guys & gals,

I can’t recall now my impressions concerning Arch Linux because I tested it almost three years ago (version 2010.05). I just remember the podium:

1. Slackware Linux
2. Arch Linux
3. FreeBSD

Fortunately I saved my notes concerning Arch Linux so I can share them with all of you. Maybe someone will decide to try Arch Linux as well:

(As I mentioned it was three years ago. I switched in the meantime from ISO-8859-2 to UTF8 so now the right font would be lat2-16.psfu.gz rather than lat2a-16.psfu.gz. As I suppose some other changes would be necessary as well.)

Greetz
I have tried to like Arch Linux twice. The first time was 2 years ago and to be fair I used it almost exclusively for 2 months, many many hours each day.

The last time was 6 months ago and it lasted for about a week before I once again abandoned it and for the same basic reasons, not even including that I despise the install process.

Proponents of Arch point to it's "lack of bloat" and I find this ludicrous in this day of hdd's of multiple terabytes. As far as I can tell, it matters little how much stuff is installed in Linux if you properly administer what gets to run and when. This isn't windoze with all the TSRs and "preloads" to appear as speed. So it's minimalistic base install doesn't thrill me in the least.

Far more important to me is the very first reason I tried Slackware in the first place. When I asked in my favorite Linux IRC channel many years ago why so many there used Slackware the guys that seemed the most knowledgeable said basically the same thing, "Because stuff just compiles right in it". That seemed to me to be the signature of a proper, fundamentally correct system and it turned out to be true.

I have to admit that auto-dependency resolution is vastly better than it used to be but frankly I don't care. I don't want anything going on behind my back or without my express knowledge and permission and all of them have require some acceptance of this basic tenet. I will gladly spend time dealing with dependencies manually as the occasional cost of having a solid, robust system that never breaks and when a problem occurs I know exactly what to fix when the worst is that a new app simply won't run. It will be my fault and since I know what I did and can discover what I didn't do, not only does it get fixed but I learn something specific and often, useful.

Slackbuilds have made things much easier w/o giving up that basic control and power that I require. In addition they do not require searching for PPAs or the excruciating time and effort to recover from breakage from a bad "update". Why people assume Slackware is more time consuming is just ignorance of the "Six P's Law" as far as I can tell.

So to answer the OP, neither is universally better, but Slackware is most definitely better for me.

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Agreed. Well-said! The lack of dependency checking in Slackware is a strength not a deficit. I never need to worry about a package manager wreaking havoc with my Slackware system because *I am* the package manager. The Slackware package management system works perfectly for my needs.

I stay away from Arch because of two deliberate design choices: rolling release and systemd. The first doesn't give me stable, reproducable results, which I like to have, and the latter doesn't give me a Unix system, which I like to have.

That's just the tip of the iceberg. LP is in no way capable of designing something better than DMR's stroke of a genius. He tries and is not capable of recognizing his failure. A typical case of Dunning-Kruger.

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lol

Interesting thread, from the perspective of a Debian-user who has no real experience with either Slackware or Arch.

Not to hijack the thread, but: Would you say, then, that Slackware is also less time-consuming than Debian?

As an ex-Debian user, I can answer this. As far as I'm concerned, Slackware is a bit more time-consuming, but also way more flexible.

I have tried Arch multiple times in VMs and this is what gets me every time. Sure, release a "minimalistic" install disc for those who want to build a system from the ground up, but give the rest of us lazy people a fairly complete install: common display drivers (and other drivers I guess, I never used it in-depth to know what else it's missing), X, a few DEs to choose from, a complete development environment for the most common languages, and programs that people commonly use on Linux (apache, samba, etc.). The only thing I don't install when I install Slackware is the KDE and Y series.

In this day and age, with cheap storage space and the ability to control your computer, the only reason you would need a minimal install is if you are working on an embedded system and storage space is prime real estate. (Or if you are using it on a exceptionally old computer).

(Actually, now that this thread has got me thinking about it again, I'm going to try an Arch install and install "xorg" (which I'm pretty sure will install everything xorg related) and a DE and see if it'll run a desktop environment with just those two commands.)

Some of you may wonder why I wrote to eXpander_:

As some people feel and the other people know MS Windows likes dumb people and dislikes smart people.

I assumed that eXpander_ is smart.

As a result I draw the conclusion expressed in the quoted sentence.

Of course I don’t know the real state of the affairs.

So my assumption may be wrong.

In such a case I lose and eXpander_ wins.

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I was an arch-user for 7 years (!) - and really had no (big) problems until their last endevours (/lib vs /usr/lib and systemd).
I tried to go along because (quote and unquote) "it was the future and soon everyone else would be doing it".
I struggled through the /lib /usr/lib thingy (and no, it was nothing like as unproblematic as the wiki makes out) - finally got it into shape again when along comes systemd - and for me that was the straw that broke the camel's back! Several failures later I just gave up on it - I have better things to spend my time on.
I sync'ed often (2-3 times/week) and although there were occasional breakages, there hardly ever was anything fatal or insurmountable. Occasionally (work/vacation) there could be a couple of months between sync's and although it usually led to more problems than my usual updating - it was very seldom anything that could not be sorted out in a couple of hours (or waiting until the next day when there were new updates).

So - systemd did it - and seeing Slackware was my first 'love' (~1996) (and I have always used it on my servers) - it was but a small step to use it 'fulltime' on my xfce-desktop.
So - thanks to Pat and his team!!

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Ha! I had a look at my Arch install yesterday and it says that it can't update and that seems to be because my system clock is wrong. It's not wrong.

Oh how I laughed.

1) For me Slack is easier to fix when something goes wrong.
I keep 2 local mirrors of -Current.
One is always updated, the other stays about 2 or 3 weeks behind the other.
This makes it easy for me to downgrade -Current to a working system when something goes wrong.
I've never been able to setup a system like this on Arch.

2) I don't like the pacman all or nothing approach to updates, or the fact that it bundles system packages with non-system packages. This has left me with a lot of broken non-system packages in the past. Slackpkg only updates system packages and leaves non-system packages and there dependencies to me to maintain, and that’s the way I prefer it.

3) I've been using Slack sense 12.0 came out and at first things were a little confusing to me. I do my best to find solutions to my problems on my own because I learn better if I figure it out myself. On those occasions when I can't figure it out someone on this forum will point me to something to read that will lead me to a solution. I've never had anyone on this forum be rude to me.
On the Arch forum there this Beginners section where a newbi would think that this is the place for someone running Arch for the first time would go for help with a problem. But in fact, this seems to be a place where other people that don't know the solution to your problem will respond with RTFM rather that point you to a specific link or document that will ultimately lead you to a conclusion without reading the whole manual. I've been running Slack for quite some time now and have never read the whole manual, I just don't have that kind of time available. When I have a problem I search that particular problem.

I like Slack better.
I like the Slack people better.

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Just fetched the Arch ISO. I remember Arch having an nice installer the last time I tried it. Now it drops me to a prompt. What happened there?

They did away with the installer a while back and went to installation scripts.

There was a thread here on LQ about this previously. Alternatively here are some highlights:

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