Once I have learned Arch, installing and maintaining it is super easy and fast. Troubleshooting a problem if it occurs is also easier because you know more how the system works internally.

But there is another problem I see when using it daily for many different things. I install Arch and week later when sending emoji find out there is no emoji font and I need to install one. Then month later needing to quickly use Bluetooth I realize I forgot to install bluez and some of it’s frontend. Then about to print something and now I need to learn how to install CUPS print server. All those things takes few minutes and have the best documentation in the Linux world, but after fresh install I get annoyed for first month or two for stuff that come preinstalled on other distros.

But… That’s also why I use Arch. I could run some post-install script from someone or use Endevour, but setting stuff how I want is the beauty of Arch.

Just have a look at EndeavourOS which is Arch with sane pre-installed stuff. Have been using it for a year without problem. Am also lazy :D

Eh Arch being “hard” is overblown. I’ve honestly spent just as much time troubleshooting windows crap or other distro crap. You just have to learn all the little tricks and whatnot that are specific to arch. It happens over time naturally.

Nice thing about arch is the community. Great documentation and if you find something that doesn’t work - somebody motivated will make it work and share. Example: protonvpn decided “nah we’re not supporting arch”. No big deal, someone in the community has packaged it up and maintains it for us.

Arch users rule

Welcome! Coming from Windows myself, I made the jump to Manjaro (It has certain issues and I do not recommend it), then to Arch less than a year after. I have been on Arch full time for around 2 years now. After the initial setup, I have found Arch to be pretty low-maintenance and no harder to maintain than any other distro, hardly requiring more than the occasional yay -Syu --noconfirm in the command line to update things. As someone with less computer knowledge than an IT professional, I think Arch’s reputation for being difficult is overblown IMO, and I suspect mostly due to intimidation from the more involved setup process prior to the availability of the install script.

I don’t know if you have any familiarity with Linux already from your work, but regardless of what distro you go with, I would go into it with a mindset that you are learning a new skill. Some things are simply done differently in Linux than Windows and will require getting used to, such as how drives work using mounting points rather than drive letters.

Realistically, setting things up for the first time often requires additional steps and may not “just work,” but when using my laptop and gaming desktop from day to day, it works just like any other OS. Gaming has been great for me generally, and the work Valve has done to improve game compatibility on Linux has been spectacular. Most Steam games do, in fact, “just work” for me.

In the 2-3 years I have been using Linux, I have rarely had things spontaneously break as many folks seem to worry about, or if I do it is because of companies not supporting their Linux communities, like Discord not pushing out updates on time, or major-event changes like the move to the Wayland graphical stack on KDE 6 which undid some of my desktop customization settings.

As a capable but lazy Arch user, not much. It certainly bugs me a helluva lot less than Ubuntu and Manjaro did.

Once you install Arch with the archinstall script and set everything, you’ll be fine.

Arch is as hard as you make it be. I run Arch with Gnome using mostly flatpaks and I the only maintenance I have to do with my pc is run sudo pacman -Syyu once a day to keep everything up-to-date.

Of course you can make it be as hard as trying to swimming in lava, but it’s your choice to make like that.

The most difficult is installing. Once you’re on it, you’re set.

If you’re not super patient, I wouldn’t personally. If you do end up going with Arch, the first thing you should do is install Timeshift!!!

You will save yourself sooooo much pain and frustration, especially with Arch. Installing a system/feature-breaking update becomes trivial to undo with Timeshift. I’ve borked my systems multiple times and with Timeshift it took less than 5 minutes to go from a trashed system back to my fully working setup.

Set it to take an automatic snapshot once a day. That way worse case scenario, your system gets reverted to the beginning of the day.

Arch is great if you’re patient and willing to learn the right way to do things in Linux.

If you want a “just works” experience though, you should look elsewhere.

I wouldn’t recommend it in your case. Mind you, Arch is easy enough to install with the archinstall script or say using EndeavourOS, but the issues come afterwards. For starters, you’ll need to occasionally deal with .pacsave/.pacnew files when you do an update, keep up with Arch news and be aware of breaking changes which may require some non-trivial manual intervention, like in this post for example: https://lemmy.nz/post/7648427

So if you’re after something that “just works”, then Arch isn’t for you. Since you’re into gaming and you’re lazy, Bazzite would be an excellent choice as its an immutable OS with atomic updates (updates either work or don’t, there’s no middle/broken state). But if you’re after a more traditional distro (ie, non-immutable), Nobara or Pop!_OS also work well for gaming.

Everyone here seems to be saying you’ll have a tough time. Maybe that’s right, but I haven’t run “proper” Arch in a long time. My experience in an Arch-based distros these days (Garuda) has been very smooth sailing other than a few minor quirks I had to iron out. Gaming, in particular, has been mostly flawless outside of a few specific games.

That said, you’ll probably have an easier time on a more stable distro, but they’ve all got their issues and frustrations. I’d probably recommend against something super stable like Debian if you primarily do a lot of gaming, as it’ll be running older packages that might not work well with newer games (so I’ve heard). You may also wanna stay away from mainline Ubuntu because of the snap bullshit (personal preference, but it’s a sentiment that seems to be shared by much of the community).

I guess what I’m saying is, if Arch interests you, give it (or a derivative) a shot. If not, just fire up something like Mint and be happy. It’s your computer.

A lot

If you have an interest in Arch, I’d recommend starting with a derivative distro like EndeavourOS. It’ll give you an easy installation process and a desktop that’s ready to use.

Then just use it as your daily driver. You’ll eventually run into the occasional issue when package X or Y upgrades and breaks something, learn to fix that, and eventually learn the “ins and outs” of Arch. That’s how I started, I went from Mint to Antergos, used that for a while, then when Antergos was discontinued (RIP) I converted my install to “pure” Arch and never looked back.

Most of the time you would be fine, but sometimes stuff breaks in unexpected ways, so at the least you need to manage a good backup scheme or be ready to chroot whenever there is a system critical update.

As for Endeavor OS, It’s basically Arch with a nicer and smarter installer (compared to Archinstall, not the Arch way). The downsides and maintenance are exactly the same.

There is also pacnew…

if you use the archinstall to setup everything (partitioning, locales, de’s, etc), not that much, but def. more than some “everything and the kitchensink straight out of the box” distros. The installer worked nicely on 2 machines I’ve tested it on, a laptop and a desktop. While the base system and graphical desktop installed nice, there was quite a bit of manual tinkering left.

But, steam works more or less the same on linux as it works on windows - but there is some proton version selecting, and even then absolutely everything doesn’t work.

Personally, nvidia+wayland (and xwayland in general) is pretty horrid with some games, but supposedly that’s supposedly getting fixed next month… It’s always something and the fix is so tantalizingly close.

and, it’s not like the EOL for win10 is that close, seems to be October 14, 2025, so there’s still plenty of time.

Did you find you had a lot of trouble getting new peripherals to work? Things like wireless mouses/headsets?