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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."
Please don't mention distro and BSD in same paragraph. People might think that BSDs are Linux-distros when they are not (thank gods).
You don't know what you don't know.
Slackware is difficult to configure for those new to linux. Same situation with the installer.
While some of us prefer it that way, I'm thinking the vast majority either don't have time, or simply have no interest in tweaking away at a hundred config files just to get things going.
Slackware is pretty good yes, but there are lots of things that are different - some better, some worse. (It's all subjective)
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/
Actually, Arch Linux has a very simple init system, as shown here: http://www.archlinux.org/docs/en/guide/install/arc h-install-guide.html#bootrc. It's just like Gentoo, for that matter. I understand what you're saying about Slackware, though. All the inits for a runlevel are in a single file (from what I remember). However, I prefer the Arch/Gentoo approach since you can start and stop services using the same scripts as those used during the init process.
Most of the "dependency hell" you run into has nothing to do with the package format, and everything to do with the front-end program such as apt-get that you use that is a layer on top of DPKG or RPM.
Assuming that every package in the debian repository was also present in a apt4rpm repository, a user's experience would very likely be about the same if they were using apt4rpm.
If your Debian system only had DPKG, and didn't have apt-get, you would be just as frustrated and you would still have "dependency hell".
Therefore, apt-get is the real gold here, not the debian package format.
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..