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Arch Linux For Newbies? Manjaro Is Here!
Penurious Penguin writes "Well within the top ten Linux distros, Arch Linux has a strong following for sure. But with an installation process requiring a little more involvement than the average distro, not every prospective user is ready to embrace the Arch Way, and understandably so. This is where Manjaro steps in. With a 100% compatibility with Arch, uncompromising adherence to principia KISS and a pre-configured Xfce, — or alternatively available GNOME & KDE — those who've been hesitating to explore Arch now have a few less excuses.
And a little side-note for those still bitter about the lack of package-signing: You'll be glad to know that Arch fully implemented package-signing in June of 2012."
just here to say - for me, arch is what turned linux into a curiosity I tinkered with occasionally into the foundation of my home network and daily productivity.
Being short on time for the last 6 months, I've kept 4 machines right up to date with the latest packages through some fairly major changes (filesystem and udev, off the top of my head) by doing little more than invoking pacman every now and then.
When I get some time, I know I can get my hands dirty using abs if I so choose. Arch is beautiful.
Hej! Nasi tu byli!
As someone who has been interested in Arch but turned off by the laborious installation (call me lazy but I just have better things to do), this might just do the trick.
How is this different from Chakra?
Than.
The package list looks like he kept adding codec support and other stuff you may not need until he hit the arbitrary 700MB limit. I know there will be a few who use it but who wants wavpack in their default install. Everyone can download these later.
I guess there is not too many look like services that slow you down but unless he used crap compression the default install size is that of Ubuntu.
Just give the user a desktop environment, a browser (to look up stuff on the wiki), the text installer for the config files and a basic init setup that gets key services.
One of the main points of installing Arch is that it forces you to learn about how your system is built.
While some people have reported problems with Arch's rolling updates, I have had zero troubles in my 6 months of using it. When something pops up that requires you to do anything more than "sudo pacman -Syu", you can always find the solution on the forum announcements.
It's absolutely true that I would not bother to spend the time setting up an Arch install for someone else. I gave a friend a Kubuntu install and I was surprised to see how much stuff was buggy on it compared to my own KDE Arch. So maybe there is a niche for this, but I am not at all convinced that things can be made "user-friendly" without them also becoming non-transparent.
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law
those who've been hesitating to explore Arch now have a few less excuses.
Can somebody tell me what is wrong with this sentence fragment? FUCK
Archbang, anyone?
http://www.archbang.org
i find it funny that all of my hardware works out of the box using Arch, but ubuntu gives me problems after problems
Bridge linux, Pure ARCH, but installs xfce as well, a good way to ease into arch linux.
Just installed arch for the first time and in some ways loved it. It has the minimalist feel of Gentoo but without the time taken to compile all of the source. But still has a lot of the work in doing a stage 3 install al be it somewhat quicker. Hmm do I prefer Gentoo or Arch or the ease of something like Ubuntu. I hate all of the crap that is installed with a base install of Ubuntu but if you go with Ubuntu server you can trim it down loads. Then again I Love Gentoo's Portage package management system, it is awesome!!!! pacman is good but does not have le flexability of overlays. Ubuntu provides for adding additional sources which are handled by the builtin package manager. But with arch you have to have wrappers for pacman such as pacaur to install non-official packages which is'nt really intuitive. In so many ways this could be a good thing, bringing a powerful linux system to the masses. But in others a bad thing bringing a powerful tool with out knowing how to use it!
Has arch been able to enable stack cookies at all yet? Without these it seems pretty unusable for many purposes.
I think that you're missing the point of the distro.
Try TC: http://distro.ibiblio.org/tinycorelinux/welcome.html
4wdloop
But I was running Gentoo before I switched to Arch, so maybe my perspective is just skewed. Also, it's been several years since my last OS install; my memory of it may be a bit fuzzy by now.
It's a newbier version of a newbie bistro :D
I think that you're missing the point of the distro.
No they are not clear. Still can't tell if they newbie in the arch or linux sense.
My initial understanding was that they wanted to help you skip the install, which is not fun without prior knowledge and the beginners instructions were a little out of date.
Installing user-space programs that most will never use does not fit the arch way. They appear to want to make Debian with an "arch core", which provides none of benefits of arch as the core arch utilities are only average.
I or users still want access to these packages, I just don't want to have to track them with rolling releases or taking up space on my hypothetical SSD if I don't chose them.
As for me i am now learning Gentoo, learning and compiling tinkering with the system is how i want my Linux Experiment to be.....
I don't like Vanilla Flavor's i drink my coffee black
i think arch used to be easier to install before this most recent release.
Debian has ideology and a huge community, fedora has corporate clout, ubuntu has support, Linux Mint has "like ubuntu but not batshit insane" what has Arch to offer?
If the only thing new about Arch is it's package manager then you better give me an awesome sales pitch because I'm sick of centralized servers. The thing I want to see succeed most than anything is a distro based on Zero Install or something like it. What good is arch for?
But... the future refused to change.
