Arch

doublejoon · Post by **doublejoon** » Wed Dec 28, 2005 2:09 pm

Im thinking of giving Arch a quick try on the laptop. Currently Im running Ubuntu.. (previously kanotix....er no more dist-upgrades) which I like but it needs to be faster.

Will the install be as involved as say Gentoo?
Will i have to compile everything even after the install for updates?

Post by **Patrick** » Wed Dec 28, 2005 2:28 pm

doublejoon wrote:Im thinking of giving Arch a quick try on the laptop. Currently Im running Ubuntu.. (previously kanotix....er no more dist-upgrades) which I like but it needs to be faster.

Why are you swithing from Ubuntu? Just curious.

doublejoon wrote:Will the install be as involved as say Gentoo?

No way! No 48 hour installs of KDE. It shouldn't take you more than a couple of hours. You could also go the underground linux route:
http://www.ludos.org/portal/
It's basically Arch Linux, quick & dirty. I haven't tried myself but Judland likes it a lot.

doublejoon wrote:Will i have to compile everything even after the install for updates?

The complete OS and majority of apps are available via pacman. There are some apps that are not available but can be built using the AUR repository:
http://aur.archlinux.org/

So far I've only built 4 or 5 apps using this method. It worked fine.

The only apps I had to compile myself (not in the repository or AUR) were the following:
sharpusique, bpconf, netgo, wlassistant

Just a pointer several people have mentioned having issues setting up grub. I used lilo with a 2.6 kernel and didn't have any problems.

snarkout · Post by **snarkout** » Wed Dec 28, 2005 5:49 pm

I haven't taken the plunge on my lappy yet, so I can't comment on arch and lappys -- I imagine it's somewhat involved, but nothing compared to Gentoo. However, I highly recommend using the 7.1 beta installer rather than the 7.0 installer -- it simplifies things greatly since it takes care of two of the most recent migration hassles seamlessly.

My .02 is that I had (and have) multiple problems with ubuntu that I haven't had with arch (or any other distros, honestly). Sometimes arch is fun -- I like the fact that I have a high degree of control over what I have on my system. Sometimes arch is a PITA - when something doesn't work, and you want/need it to do so quickly, grepping through wiki pages and forum posts is a drag. I'm personally very happy with arch though.

Post by **Patrick** » Wed Dec 28, 2005 6:22 pm

Snarkout wrote:However, I highly recommend using the 7.1 beta installer rather than the 7.0 installer -- it simplifies things greatly since it takes care of two of the most recent migration hassles seamlessly.

I used 0.71 and it worked pretty well.

Ryochan7 · Post by **Ryochan7** » Wed Dec 28, 2005 10:25 pm

I have been thinking about trying a different distro for the past couple of weeks and I think that I will give Arch Linux a try. I am currently using Gentoo but I am sick of compiling and there has been far too frequent system breakage lately. The Arch package repositories have a great amount of packages but it's too bad that the repositories don't have many commercial game installers like Gentoo does; AUR does have the latest installer for Doom 3 but that's the only one that I found out of the games I own. The amount of packages in portage has been the only reason that I have stuck with Gentoo as long as I have. I hope Arch turns out to be as good as you guys say it is.

snarkout · Post by **snarkout** » Wed Dec 28, 2005 11:56 pm

Look through their forums for gentoo discussions. Many of them end up in arguments, but overall, there seem to be a good number of people who have migrated to arch from gentoo and slack. I'd never want to sound like I'm trying to up-sell arch in any way. It's just that I'm personally very happy with it. It's also a major relief to finally have found a distro I like since so many have really been so close but have too many problems. I'd personally be fine with debian if there were an up to date release of it that wasn't so breakage prone.

(K)ubuntu doesn't fit that bill for two reasons - a) the devs feel the need to "improve" the defaults which most times I see as regressions, sometimes major ones, and b) too many packages I use frequently are buggy. The community forums also drive me batshit - sorry, but as much as I try to be helpful to n00bs, I can't wade in quite that deep into the self-important, greedyass no interest in learning, me-me-me-OR ELSE crap that is poured into those forums by the gallon. Also, I far, FAR, prefer the rolling release setup than the 6 month freeze and release cycle that is so popular right now. I think the (k)ubuntu folks have a great vision, and the work they are doing to get linux out to the masses is seriously kickass, but technically they fall short in some areas I feel are important. Many many others disagree with me, and I'm personally glad - hopefully at least some of the new users (k)ubuntu attracts will stay with linux and give back to the community in some way.

I'm probably starting to sound like a broken record at this point, huh?

