Welcome to the Arch Linux Forum
 

This forum is to discuss Arch Linux.

--jeremy

Thank you Jeremy, all of us Archers appreciate it.

Now we can begin to corrupt the unsuspecting.

We're coming MasterC. ;)

Not to be offensive but aren't there enough Linux distros out there? I mean if you don't like whatever distro you have now, why not just tweak an existing distro to your liking. It could certainly save some hassles of trying to learn some 20+ different distros. I can understand however if Arch provided something completely awesome like an insanely secure yet use-able default configuration, or a distro made for gaming, etc.


Feel free to yell at me cause I'm used to it.


--tarballedtux

Arch is fast.

Arch is stable.

Arch is secure.

Arch is free.

Arch has the best package management out there.


None of those things are revolutionary, but when put together, it makes one hell of a distro.

I like Arch because it just works. I haven't had any problems with my Arch machine since I installed it.

I like Arch's (Judd's) philosophy of keeping things simple. Everything is pretty straight forward and there are no surprises.

i actually enver heard of it, but im nobody

I've been using *nix for about 5 years now or so, and I've never heard of it, either that or I did and forgot about it.

This what I did, trying to "tweak an existing disto to my liking" since 1997. Starting with SuSE. From SuSE to Caldera and few other RPM distros which are not easy to "tweak"/modify... ridget... and doesn't satisfy your liking in long term nor give much scope for creativity without having a "hight tech" developer skill. Moreover waiting for months for upgrades. No doubt, lot of improvement have been done since then.

Leaving RPM distros out from my liking, Debian came close showing the trend what a good distro suppose be. Unfortunately runs with "old" packages.... XFree86, KDE, etc. I am glad Knoppix is giving a new "life" to Debian.... its hardware detect is currently the best among all distros. Gentoo Linux, I would have loved if didn't face problem with the compiler upgrade from gcc-2.95. Also I noticed it doesn't have a strong base to handle major changes. After Gentoo, I came to a "dead end"... and went through DistroWatch and found Arch Linux.

First thing what amazed me was the smallness... simplicity. Took only 700Mb HD space when same packages (KDE, Mozilla, etc.) running Gentoo and other distros, takes 1.8Gb of HD space.... what to say about RedHat or SuSE (2.5Gb).

Without getting confused with "unnecessary" stuff and thereby having a simple and good base system, which "just does the work", it was easy to start "tweak" to your liking with Arch Linux.

In short, Arch Linux is a base from where you can build your own or use as its distrbuted, which continuously is upgraded with an excellent package manager system "Pacman".

PS.
I see Arch Linux a new trend in Linux Community where less skilled Linux users are no longer dependent what distros provide but also can interact with the distro. Not only setup a system of their own linking but also contribute their likings and ideas. This idea is not new. Debian, Slackware and few other non-RMP distros were in this line since beginning but required a high skill level and be part of the "group" (though Knoppix does well in this line where developers are guiding the users who are interested, to build their own live CDs). But users need simplicity. And this is what Arch Linux provides.

Nice to see this! :)

Cool

yes there are. but your point is weakened when you are running three distros yourself. for me it is arch only except for my router box and that is only because arch does not have an i586 version yet.

arch offers a far more stable sytem and far faster system than gentoo.

it offers a package management system that is simple and effective and cannot break itself, unlike portage.

it offers two different isos for install neither of which require a week to get a fully operational system.

it offers new packages

it is designed to be for a user. as in if a user want s to contribute physically they can. the developers listen to the users a will fairly quickly implient changes. motivated users can use the very easy and useful build sytem to either build their own packages, customize their packages (such as refining optimizations) or contribute packages for consideration/uploading to the arch linux repos.

now tell me what do your distros offer the linux community?

;) I don't think anyone is gonna yell at you :)

Let me try to answer this as best I can:

Why are there 50 different car companies? Why are there new computers built everyday when the ones that are out right now are plenty fast and can handle quite a bit?

Because things can be improved. With each new distro out there are more and more challenges. Competition breeds improvement. Arch is something that combines ease of use with speed and friendliness.

:)

Arch really is a great distro, it deserves quite a bit more recognition than it has gotten so far. I hope having this forum will give it this opportunity. :)

Cool

Wow, I think we are all coming off as zealots.


