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Interview with Arch Linux Core Team

Posted by timothy on from the golden dept.

Provataki writes "OSNews posted a juicy interview with the Arch Linux core team discussing everything about their promising distro, including their original package manager 'pacman,' their competition, their plans and more."

10 comments

  1. Re:I hate Arch Linux. by Saeed+al-Sahaf · · Score: 1, Redundant

    This story is not up to Roland Piquepaille's high standards.

    --
    "Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
  2. Good distro by dimss · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I've tried Arch last year. Mostly good distro but their i18n support was very poor. First, I have to rebuild ncurses with utf-8 support (Looks like this one is fixed by judd). Second, glibc comes with reduced locale set. I had to build ru_RU.KOI8-R myself. Debian, for example, provides nice frontend for doing this. Slackware comes with huge number of locales by default.

  3. naming by sfcat · · Score: 1, Insightful

    Why does every FOSS package name tells us nothing about what it does? Pacman, that's not going to confuse anyone. Not that it really matters, it just occured to me. I guess it is better than Kensho, a product that I worked on last year, the name doesn't actually translate directly into any English word but it kinda means serenity.

    --
    "Those that start by burning books, will end by burning men."
    1. Re:naming by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

      You obviously haven't been using Unix systems long enough to understand this. Look up the history behind commands such as cat, rm, ls, etc. pacman fits in perfectly, and thinking "PACkage MANager" isn't that hard.

  4. Great distro... by deggy · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I've been using arch for about 18 months now and it's a great distro - I like to keep bleeding edge and it allows me to use all the latest libs with ease.
    I aggree that it's not for beginners, and still takes considerable user effort at times but it's got a sensible conf file layout and syntax and provides complete control over the OS, it much harder to FUBAR that a Mandrake or a Redhat.

    D.

  5. Naming is Hard! by Makarakalax · · Score: 2, Informative
    Why does every FOSS package name tells us nothing about what it does?


    Pacman stands for Package Manager.

    But to defend less well named products, it is very difficult to name things, and extremely difficult to name things well. Also frankly it is far more important to pick a name that is memorable and easy to pronounce. It doesn't take long to figure out what something does (man pacman, pacman --help, google for pacman etc.), but if you can't remember it next time you need to use it, then the name is useless.

    Sure it's still a good idea to have a small reference to what the application does in the name, but it isn't that important. Google does ok. Not having a reference to what you do in your name means you get more word of mouth. People have to ask "What does that do?", and straight away they are interested.

    Generic names don't really make good names in the overcrowded world of software. People don't realise that you are talking about an Application when you refer to Mac OSX's "Mail". Word does OK because it is so commonly known. But Excel is an excellent name for an application, Access too. You get a small feel for what the application does but the name is fairly unique and memorable.

    And finally, your name (sfcat) tells me nothing about you, why didn't you pick a name that would instantly help me know what kind of person you are? My name is obviously better, it tells you that I am a bit weird.
    1. Re:Naming is Hard! by sfcat · · Score: 1
      Google does ok. Not having a reference to what you do in your name means you get more word of mouth. People have to ask "What does that do?", and straight away they are interested.

      I was just pointing something out, don't be so eager to insult. I googled for Pacman, and you know what, all the results were for the game, duh? I've been using Linux for 12 years now so I know about the names uses and yes, I could figure out what pacman does. But that doesn't mean most people can.

      Yes, naming is hard, but pacman? That is going to confuse alot of people. And if they can't figure out what an application does from the name, they aren't necessarily interested. For instance, do you care what Kensho does? I doubt it. Just because something is obvious to you or I doesn't mean that it will be obvious to someone who just wants their computer to work. Not everyone is a programmer who has been using UNIX since before the dawn of time.

      --
      "Those that start by burning books, will end by burning men."
    2. Re:Naming is Hard! by Makarakalax · · Score: 1

      I'm not sure why you thought I was trying to insult you.

      It's true that software are tools, and you search for the tool by name, and you hope the name will reveal the tool's use. However it isn't that big a deal. All GUIs nowadays have a description field, Google will help you if you search well (eg "pacman ArchLinux"), man pacman would also help, so will "man pacman".

      The best thing a name can be is memorable and catchy. Car manufacturers have long since given up on contextual names, they do fine.

      No I've never heard of Kenshoo, I don't know what it does either. I logically assume that if I wanted a tool that did what it does I'd find out about it. I doesn't really matter what it's called; word-of-mouth, google, whatever, would lead me to it.

      But yeah I agree that on a scale of things, essential command-line tools like a package manager and directory listing tool need good names, and UNIX sucks for those for sure. But compared to apt, yum, rpm and portage I think pacman is the best.