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View original on lemmy.world

81 replies

piefed.zip

You don't actually have to be 1337 to use arch

You don't have to, no. But you should. Not understanding how a system works that you fundamentally completely set up yourself is setting you up for massive failure. That's like using unreal engine and only relying on blueprints without understanding C++.

If you want Arch without knowing shit about arch, there's plenty of distros you can use. Stop trying to be cool. Pick something that fits your use case.

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rozodrureply
piefed.world

You don’t actually have to be 1337 to use arch

Omarchy users in shambles right now. oh who am I kidding, they can't read.

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Richardreply
lemmy.world

There are 10 users on omarchy right now, 3 of them are very pissed at you. The other 7 are AI agents so they don't care.

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zebidiahreply
lemmy.ca

That's a really insightful observation, and you're right to push back....

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The angry user case is gated by the human emotion capability so it never ran for omarchy users.

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deczzzreply
lemmy.dbzer0.com

Damn didn't know about omarchy hate! Not that I care much. Don't really understand why the developer gets flamed because of his vibe code obsession, if that's the case (his problem not mine). But he is kinda insufferable to listen to - that's why I chose not to.

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Thanks. Interesting read. Not that I disagree with the points made in the post, but I find it quite problematic that the author at no point defines what he means by fascist. Does he subscribe to Marx, Umberto Eco, Walter Benjamin or other of the numerous philosophical descriptions. A little off topic but I think it's important to at least reflect on this before labeling people without having properly defined the concept. I usually return to Eco and by his definition, DHH does indeed seem to align with (at least) Eco's third aspect; Cult of Action for Action’s Sake. DHH rant on how "stupid" internal discussion and conflict in FOSS project is just bad leads me to believe that he is valuing action over reflection, leading to anti-intellectualism (which is also touched upon in the blog post).

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I haven't paid attention to Omarchy to be honest. So I went to their website to see and was trying to watch the video on their distro. When he opened a terminal and intermediately opened a tiled browser window with X loaded, I just noped right out of there.

You are correct about the unable to read, and it's a good thing they can't.

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escreply
piefed.social

Installing arch won't give you anymore understanding of how system works, at least no more than installer would, linux systems are somewhat hard to understand especially if you aren't deeply involved with them. Also that understanding requires so much peripheral knowledge of linux to start with, it's not even funny. Like you can start on disk partitioning and it would take a week to explain everything you can do, look at this pie: encryption, vdo, lvm, different filesystems, billion things available in device mapper, then systemd mounts etc., etc..

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exureply
feditown.com

Installing it manually will at least give you all the tools to fix your boot loader or troubleshoot an issue that prevents you from booting.

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I installed arch "from scratch" for the first time after installing it with archinstall like 4+ times previously, and yes it definitely somewhat did this, but honestly not quite to the extent that I expected. I feel like most of my system's configuration was determined for me by the KDE plasma dependencies and defaults lol

My bootloader configuration is definitely one of the parts that I was more exposed to with a manual install, but honestly I don't really see how what I learned would help me fix issues like that in the future, more about how I could customize the boot screen and extend my configuration with more boot options

idk it was a good experience to have but I think it brought more personal satisfaction than real practical benefit

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Idk, my first time a while back (after Mint and git clone, ./configure copypasting), as soon as I stopped trying to debug the python script and started following the damn wiki, it took me like 2 hours or so to choose F2FS out of all options then chain that with LUKS with all of the relevant options to allow discards. Not counting the time it took to reboot from a "you are a dumbass lol - systemd" screen back to the installer. I completely ignored LVM and all of those other funny initialisms because it said it was optional and I didn't see the point. I still don't. Then I looked up how to get 3000000FPS in minenhandwerk and found alhp.go, that was mostly just copy pasting.

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Speiser0reply
feddit.org

That’s like using unreal engine and only relying on blueprints without understanding C++.

I like your comparison in this situation. It's so layman-unfriendly that one can doubt its usefulness. And I'm happy to see that I'm not the only one struggling to find suitable comparisons.

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piefed.zip

Good news, if you don't understand that comparison, you shouldn't use arch linux.

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Someone tries to reach out and find common ground with you

FUCK YOU , YOU'RE NOT MY REAL DAD

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Speiser0reply
feddit.org

First of all, I disagree, kind of. You don't need to know about unreal engine specifics to use arch. On the other hand, I can guess what blueprints are without knowing unreal (therefore I only disagree kind of). On the 2nd other hand, if they're able and motivated to read up what you mean, they're likely able to use arch.

Second of all, it's not really good news, because if they don't understand the comparison, they will not understand what you told them and therefore just ignore it. A warning in a language that you don't understand will not stop you.

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adr1anreply
programming.dev

Amazing prose, fellow human. First of all, you wrote with one hand, another hand, and then another hand. Just to finish with, secondly.

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Indeed. And I used my muscles powered by bread to move my internal skeleton to write this.

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Katana314reply
lemmy.world

I'm not great at Linux, did programming for most of my life in Windows, but so far I've gotten by for about a year in CachyOS (uses Arch). Having it work so well in gaming has been a strong motivator.