Maybe I'm asking too much, but will Manjaro offer a version that integrates with Enlightenment, instead of the current Xfce integration ?
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
While some people have reported problems with Arch's rolling updates, I have had zero troubles in my 6 months of using it.
Six months doesn't seem like a very long time to vouch for the stability of the updates.
I'm not talking about Arch here specifically, but it seems to me any system accumulates bits of custom configuration and slight deviations from the common use patterns over time. In a word, entropy. As your particular setup becomes more specialized and rare, it becomes less likely to have been covered by testing and therefore more prone to conflicts with new updates. So while a good six months is a good six months, it may not say that much about stability years down the road.
Unless I'm mistaken, Distrowatch rankings are not a measure of "most popular" (first link).
Even Distrowatch says Distrowatch isn't a reliable measure of popularity.
(My definition of popularity is usage share.)
This works. Uses systemd already which looks like something arch will be going too... so saves a little hassle, especially if you are new to arch. I ran the xfce version and no hassles. Bridge Linux is cool too, and has a nice post-install script which I really like. It's weird to think of installing Arch so easily... but it seems to be picking up steam!
You get the brevity and coolness of #! plus the beautiful versatility of arch, and it actually works on modern hardware. It also uses openbox.
And I know this is just a plug for DistroX (sorry, didn't RTFS), but for people insterested in other Arches that aren't:
List of Arch Based Distros
Well, I've been using Arch since... had to actually login into the forum to see how long, since 2004. At some point I when I was finally able to use Linux at work, I told myself I should use a more "professional" distribution, as I'm partial to KDE I tried OpenSUSE. That didn't last long, it was a really buggy and generally unpleasant experience, I promptly returned to Arch. In my experience, given how bleeding edge Arch is, it's really amazingly stable. Yes, every now and then the updates require some manual intervention, but if pacman refuses to upgrade for some reason, check the home page instead of forcing the upgrade and you should be fine.
Having said that, the rolling release system also means you have to go with the flow - you don't need to upgrade daily, or weekly even, but still every now and then. My MythTV backend (which I've retired since I found I really don't watch that much tv) was on Arch, and was pretty much unattended for a few years. Trying to upgrade that box simply didn't work. Mind you, it worked fine for what it was intended to do, and probably still would should I turn it on, so as such there was no need to upgrade.
It's currently #7
I was using Gentoo before I switched to Arch, as well.
The main draw for me is that Arch doesn't make specialized versions of packages, plug their own configuration tools or intentionally cripple itself due to ideology.
Apart from the boot-up message saying "Welcome to Arch Linux!" and the package manager, I could just as well be running Linux From Scratch. I like that, to me it's the closest to what Linux actually is, and it really isn't that hard to deal with compared to Fedora or Ubuntu or whatever, because I don't have to look up distro-specific guides for anything. Everything is vanilla and just as the developers intended.
I just recently migrated to Grub2 and Systemd. Couldn't have been easier.
Eat the rich.
Arch also has one of the 2 Hurd distros - the other being Debian. Wonder how well that one's coming along?
He's obviously an expert
Track IP - Remotely track the IP address of a machine via email or MySQL.
I'd consider myself a pretty experienced Linux user, having been using it since it came on two HD floppies. I use Ubuntu, and keep hearing people going on about "oh Ubuntu is for n00bs, only n00bs use it, use $other_distro because you get more control of what gets installed".
I don't care about controlling what gets installed. I want to take a bare OS-less machine and have it up and running with the minimum of hassle. If I'm spending time watching pages and pages of compiler output scroll past, I'm not having fun and I'm wasting time - and more importantly, I'm not getting *real paying work done*.
So, fine, if you want to *play* then stick with distros that take two hours to install to a basic command prompt and ask you all kinds of pointless questions about how you want /opt/srv/lib/ formatted. If you actually want to get stuff done and learn about Linux, stick to the "easy to install" distros.
Try https://parabolagnulinux.org/
That depends a lot. On a distro like Ubuntu, 6 months means a single real update really. On Arch, since it's rolling release (and bleeding edge), every single package may have been updated several times, as well as some not-so-minor changes to the filesystem, for example.
I've been running two PCs with arch for about 18 months now, and have never encountered any real issues with the rolling-update process.
Because experienced users usually want to configure their own PCs to their likings, and Ubuntu makes this way harder than Arch.
While installing Ubuntu may be easier, configuring Ubuntu to my liking can take a lot more time than it takes to configure Arch.
Or course, newbies will customize neither, so Ubuntu is the way to go for them.
In my stint in previous company I was given a machine with 256 mb ram. Running ubuntu was a nightmare & so I installed arch with openbox, feh & rxvt-unicode. I never looked back. The only issue was the hibernate but that never worked for me in ubuntu anyways.
I've been using arch for about 4-6 years now and I've never had to sit and watch compiler output. It takes about 20mins to actually install and set-up (a bit longer if you count downloading the packages and updating them). I've never been asked about the format of /opt/srv/lib (I don't even have one). Other than the occasional update requiring a bit more intervention than pacman -Syu, the up keep on Arch is as simple as pacman -Syu and the install wasn't much more difficult.
