When I say arch I mean the arch distro and all of its offspring.
Endeavouros
Arch-gui
Manjaro
Artix --maybe not though
My first enjoyable distro was manjaro, the manjaro element less so but using arch clicked for me. But even so if my first experience was using arch and archinstall then yes its not the easiest but its also not that difficult, arch is treated like a boss battle in darksouls.
So when a pre configured GUI arch is recommend I would like to see less scar mongering.
I agree with the OP. But swap the term “newbie” for “casual user” or “non IT user”, and more people would agree. Even the nerdiest IT Pro was a newbie whenever they use a distro for the first time. Avoid the term “normie” too, as people have different ideas of what normal is. There are more non IT, power users who have a deep knowledge of their applications, than all Linux users put together.
So this discussion is all around a sloppy choice of terminology.
I agree that the descriptors have to change. It’s insulting to linux beginners when you assume they’re illiterate non-it users that can’t read the paragraph explaining the install options.
But, for a non IT person, installing Linux, using the typical GUI tools is not specially hard to do. Write an ISO to a USB stick. Boot the PC. Answer the installer questions like language etc. And if something doesn’t work, try a different distro. The problems come when people suggest users use unfamiliar UIs, such as the command line or fiddling with config files, where, if you don’t know the exact magic words, it fails to work.
While a linux beginner who’s been developing apps in proprietary microsoft systems for 20 years might be looking for an OS that’s easy to manage from CLI.
Yes. Then the newb is typically happy to learn the Arch ways. Showing that “arch bad for new users” is a bad choice of words.