EndeavourOS-Easy Arch!

[oldrocker99]

There was a much-loved Arch version called Antergos, which distinguished itself by installing your choice of DEs during installation. It was a project which ended last year, because the small team had lives, which prevented their continuation of the project.

EndeavourOS is just as easy to install as Manjaro, which is as easy to install as Ubuntu. The Calamares installer makes it easy.

You heard that correctly. It installs vanilla Arch in 8 minutes if XCFE, the default DE is installed, even offline. The other DEs need to downloaded, which means hardcore Arch users, and those who wish to try it, don't have to spend a significant amount of time. There's a meme of a woman with 6 cans of Red Bull strapped to her arm, and the caption is "Getting Ready to Install Arch."

And suddenly, installing pure Arch has been made easy to install.

Will wonders never cease?

[CelticWarrior]

Will wonders never cease?

I hope not

Thank you for this interesting info. EndeavourOS is news to me. I'll give it a try as soon as I have a machine to test it.

[coffeecat]

Not support.

Thread moved to Ubuntu, Linux & OS Chat.

Better exposure here anyway.

[ajgreeny]

I have had a running VM of Arcolinux, another easy to install and use version of Arch, for some time now. From what you say it sounds rather like EndeavourOS.

If Ubuntu, or its various DE versions, ever disappeared it is certainly one that I would be prepared to make my main OS; it is almost quicker to keep updated than Ubuntu with a simple one word command upall.

However I am still a definite Xubuntu fan and likely to stay so for as long as I can.

[oldrocker99]

And when I said "vanilla Arch," I meant just that. Pacman wasn't installed, and pamac had to be compiled. I had gotten accustomed to Manjaro's packages, which exceed the packages in the Arch repos.

Getting used to it, and having fun. I should have moved to an Arch-based distro long before, (NOT pure Arch (I tried it once, and managed to turn my /home partition to /swap, a disaster.

I will always love Ubuntu, my 12-year go-to Linux distro. It was software availability that made me leave Ubuntu, and Debian-based distros, too. Over the years, some of my favorite apps disappeared from the Ubuntu repos, all of which are in the AUR. Not to mention a couple of games I had bought in the Ubuntu Store, which wouldn't install because "this program will not run on this version of Ubuntu."

Cheese and crackers got all muddy, Bioware's Linux client for Neverwinter Nights (not the EE) STILL works. Still.

At any rate, the first vanilla Arch is an adventure, the good kind.

I am still dual-booting with Ubuntu MATE, the development version, so I certainly am not dissing the distro which got me started.

[VMC]

I installed pure-arch a few times, then again I hardwired a video chip and coded needed video driver as well many years ago. Thankfully those days are gone along with installing pure-arch. There's so much needed programs missing after arch install. In the end, an Arch distro like EndeavourOS makes life so much simpler.
Arch-addicts remind me of secret handshakes and the likes. neanderthals.

[oldrocker99]

I installed pure-arch a few times, then again I hardwired a video chip and coded needed video driver as well many years ago. Thankfully those days are gone along with installing pure-arch. There's so much needed programs missing after arch install. In the end, an Arch distro like EndeavourOS makes life so much simpler.
Arch-addicts remind me of secret handshakes and the likes. neanderthals.

They're real He-Men, spending a lot of time instead of just using Calamares and get it right automatically. As easy to install as Ubuntu itself, and, horrors! An easy-to-install Arch system! The Arch Forums themselves say that easy-to-install Arch users are not welcome. The Manjaro and EndeavourOS forums are as friendly as the Ubuntu Forums.

[kevdog]

I'm not trying to be an elitist but installing Arch itself -- from scratch -- isn't that difficult. Yes the first time through you may need to know your system hardware, but it honestly doesn't take all that long. The problem with all these "auto install mechanisms" is although the most likely shorten the installation time, the also probably skip options you might want in your installation. For example if you want ZFS on root and want to set up datasets within the architecture, there is no way an auto installer is going to be able to offer you that level of specificity. Configuring systems like this take a lot more time and part of the time is spent "thinking" about how you want your system setup.

I'm not saying these auto install distributions do not have a roll particularly if you need to spin up a quick VM for testing. Usually defaults will do. For other roles however they may not be adequate. I guess this is where the "thinking" part comes in. Think about what you need and then try to choose the best option.

[oldrocker99]

I did try installing Arch, and realized that 12 years as a user had taught me little about fstab and other esoterica. Not being eager to hose my system, and try all over again, I used Manjaro and now Endeavour, and love Calamares installer, which, BTW, can install Debian, Slackware, Fedora and any other distro; it's not specific to Arch.

And the EOS repos contain all of 12 packages, including their Welcome screen, which hardly, IMHO, sullies my otherwise clean Arch installation, and yay beats pacman 100%. Fewer keystrokes, too.

[kevdog]

The "Arch community" isn't bad per se -- they just want to be asked beginner questions -- which many would call stupid. I agree the attitude can be caustic however in general most of the beginner questions could really be answered by consulting the wiki pages. The wiki pages are great and with a lot of detail. Sometimes deciphering all the information within the wiki page of a given subject is kind of difficult particularly if you are not familiar with the subject. If however you make posts with a lot of detail and reference items on a particular wiki page and give things you've tried and what the outcome was, usually the recommendations in their forums are pretty much on point. Many people say similar things about the FreeNAS forums, and I think the general pervasive feeling that the forums are also "toxic" is a bit overblown as well.