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You don't actually have to be 1337 to use arch(install)btw
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Skullgrid lemmy.world Skullgrid@lemmy.world
Joined: 2023-06-29
(edited) Quote

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

534   Original
esc piefed.social esc@piefed.social
Joined: 2026-03-24
#2 · (edited) Quote Reply

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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Sanctus anarchist.nexus Sanctus@anarchist.nexus
Joined: 2025-09-08
#3 · (edited) Quote Reply

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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Skullgrid lemmy.world Skullgrid@lemmy.world
Joined: 2023-06-29
#4 · Quote Reply

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).

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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esc piefed.social esc@piefed.social
Joined: 2026-03-24
#5 · Quote Reply

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.

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

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Skullgrid lemmy.world Skullgrid@lemmy.world
Joined: 2023-06-29
#6 · Quote Reply

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

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

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realitaetsverlust piefed.zip realitaetsverlust@piefed.zip
Joined: 2025-12-04
#7 · Quote Reply

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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Skullgrid lemmy.world Skullgrid@lemmy.world
Joined: 2023-06-29
#8 · Quote Reply

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 t...

... 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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realitaetsverlust piefed.zip realitaetsverlust@piefed.zip
Joined: 2025-12-04
#9 · Quote Reply

... 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...

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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rozodru piefed.world rozodru@piefed.world
Joined: 2026-02-06
#10 · Quote Reply

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.

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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rozodru piefed.world rozodru@piefed.world
Joined: 2026-02-06
#11 · Quote Reply

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 t...

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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esc piefed.social esc@piefed.social
Joined: 2026-03-24
#12 · Quote Reply

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 t...

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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Skullgrid lemmy.world Skullgrid@lemmy.world
Joined: 2023-06-29
#13 · Quote Reply

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 AU...

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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TurboWafflz lemmy.world turbowafflz@lemmy.world
Joined: 2023-09-23
#14 · Quote Reply

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).

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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exu feditown.com exu@feditown.com
Joined: 2023-09-29
#15 · Quote Reply

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 eve...

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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southsamurai (he/him/pronoun agnostic) sh.itjust.works southsamurai@sh.itjust.works
Joined: 2023-06-19
#16 · Quote Reply

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.

Dammit, that makes me want to steal a laptop just to fuck with arch

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BurgerBaron quokk.au BurgerBaron@quokk.au
Joined: 2026-05-18
#17 · (edited) Quote Reply

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).

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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lemmyvore feddit.nl lemmyvore@feddit.nl
Joined: 2023-06-15
#18 · Quote Reply

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.

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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esc piefed.social esc@piefed.social
Joined: 2026-03-24
#19 · Quote Reply

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.

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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esc piefed.social esc@piefed.social
Joined: 2026-03-24
#20 · Quote Reply

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

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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diaphragmwp discuss.tchncs.de diaphragmwp@discuss.tchncs.de
Joined: 2026-06-03
#21 · (edited) Quote Reply

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 eve...

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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Richard lemmy.world richardisaguy@lemmy.world
Joined: 2023-08-13
#22 · (edited) Quote Reply

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.

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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Axolotl feddit.it Axolotl_cpp@feddit.it
Joined: 2025-10-10
#23 · Quote Reply

Dammit, that makes me want to steal a laptop just to fuck with arch

I can lend you mine if you install me arch

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Speiser0 feddit.org Speiser0@feddit.org
Joined: 2024-06-27
#24 · Quote Reply

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 t...

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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psion1369 lemmy.world psion1369@lemmy.world
Joined: 2023-06-25
#25 · Quote Reply

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.

4
Skullgrid lemmy.world Skullgrid@lemmy.world
Joined: 2023-06-29
#26 · Quote Reply

Dammit, that makes me want to steal a laptop just to fuck with arch

... 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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realitaetsverlust piefed.zip realitaetsverlust@piefed.zip
Joined: 2025-12-04
#27 · Quote Reply

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.

