought table. It has been a wonderful meal so far.