Advise

techforay · 06-09-2020, 12:43 PM

Hi All
I would like some perspective. I am pretty new to linux although i have played with it for awhile and am going through command line tutorials. I have three devices with linux installed. I have a older laptop with Arch installed. I have a raspberry pi with arch arm loaded. I also have a surface pro with Manjaro installed. Obviously theses are Arch linux based os’s. It was fun to build the system from scratch on the laptop. I am interested in preparing and taking some of the linux exams and getting some certifications. My question is this. I know that Arch uses AUR repository and is a source for lots of packages that a guy may want. I am confused why when you go to a site like virtual box why they don’t list Arch as a option for downloads. I know you can get it from AUR but Virtual box has download for 25 different distros but Arch is not one of them. Is Arch not as popular as i thought. If i am interested in getting certified should i be using another distro as my main distro?

teckk · 06-09-2020, 01:03 PM

Arch does things arch's own way. I would advice you not to download something from a site and try to install it on an arch machine. The way to do that is to get the source and make a PKGBUILD for it.
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/PKGBUILD
Then compile it using makepkg, install with pacman -U, then you won't mess up your file tree, have unmet dependencies, or different versions of python all messed up.

If you are going to run arch then do things the arch way. It'll save you all kinds of problems.

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Arch_Build_System
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/VirtualBox

Code:

pacman -Si virtualbox
Repository      : community
Name            : virtualbox
Version         : 6.1.8-2
Description     : Powerful x86 virtualization for enterprise as well as home use
Architecture    : x86_64
URL             : https://virtualbox.org/
...
Depends On      : glibc  openssl  curl  gcc-libs  libpng  python  sdl  libvpx
                  libxml2  procps-ng  shared-mime-info  zlib  libxcursor
                  libxinerama  libx11  libxext  libxmu  libxt  opus  qt5-base
                  qt5-x11extras  VIRTUALBOX-HOST-MODULES
Optional Deps   : vde2: Virtual Distributed Ethernet support
                  virtualbox-guest-iso: Guest Additions CD image
                  virtualbox-ext-vnc: VNC server support
                  virtualbox-sdk: Developer kit
Conflicts With  : virtualbox-ose
Replaces        : virtualbox-ose
Download Size   : 35.35 MiB
Installed Size  : 161.25 MiB
...

shruggy · 06-09-2020, 01:04 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by techforay

If i am interested in getting certified should i be using another distro as my main distro?

Depends on what certification you're aiming at. If it's RHCSA/RHCE, then obviously you'll be better off using RHEL or, at least, CentOS. OTOH, for LPIC-1 the distro you choose probably doesn't matter that much.

And I wouldn't jump to conclusions based solely on what packages one piece of software is offered in. Even a popular piece of software like VirtualBox.

techforay · 06-09-2020, 01:27 PM

Thank you for your input

DavidMcCann · 06-10-2020, 10:12 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by techforay

If i am interested in getting certified should i be using another distro as my main distro?

In a professional context, the choices are usually
- with support: RHEL, SUSE, or Ubuntu
- without support: CentOS, Debian Stable
On a server, RHEL/CentOS and SUSE are much the same, as they both use the Linux Standard Base.

On the other hand, I've always used the Arch wiki as a reference tool, although I'd never use it!