Sniffing out yet another Linux Distro

Tsuroerusu · Post by **Tsuroerusu** » Fri Nov 25, 2005 1:17 am

Judland wrote:Arch is optimized for i686 architectures.... so my test PC just makes the grade.

Nice, I've got FreeBSD 5.4 running right now, works great, talk about an amazingly intelligent package management system. Example: After I upgraded the gtk2 package all the dependencies of apps depending on older versions was automaticly set to the newer package.

FreeBSD's port system rocks, talk about taking the best from Debian, and a lot more because it's not bitching about stuff like MPlayer, VLC and DVD playback, and Gentoo

Judland · Post by **Judland** » Sat Nov 26, 2005 1:26 am

As promised, here's a 4 page OpenOffice document containing my notes regarding the installation and set-up of an ArchLinux system.

archlinux-setup.sxw

Just right-mouse-click and SaveAs to your hard drive.

It's not complete, and only touches on what I've had to go through to get Arch on my system. But, I hope it can help someone in some way.

Post by **Patrick** » Sun Nov 27, 2005 12:24 am

I got Arch up and running. In fact I'm posting from it right now. A lot of manual configuration but it's a very lean and trim distro. You only install what you need/want. Looks interesting. FYI, PC-BSD was a bust. The installer completely died on my system. Maybe it's because I have a mini-ATX board. Linux never has a problem with it though. I'll post some updates as I go along.

Judland · Post by **Judland** » Sun Nov 27, 2005 12:34 am

That's great, Pat! Did my little tutorial help out in any way?

I've been playing around with ABSes (Arch Build System) and making a few packages of my own... apps I use that are not part of the repositories yet.

I'm keeping notes on this and have updated my OpenOffice document to reflect those I've made regarding the installation of PKGBUILD files from the Arch User's Repositories.

I'll work on the notes covering the creation of your own PKGBUILDS later.

Once you do a couple of them, it's pretty easy. And it's also better than installing raw tarballs as Pacman will maintain control of the apps when installed as an ABS.

Post by **Patrick** » Sun Nov 27, 2005 8:45 am

Judland wrote:That's great, Pat! Did my little tutorial help out in any way?

Dave,
Yes it did, especially in regards to setting up KDE. Thanks. I can see why people like this distro. Not as tedious as Gentoo while installing but it gives you total control over everything. I wish the hardware detection was a little more mature. I know they're not catering to the noobie population. Even though I've bashed Gentoo in the past their documention is fantastic. Arch documentation needs work as well. I need more time using it and installing applications for my final verdict.

Judland · Post by **Judland** » Sun Nov 27, 2005 9:55 am

I agree. Although all of the critical information is available on the Arch Wiki and forums (obviously, or I would never have been able to get anywhere with it relying on my own know-how), it needs work on it's layout and presentation.

What I'm really hoping for is that the extra work required in installation and configuration pays off in the way of easier system maintenance.

Kanotix has served us well, and it's a great place to start for people using other OSes to easily enter the world of Linux. However, I'm starting to get frustrated with all of the issues surrounding Debian SID. Risking a broken system after a routine upgrade is making me reluctant to upgrade in the first place. That's not good.

It's been a few weeks, and Arch seems to be easy to upgrade and, best of all, upgrades complete without any issues.

I'm still evaluating, as well. Arch is a little more work, but it's also working the best (out of the distros I've tried).

Post by **Patrick** » Sun Nov 27, 2005 10:30 am

I've downloaded a bunch of apps using pacman and it seems to be working fine with one exception. Kino is crashing when starting up which is kinda of ironic since Dan Dennedy is one of the people who recommended Arch Linux.

snarkout · Post by **snarkout** » Sun Nov 27, 2005 1:26 pm

Patrick, are you using hotplug or hwd? Hwd has found nearly everything I've thrown at it (with the exception of my scanner). Also, IIRC "hwd -s -x" will create an xorg.conf file for you that's much cleaner than the one used by default. If those aren't the exact switches, they're close.

Post by **Patrick** » Sun Nov 27, 2005 2:42 pm

Snarkout wrote:Patrick, are you using hotplug or hwd? Hwd has found nearly everything I've thrown at it (with the exception of my scanner). Also, IIRC "hwd -s -x" will create an xorg.conf file for you that's much cleaner than the one used by default. If those aren't the exact switches, they're close.

I'm using hwd and I read about the hardware detection script after configuring xorg.conf manually. Not a big deal, I know my system! Anyway I'm making progress. Looking for a how-to on installing nvidia drivers. So far I'm liking Arch. Once I get the hardware configured I'm going to try creating some packages for software not in the repository. Maybe Leon's Pedington's bashpodder gui or Qdvdauthor? The best aspect of Arch is how fast the system boots compared to other distros. Thanks for the tips.

Post by **Patrick** » Sun Nov 27, 2005 6:27 pm

Update:
Nvidia drivers installed with no issue, got automount working and Kino is now working after re-installing. Up next, compiling and creating packages.