> anyone already familiar with installing a Linux distro (especially any sort of -server variant) will be comfortable with the archinstall script.
To be fair, thats not _generally_ the audience we tend to think about when we talk about the enshittification of Windows. We're usually talking regular consumers / computer users and "gamers" the latter of which is a wide range of people that can fend for themselves with instructions to people that cannot.
Agreed. I know in some circles it's a meme, but if the Steam Gaming Console actually makes a debut any time soon, I think we'll see more of a jump from the "Gamer" crowd away from Windows. My (some say naive) hope is that it will make game devs try to design games that aren't only locked in on Windows and have more Proton support.
It's really a (good IMHO) sign of the times that us old hats have to remind ourselves that most new comers to Linux today aren't necessarily adept at installing another OS, let alone using the command line. The first time I installed Arch was maybe four years ago, but the very first dual boot setup I made was between Win 3.1 and OS/2 2.1 in 1993 when I was 10, and I've been playing with Linux since the mid-late 90s. When I first installed Arch the "hard way" I said to myself--"I don't understand why it has this reputation... this is all stuff I've done before countless times." Frankly, I'm still trying to figure out the distribution graph of Linux knowledge and how to engage with different skill levels.
I agree. I also think that not everyone (I couldn't say if this is generational, I see this among peers sometimes too) has the same appetite for problem solving. People hit a problem or a wall and say "So I tried X and now I see Y. I dont know what to do" and then they just sit there. The reason that LMGTFY and RTFM come off as "elitist" is because people are frustrated by others' willingness to just "stop trying" whenever they hit a road block.
Fair enough, but I wouldn't generally direct that audience to vanilla arch linux as "gamers first distro" anyway.
I'd direct them to something like Bazzite (Immutable), or CachyOS for staying arch-based but providing a GUI installer and tools, Endeavor OS, even Fedora, etc.