Having said that, the rolling release system also means you have to go with the flow - you don't need to upgrade daily, or weekly even, but still every now and then.
And that's the problem with Arch. You can leave a Debian installation unattended for years and it will still correctly update. Why can't Arch do that?
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
Because once you know what you're doing every distro is easy to install.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
Computers aren't supposed to get you to the applications you want and let you get work and playing done! They're supposed to be time-sucking vampires from hell that make you throw them out windows.
Sillyface.
Promote true freedom - support standards and interoperability.
I'm not an Arch developer, so this is just my impression as a user. Arch seems to target for simplicity and also being bleeding edge. As such, there are points when some very fundamental changes have to be made - for the benefit of the user, in my opinion, but it also means the user has to make the changes as well. It's been so many years that I can't even recall what it was called... but way back when men used to walk uphill both ways and edit their xorg.conf to get two monitors (actually, it wasn't even xorg.conf back then... X11.conf? It's been too many years. But I digress), device hotplugging and detecting in the first place on boot involved quite a few hacks. I can't recall what the most popular hack was, but Arch never embraced it (naturally, being Arch, those hacks were available for those who wanted them) - instead, once udev became available, that was the solution. And while it took some time for the popular DEs to utilize it as well, once they did, everything worked great without any unneeded (and buggy) layer in between.
But I'm genuinely curious - I've never really used Debian. From what I've gathered, there are three "branches": stable, unstable and testing. And sometimes, unstable (or is it testing? do correct me if I'm wrong) becomes stable, and a new very-much-unstable branch is formed. So, you are telling me that such an upgrade is always flawless? How about should you skip a few major releases (given how long they take with Debian that is highly unlikely, but bear with me), could you still upgrade?
Anyway, would I run Arch on a production server? Certainly not. Nor would I Debian, or any other "community" distro. When the shit hits the fan, there must be a corporation you can hold responsible. But for my own (also professional) use I've found Arch to be very likeable. YMMV, HTH, HAND. But at the moment, instead of rambling online, the scotch next to me seems more desirable at the moment. Perhaps I'll continue rambling further later, even more incoherent than now.
All good if you are happy with the standard ubuntu packages, not good at all if you want to tweak your system substantially without the packagemanager hosing your system at the next update, not to mention the next dist-upgrade (Which does not exist in arch).
It takes a good workday to build an archsystem from scratch, but from there on it just works until I upgrade my computer, and I really cannot say that about ubuntu.
But the most important aspect of arch is the excellent wiki with clear consise howtos. Ubuntus forums is riddled with unsolved questions, nonworking hacks, etc.
Do they boot faster?
Do they run faster?
Do they detect hardware better?
Do they add software application better, or faster, than Debian or Ubuntu?
What are the real advantages?
Most people don't care about "customising" their distro. They want to get work done.
If you want to spend all your time glueing fake plastic spoilers and splitters to your car and adding fancy glowy neons, then fine. Once I've got the seat adjusted and the radio tuned, I'm quite happy to leave the rest alone and get on with the fun bit.
I never tweak my systems, I install it and actually use it
"It takes a good workday to build an archsystem from scratch, but from there on it just works until I upgrade my computer, and I really cannot say that about ubuntu."
yea ok you cant say that about ubuntu, you dont spend a day fiddle dicking with tweaking an OS that if you move it to a new machine will fuck up ... I have a USB drive with ubuntu 9 on it that gets used to back peoples stuff up, not a live disk its been ran on everything from a pentium 2 to I7 laptops and I never had to touch a single thing.
I agree to that. I just installed both Arch and Manjaro to compare them with each other and with Ubuntu with Mate. And I like the speed but I have a job to do and do not want to tweak that last bit: it should just work. Manjaro does a good job to ease installation but you still have to do a lot yourself without a graphical packagemanager. And yes I know how to get along without it but why should I? Computers should make my life easier not harder.
Don't get all defensive about Arch, GP was referring to Gentoo.
Error 404 - Sig Not Found
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Pacman_GUI_Frontends
I haven't bothered with one. I mostly just pacman -Syu, pacman -Ss, pacman -S and pacman -R but to each his own.
mod parent up.
Crunchbang installs easily, recognizes all my hardware, etc., and is fast (faster than Manjaro this computer). It has the ease of installation of something like Ubuntu or Mint, but sucks less resources and runs a lot faster.
Most people don't care about "customising" their distro. They want to get work done.
And that's why arch isn't for most people. :)
If you want to spend all your time glueing fake plastic spoilers and splitters to your car and adding fancy glowy neons, then fine. Once I've got the seat adjusted and the radio tuned, I'm quite happy to leave the rest alone and get on with the fun bit.
Actually, arch isn't about customizing the look and feel of your OS, it's more lower level than that. Think more in the lines of "changing the engine", "replacing the steering wheel with a joystick", or stuff like that. It's not just about the paint.