We are putting Gentoo users to shame. ;)


If Arch doesnt interest you, dont use it. We wont lynch you. (unless of course we find out where you live)

I started using Arch only about two weeks ago - shortly after 0.5 (Nova) appeared. I installed it in place of Slackware... not that I'm a power user, far from it! Still, I managed to get it going, and so far my impressions are overwhelmingly positive. It has the solid foundation and streamlined simplicity similar to Slackware, but its pacman is a superior package management tool. And there is a system similar to Gentoo's ports, as well... At first their desktop was a little behind Slackware + Dropline combo I had going before, but now their Mozilla has xft support, and they added vera fonts and ms fonts to pacman repositories, so it is really easy to have a good looking desktop. I'm very happy with Arch so far... My only objection is that somehow I ended up with ext3 system, when my preference would've been reiserfs. I don't think I ever had that option during the install.

and how does arch compare to gentoo. is it just an easier install or what? is everything compiled from source?

I just had a look at Arch Linux - I'm a passionned gentoo user, I think this needs to be said.
I didn't try Arch Linux, I just read quite some info about it, the package managment system etc.
How does it compare to gentoo?
-Gentoo requires more HD-space - since You download every source, and (One thing I don't like), there is no automated way to remove them. So eventually, you end up having kde3.0 source packages on your system, even if you're never ever going to need them again - which uses a lot of diskspace.
-ArchLinux is i686 optimized, which is nice, but Gentoo is Architecture optimized, so if you compare a binary one by one, Gentoo would turn out to be faster (though I doubt you would note it)
-Arch Linux installs faster - since it uses binary packages (Tell me whether I'm wrong). There is no need to compile everything.
-Gentoo Linux has far more packages available. Look through portage and tell me what you CANNOT find :)
-Gentoo has IMHO the Best support forum I could find. I never read the word rtfm etc. People are very nice over there. I would say, it's the best Linux Forum - after LQ of course :)
-Gentoo seems to be a bit more Geeky :)
I think this doesn't turn out which distro is better, it turns out what you like more. I'm more the Gentoo kind of guy :)

Arch really shouldn't be compared to Gentoo, as its focus is not really on installing from source. It does have that portage-like tree corresponding to every package in the binary repository, so you could possibly get sources and compile or recompile everything with flags of your choice.... but it's not really what Arch is about, I don't think.
It is really better compared to Slackware.
As far as the size matters go, it does have fewer packages and fewer users than Gentoo. But the selection is pretty good, and smaller community is actually a bonus in some ways - you get more personal attention.
I haven't used Gentoo so I could be wrong but I think it's outgrown that stage where you can still address its creators directly with questions and comments.

You can address its creators, but why would you don't need to. The creator is just working on portage and there are dozends of developers, who are really willing to help you out on your problems. Check out the forms, you see a lot of developers answering questions of regular users. They really care, as it seems.
You do make a point with the small community. It just has different advanteges and disadvanteges.
And besides, you're right that you should rather compare it to Slackware. But again - its just a different distro. Its for sure a good distro so who cares which one is better ;)

all I can say is that linux users are definitely spoiled for choice.

Yeah, we rock as a community don't we? Go us!

Us = Linux people.

:D

Arch will surely be noted when discussing the top 5 distros. So I figure why argue over the order in which the top 5 should be? They are equally as good, and that's why they are known as the 'top 5' and not 'number 1, number 2...' ;)

Cool

To be honest, both forums and irc channels are very good - I DID use both (gentoo for 6 months) and I've been on both distros' forum and irc channel -> you will be helped in a nice way in both distros. The advantage arch has is that it has a smaller community so you can actually discuss a lot with the developers :)

There seem to come up a lot of questions on how arch compares to other distros... My story looks a lot like rasat's

Started out with the rpm distros (redhat/mandrake/suse) -> something was always broken (mouse didn't work, horrible fonts, installer crashes,...) and it's too difficult for a n00b to fix that. RPM also sucks for people who want to run the latest software all the time and these distros are _slow_.

FreeBSD rocked, but I also wanted to learn linux so I started using gentoo. This went well for months, although the compiling time was something I really disliked - really, the developers shouldn't be so stubborn and allow BOTH binary packages and compilation from source (as with fbsd and arch linux). But at the end the whole distro was unstable and unusable, things started to crash randomly - not good - very good documentation in gentoo though, and easy to find help on the forums and irc (as opposed to the rpm distros I could actually solve my problems here).

So Debian it was. The stable distro can be very stable, but the software is waaay too old, so I used unstable. The problem is that it's actually unstable! Something was regularly broken and the problem is that the debian zealots don't understand that this is NOT normal behavior and that I am NOT gonna use stable.

