You're not screwed. Depends on how much you enjoy tinkering and troubleshooting.

My main advice would be to keep your data backed up and completely disconnected from the PC. And make sure your machine is not critical (i.e. for working from home or something). Other than that you do what you want. If you want to dive deep in Arch then that's fine.

One thing to know is that the important part relevant to you is: the desktop environment (KDE) and the Linux distro (Arch) are different things. The far more important thing for you is to have KDE.... the distro underneath just needs to not get in the way.

If you've got Arch up and running then stick with it until it gives you trouble. I naturally ended up distro hopping in the beginning because I would catastrophically break something I couldn't repair and could change distros naturally when reinstalling.

Good options for easy distros with KDE would be:

1. Tuxedo OS (or Kubuntu) - easiest and there's lots of support online.

2. Fredora - rock solid and highly recommend. Although I would recommend OpenSUSE Tumbleweed instead, this got me hooked on Linux and was the least problematic for a bleeding edge updated distro, where I happily used Discover for installing and updating.

3. CachyOS - good option for sticking with Arch.

sudo pacman -Syu

And done, usually. Lol

I don't know exactly what u are talking about steam cause it just sudo pacman -Syu steam and that it .everything else if u have modern nvidia then do sudo pacman -Syu nvidia-dkms if amd setup then u will no need anything else .In the end as for beginner try CachyOS if u the most close experience to vanilla arch .this guys just do some performance tweaks while staying maximum vanilla as possible about arch linux

You are 90% of the way there.

Just keep your system up to date (update packages weekly maybe) and you will be fine. The system mostly manages itself.

I recommend installing both the current kernel and an LTS kernel. If you ever have a problem with a driver or a filesystem or something after an update, just boot into LTS and you are back up and running.

As a completely new user who’s self-described as “not very tech savvy”, Arch is probably a terrible idea, and you should switch distros.

I really like Debian, but something like Linux Mint or Fedora might be wiser for you; all three hold your hand more, which would be very important in your case. Fedora and Debian specifically are designed to work well with KDE, although Fedora will have newer versions.

You certainly seem willing to learn (you got through the Arch install process), and I think you still have a great opportunity to enjoy Linux, but considering you’re calling the terminal emulator “Konsole”, your self-description is probably apt. FYI Konsole is just one application to access the terminal, kind of like how Firefox and Chrome are both web browsers, but you don’t use “Chrome” to refer to web browsers.

You haven't provided a lot of detail on what your current setup looks like. If you use a gaming-focused distro like Cachy or Bazzite they should essentially work "out of the box." Bazzite is also very difficult to break since the immutability makes for very effective guard rails for new users.

If you went with Arch right off the bat, you did take on quite a lot for a new user, but - and I do genuinely mean this - there is no better way to learn the ins and outs of Linux than jumping into the Arch deep end. Even if you choose to switch to a lower-maintenance distro, your effort with Arch is never wasted.

Want a very low maintenance gaming distro with almost no setup? Bazzite.
Want a more hands-on gaming centric distro like SteamOS? CachyOS.
Want a more stable all-around distro that also works great for gaming? Fedora.

Avoid Ubuntu/Kubuntu/Xubuntu. You will see Mint recommended often, but I personally only recommend it for older hardware that you are trying to revitalize. There are better options.

A new version of Debian just released, and there is no more rock solid distro than Debian. Add KDE Plasma and you will have a very low maintenance, pleasantly familiar, extremely reliable system.

Once your computer's working to your satisfaction, pretty much all you'll need to do is alias sudo packman -Syu and try to remember to run that every so often. The arch Linux wiki is second to none, and if you stick with the distro you should find it all feels very familiar in no time.

Arch is very high-maintenance. Try Debian 13, it just came out this week. Ubuntu is okay but it has a lot of crapware compared to Debian. If your Wi-Fi and GPU work on Debian you do not need Ubuntu.

I'm an experienced Linux desktop user of about 15 years and I switched from Arch to Debian and I don't miss Arch. If you need bleeding-edge software you can use a combo of Nix, language package managers, and building from source. Arch doesn't add much plus I frequently ran the wrong pacman command and soft-locked myself out of the OS. Debian doesn't do that to me.

Welcome to Linux where you maintain your own os.. You are literally the owner of this ship you want to destroy your system to ahead you want to do whatever cause windows pissed you off go ahead.. evening can be fixed usually.. try all the distros till you like some and use those.

How does it feel to be in control and not have to listen to the Man ?

i knew a fair amount about linux cli since ive used ubuntu and debian for servers for like 15 years so i was someone knowledgeable but when i decided to wipe away windows on my desktops i picked linuz mint because it was ubuntu based but also it was recommended for beginners. for the most part it works great, i can use steam and heroic. i cant get warcraft classic working but i just need to dig in more.

the one problem i had was when i first started and it wouldnt boot up but i just command line restored using timeshift and it fixed it and i havent had a problem since.

i havent once had issues with drivers or anything. i even installed it on an old computer for my dads church who mostly use it for powerpoint (now libreoffice) and projecting. they know nothing about computers and theyve been fine. i do want to enable auto updates for them though so they dont have to do that.

Arch is nothing like SteamOS. If you want a SteamOS like experience you should pick Bazzite. However since you're on arch you may as well stay until you break it. Backup the things you think are important. Use the archwiki as your first step for problem solving. Since you're new to linux you probably shouldnt go to the arch forums.

when i was about to install steam i found a tutorial on it with 3 - 4 pages full of text and was a bit overwhelmed

Here is my tutorial:

• enable multilib repo by editing pacman config
• sudo pacman -Syu steam

It's as easy as that. Thats how I run it.

and i read now im responsible on maintaining it, what does it mean? is it just finding and testing drivers? or system update? what is the easiest way to do it? and what i getting myself into?

When I started my Linux journey, I went with Ubuntu and kept breaking it every year for a couple of years, which taught me a lot. Then eventually I hopped to Arch and I've been running the same setup since. For over 6 years now. I am very lazy, so I don't do anythjng special unless it breaks.

My setup has automatic btrfs snapshots and manual offsite backups with borg.

My workflow is:

• every friday evening after work, I do an update and reboot.

• If everything works, I do a borg backup. Most update fridays are like this and end here.

• If it's broken (this year it's been 2 times so far, last year iirc 3 times) I read the journal log, find the cause, fix it by live booting an arch usb stick and chrooting into mt system and following the archlinux forum or reddit or news. (For example recently, there was a kernel bug with btrfs, someone on reddit posted a mailing list link with a command that solved it)

• Sometimes there is an issue with an app I have, especially if it's from the AUR. Often a reinstall fixes it, otherwise I fix the PKGBUILD and let the maintainer know what was broken.

• After it is broken, I go through all the .pacnew files and merge them (The wiki says you should do it after every update, but I'm lazy)

• After I fixed it, I do a borg backup.

• If it takes too long to fix or I am especially lazy, I restore a btrfs snapshot and try next week. Usually the issue is resolved by then or somebody solved it on reddit.

So yeah it's quite involved, but I got better at it with time and again, most of the time everything just works and I can enjoy weekly improvements or new features to play with.

I am a bit on the fence which advice to give you. Either keep it and run with it for a while longer or install a simpler gaming focused distro. It's up tp you really.

Perhaps it may not be a bad idea to dual boot Arch and SteamOS or BazziteOS until you get the hang of Arch. While Arch is a very flexible system, accidents happen, and it'd be a shame to lose game progress due to system breakage.

And fyi, Konsole is simply a terminal application for your command line. Personally I don't really mess with flatpaks, and I suggest getting familiar with pacman (Arch's package manager) and the AUR.