Slashdot Mirror
Arch Linux: the Distro of the Year?
Provataki writes "OSNews posted an enthusiastic review of Arch Linux, a distro that is fast gaining popularity lately. The article compares Arch to the existing big-name Linux distros and takes a shot on describing where Arch offers a better solution. It also lists some of Arch's own problems and suggests solutions."
I run Arch since last year, and it's a rock solid, fast and modern system. I recommend it too, as long as you already have a clue about Linux configuration.
It's not my intention to troll or flame, but: Why doesn't people just stick with Slackware?.
They were here first. It's the more mature distro we have right now. It's simple, i just read sometimes the kind of troubles people have with some distros and i just can't beleive it. A distribution shouldn't get in the middle, just install and go away. You should just forget about what distro you installed the moment you are done installing it. That is only true about Slackware GNU/Linux and the BSDs.
WTF am I doing replying to an AC at 5 A.M on a Friday night?
With this, how many more distros can we expect with All in the Family inspired names? "Free BSDingbat"? The Ubuntu "Meaty Meathead" ?
Arch is not perfect and no matter what Archers might advocate to you in the forums or IRC, Arch is not for newbies
:-/
This would have been interesting news for geeks six, seven years ago. At that time I was writing my PPP scripts and XF86config etc. from scratch. I have come to value my time more, and let the established distro developers do the 'dirty' work.
For doing that successfully I buy their product once in a while, and enjoy the great configuration management tools available now.
As far a package managers are concerned: the only time I ever messed up one was when I did an 'rpm -e rpm'
Stachel
I'm a Debian developer, and I'll agree that it's not simple in all the ways it could be, but I don't get this:
"apt-get & dpkg and all these related tools are not as brain-dead simple to use as pacman is"
How is "apt-get install whatever" any more difficult than "pacman -S firefox"?
http://www.welton.it/davidw/
"Roll Your Own".
If there is one thing the diaspora of distro's should prove, it is that truly anyone can roll their own..
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
That's actually pretty funny. Personally, I won't use Meaty Meathead until KEdith 1.0 is realized. Too bad it's not compatible with Gloria, which is obviously a Gnome app.
If it's too hard to use, then the solution is not to invent a whole new format, but to write tools to make it easy. Automating dependency management and package installation is hard. Writing a new user interface is easy.
Personally, I would like to see Debian packaging and packages become the base for all "mainstream" (i.e. binary distributed) linux distros. Obviously, distros like gentoo are something of a special case, but distros like Xandros, Ubuntu, and Mepis have demonstrated that it is a good base upon which to build a robust distro, and compared to different RPM-based distros, Debian based distros are amazingly interoperable. Why reinvent the wheel?
"He who would learn astronomy, and other recondite arts, let him go elsewhere. " -- John Calvin, commenting on Genesis 1
Yes, I'm sure I've seen ArchLinux's logo somewhere else before...
"Wow, I wish I had Eugenia's job"
Well, sort of. I mean, I like feeling actually challenged to write cogently, use a spell checker, and actually be made to have the discipline to review the actual material. I mean most of the review went:
Foonux: Well it was sorta like slow, and pretty tough and stuff and I didn't really like it.
Yaddanix: Lots of RAM, and it was slow and the package tool was tough but it has all kinds of stuff that Arch doesn't have but it's still kinda lame and all.
Oh yeah, but the review was about Arch, right? Ok, um, well here's a laundry list of things that suck about it. But it really rocks because it's Slack and it's all 0ldsk00l and stuff lol!
I am no longer wasting my time with slashdot
The title of this news article is a silly one- "Distro of the Year?" I am surprised it didn't incite a slap fight among the nerds that wish to advocate their Linux flavor of choice.
Arch Linux is a fun distro. It was great when I was dual booting between linux and windows and needed something exciting. I even used it for several months from .5 - .6.
The biggest problem I used it were the stability of packages, and the dependency checks. It is no where near even Debian Unstable in stability, and the dependency checking leaves much to be desired.
There is nothing wrong with Arch Linux. It's a fun, cutting-edge, enthuisiest distro. However, now that I use linux full time, I would guess that Ubuntu will be the distro of 2005 :)
I love how Eugenia claims linux isn't ready for the desktop and then uses a distro like Arch. That being said, I still greatly respect Eugenia, except for her strange comments on Arch Linux (Pacman -S simpler to use than apt-get install?)
"swaret --upgrade"
... so I don't think it's [just] because I'm an idiot - maybe I'm wrong :0)>
... thanks!!
This list all updates including the packages sizes. I'm sure slapt-get does just about the same. Then you go through and say yes/no/all/quit to download and install packages as required.
The creation of packages for use by others seems to be something of a black art however. I've looked at the howtos a couple of times now (as I often find I can't get the very latest update of the obscure software I use a couple of days after release) but my eyes glaze over. I very rarely struggle to create and install the packages for myself - even doing minor amendments to make/config files and (very occassionally) alterations to code
What I'd like is a slackware package builder that does it all for me so I can then install the package and distribute it for others. Oh, and a money tree wouldn't go a miss, along with a frictionless enviro-friendly engine
Any suggestions.
What I'd like is a slackware package builder that does it all for me so I can then install the package and distribute it for others. Oh, and a money tree wouldn't go a miss, along with a frictionless enviro-friendly engine ... thanks!!
Try checkinstall. You run it as the final step instead of "make install", and it will automagically generate and install a package for you. It runs perfectly for me under slackware 10/10.1. I think a tgz is available in the slackware extras/ directory, even.
However, I have heard complaints from people who don't like how it arranges the directory structure (putting stuff into /usr/local, etc). They may be correct, but the packages *do* work just fine on other systems.
As far as usability, I use it for my main machine at the office and it's been rock solid. It took only about 45 minutes to set up, including tweaks, and fairly minimal interaction with help boards. Now will it automagically burn CD's and work with my digial camera? Doubt it, but then again I don't need those things in my office environment either. I guess it's all about using the right tool for the job..
I use checkinstall already ... I understood from the howtos that there was alot to do on permissions and ensuring that things didn't get written to wrong locations and such like.
Cheers.
Dammit, quit linking to Eugenia's troll page. I'm not going to read the article, because I don't want to give her any more page impressions, but Arch linux isn't bad in my experience. I'm running it on my laptop until Ubuntu Hoary final is released. As distros go, it's fast and simple, although they did have some trouble with package quality a while back.
Gentoo uses a 'mess o' symlinks' approach as well - they just put them in different places. ;-) Arch has a DAMEONS variable that contains a list of the daemons it starts. That's it. Blindingly simple.
I run Gentoo on my desktop and Arch on my notebook (way too slow to build Gentoo, and I don't keep in sync'd well enough to use distcc..) and I adore them both for similar reasons: while Arch makes me lazy, Gentoo has more knobs and dials to tweak, they are both quite flexible and above all do what they're told and nothing more..
How a mess of start up scripts in one directory (/etc/rc.d/) controled by a single flat text file (/etc/rc.conf) is inferior to several numbered directories that represent runlevels, filled with oddly-named start up scripts in random orders?
One seems like a simple, elegant solution while the other seems needlessly complex.