So distrowatch helped me in finding archlinux! I have been using it ever since. It's faster than gentoo. Honest - compiling stuff yourself to make it a nanosecond faster is bullshit. Arch feels faster than my gentoo box ever was. I can actually type pacman -Syu and my complete system with all software will be updated in minutes, not hours as in gentoo. And it won't be broken. Updating gcc actually works! Problems will be solved by the nice community, often by the developers or even apeiro himself. Yes, there are still a lot of apps missing but actually there's prolly enough packages to do about anything you want. And new apps are added all the time. I also like the easy configuration in arch, thumbs up to the developers!

I can really advice all (open minded ;) users from other distros with some extra time and HD space to try arch - you might never look back ;)

I haven't looked at the 0.5 installer but I would imagine this was because you let it partition and create filesystems automatically. If you do this manually you can choose reiserfs, this at least was the case with the 0.4 installer.

My way to Arch runs close to those of rasat and =X¥®µ§=. First RedHat and a little Mandrake, beeing a noob I couldn't figure out dependencies and hadn't heard of apt-for-rpm. Then I went sourcebased with Crux. The compiletimes were a hassle and few programs vere availabe, programs outside the base system tended to be unstable. Tried gentoo, the CDs wouldn't boot and I lacked the patience to figure it out. Took a quick tour into debianland (woody) but weird bugs plagued the system, also programs vere too old. Tried debian-by-knoppix and found it a real hassle to unisnstall software. Heard of Arch via osnews.com and installed. Been running it since then and now I'm here preaching ;)

//Edited for spelling//

I thought I'd post my two bits as well.

Config summed up the differences between Arch and Gentoo pretty well. But as ferrix said, Arch is probably closer in style to Slackware than it is to Gentoo.

First: I've never ran Gentoo before, so everything I know is second-hand. People rave about their friendly community and excellent documentation. Gentoo sets the bar here, and we're working hard to do the same at Arch. Dennis Herbrich has finally taken documentation duties away from me, which is a boon to the users out there who may actually need it (I'm the type that ends up writing documentation for myself, so it really doesn't help others).

Outside of that, Arch and Gentoo don't really have a lot in common.

One interesting trend I've noticed lately is that many newbie-ish users come to Arch from Gentoo, after using their excellent documentation and community to bootstrap their knowledge to the point where they can hold their own in Arch. This wasn't in our master plan, but nevertheless, it seems to be happening on a small scale.

it is a cross between ports and apt i would say. no better or worse than portage though some would claim otherwise (usually without reasons/proof)

[quote]-Gentoo requires more HD-space - since You download every source, and (One thing I don't like), there is no automated way to remove them. So eventually, you end up having kde3.0 source packages on your system, even if you're never ever going to need them again - which uses a lot of diskspace.[quote]

gentoo also forces alot of extra things on you in the way of build time depends some of which will never be used again. i have yet to see a ebuild that removes such unecessary build time depends.

sometimes true sometimes not. but i can also tell you that if you use the -O3 cflag then you may not have faster binaries and will likely not have smaller binaries or even functioning binaries. this is such a weak claim. it is like the arguements between which is better AMD or pentium, etc. if you think milliseconds make alot of difference to a general user then by all means use a bunch of ridiculous cflags.
yes it does but which makes it much faster to fix if you make a stupid error and have to reinstall your root partition. not a big thing but if you need your computer in an hour or so then gentoo will drive you nuts. the down time drives many nuts.

and debian has more than gentoo. whats your point? when i installed gentoo it did not have many packages and many were masked because they did not work.

generalization/inexperieince. there are LOTS of very helpful linux communities. this is a completely subjective thing. it is also annoying. i help alot of people besides arch linux folks and this downplays my efforts and others like me (and other BBS's as well)

again inexperience. gentoo forces one to learn a bit more but i did not learn much over what i had learned in debian libranet and nowhere near as much as i have in arch.

if this is the case then why compare? why bother coming into the arch forum and downplaying it? i know you mean no harm but it gets annoying when zealots run wild.

people claim i am a arch zealot but in reality i just try and defend its right to exist. most of my "zealotry" is in defence of arch. in reality though i could not care less what you use just don't downplay what i use unless you have the proof to back it up. ok?

i never try and tell people what to use or even what distro i use unless they ask. and i will be honest. arch is not perfect....but then again no distro is. no OS is.

