Comment by acron0 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by acron0 | Hacker News Reader

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> Running someone else's patch set of Arch is the easiest way to have a terrible Linux experience. Having a nice interface to lull people into believing what they are getting is a professional product and then handing them a fundamentally broken system, where some hobbyists have patched a proper Linux distro so bad, that you are not even allowed to ask for help on the Arch forum is down right devious and presents the worst of the Linux world.

Except, this isn't the experience for the majority of users moving to Cachy, Bazzite, Zorin, whatever. What they're getting is a fresh, usable experience specifically in the "flavor" they care about.

Linux, and especially Arch, has an image problem, and it's the reason, despite how good these base distros might be, that people aren't coming. It takes a clever bit of branding and a marginalisation of all the gatekeeping (just like you're trying to do right now) to let users finally think "actually, maybe this is something I can use".

>Except, this isn't the experience for the majority of users moving to Cachy, Bazzite, Zorin, whatever.

Yes, but it will be experience they inevitably will have once these differences will result in their OS being fundamentally broken and nobody being there to help them.

>It takes a clever bit of branding and a marginalisation of all the gatekeeping (just like you're trying to do right now) to let users finally think "actually, maybe this is something I can use".

Hilariously giving people a fundamentally broken OS, which they use based on superficial criteria is the best gatekeeper imaginable. Once the inevitable happens and their distro is totally trashed, they will never use Linux for anything again.

If you want people to have a good long term experience give them a well supported mainstream distro, instead of a fundamentally broken arch patchset.

>"actually, maybe this is something I can use".

Which is exactly the wrong thought. No, the fundamentally broken Arch derivative you are trying to use is much, much harder to use than Fedora.

But you won't get them to understand these points unless you're willing to fix the image problem and then invest in better branding. Telling people they're wrong doesn't sell things.

New users shouldn't understand these points. They just should be advised not to use any of these distros, they do not need to understand the reasons, besides that they are poorly supported projects and will break their OS.

What does “fundamentally broken” mean? Seemingly you’re phrasing it as something to do with community forums and wikis? That’s a strange definition.

You keep saying it’s fundamentally broken. That appears to be inconsistent with virtually all of the first hand accounts in this thread. You come across as intransigent.

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