Arch self-destructing?

snarkout · Post by **snarkout** » Tue May 08, 2007 11:27 pm

Wow - I don't know how many of you frequent the arch forums or mailing list, but there have been some very major "disturbances in the force" lately - devs leaving or dropping projects (the beyond kernel is gone, for instance), talk of purging current and extra of a majority of the packages, etc. I really hope things get smoothed out in a beneficial fashion for the devs as well as the users. If not, oh well, it's been a fun experience...

Chess · Post by **Chess** » Wed May 09, 2007 8:08 am

I did see some of that. There were some folks leaving for FreeBSD (there has been a lot of crossover back and forth between Arch and FreeBSD these last few years). I did see that the Arch kernel maintainer for the beyond kernel had some pretty harsh things to say about the Linux kernel stability. I imagine all distros go through things like this. Hopefully, Arch can work through this stuff.

allix · Post by **allix** » Wed May 09, 2007 8:31 am

oh oh , what can we do, we should all give up linux its a unstable piece of shat

And start running the *BSD's all the way

mowestusa · Post by **mowestusa** » Wed May 09, 2007 9:38 am

Chess wrote:I did see some of that. There were some folks leaving for FreeBSD (there has been a lot of crossover back and forth between Arch and FreeBSD these last few years). I did see that the Arch kernel maintainer for the beyond kernel had some pretty harsh things to say about the Linux kernel stability. I imagine all distros go through things like this. Hopefully, Arch can work through this stuff.

Warren in his last interview stressed the fact that there is only one stable Linux kernel each year. Perhaps if distros focused on that one stable Linux kernel as Warren does for Mepis they would get the kind of stability that they are finding in FreeBSD. I really don't understand kernel development, and I don't use Mepis any more, but I really do respect Warren's opinions. He has been around the block in the Unix world for a long time, and I do believe that he is a talented and gifted developer.

I'm not an Arch user nor am I a FreeBSD user (although I'm enjoying learning NetBSD right now). I'm curious why there seems to be so much cross over between Arch devs and FreeBSD devs, and why devs are jumping back and forth between those two projects? Looking from the outside, I would think that if a FreeBSD dev wanted to get into Linux they would pick Gentoo and if a Gentoo dev became frustrated they would go to FreeBSD, but what is the connection between Arch and FreeBSD that they seem to have attracted like minded people?

I have not been reading the Arch lists, but just curious about this current discussion, and interested in hearing more.

allix · Post by **allix** » Wed May 09, 2007 9:44 am

mowestusa wrote: I'm curious why there seems to be so much cross over between Arch devs and FreeBSD devs, and why devs are jumping back and forth between those two projects? Looking from the outside, I would think that if a FreeBSD dev wanted to get into Linux they would pick Gentoo and if a Gentoo dev became frustrated they would go to FreeBSD, but what is the connection between Arch and FreeBSD that they seem to have attracted like minded people?

Gentoo and FreeBSD are not really alike, portage is not FreeBSD ports, its a influence , but is very different now.
On Gentoo everything is part of the system, FreeBSD as mentioned up teem times separates the os base from 3rd party applications.
Gentoo has its own init script, and many other gentooesque things..

mowestusa · Post by **mowestusa** » Wed May 09, 2007 11:05 am

allix wrote:Gentoo and FreeBSD are not really alike, portage is not FreeBSD ports, its a influence , but is very different now. On Gentoo everything is part of the system, FreeBSD as mentioned up teem times separates the os base from 3rd party applications. Gentoo has its own init script, and many other gentooesque things..

I understand the base vs. everything part of the system, because NetBSD is the same way. So Gentoo and FreeBSD are not really similar, so what kindred spirit is there between Arch and FreeBSD? I believe one thing is a BSD style init scripts, but that is the only thing that I know of that is similar. The package system seems completely different because it is not a ports tree, that compiles things from source.

Chess · Post by **Chess** » Wed May 09, 2007 11:16 am

I am not sure why there is a connection between Arch and FreeBSD. I have been watching various FreeBSD mailing lists the last several months and whenever anyone asks which Linux distro to try, the three that get mentioned most often are Gentoo, Slackware, and Arch. I think the single rc.conf configuration file in Arch is appealing to FreeBSD users, since FreeBSD has the same thing. Plus, some folks equate Arch's AUR third party repo as sort of equivalent to ports, since each Arch PKGBUILD fetches the source and compiles the application, just like a port does. Other than that, I'm not sure.

allix · Post by **allix** » Wed May 09, 2007 11:57 am

I found something amusing

http://www.levenez.com/unix/

You will see ArchBSD

Chess · Post by **Chess** » Wed May 09, 2007 12:05 pm

I think ArchBSD was a 4.4BSD-Lite OS for the Acorn.

As to ArchLinux, their Wiki has an entry comparing Arch to other Linux distros and other OS's, including FreeBSD. For FreeBSD, it has this to say:

"Like Arch packages seem up to date and decisions are delegated to you the power user. This may be the most interesting competitor to Arch since it goes head to head in package modernity and has a somewhat sizable, smart, active, no nonsense community."

http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Arc ... er_Distros