I thought I wouldn't mind people yelling at me what it wasn't fun. It's fine anyway I was asking for it. It should be pointed out that I don't run all three distributions. I only keep it there as a reminder of how many different distros/version I've used.

Because I like to argue: Sarah31:

Stable? Most of all Linux distros are stable unless your the type to type rm -rf to fix problems.

Fast? Maybe but I bet not too much faster.

New Packages? Who doesn't offer new packages? Besides dead distros.


--tarballedtux

"Arch is fast.
Arch is stable.
Arch is secure.
Arch is free.
Arch has the best package management out there."


I can tell you all:

Debian is fast.
Debian is stable.
Debian is secure.
Debian is free.
Debian has the best package management out there.

Just my humble opinion.

Why come to the Arch forum just to talk about how great Debian is? Leave that in the Debian forum, we won't bother you.

Really? Can APT download and compile source automatically ala PORTS?

I agree. While discussion/debate is good, remember that choice is one of the many things that makes Linux great.

--jeremy

I just wanted to say thanks to jeremy for creating a forum for my favorite distro. I have been using Arch for 6 months now, and it is the only one I boot. I tried gentoo as well, but really, who wants to wait 30 hours just for a basic desktop install?

Also, welcome to LQ to Apiero and Sarah31, I am sure your knowledge and expertise in Arch will help many here at LQ as well as at the Arch forum.

Cheers

That's what I'm trying to say :) The difference is so small, so why would one want to care? There are a few cases in which it helps a lot, but not in general.
Sorry, I can't agree - I have seen many very friendly places, but I was overwhelmed by the Gentoo guys. Never saw anything like it. I'm not saying this, because its distro-specific, no, its just the people. Of course, very subjective (Trying to stop a flamewar ;)
Did I downgrade it? I did not intend to do so! If I did, sorry. Somebody asked for a comparison between Gentoo and Arch Linux, so I took some spare time to create one - and you're saying, I shouldn't have done so :confused:
I just tried to say that they are different not better or worse. You don't need to defent arch, because I don't offend Arch - as simple as that. And I'll be watching this forum - and if I can be helpful somewhere, I'll help, whether its Arch, Slack, Gentoo, Debian or whatsoever :)

Lol... I like Arch a lot... Thats all I have to say about it.

yeah but have you used arch?

no

then how can you compare?

i have (granted my gentoo experieince was a year ago). i would compare but there is really no point to because whatever i will say gets rebuffed anyway by gentoo users who have not even tried a i686 optimized distro.

anyway my time is obviously wasted posting to this thread anymore.

sarcastic

as gentoo is obviously so much more superior to any linux distro out there. i mean how could it not be? it has no bugs at all....

/sarcastic

goodbye

In that case Sarah, I thnik Windows ME is the best Linux out there :)

By referring to an individual in the plural it sounds like you're displacing some bad experiences and aggression onto a guy who is *a* Gentoo user and might not merit all that anger by himself.

People can do research and post their impressions without having hands-on experience and, if they're upfront about a lack of hands-on experience, what's the problem? Just disagree from your superior vantage point. No reason to get </sarcastic> and disgusted sounding about 'wasting your time'.

People aren't going to be swayed from their distro or towards another by hostility. Play up the pros and maybe they'll be curious enough to try it and, if it's better - better for them - they'll use it.

Or at least, that's my reaction. For most of this thread I was getting pretty curious about trying it. Still will, but I've got this Gentoo disk already downloaded and burned that I haven't even tried yet. ;)

Then check out the live cd, if you like it you can download the disc to your drive and continue playing with it, f you don't like it it's just another cd with useless information on it

MasterC has LOTS of CD's with useless info on them, but the Arch Live CD is definitely not one of them. :cool:

OT:
Have you ever tried talking about yourself in the third person? Try it, it's fun. :D

Cool

digiot wonders about an Arch Linux live CD. He had no idea there was one. He thinks he could always use a third live CD. :D

Forgot to say - it *is* fun. :)

Um. I just went to the Arch Linux site and it killed my browser. And when I popped Mozilla back up my fluxbox tab was in the wrong place. Had to restart Mozilla again to fix it. That's not encouraging.

Weird, I must have visited the site in like any browser you can possibly use and it always showed up without any problems...

Are you sure it was caused by that site?

Well, I think it was the wrong link but as soon as I hit it *zoop* bye-bye to Mozilla 1.3. It was the upper-left 'Get a CD' link that goes offsite. But I hit the top-right 'Download' link the second time around, followed a couple more, and I'm downloading it now. The Arch page itself, loaded fine - just the link on it was goofy.

