📚 I Finally Tried Arch Linux for the First Time (from Ubuntu), and I am Surprised How Noob-Friendly It Is!

Ever since I was exposed to the Linux community, I was inevitably faced with all the talk and jokes about Arch Linux. It gave me the impression that Arch is an advanced user type of distro, a distro more difficult to use, maybe unnecessarily difficult, for people who enjoy self-torture for the purpose of looking like hacker man! And don't get me wrong, that is slightly appealing, but I discovered this was not really true. Arch is very noob friendly!

Now, I should clarify that Arch is still a minimal install distro. So this means that you will likely not have a very usable OS out of the box right after install. But to me, a noob isn't necessarily someone who doesn't want to learn, it's someone who doesn't know and lacks in knowledge; someone who's new. IF YOU WANT SOMETHING READY TO USE OUT OF THE BOX AFTER INSTALL, ARCH IS NOT FOR YOU. But Arch is certainly for you if you are not exactly a Linux expert. There are a few things that Arch does very well to be noob friendly:

1. The Arch Wiki is VERY GOOD. The Arch wiki does not only have info on how to install and setup arch, it had information on so many things! It has info on how to secure your system, info on so many desktop environments and how to set them up, and even how to start gaming or emulating consoles, and all kinds of popular Linux software. Arch wiki is extremely well written, and will be more than enough for you. Ignore any other source unless it is not in arch wiki.

2. The community support is very good. It might not seem so because of some of the memes and the snobby "Arch btw, you're dumb for using Ubuntu" crowd, but the community is very helpful and willing to support. There is a common misconception that you will have a hard time finding support for anything other than Ubuntu, but most support questions that you find for Ubuntu online will work for arch. This isn't to say that I didn't find enough support that was arch specific (even though it'd probably work outside of arch).

3. Pacman (the package manager) is very easy to use and noob-friendly, and it is very fast.

4. When you build your system from a minimal install, you'll gain a lot of understanding of how it all works, and you'll become better and troubleshooting. Imo, arch is much easier to troubleshoot than Ubuntu. Ubuntu is loaded with things you don't know are there, whereas with arch, you built it from the ground up, you know much more about it.

I will end with saying that this isn't an attempt to bash on other distros or people using them. That is one thing I disliked among some users, and although I will stop using Ubuntu, I still think there is a very good use case for it (some say Mint is better, not here to argue for or against that). But my point is that you should not be afraid from Arch if you've ever had the slightest bit of curiosity. If I had known it was so easy, I would have done it a long time ago.

Tl;Dr If you've ever wanted to try arch but was daunted by that it might be hard to do and hard to find support, don't worry, there is plenty of support! Just prepare to spend several hours on setting it up :)