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Arch Linux 0.7 Reviewed

Posted by CowboyNeal on from the closer-looks dept.

Eugenia writes "Andrew Roberts posted a long and informative review of the newly released Arch Linux 0.7. It describes the installation method, post-install configuration, features included, package management and the available support for the distro. Trying to describe Arch Linux in a single sentence, many would say that it's a distro that's almost as speedy as Gentoo is, as simple as Slackware is and with a package management similar to Debian's. [Semi-]advanced Linux users would probably like it a lot."

13 of 31 comments (clear)

  1. Oh God, noooo by Anonymous+Cowherd+X · · Score: 3, Funny

    Oh please no, not another Linux distro, there really is no reason to have as many distros as there are penguins in the world! We're running out of penguins!

    1. Re:Oh God, noooo by Tsalg · · Score: 1

      And where is that screenshot? :p ./T

    2. Re:Oh God, noooo by alexmat · · Score: 1

      That's pretty funny, but I think that one of the coolest things about GNU/Linux is in how many different ways you can put together an os. The applications are all the same anyways so not much effort is wasted. If anything it fills the needs of niche markets that other distros may not address. I for one have tried Gentoo, Slackware and Redhat, but am sticking with Arch because of it's power and simplicity (not to mention the awesome package manager).

      I'm writing this post from a laptop running Arch, sitting in an office with an Arch development server and five desktop clients runnining Arch. Give it a go, the more distros you try the more likely you are to find one that you'll stick with and love.

  2. Re:Interesting by Anonymous+Cowherd+X · · Score: 3, Funny

    You just ruined my most-consecutive-Slashdot-posts record attempt, you insensitive clod!

  3. Cool by digitalchinky · · Score: 3, Insightful

    (for the poster above, everyone is reading about battery stickers)

    I thought the review was written pretty well actually! I'm always on the lookout for a better distro - not that this one really fits, but there are many links to other sites that lead me to other ideas.

  4. 15th post by Anonymous+Cowherd+X · · Score: 1

    To keep this series of posts at least a bit less off-topic: the codename for ArchLinux 0.7 beta is Wombat.

  5. Womat? by FlashBuster3000 · · Score: 1

    I don't know much about Wombats but thats the 16th post! :P

  6. Arch by FictionPimp · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I've used arch in the past and found it a great distro. It has its quirks, but for me it was rock solid and ran like a charm as a development/test server for a side project I was working on. It does require you to know a little bit more about linux and your hardware then most distros, but its not anymore complex then gentoo or slackware. Plus it is targeted at i686 which is nice for speed. I found the package choices a bit small, but it is way easy to make a new package from souce and install it with pacman.

    Anyways, its a great distro.

    1. Re:Arch by FictionPimp · · Score: 1

      Their package managment (pacman) doesn't have anyway that I know of to only do security updates. On a production server I want only security updates to my system. Arch Linux only has 2 releases to choose from, current or release. With current, the packages are cutting edge and always changing and upgrading, and as far as I know release is just a snapshot of current that doesn't change until the next release. That makes it a great desktop OS or test machine, but lacking in the production server area imho.

  7. Re:Interesting by Anonymous+Cowherd+X · · Score: 1

    If you were half a man, you'd have a script for that. Shame on you ;-)

    I don't have a subscription to Slashdot. ;)

  8. I used to use Arch Linux by Cthefuture · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I used Arch Linux for about 6 months not too long ago.

    It has some annoying quirks but nothing too bad I guess. The biggest problem is lack of packages and the very slow package manager. Although packages are easy to create, I got tired of having to create packages for every little thing I needed. After looking at the code for the package manager I could tell it was written by someone who did not know what they were doing. Maybe that has improved since 0.6, I don't know.

    It is not any faster than any other distro. With the exception of boot time, all distros are really about the same performance-wise. In fact, I found the Arch package manager was incredibly slow (try running Arch on an old machine).

    Overall, between the goofy quirks, lack of packages, and lack of coding skill, I went back to my old friend Debian (actually, Ubuntu Linux).

    --
    The ratio of people to cake is too big
    1. Re:I used to use Arch Linux by evilmegaman · · Score: 1

      Wow, In case you haven't noticed this distro is made for newer machines. Not old ones. I don't know why people are so oblivious to everything. this a great distro with a great package manager :) I mean what can beat pacman?

  9. Gentoo is not speedy... by wolf31o2 · · Score: 1

    The subject pretty much says it all. Gentoo is not speedy. Gentoo can be speedy, but generally, it isn't any faster than any of the other guys out there.

    This is compounded by the fact that most of the people who claim the speed of Gentoo overoptimize their machines and end up with slower binaries thanthose that don't, but I'll leave that one alone. ;]