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Using a distro that's a derivation of arch is perfectly fine. Cachy does all the configuration for you. SteamOS runs on arch aswell and is absolutely targeted towards non-technical people.

Plain arch does nothing of that. You have to install every package yourself. Want a network connection? You need something like NetworkManager for that. Wdym, a desktop? You have to install that. Oh, you don't want your desktop to start via something like startx in the CLI? Well, you better go take a look at something like lightdm or sddm.

Most non-technical people that have no interest in learning that will not be able to use arch properly.

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Skullgridreply
lemmy.world

... there's a reason why I said arch(install).

I appreciate your PSA, my point is maintaining arch properly sounds more challenging than the actual process of installing arch using archinstall.

And like I said in the explaination, I use arch just for random VM shit , precisely because you can set up arch in like 2 mins using arch install in a braindead manner, just like patrick. It's how I slop it into VMs.

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piefed.zip

Oh I get it, dw. But I often see memes like that used as "excuses" for technically illiterate people who want to be cool and use arch without understanding it. Like, it's not about gatekeeping, it's about people using software they are unable to handle and use, not because they're dumb, but usually because there's just no interest in learning these things. That's the whole reason we had this AUR problem a few weeks ago, and that just kinda pissed me off so I'm reacting a bit allergic to these kind of memes.

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That’s the whole reason we had this AUR problem a few weeks ago, and that just kinda pissed me off so I’m reacting a bit allergic to these kind of memes.

I had some fun trying to get started with buildbot and looked at packages that were pre-requisites and some of them were on AUR and I noped the fuck away from that shit precisely for that reason.

I need to have set up a lil' debian to have done this shit in an env that I am familiar with, but archinstall is that easy and carefree that I can't be bothered for debian installer to take ages in each step.

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anarchist.nexus

If you ever want to sweat and earn some knowledge that manual install process is a way to use up two weekends doing just that if it's your first time.

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honestly once you learn how to install Gentoo and/or NetBSD every other install is an absolute cake walk.

Really though like you said it's valuable knowledge to learn.

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... The whole source of the meme is that I'm just dumping arch into VMs. Download an easy to use VM manager like gnome boxes or virt-manager and use the snapshot functionality to come back to it later.

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If it's your first time with Arch. Because if it's your first time with Linux there's no point.

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feddit.nu

Who the hell not manually partitions their system? You guys have empty hard drives?

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boonhetreply
sopuli.xyz

Well if you're moving from Windows, you can just nuke the entire thing with automatic partitioning and it feels so damn good

But since that was a long time ago, these days I keep my / and /home on not just separate partitions but separate drives since all my SSDs are only 1 TB. The installer can do whatever the hell it wants to / but /home has to stay untouched.

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What junk can you possibly fill multiple TB drives with? I have a mini desktop with a TB drive and it's only got about 7.5 GB on it. And I think that's a lot. My pathetic little home server is a measly 500GB and has just 37GB on it. I even have another computer that I use with 125GB drive. Barely 1/3 filled.

0

I (struggle to) use arch (in disposable VMs, not my actual machine) btw

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Me. Not worth my effort. I've reached a point where I just can't be bothered to be 1337 anymore.

Everything that matters is backed up to 3 different places, my pathetic little repurposed laptop home server and 2 cloud services. And one of those is literally on the other side of the planet from me.

I sleep well. As much as the doctor prescribed medications and cpap machine allow for anyway.

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Alleroreply
lemmy.today

It does have its merits, but the hype is pretty much "cool kids go hard"

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Bluewingreply
lemmy.world

If they really wanted to go hard, they'd be running Gentoo or LFS. Possibly Debian or Slack if they were truly hardcore.

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Alleroreply
lemmy.today

True, but Gentoo and LFS are too hard for them, and Debian/Slack too old and uncool.

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I ain't got the time to wait for Gentoo to finish compiling. I'm old and don't have that many years left to live. And LFS, well madness lies on that path. I have seen it and barely escaped.

Debian is kind of cool again in a hipster sort of way if you aren't running a bunch of servers. I do wonder why Slack has faded so. It was the Arch of it's day.

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Skullgridreply
lemmy.world

my jokey response was already said by Allero, so I'll tell you what I think draws people to it.

  1. Early packages. As soon as the packages are shipped, arch tries to get them in the repo, stability and interoperability be damned
  2. Related to the above, AUR. You can't be bothered to build something? Get it from the AUR from someone who an be bothered to build it, but can't be bothered to be the maintainer of that package. This then leads to the issue recently with malware.
  3. Minimalism. Arch only gives you what you need and you need to set up everything else.
  4. No automated help, thus, total control and responsibility over your system. Installed a flatpak? Set up the executable in the application launcher yourself. (NB : your mileage may vary, I'm comparing LXQT arch with LXQT debian)

I'm using it in VMs only, and because setting it up is faster for me than setting up debian, which is my daily driver. Like I said many times in this thread, I slop it on using archinstall since it just needs the initial config, and I just walk away. The deb installer uses a wizard that "does stuff" while I go through it, so I have to stop and start. I'm only doing defaults anyway , so I don't have to change much in the installer.

