thelinuxlink.net

This => http://user-contributions.org/wikis/use ... Install_CD might just be what linc is looking for

I hope you get more info than link posting.

It's archlinux with a "face", that is archlinux with kde+office preinstalled.

I just downloaded it. I might have to try it on my laptop.

You might also give Frugalware a shot, Pat. I've been running it on my testing box for a while now, and have to say I like it a lot. If you're looking for the simplicity of arch with a little more polish out of the box, and like the slackware inits and installer, it's a good OS to look at. It has pacman and ABS, but they've been changed in some ways - they still do the same things though. The only drawback I see is that the mailinglists and forums are pretty dead - I understand that the devs are in IRC pretty regularly though, and usually if something is posted to the mailing list it's addressed quickly. No networkmanager yet, though.

Snarkout wrote:You might also give Frugalware a shot, Pat.

Snarkout,

I also believe that it would be cool to have a nice package manager with the init scripts of Slackware, and the configuration tools of Slackware, and the more vanella experience of Slackware.

However, does Frugalware offer more than just the standard Slackware packages with pacman. For example do they offer the same number of packages as Arch or do they simply offer the Slackware packages with an easy to use package manager?

I enjoyed using Slackware. Fast, clean, and just worked. However, I'm right now I running Debian Etch on a CLI only workstation because of the huge selection of packages, package manager, and easy to discover new CLI programs with "apt-cache search..." I'm not a big fan of Sys V, but I'm also discovering nice tools which help managing that too, like rcconf.

Thanks for the plug though. I'll be looking for something for my next CLI workstation, a 166mhz with 32 or 128megs of ram.

Just 2 days ago Arch released the 0.8 alpha which is supposed to have an improved and easier install procedure.

http://archlinux.org/news/279/

I haven't tried it yet though

mowestusa wrote:

Snarkout wrote:You might also give Frugalware a shot, Pat.

Snarkout,

I also believe that it would be cool to have a nice package manager with the init scripts of Slackware, and the configuration tools of Slackware, and the more vanella experience of Slackware.

However, does Frugalware offer more than just the standard Slackware packages with pacman. For example do they offer the same number of packages as Arch or do they simply offer the Slackware packages with an easy to use package manager?

I enjoyed using Slackware. Fast, clean, and just worked. However, I'm right now I running Debian Etch on a CLI only workstation because of the huge selection of packages, package manager, and easy to discover new CLI programs with "apt-cache search..." I'm not a big fan of Sys V, but I'm also discovering nice tools which help managing that too, like rcconf.

Thanks for the plug though. I'll be looking for something for my next CLI workstation, a 166mhz with 32 or 128megs of ram.

Frugalware uses it's own packages, but it uses pacman as a package manager. They've modified it quite a bit from what I understand. The installer is the slackware installer, and the entire /etc directory looks (and behaves as far as I can tell) like slackware. It is very fast/lightweight, but once you're done with an install, you have some very nice polish - whoever does the art for frugalware does a very nice job. I've seen 3 versions now, and all have been fantastic artworkwise. That being said, I've been tracking -current and it's very hard to do without breakage. I also had a very hard time getting it installed on one of my boxen - it installed effortlessly on my lappy, though. The tradeoff is that the packages tend to be even more up to date/beeding edge than arch's. This probably also means virtually no testing has been done on them, too, since as far as I can tell the frugalware community is pretty damn small. The bottom line is that it's another alternative, and one that I found a nice balance of things in - I doubt it will be replacing Arch on any of my boxen soon, but I still really like it.

Snarkout wrote: Frugalware uses it's own packages, but it uses pacman as a package manager. They've modified it quite a bit from what I understand. The installer is the slackware installer, and the entire /etc directory looks (and behaves as far as I can tell) like slackware. It is very fast/lightweight, but once you're done with an install, you have some very nice polish - whoever does the art for frugalware does a very nice job. I've seen 3 versions now, and all have been fantastic artworkwise. That being said, I've been tracking -current and it's very hard to do without breakage. I also had a very hard time getting it installed on one of my boxen - it installed effortlessly on my lappy, though. The tradeoff is that the packages tend to be even more up to date/beeding edge than arch's. This probably also means virtually no testing has been done on them, too, since as far as I can tell the frugalware community is pretty damn small. The bottom line is that it's another alternative, and one that I found a nice balance of things in - I doubt it will be replacing Arch on any of my boxen soon, but I still really like it.

I decided to search Frugalware's packages and Arch's packages for things that I have installed recently. Neither of them had them in their repos. Which did not surprise me. I'm interested in CLI programs and text processing methods right now which don't get a huge amount of attention with all the cool multimedia stuff and Openoffice. So I think I will stick with Debian for now. I might give Netbsd another try too, because I noticed that one of the programs that I'm learning right now was in pkgsrc. Perhaps if I want to do some compiling myself, I might just go back to straight Slackware again. So many great choices, you really can find something that will work for you, no matter what you are trying to do.

@mowestusa: if you go back to slackware, be sure to check out the slackbuilds.org project. It is run by a bunch of veteran slack users and it's designed to serve as a repository of high-quality slackbuild scripts so folks can build their own packages. I've contributed a few slackbuilds there, myself. Slackbuild scripts are a great way to build and maintain slackware packages -- that what pat v. uses to build the official slackware packages, after all.

I was actually very surprised at the size of Frugalware's repos. I was really expecting them to be much smaller and less inclusive. Also, it's very easy to build your own packages for Frugalware via the FrugalBuild system which is nearly identical to arch's PKGBUILDs. But, yes, debian certainly has an order of magnitude more packages.

I just figured I'd mention Frugal since I have found it to be a very nice system.

Snarkout wrote:I just figured I'd mention Frugal since I have found it to be a very nice system.

I'm really glad that you did mention it. I've tried a number of things because of suggestions on this board. Actually, I tried Debian Etch because of some of the things that were said about Debian Etch on TLLTS and in this forum. So often people had mentioned a distro or a tool or a package that has solved an issue that I was having personally. So I really appreciate your input.

Chess, thanks for the encouragement to give slackbuilds a try too. I did check out their repositories and I did not find either asciidoc or pdftohtml which I have installed recently on debian for some CLI projects that I'm working on. At the same time both of the programs mentioned I'm sure would compile without issue and install fine on a Slackware system, so that is probably why there isn't a Slackbuild for it. It is just too easy to do any way.

I'm probably getting a 166mhz with 128megs of ram. I'm not sure how I will use it, but it definately will be a CLI only machine when I do set it up, although DSL would run on it just fine or even Puppy. I don't know how I will put such an old machine to use just yet, because I have computers doing everything I want them to do. I have routers, webservers, and file servers. I need a machine to play movies which I have in the wings waiting. So I'll see.

So I went and installed Arch via the office CD. So far so good. I forgot about all the little things that need to be setup manually.

Pat do a small review on the show if possible