danbuter

Seriously, I've read over the Beginners Guide a couple times, and there are just way too many missing commands, etc, for this to be useful unless you already are very familiar with linux. They say to start hal, etc, but not if it's done on the command line or as an edited file, etc. They just kind of assume that people know this stuff. I really wish someone would go over the guide and polish it up a bit. I bet it wouldn't take a whole lot for the guide to actually be useful.

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Dan

Juan Pablo

Arch Linux is not actually a 'for-begginers' distro, I suppose the 'begginers guide' is for Linux users who are new to Arch not Linux itself.
I've tried Arch and it's but it's not for newbies. Start with something simpler like Ubuntu, or Linux Mint

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Don't PM me with questions, instead post in the forums

geniuz

I think I agree with Juan, I've had the guide with me during the Arch Install and I encountered quite some problems, problems whitch would most certainly discourage any "newbie" from continuing...

So yes...Arch isn't build for any beginner with some spare time thinking: "Aww what the hell let's just try this linus or linux w/e and get it over with..."
You gotta do a little research before you do, and use your brain mostly...

Jonathan183

I did not have problems with the install ... although I had partitioned the disk first so only skipped quickly through that section. As others have already indicated the distro is not really meant to be for a complete beginner. Having said that they included a section about daemons earlier in the guide, telling you what they are and where they are in Arch.

I think the balance between explaining and repeating too much detail is about right ... if you skip over a section you may encounter problems or not understand something and have to go back. Adding more detail at each stage would make the manual longer ... increasing the length and making the temptation to skip over things greater.

If you are just following the instructions rather than trying to understand what they are about then I don't think Arch is the distro to use, and I think the Arch wiki tries to make that clear.

One of the things I did with Gentoo and Arch is print the manual. I find going through things on screen I can get lost and skip over things I need to do. The first time I do an install I read through the manual and highlight commands I need to run or things I need to change from defaults, that way if I need to reinstall or install on another system it is much quicker. You may find a similar strategy useful. I really only started taking this approach fairly recently because most distros hold your hand through the install process so you can get away with a quick on-screen review (or actually just start the install and follow the prompts).

axel

You can also read the following guide. You can read some very useful stuff. The whole installation progress described there differs a little from the wiki's one but it works.

Arch Linux Installation Guide

ryokimball

Ya know, I was aprehensive about installing Arch for my computer, especially since I don't have the resources to print out the guide or anything like that. But when I finally tried it the process was quite straight-forward. I mean, sure you're working in command line to begin with, but it tells you exactly what to do: "type /arch/setup to begin" and voila! I did look up "hal" and wonder whether or not "iSCSI" was something I should worry about, but I just did what it told me (even if I didn't understand --I could always look it up later) and it worked out great. I have to say Arch is the best distro I've worked with thus far, if for no other reason than the fact that I did it, it is my setup just like I want I want it to be. I wanted to put a background on, so I looked up what the wiki said, and typed in the "feh" stuff that made no sense to me and before I knew it I had prettified my computer!

...In short, I don't think it's so much a that people assume you "know this stuff" as much as they give you just what you need to know to do it, and if you're wanting to know the "why"s and whatnots you can find that out later.

ozar

lol... there is never a shortage of users new to Arch complaining about it not being easy enough to install, setup, and/or use. One can always check the official ArchLinux Forums to see what I mean.

The good thing about the Beginners Guide itself is that it's written to a wiki, so it's there for anyone to edit and make easier for all to understand and use. The Arch user community highly encourages users to edit the wiki pages as needed to make them better for everyone that reads them.

The other thing about Arch is that it's generally considered a distribution for "advanced" Linux users. That's not to say that new Linux users can't make it work for them. They just need to expect it to be more difficult than a beginner oriented distribution.

I personally think it's good that we have options with Linux distributions and have beginner, intermediate, and advanced user distributions available to us. It would not be much fun for the advanced user if all distributions came with lots of training wheels, so to speak. Sure, they could remove all the crutches that were attached, but most advanced users would not want to be burdened with that effort.

We should probably all strive to be more experimental and patient with Linux, and try to have more fun with it, in general. In the interim, the Beginners Guide is there and waiting for anyone to edit it and make it the perfect beginners guide for all readers.

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oz

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Misfit138

Could you be more specific? I am not understanding exactly what you are referring to.
I wrote most of the guide and would be very interested in improving the section you had trouble with.

-=JuicyJuice=-

i wouldn't say that the guide was useless i managed to install arch on one of my old @$$ computers and i am a total linux noob.. ^^props to the writer^^

Jonathan183

Good job ... as I put in post #4 I think the level is about right. The only things I think you might want to consider are:-
1. setup normal user and sudo pacman operations.
2. firewall setup early in the process.

As I said in post #4 too much detail would drive people mad ... new to Arch and new to Linux are not the same thing