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Bluewingreply
lemmy.world

Yeah, my quip is meant in the same vein. Every person is entitled to their own choice in the road to Hell they want to take.

In a more serious personal opinion, you can get nearly the same undercooked packages from SUSE Tumbleweed, with just with a bit more seasoning and testing. And if freshness matters with even better seasoning and testing Fedora can fill that role. And both take less effort and have less risk.

I stopped giggling and laughing about the flaming wreckage of my installs a decade ago because I'm just too old and lazy to fix things anymore.

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Skullgridreply
lemmy.world

I think I tried OpenSuse, but I'm not sure how I felt.

Does it have the easy archinstaller?

EDIT: They really fucked up the naming convention with Tumbleweed, which makes me think of a deserted place, when it's actually the more up to date one

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Bluewingreply
lemmy.world

Yeah, I've tried Tumbleweed several times and liked it, but the package management and a couple of other things about it just didn't vibe with me. I do like the name of Tumbleweed. Tumbleweeds never stay still as long as the wind blows. The wanderlust is real.

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They should have just called it wanderlust, and it's a German reference.

Although that could refer to distro hopping... 🤔

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lemmy.world

You don't have to be 1337 to install arch, but you do need to be pretty 1337 to keep it running. I use arch btw, but I also use Mint because I don't always have time for Arch's shit.

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"Hey, I tried the recommended GUI package manager and everything got messed up. Is anyone looking into this?"
"lol just use pacman -Syu in terminal"
"...k, guess I will, but I'm not about to recommend this to anyone else"

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esc
piefed.social

Not using installer more often than not is a good indicator of being tryhard and not something to brag about (like who cares how exactly have you installed OS, something that you do once in a few years).

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Skullgridreply
lemmy.world

I think I get what you're saying, but you might want to fix up the way you said it to be clearer, for your own clarity of expression.

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escreply
piefed.social

Sorry, I'm getting less and less proficient with english.

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no worries, the sentence was grammatically correct, just an unwieldy one any native speaker can make from time to time

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quokk.au

It was* (before archinstall) usually bragged about in a tongue and cheek way...I thought. Be pretty stupid to brag you're literate enough to just follow directions. Waste of time.

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I've never bragged that I managed to install Arch (Or Gentoo for that matter), buuut let's be honest, most people aren't literate enough to follow directions. Complex words outside of their domain of expertise frighten and confuse most people.

But then the people who understand the complexity involved to understand the brag are precisely the people who themselves could easily install follow said instructions so it becomes kinda moot anyway.

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I've seen people bragging about it a few times unironically. Not even some cool specifically constrained environment (like offline from installed linux or windows).

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lemmy.world

My current copy of arch on my laptop was manually installed by using pacstrap running on my previous nixos installation because i didn't have a usb drive with me. i don't really recommend that route it isnt very well supported

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It's not really that special, no? IIRC it was even documented on the wiki some time in the past, what troubles did you encounter that weren't caused by nixos?

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lemmy.world

Well, what a fest of dumb elitism and delusional farce in the comments. I need more popcorn and that you deeply for posting this

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sh.itjust.works

Tbh gatekeeping Arch by keeping an area of pestilent neckbeards around it is good actually. I mean there's nothing hard or elite about Arch really but newbies should never be exposed to the AUR (see recent events) when they have no clue what they're doing and the risks associated with AUR use.

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Shanmughareply
lemmy.world

We could do the same by properly informing newbies about what Arch is and what it expects of a user... but who am I kidding. A negative deterrent is anyway needed, you are right

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Skullgridreply
lemmy.world

I need more popcorn and that you deeply for posting this

buy me a drink first

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It will take some time, as I am preparing to move from one place to another with a few animals. But provided with a way to do it, will do

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I definitely agree here. But if you want to better learn how the system works, I suggest getting a cheap used laptop and just hammer at installing arch using the install guide, not the installer tool. The tool is nice and all, but you still need to know what is going on under the hood and to understand most of it.

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lemmy.zip

Better use cachyos, compilation flags will give you a performance boost.

And for disposable distro use distrobox.

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bob_lemonreply
feddit.org

In the olden days, back when the strikes of counters did number 1.6 or less, 1337 was used to designate the best of the best. The elite, as it were.

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sh.itjust.works

An illegal site that you should totally never use as there you can find free movies, series, and other stuff to torrent

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Bluewingreply
lemmy.world

These days only Kajeet has warez. It's mostly virus ridden pr0n, but it's warez for the 1337 haxorz out there.

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reddthat.com

I was gonna ask why and say something but now i am unsure if it is sarcasm lol. Also I am assuming it is 1337x.to? That's what appeared on a quick search. But is that really what the image reffered to? how is this related to... installing arch? Unless that's also part of the joke if it is a joke. Does it just gather the stuff from other sites so that it is easier to find anyways??

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