Yeah you’re right it’s refresh databases, my bad.

I have never, once, run into an issue due to rolling release. I have never once read the news before updating. I’ve never had an update on arch break my system, never.

“Bleeding edge” is beta or alpha releases, people running those are the guinea pigs. All packages in default arch repositories are release versions, intended for use by users.

It is always expected to update your system periodically, no matter what distro or even software you’re using.

None of these are actual problems

Yes, and I argue that this is true of new users as well.

normally just works

Yes, very user friendly

excellent wiki to get answers.

Yes. All users of systems, new, intermediate, advanced, and of any system, including windows and Mac, google stuff sometimes and look for information. This is probably one of the most important components for any software, the more easy it is to find information the better it will be. You can’t find anything up to date on Ubuntu anymore, you’re in a forum with a post from 2008 following outdated information.

expected to read the wiki

yes, when using software it is expected that at some point you’ll want to look at documentation, so documentation needs to be detailed, accurate and up to date.

This problem you’re talking about with packages A B and C and wrong versions and stuff, I’ve never run into it. I’m sure it can happen, but I’ve never seen it. I have run into it on Debian based systems, every time I’ve tried to run one for a few months I get broken dependencies and stuff due to mismatched versions. Basically every problem after your edit applies to all package managers, forcing yes on dialogs (the “y” in -Sy) is always dangerous, “apt purge” and “apt autoremove” to clean cache and remove unneeded dependencies, this stuff isn’t unique to pacman, and again, I’ve only ever seen it on Debian, it’s theoretically possible on arch but a guarantee on Debian that you’ll run into these problems.

But we are getting lost in the weeds. Give someone an endeavorOS installer and a Linux Mint installer, will there be a noticable difference in ease of use? No, there won’t, generally what determines user friendliness is the DE. The few things they could get stuck on are in the terminal, that applies regardless of the distro, and the big difference is the package manager, and like I’ve said, I’ve never had pacman break, I’ve had apt break something every time I’ve run it for a few months.

The wiki just likes to make the details available. Installation of nextcloud is as easy as pacman -S nextcloud

You’re comparing a simple install guide with the entire detailed documentation of a package. of course the package docs are going to have more details.

Ignoring details is not the same as being user friendly. Having a bunch of corpo marketing pictures of slightly above average people smiling on video chat in your installation docs does not make something user friendly. Is this really the metric we are going by, how little information is in the documentation?

Dude thank you, someone who actually tried what I’m recommending weighing in.

OK I’m gettimg frustrated now, because you’re making literally no points at all, and now you’re quoting yourself. A whole lot of words saying absolutely nothing.

You didn’t lay out “fault in my logic”, you just asked me what I mean by robust. Do you have anything to actually say or do you just like the sound of your own voice?

In what? What???

How is arch hard post installation?

OK, so Debian is not rolling release, arch is. If rolling release causes the system to implode, doesn’t that make arch more user friendly?

I’m the one that’s says the only thing unfriendly about arch is the installation. That’s a point I’m making. And truth be told, most of what a user interacts with is the DE, installation is the only real sticking point between all these systems at this point, that and package management. Outside of installation and the package manager they’re basically the same as far as the casual user is concerned. And for arch, once you get past the installation, it’s package manager is just better than apt. And EndeavorOS does the installation for you. So it’s better.

What do you mean with robust here?

If you’ve ever “held broken packages” you’ll know what I mean by robust. I’ve had an entire distro upgrade break in Debian, it seems with a Debian system, eventually, you’re wiping and reinstalling because something broke. I have had this happen to every single Debian system I’ve installed since the gnome2 days.

When I talk about Debian and arch, I’m also talking of their downstream distros. So Mint would be a desktop oriented downstream distro for Debian. It inherits all the problems that come along with Debian, just as Manjaro or EndeavorOS would inherit anything that comes along with running arch. This is all in addition to any issues caused by those distros themselves.

I wouldn’t recommend any new person install arch, in fact I don’t even do it because I get tired of the installation process. I’d recommend someone install EndeavorOS, which is just arch without the installation issues. If someone wants a Debian based system, I’ll recommend Linux Mint, but if you don’t already know why you want a Debian based system, if you’re just looking for a desktop that works, I’ll recommend EndeavorOS because the underlying Arch system is just IMO better than a Debian system.

