I've recently noticed that Linux YouTube™ has lost its collective mind over some slick setup scripts that changes Arch Linux into the pet configuration of some guy¹. And, I'll give this project its due, the setup is nice to look at, but that's about all of the positive things I can say about it.

The project makes some weird decisions, makes some weird keybindings, installs some weird choices for applications, and is generally not what I would want for a computer. The project bills itself as being 'opinionated', which is a clue to what you're getting.

But I started to wonder why I was seeing this thing absolutely everywhere all at once. And why are the videos and articles about it almost all presented with the same reverent tone telling me that they think this is the best thing ever?

I think there are two main reasons (and probably lots of little reasons):

1. It uses Arch Linux, and Arch has a reputation for being hard to install, so people like to brag about running it. I'm sure a lot of this is exaggerated for forum clout or whatever. Arch isn't that hard to install if you've got a little bit of Linux experience under your belt.
2. People who are Linux-curious go to places like /​r/unixporn and think to themselves, "I want that." But then they find out what it takes to get whatever that is and then they end up with some kind of UI envy
3. It takes all of the choices you need to make to have a functional Linux system and makes them for you. That's what opinionated means.

And I do get it. There are lots of things that I think I want to do, and when I start going down the road of doing the thing, I realize that it's going to take a lot more work than I realized², and that I've convinced myself that I don't have time to learn anything right now ³.

But one of the things that I don't think I've ever wanted to do was to adjust any part of my environment according to someone else's preferences. That's weird.

The closest I'll get is downloading and installing a custom color theme for an application. But cloning someone else's dotfiles so my entire computer is set up for someone else's preferences? What?

The whole point of running something like Linux is that you're in charge. You decide what web browser you want, you decide what text editor you want, you decide what file manager you want, you decide everything. Then you customize your editor to do what you want. You customize your browser to do what you want. You customize how you want your file manager to behave. You might even go through and change hotkeys and keyboard shortcuts to fit you and the way you interact with the computer. What you end up with is something that's customized to you.

With these setup scripts, you're not only offloading all of those decisions to someone else, you're also tacitly accepting their choice of additional software to install. Software that you might not want or need, but you're cloning someone else's computer and that's what they have so that's what you have. Their opinion is your reality.

I do get it, too. Not everyone wants to spend the time setting this stuff up. The last time I rebuilt my computer, it took about two days to get everything set up just how I liked it, and I had dotfiles already in place. Not everyone has the time or patience to do that. They don't want to learn how a text editor works so they can edit a config file so that they get windows to tile next to each other just so. They just want the results without having to do the work.

I can sympathize. And I'm not going to tell anyone that they're wrong for using helper scripts to install someone else's vision of a computer operating system. But I will say that if you take shortcuts, you're going to be less equipped to know what to do when something goes wrong⁴, or something breaks in a way you didn't expect, or why uninstalling Package A suddenly made Package B disappear.

But I'll also offer a little bit of advice (worth what you paid for it): if you use these scripts, fine. Enjoy. But please only use them as a starting point for your own computing journey. Don't use them as an excuse to be lazy. If you're going to use any flavor of Linux or any of the BSDs or any operating system that isn't Windows, you will need to learn some basic computer skills⁵. You'll have to get over your fear of the shell. If you don't, you'll spend your entire computing life using someone else's computer.