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

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Shanmugha lemmy.world Shanmugha@lemmy.world
Joined: 2025-02-08
#28 · Quote Reply

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

3
Skullgrid lemmy.world Skullgrid@lemmy.world
Joined: 2023-06-29
#29 · Quote Reply

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

I need more popcorn and that you deeply for posting this

buy me a drink first

3
Skullgrid lemmy.world Skullgrid@lemmy.world
Joined: 2023-06-29
#30 · Quote Reply

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

Someone tries to reach out and find common ground with you

FUCK YOU , YOU'RE NOT MY REAL DAD

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Shanmugha lemmy.world Shanmugha@lemmy.world
Joined: 2025-02-08
#31 · Quote Reply

I need more popcorn and that you deeply for posting this buy me a drink first

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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Captain Aggravated sh.itjust.works captain_aggravated@sh.itjust.works
Joined: 2023-06-20
#32 · Quote Reply

Arch has good documentation. Read it and you'll be ok.

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UninterestingVoid reddthat.com UninterestingVoid@reddthat.com
Joined: 2026-07-17
#33 · Quote Reply

who is 1337? leet?

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Skullgrid lemmy.world Skullgrid@lemmy.world
Joined: 2023-06-29
#34 · Quote Reply

who is 1337? leet?

Leet

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zebidiah lemmy.ca zebidiah@lemmy.ca
Joined: 2025-04-01
#35 · Quote Reply

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.

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

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EuroNutellaMan sh.itjust.works EuroNutellaMan@sh.itjust.works
Joined: 2026-04-22
#36 · Quote Reply

who is 1337? leet?

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

2
EuroNutellaMan sh.itjust.works EuroNutellaMan@sh.itjust.works
Joined: 2026-04-22
#37 · Quote Reply

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

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.

3
l3mming lemmy.world l3mming@lemmy.world
Joined: 2025-05-25
#38 · (edited) Quote Reply

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.

5
Speiser0 feddit.org Speiser0@feddit.org
Joined: 2024-06-27
#39 · Quote Reply

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

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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Katana314 lemmy.world Katana314@lemmy.world
Joined: 2023-06-09
#40 · Quote Reply

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.

"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"

1
Katana314 lemmy.world Katana314@lemmy.world
Joined: 2023-06-09
#41 · Quote Reply

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 t...

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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danielfm123 lemmy.zip danielfm123@lemmy.zip
Joined: 2026-07-12
#42 · (edited) Quote Reply

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

And for disposable distro use distrobox.

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Ann Archy lemmy.world anarchy79@lemmy.world
Joined: 2023-08-17
#43 · Quote Reply

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

dm me for warez

2
UninterestingVoid reddthat.com UninterestingVoid@reddthat.com
Joined: 2026-07-17
#44 · Quote Reply

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

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??

1
bob_lemon feddit.org bob_lemon@feddit.org
Joined: 2024-06-28
#45 · Quote Reply

who is 1337? leet?

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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adr1an programming.dev anzo@programming.dev
Joined: 2023-06-22
#46 · Quote Reply

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 understan...

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

1
AdrianTheFrog lemmy.world AdrianTheFrog@lemmy.world
Joined: 2023-06-15
#47 · Quote Reply

Better use cachyos, compilation flags will give you a performance boost. And for disposable distro use distrobox.

you can use arch with the cachyos kernel and repositories to (afaik) get most of that performance boost while keeping the arch experience, that's what i'm doing on my main computer at the moment

https://wiki.cachyos.org/features/optimized_repos/#adding-our-repositories-to-an-existing-arch-linux-install

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AdrianTheFrog lemmy.world AdrianTheFrog@lemmy.world
Joined: 2023-06-15
#48 · Quote Reply

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.

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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gera feddit.nu gera@feddit.nu
Joined: 2025-01-20
#49 · Quote Reply

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

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Shanmugha lemmy.world Shanmugha@lemmy.world
Joined: 2025-02-08
#50 · Quote Reply

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.

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

1
boonhet sopuli.xyz boonhet@sopuli.xyz
Joined: 2025-06-16
#51 · Quote Reply

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

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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