Arch is actually trivial to install, provided you know the basic UNIX commands.
Also, the Arch Wiki is some of the best documentation for any distro, anywhere. So that helps.
Also, the Arch Wiki is some of the best documentation for any distro, anywhere. So that helps.
Not for "ordinary users" which is what we're discussing here. For that you'd need an actual installer of some type.
Totally agree about the Arch Wiki -- it's incredible.
It's not for everyone, and certainly not for the writer of the original article.
Sometimes, what Arch provides is "it works" as opposed to "it doesn't work". (This was the point I was trying to make.)
This is not a hypothetical. I turned a coworked onto Arch by this simply being the only Linux distro that would work on his Macbook Pro (ca. 2015, I think?). He tried Ubuntu recently (12.10)... still didn't work because it could not understand the disk on his machine.
This guy is a very competent developer. He's not afraid of a command line. It still took him a few hours (IIRC) to get it installed. (Including with my help + googling various things about how the Mac EFI thing works/doesn't. Incidentally he still has to press some magic key combo on every startup to avoid MacOS starting up. It's goddamn ridiculous.)
The EFI bits, and keypress combo, however, are true of any Mac.