Hey y'all. I have a question for everyone. Its been on my mind for awhile now. I have been thinking of moving from Ubuntu to Arch. I started with Ubuntu 4 years ago. A year later I started programming. All I actually do on my Linuxbox is program, search the internet. Which is mostly to learn something about programming or Linux. I mostly use the command line for everything. I would say 50% is command line use and the other 50 is the internet.

So, since I only use my box to develop, what would you suggest I do? What would be best for me? In your opinion of course. Thanks.

Use the distro you are comfortable with. If that is Ubuntu than so may it be. If you really want to give Arch (or any other distro) a try I would recommend to do that in a VM first and see if it works the way you like. Ubuntu and Arch are very different beasts.

I am very comfortable with Ubuntu obviously since I have stuck with it since the beginning. All I do is program on it anyway. I just like the freedom Linux gives me to develop and to move around! I don't necessarily need to move to Arch to get a better development environment. I have just wanted to give it a try because of the challenge and amongst other things. I know Arch is a different beast than Ubuntu. I Wouldn't even call Ubuntu a beast lol but I have 3 hard drives so no need for a VM.

I guess I am going to go for it then. What's there to lose right? I am zero filling the HDD now. Only 80GiG. So, it should only take a few hours to fill.

So @TobiSGD, why did you choose Slack over Arch and Gentoo?? Any particular reason?

Your current system if you mess up with partitions or disks. But of course it is up to you, I personally prefer VMs for basic tests.

For me it is Slackware for some simple reasons:
- Slackware is rock-stable, even the development release has almost never issues. That is why I am not using Arch.
- I can install Slackware in a few minutes, because its core-system is binary, but can re-compile anything when needed. That is why I am not using Gentoo.
- It has no dependency resolution, that is why I am not using other distributions, besides an old Debian install on my file-server, I am just to lazy to replace it and it just works.
- I have total control over my system, more than I can get with any other distro (besides LFS) I would think.

If I mess up horribly; Couldn't I just zero fill that HDD and start again? I have heard Arch is easier to install software than Slackware!

It might be but a Slackware installation is not hard.

No need to zero fill, just install again. What I actually meant is: If you mess up with partitions/disks you will probably damage your Ubuntu system. I would recommend to not touch the Ubuntu install until you are confident that you don't need it anymore.

Anything has its price. You have larger repositories in Arch, but they come with the downside of dependency resolution (at least a downside for me, YMMV). For things that are not in the repositories, it really doesn't matter if you use yaourt on Arch or sbopkg on Slackware. I have never build an Arch package manually /from what I have heard they are very similar to Slackware packages), but I have no problem to do that for Slackware. So currently for me installing software is easier on Slackware.
But since you are a programmer you should learn how to make proper packages for your distribution anyways.

Like I said I have 3 hard drives. My Ubuntu OS won't be touched. When you said i would mess my HDD up, i assumed you meant i would damage the grub or bootloader and in turn would render the HDD unusable. Unless i wiped it. Anyway, I am always coding something up. When I am not, I am thinking of projects to do! So this will be good for my coding craving! More so, the need to occupy my mind with software related stuff. The more I talk to you about it, the more I realize this is something I should do. I will admit it is a little intimidating though. I am a Tad nervous. Mostly excited though!

In the 3 or so years of programming, I have never learned how to manually install libraries and software. Sure I can untar a package and settle unmet dependencies during the automated installations but I have no idea where the packages are placed. Like the shared object files or where the linkers look, etc. Why they are placed where they are placed and all that good stuff. I assume I need to know all of that good stuff with arch, gentoo, slackware huh?

Need to? No.

All three of those distros have packaging systems that take care of those things for you. Just as Debian-based distros do.

If you want to build your own packages or write your own package-building scripts then you do need to know those things. But that's also true on Ubuntu.

On good to know! Guess I should learn anyway though. I'm zero filling my HDD now. It is actually an 80GiG HDD, not 40. Its only filled 10GiG's so far and its 2am here in Jersey. So it will take a little while longer than expected. Ill leave it over night and install in the AM. Thanks

As TobiSGD wrote, there's no need to zero fill. Re-formatting each file system or removing all the files and directories would be functionally equivalent unless you have data you want render unrecoverable.

I stopped the DD and am proceeding with the arch installation.

So I'm installing now. I'm sizing my root directory now. What's a good size? Should I use 10000MiB?? Maybe use the whole 37MiB and move my home folder to the root dir?

Went with 15,000 on the root dir, 1024 on the swap, and left the rest to my home folder. I will configure later if needed.

First install was a flop. No idea why because the install was pretty straight forward! Try number 2 @ 4:30am.

Or some reason I keep seeing this error message: bsdcpio fails to set local

My Slackware 13.37 / (everything except /home, /srv and /var) has 7.4 GB used. 10 GB should be plenty.

/home might as well be part of / because many of the config files and directories under it are specific to the versions of applications installed under /.

Data files and directories for personal use (that normally go under /home and are not specific to the versions of applications installed under /) can usefully be kept on a separate file system which can later be mounted when running different OSes or a different version of the same OS.

As an example, for my own single user system, /home/c/d is a separate file system. c is my user name. d is an arbitrary choice (reminiscent of D:\) and short to type. For applications which have non-version-specific config directories and for Templates, I symlink from /home/c to home/c/d:
Is "bsdcpio fails to set local" the exact error message? netsearching for it gets no matches.

On systems without extra /tmp-partition I would recommend to go for more than 10GB, otherwise the simple task of making a DVD-ISO for burning will fill up the filesystem. If you have 80GB on that disk I would simply give 20GB to / (including /home), the amount you want to swap and the rest to a data partition.