Slackware users opinions of Arch?
 

Hello, Slackware users!

I just wanted to know what Slackware users think of Arch Linux. I just installed Arch after removing the Slackware partition from my machine and it appears to be a fairly similar distro to Slack, though it requires almost everything to be configured by hand and does not even have the minor conveniences of Slack.

But pacman appears to be a really good option and Arch seems to be more up-to-date with software than Slackware.

So anybody here has tried Arch and can give any insight or comparisons between these two very similar looking distros?

Well, Arch is based on Slackware. It is generally considered a meld of Slackware with an advanced package management system like in Gentoo.

Personally, this has little interest to me since I compile probably 80% of the software I use myself, and use checkinstall to make it into packages. So I always have the latest software that I need, even if Slackware itself doesn't.

hi there,
as you probably know, I am an Arch fan: my notebook and a small web server. In fact, I think it is quite simliar to slackware. But (imho) it is a bit easier to configure and customize. Fast updates and a constant development makes Arch a suitable distro for notebooks.
The most important thing about Arch is pacman. It is a pretty solid package management system and very intuitive to use also. Configuration based in text files with a simple syntax brings you pretty fast to your target.
as always, just my :twocents:
regards,
slackie1000

Not true, Arch was actually based loosely on Crux but is mostly the brainchild of the creator, Judd Vinet. He wrote pacman from scratch and is still the sole developer of it.

I've never used Slackware but a lot of people who come to Arch from distro-hopping say it seems like a mixture of the best from Slackware and Gentoo. I've used Gentoo and to me Arch seems to be bleeding-edge like Gentoo but it doesn't take me hours to update my system ;) It lacks the dumbing-down Gentoo has like rc-update and associated garbage but still isn't really difficult to use. Arch is my third distro and I managed to sort myself out without annoying too many people in the forums ;)

Yes, Arch is not Slack-based.

But I think this sums it up:

Slackware - the conservative approach + the package management

Don't agree fully. The most important facet that got me trying Arch was the fact it's a i686 build. I'm sick of (binary) distros still built for 386 - especially for my laptops.

Combined with only having the one package manager rather than the bun-fight that seems to keep arising in the Slack world was enough to convince me to drop my (brief) foray with Slack.

Arch in my opinion is better than slackware in almost every way.

You have more control of your system in Arch linux, and it's easier to control it too. In slackware, to add bootscripts you have to create one in /etc/rc.d/, and then add an entry to it in /etc/rc.d/rc.local. All you have to do in arch is add it to /etc/rc.conf.

Also, pacman makes updating Arch a breeze. Pacman -Syu will upgrade your system in one command, with dependency resolution.

Arch is i686, and you can really feel the optimization, it's the fastest distro i've ever used. Arch linux is also much lighter than slackware since it has dependency resolution. A default install of Arch Linux contains almost literally nothing, basically what you would get from an LFS install. From there you just install kde or gnome or xfce through pacman, and it installs the bareminimum amount of packages for xfce/kde/gnome. A default install of slackware is very very bloated.(i'm counting 6 web browsers on my slack 10.0 box)

My only complaint with Arch is it's too much work to make a package. In slackware you can make anything into a package, including just text configuration files. On arch it's not so easy.

hi there,
ok.. agreed. I made an analysis comparing direct to slackware. the "vanilla" approach with a nice package management(pacman).
but you are right, the i686 build is an important point also.
regards,
slackie1000

I've currently installed Fluxbox on Arch and I've got to agree. It runs like greased lightning (Whatever that is)!

WindowMaker was OK, but Fluxbox is better in almost every way.

Arch + FluxBox == lethal! :cool:

Hell, even Arch+gnome is faster than most distros.

Personally, I prefer slackware to arch / ubuntu (or others).

Arch and ubuntu are nice and not too bloated as FC, suse or mandravia. Their package management systems are nice and fully workable. However, they come across a big problem: Packages dependencies.

Such kind of dependencies are weird and can be problematic (at least to myself). M$ win is already a notorious classic example on dependency problem -- DLL hell.
What I believe the reason I dropped using such package management system is the limited power given to control a PC. They can only provide a very generic and workable binaries copy in which I may only need some of the features that can be detached to be a standalone program. More, I have been using freebsd 5.4 for a while, its dependency is the worst one I see so far (more suck than M$), so I dare not to use freebsd anymore.

Slackware prevents this problem by using manual package managment system, i.e. compile from source if you need something, in turns give me more power to contorl the system.

That's one of the major reason I move back from other distro to slackware. Cheers~

Arch is excellent, except for 2 points: the lack of a stable version with security updates, and its "I am soooo cool" community. Both points make me stay with Slackware.

For me the things i dislike about Arch Linux is the mods at the forums. They have a very holier-than-thou attitude.

But i think it's still better than Gentoo's community.

I had never heard of Arch. I think I may like it. I have a few questions.

Is the dependency resolution annoying? I mean, will it complain about every package you try to install and versions and such like apt does? Or is it just there to help with installs of stock packages?

Also, is it simple to compile stuff like it is on Slackware? Are headers included or are there seperate dev packages (like on Debians)?

Creating packages, how hard is it?

I may just try it out regardless of the answers. But I would very much appreciate it.

This forum has been getting clouded with this crap more the last few months and I don't know why. I know you guys are experimenting with different distros. I did too for a long time. Finding which distro pisses you off the least can take awhile. Just my opinion, but slackware puts up the least amount of barriers, if any, for me to get what I want done. All I remember about other distro's is fighting with them anytime I wanted to go outside the boundaries of what was setup, even just the tiniest amount. Slackware lets you tinker with *everything* about it. I have made PXE boot initrd images out of slackware, bootable usb flash sticks, custom recovery livecd's. For one of my servers I have slackware running off a Read-Only 512Mb CF Card combined with a loopback FS using Unionfs. It took me less than 2 hours to have it setup and running. The only problem I even had was with pivot_root and that's because I was giving it a bad directory name by accident. To me, slackware is a "pure" distro. It lets the user define what they want their system to be. If you don't use slackware for a long time and really get into it deeply you probably won't even understand what I mean but it's absolutely true. You can ask any long time slackware user.

Things can be based off slackware but they will never *be* slackware or anything like it. If there was I wouldn't only have slackware on all my servers/desktops/laptops.

Package managers like gentoo's and debian's are interesting and that is about all. I don't really install too many packages past the default install honestly. Amarok, mplayer, qemu, digikam, mythtv client. I have slack packages I created for all of them as well. So if I did reinstall, it's a simple installpkg away from having it again.