I’m a perma-noob and I was able to do it. Had to re-do a couple of steps because I interpreted instructions that were meant to be literal, but the wiki pages are very comprehensive. I just had to pay attention to the details.
Forgot to update…so I was able to get it install with the archinstall script with no issue. Installing it the Arch way, by using the docs, went super well until I went to install the boot loader. I saw no errors when going by all the steps prior to the boot loader install so I’m guessing I was installing grub incorrectly, or maybe something I’m not aware of. I’ll try again soon and respond with the fix, when I get it installed that is, in case you run into the same issue.
It’ll depend a lot on your experience. I can just install Arch without reading the wiki at all in about 5 minutes for something fairly vanilla. If you’re comfortable with Linux then following the wiki won’t be too hard, took me maybe 2-3 hours on my first install before I had my DE and everything all set up (12 years ago). If you’ve never used Linux before and take the deep dive then it could take hours and days depending on how fast you can absorb all that information.
“Easy” is very subjective, there’s stuff that’s so dumbed down for the sake of “easy” that it makes my life harder when I need to do more complex stuff. I know people for whom linear algebra in 11 dimensions is easy for them to do and solve. Easy is relative to your own personal experience level and what you’re trying to accomplish.
Install it in a VM as a test run, you’ll see by yourself.
Easy or not depends vary wildly. But the usual task is
partition the drive
format the drive
mount the drive
install the base system
That is the bare minimum, but we need to do more configuration to be able to boot. Hence the next task is configuring the following
fstab
timezone, hostname, and networking
boot loader (I just use the EFI directly nowadays)
That is it. Everything else is usually work specific. Like, if you wanted arch to be a server, you usually didn’t install a GUI. For workstation and gaming, you need more steps but it will vary depending on hardware. The archwiki covers a good deal of hardware from laptop to desktop and their quirks.
It’s as easy as following any set of instructions. Whether or not you actually understand what the instructions are doing is an entirely different story. If you actually want to learn how to operate a posix system, doing a bunch of command line installs of Linux isn’t going to help you with that. What will help is living in something with excellent documentation like OpenBSD, with minimal reliance on external tooling. Once you have the skills, they’ll transfer anywhere.
I had done a few easier Linux installs on Raspberry Pis and VMs in the past, but when I decided I wanted to try using Linux as my daily driver on my desktop (dual-booted with Windows at the time) I decided to go with a manual Arch install using a guide and I would 100% recommend it if you’re trying to pick up Linux knowledge. It’s really not a difficult process to just follow step-by-step, but I looked up each command as they came up in the guide so I could try to understand what I was doing and why.
I don’t know what packages archinstall includes because I’ve never used it, but really the biggest thing for me learning was booting into a barebones Arch install. Looking into the different options for components and getting everything I needed setup and configured how I wanted was invaluable.
That being said, now that I know how, is that how I would choose to install it? Nah, I use the CachyOS installer now, but if I wanted stock Arch I’d probably use archinstall.
Give it a try, fuck it up, and give it a try again. Try not to fuck it up in the same way as the first time. Repeat until it works - it will work eventually.
It took me about 6 hours and 3 disk re-formats my first time. I was particularly bad at it. I barely knew what a disk was, nevermind a partition.
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