@ruario: Thanks for bringing my up to speed. So Arch is now a Gentoo with binary packages and the BSD-style rc.conf is gone?

But Gentoo is much more stable than Arch.

Markus

In a way yes.

Not gone yet but deprecated yes. I also think it is a shame. Here is another quote from that previous thread.

They slowly phased out initscripts and sysvinit, and went with systemd as the default:

https://www.archlinux.org/news/syste...installations/

Not to fully change the subject, but after getting used to systemd, I honestly started to like it more and more.

I know that. Five years ago I had Arch and Slackware in evaluation for replacing FreeBSD on hardware, which runs Linux but not BSD. Arch appealed to me due to rc.conf, but Slackware won, because I knew it from the 90s and it provides stable point-releases.

Today after digging into the current state of the thing, I'm so glad, that I avoided this nightmare. And I'm even more scared by systemd now.

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I migrated to Arch from Slackware about 8 or 9 years ago but might install Slack again to see what changes have taken place over the years. I've always told myself that if Arch were to ever disappear, I'd return to Slackware.


@corp769

No problems to report with systemd here, either.

Perhaps, though I prefer the packaging system on Arch and everything associated with it, from the PKGBUILD format to the AUR and how easy it is to maintain something there. So I would still pick Arch over Gentoo personally.

Why are people still saying "X distro is more stable than Y distro", etc? You can make any distro do anything you want, and as the end user, you have the option to having that stable system, depending on what you do, program, script, recode, etc.... List goes on. I enjoy arch and gentoo equally, and the same goes for slackware. Almost sounds like a d*ck measuring contest to me

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The question is not "which distro to pick up" but rather "what will you be able to do with that distro"

I've seen many people using "noob" distros and do amazing stuff on a development layer, while others, would just install Slack, Arch or anything else and don't do much afterwards, except maybe being elitists about it (I'm talking about some of my friends).

Personally, one of the key components for choosing a distro is surprisingly, not an advanced technical feature but rather the friendliness of the community behind it.

In my humble opinion; what differs really about (Arch or Gentoo) and Slack, is that the latter is driven by a single person and this maintains its focus and direction and that's the secret to Slack's longevity.

Gentoo while being a very good distro has some problems and many branches came out of it (Funtoo (amazing), exherbo(experimental), sabayon (meh))

Tips to help you to choose:



- Do you want frequent updates (many times a day), bleeding edge software and gazillions of repositories? choose Arch

- Are you looking to get a grip on UNIX systems and learn in a steep but sure curve with a rock stable distro? choose Slackware

- Do you have decent hardware? Do you want to *really* get your hands dirty, build an OS from the ground up, understand your system's internals and build a distro that is tailored to your needs exactly while having your software optimized for your cpu? choose Gentoo

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I agree and IMHO that really should be how people should look at Linux distributions (or basically any OS). For one it could lead to the conclusion one can do almost everything with about any distro. And that in turn points to the value of a distro-agnostic view of things.

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Those last 3 points you made are right on!

Arch, I prefer bleeding-edge for my workstaion.

Slackware will probably be one of my server distros.

I want to build linux from scratch to really understand everything.

Linux from scratch as in gentoo, or LFS? I admit, LFS is where it's at if you want to get to the nitty gritty and fully customize everything. I still use arch and gentoo, as I can't see myself installing LFS on all 12 computers I own.

Yes, I know his last point was Gentoo, but I'd rather go with LFS. Similar enough, no?

Those Arch users who are considering something else might also want to look at CRUX (3.0 was released at the start of the year). Not to put you off Slackware of course. Just another option to consider.

EDIT: Check out the CRUX 3.0 Handbook to get a feel for the kind of distro it is.

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