Thanks arielext - I went stumbling around anyway, but thanks. :)

I won't be able to try it right away though - I'm trying to straighten out my Celeron box. But soon. :)

[QUOTE]Originally posted by digiot
[B]By referring to an individual in the plural it sounds like you're displacing some bad experiences and aggression onto a guy who is *a* Gentoo user and might not merit all that anger by himself.[quote]

oh? what individual am i refrring to ? you when i made reference to gentoo users i meant gentoo users. not you specifically.

yeah sure but that is what you would call a an unscientific work or pretty well an opinion. i never said i had i superior vantage point but do have experience with both systems and for many reasons i prefer arch to gentoo. the problem with your "review" is that you discount a distro without even being aware of "the facts" or having even tried it to know if "the facts" you use to discount it even mean anything.

sound disgusted? feh i AM disgusted. i have enough experience on other forums to be so sick of the standard gentoo zealotry that pervades almost ever corner of every general (and even soem specialized) linux forum. gentoo is a good distro sure but it is not for everyone and it DEFINITELY is NOT the best distro out there. neither is arch. EVERY linux distro is fraught with bugs and glitches. linux in general is not perfect..NO os is. so proliferating talk that makes gentoo or whatever sound godlike in it performance is just a pure waste of time.

am i trying to sway people to arch? you are trying to sway people away from it without even trying and being able to base your opinion on an actual test on it. i know pros and cons of it very well but no one asked me for pros and cons. i am defending against wankers like you that want to discount it from the linux ranks based solely on your opinion that nothing is better than gentoo

have fun. MasterC please delete my account i won't be back.

Sarah, no need to get upset over a few users reactions. In my other post I sorta described some of that as 'normal'. Let it ride, don't sweat the small stuff ;)

And as a side note, I'm just MasterC :) Jeremy is the Site Admin, and generally we don't delete accounts. Feel free to come and go, it's an open community even to those that from time to time don't wish to participate. I'm sorry you feel this way currently.

Please understand that people are going to say things occasionally that won't agree with your views. It's that which makes us human. It's that which makes us members of the Linux community. We all have choice, and with that comes bias-ism, regardless of it's roots. No worries. For those interested they will seek out what is available to them (such as ArchLinux). For those who are not, they won't have in the first place anyway. All we can do is provide assistance along the way to all who ask.

:)

Cool

well fine if you won't erase my account then so be it. i will not be back.

i expected an arch forum to be about arch not aboutn gentoo, debian, mandrake or other distros/oses.

i don't sweat the small stuff but i also don't tolerate os/distro bashing by individuals who have absolutely no concept of how other distributions are.

there are other issues i have with this board as well. small isues but since i am pissed i don't have time to deal with them i am busy with arch i am busy with JL. LQ will do just fine without me digiot can easy fill the void since he is so wise.

Sara31
 

This is, after all, just one thread..
I'm sure thie forum will mature with Arch-specific questions & answers.

Exactly. You need to simmah naah....

There is a new distro thread so everybody has to come check it out. A lot of folks have never heard of Arch so they react with fear and uncertainty.

In a perfect world these people would keep their mouths shut but it is not always so. Rather than pout and give up on this forum after what...a week or so...just ignore the trollers and try to help people with Arch.

As camelrider said, this thread (and by extension Arch...) is a novelty to the many thousands of users of LQ. Give it a bit, and the novelty will wear off, and it will mature.

Well, I'm glad you finally got my name right. I rest my case about displaced aggression. I am a Slack user *points to distros field* and specifically said I've yet to try either Gentoo or Arch. I never made any "review" at all. That was my first post on this thread. The individual you were arguing with was Config who is a Gentoo user and, as far as I could tell, admitted a couple of limitations in Gentoo, praised many aspects of Arch, and said Gentoo was still the distro for him. This was the vicious pro-Gentoo attack that got you so incensed.

I hope you do come back, but hope you do so more calmly. The Slack forum is full of references to other distros - the focus is Slack. This forum will be full of references to other distros. The focus will be on Arch. It's not at all surprising that, with almost 50K members, few of whom use Arch, there are going to be questions about it and comparisons to Gentoo or Slack or whatever people are already familiar with. After getting a fix on what Arch is all about by comparison with other distros, Arch will become more familiar and conversation will become progressively more Arch-centric among greater and greater numbers of Arch users. As long as some Arch users don't run off prospective newcomers to Arch and then leave, themselves.