Also, I used to be a gnome2 guy, then Mate and then xfce, but these days I find xfce breaks on upgrade no matter what system it’s running on, and it’s incredibly bloated these days. So now I recommend KDE, I find it to be really nice, though I don’t use it (I’m nuts and so run a tiling Wayland setup) but for people looking to replace windows, just have a desktop that’s close to what they’re used to, I’ll say EndeavorOS with KDE, or secondarily, Mint with KDE, and I think that about covers anyone’s general desktop needs.

Says who? The days when this was true are long gone. Ubuntu is no longer the user friendly everyman’s desktop system anymore. Arch is extremely user friendly, just not the installation process. I find it to be much less of a pain in the ass to use than Debian based systems. For one, you have the Arch User Repository, so you’re very unlikely to need to not be able to find some software you want, and more importantly, so many packages in Debian are out of date and they take forever to update them, stuff often breaks because the version needed as a dependency for something else is not in the repositories.

For people who want to use arch but don’t want to manually do everything I highly recommend EndeavorOS. You fly through a wizard, just like Mint or something desktop oriented, and you wind up with a nice, working environment, but it’s Arch tooling instead of Debian tooling. The biggest and for most people only noticeable difference is the package manager, and pacman is so much more robust than apt.

I get frustrated online when I see people saying “Ubuntu is the most user friendly distro” or “arch is not for noobs”, this stuff was true like 10 years ago, that’s no longer the case. Ubuntu is user hostile, and there are arch derivatives that are basically arch with a graphical installer, which is the only part of using arch that is hard for people who aren’t hardcore nerds. It’s not like Gentoo or Void or Alpine or Nix or running a BSD system or something advanced like that.

Oh I can’t ask how it’s identical?

“Drinking and driving doesn’t kill people, people kill people” oh wait, that’s senseless and they’re not identical… Maybe you responded with this instead of answering my question because you know that.

“Cars and alcohol don’t kill people people kill people” yeah that’s why it’s drinking and driving that’s illegal, not cars and/or alcohol. But you thought of that already and realized your mistake, which is why you’re dodging.

Try harder, it’ll do you some good.

How so?

They’re not saying people are killing people with videogames, and you know that, so you’re being disingenuous. You’re creating an equivalency I didn’t make and arguing with it, not me. When you do this you only look smart to stupid people.

I didn’t defend anything, I just pointed out the irony of “videogames don’t kill people, people kill people.”

That’s not the argument though. The argument is “videogames don’t cause this problem” which is true in both cases.

Don’t you love it? Now the anti gun crowd is going to have to use Tue same arguments they pretend not to understand when defending videogames.

Replace “videogames” with “guns” to understand the 2A argument.

Isn’t this just a ripoff of the “information that will lead to the arrest of Hillary Clinton” meme?

Onions.

In fact it’s the oldest food, found everywhere domesticated and nobody knows where they come from or who first domesticated them.

Who cares if it’s okay, that’s subjective. I have limited clock cycles, attention span, and I have to prioritize what I’m going to expend energy on. I don’t have time to get to know every person I encounter. I’ve got people and things in my life that matter to me, if I see you and you’ve got face tattoos I’m judging, cry about it. If I have a reason to get to know you maybe I’ll be pleasantly surprised. I doubt it. I’ve got a life to live, pattern recognition is a core part of my nature as a creature that I’m evolved to have, I’m gonna make use of that strength. Maybe if you don’t want to be judged as a scumbag don’t deliberately express mutable scumbag traits. Even if I’m wrong about someone I won’t regret it, it’s highly unlikely that if I were more open minded that their presence would’ve enriched my life and they would’ve become my best friend. It’s a cost benefit analysis. the likelihood that someone who deliberately expresses scumbag behavior wouldn’t behave like a scumbag is below 50%, and where I am wrong, they don’t need me to love them, they have people in their lives that know them and love them and why would they want to hang around a judgmental asshole anyway? Nobody really loses anything.