Arch was the distro that got me to stop distro-hopping. It’s stable, it has a rolling release, and it’s mine (as in, customizable, manageable).

I guess, if there’s anything I wish I’d known off the bat is that the Arch documentation is probably the best available. So much so, a LOT of it applies to Linux in general and not strictly to Arch.

https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Main_page

If something breaks, READ the error messages, understand each component, and check the wiki, there’s a very high chance the troubleshooting section has the exact issue laid out.

I’m using manjaro-i3 for a pretty long time now (6-7 years) and I’m fully satisfied, I won’t change any time soon. It was not very difficult at first, even though I wasn’t a linux user when I moved to manjaro. I would just maybe move to sway instead of i3 which seems probably more modern now.

ditch it and go straight to NIxOS

I can recommend using endeavourOS if you do not want to waste time

But if you want to learn, go for it! Make sure to have the arch wiki ready on a second device

And understand what chroot is, is very important 😆😌

Edit: Ah and don’t forget to install yet another yoghurt

Be aware that some apps will install fine from the arch repo but some others will be better installed from flatpack (e.g. inkscape) or directly as an executable (e.g. Godot).

On steam you may need to specify your video card if you run an AMD card using the DRI prime command. Some games will require -vulkan to use vulkan rather than game settings.

Note: experience may vary by compositor (xorg/wayland), desktop environment, drivers, system hardware, and your willingness to dive into details.

Check ArchLinux.org for news before you kick off an update. It’s got an RSS feed and a mailing list if that helps.

Read the Wiki, and turn to it first for any issues you have.

This one may be a special “me” problem, but if you’re manually interacting with wpa_supplicant, stop and go read the Networking page in the Wiki again.

Learn how to use journalctl (at least superficially) before something goes wrong.

Generally you want to restart after an update to the kernel or graphics drivers or things start degrading strangely.

From the bottom of the installation guide: https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/General_recommendations

don’t use archinstall if it’s the first time, the manual installation is not that hard

• EndeavourOS is arch based with less hassle. Its more than good enough for most people. don’t get trapped by minimal install bs and other non-consequential opinionative approaches to software.
• Select btrfs as your file system and use timeshift. If you fuck up or if your updates fuck something up. There are other ways of doing rollbacks and this is just what I became familiar with. I’ve used it two times in the past year, its worth it.
• Bookmark the archwiki, 99% of the time the answer to the questions of ‘how to’ and ‘can i’ are in there
• There are multiple DE’s. Pick what works best for you before you toss that bootable USB installer. You of course can switch later down the line, but experimenting now will save you config troubleshooting later, just stick to what feels/looks best. Look around on the web to see what appeals to your workflow. There are others like Cosmic and Wayland that are not included in the arch gui installer, in which case, follow the install procedures for the DE you want and remove the old ones to avoid config overlap.
• Have Fun. If you are not, do something that is.

• archinstall is one of the better/best distro installs around - it just does what it says it will and is pretty intuitive
• LUKS encryption is easy to set up in archinstall - strongly recommend encrypting your root partition if you have anything remotely sensitive on your system
• If you do use encryption but don’t like typing the unlock password every reboot, you can use tpm to unlock - yes, this is less secure than requiring the unlock password every time you reboot, but LUKS + TPM unlock is still MUCH better than an unencrypted drive just sitting there
• sbctl is a good tool for secure boot - If you want to get more secure, locking down bios with an admin password, turning on secure boot, sbctl works really well and is pretty easy to use. I would suggest reading up to understand what it’s doing before just installing/configuring/using it
• yay is a solid AUR helper / pacman wrapper

The whole arch advantage (imo) is that you have a full understanding of what’s in your machine and how it works.

As a beginner you won’t understand and that’s okay, but you should try different things (or don’t and just focus on what works for you) as long as the end result is you doing: pacman -Qe and going “hmm that makes sense”, and imo the undesired result is going “hmm what do these all do, why do I have 2000+ packages”

Do yourself a favour and install it on a virtual machine first. Screwing up an install on Arch is frighteningly easy. The Arch Wiki is your friend, use it. Also, read the installation instructions before you begin the installation, not during. If this sounds like too much of a headache (understandably so), then give EndeavourOS a whirl.

So many tips, let me add mine.

• btop - for monitoring and process management
• pacseek - terminal UI for installing, searching packages (uses yay)
• chaotic aur - repo for prebuilt binaries that are generally ok

When installing use the archinstall the first time, unless you really want to go into the deep end and use the normal install.

The ArchWiki is amazing, probably don’t start by installing nothing but a window manager and adding things you need as you go

EndeavorOS if you want to have an easy time. Also be comfortable reading documentation.