CptnObvious999 · Post by **CptnObvious999** » Thu Dec 29, 2005 12:41 am

Ryochan7 wrote:I have been thinking about trying a different distro for the past couple of weeks and I think that I will give Arch Linux a try. I am currently using Gentoo but I am sick of compiling and there has been far too frequent system breakage lately. The Arch package repositories have a great amount of packages but it's too bad that the repositories don't have many commercial game installers like Gentoo does; AUR does have the latest installer for Doom 3 but that's the only one that I found out of the games I own. The amount of packages in portage has been the only reason that I have stuck with Gentoo as long as I have. I hope Arch turns out to be as good as you guys say it is.

I have rarely had a package not compile and if so I can always find my way around it like disabling a use flag or compiling a program. I think most of the compile errors where when I was installing Gentoo because they miss dependancies since they are already installed on their machines. Also the use flags aren't tested by some developers when they release the program so they have been known to give errors. Overall my gentoo experience has been very positive even though Im running amd64 testing. If you are tired of compiling you can use the binaries for your architecture. http://gentoo-wiki.com/TIP_Using_PORTAGE_BINHOST. If you want to stay with Gentoo or go with something else its all good as long as its not windows

just kidding its all about choice

BTW I just found out about GLSA being integrated into Portage which is awesome. It basically has all the fixes for all the current known exploits and it will patch them as they come out (no you don't need to recompile it). All I have to do is run "glsa-check -f all" and it is completely secure from all known vulnerablilities in a few seconds.

Wally Balljacker · Post by **Wally Balljacker** » Thu Dec 29, 2005 1:11 am

Snarkout wrote:Look through their forums for gentoo discussions. Many of them end up in arguments, but overall, there seem to be a good number of people who have migrated to arch from gentoo and slack. I'd never want to sound like I'm trying to up-sell arch in any way. It's just that I'm personally very happy with it. It's also a major relief to finally have found a distro I like since so many have really been so close but have too many problems. I'd personally be fine with debian if there were an up to date release of it that wasn't so breakage prone.

(K)ubuntu doesn't fit that bill for two reasons - a) the devs feel the need to "improve" the defaults which most times I see as regressions, sometimes major ones, and b) too many packages I use frequently are buggy. The community forums also drive me batshit - sorry, but as much as I try to be helpful to n00bs, I can't wade in quite that deep into the self-important, greedyass no interest in learning, me-me-me-OR ELSE crap that is poured into those forums by the gallon. Also, I far, FAR, prefer the rolling release setup than the 6 month freeze and release cycle that is so popular right now. I think the (k)ubuntu folks have a great vision, and the work they are doing to get linux out to the masses is seriously kickass, but technically they fall short in some areas I feel are important. Many many others disagree with me, and I'm personally glad - hopefully at least some of the new users (k)ubuntu attracts will stay with linux and give back to the community in some way.

I'm probably starting to sound like a broken record at this point, huh?

Just out of curiosity, you find Debian testing to be too out of date? I've been quite happy with it myself. No breakage whatsoever, and unstable packages of the latest applications like Firefox 1.5 are only a "dpkg -i" away from packages.debian.org.

Judland · Post by **Judland** » Thu Dec 29, 2005 1:13 am

I also left the world of apt-get (Kanotix being my previous distro. of choice) and RPM in search for a better method. I did find it in Arch and with it's package manager, Pacman.

It's been so much more easier to maintain this system. From what I've read on the Arch forums and Wiki, I won't have to re-install the distro. again when it comes time to upgrade to Arch .80 (or what ever the next release is). I got tired of having to do this with other distros. I've used in the past.

I don't wish to mislead anyone either, but I have to say that Arch has performed very well for me and I've learned a lot since adopting it. My hardware has never performed as well as it now does with Arch Linux. No complicated and/or time consuming compiling of packages either.

If you're intimidated at all by having to manually configure Grup/Lilo, Xorg, KDM and the KDE desktop, then Underground Desktop is an easier and faster way to get Arch running on your system. It does all of the above automatically for you.

Let us know how you do, doublejoon.

P.S. I'm about a day or two away from posting a manual I've put together regarding the installation and setup of an Underground Desktop install. I'll post a link when it's ready, if you think it might be useful to you.

doublejoon · Post by **doublejoon** » Thu Dec 29, 2005 6:54 am

Thanks for all of the input and advice folks:). The laptop is going back into surgery this weekend. I will let you all know how things went.

My laptop is an Acer Aspire 1362 Lci

Oh yeah Patrick. I like ubuntu. Just wanted to give Arch a try to maybe speed things up a bit

http://www.pcvideoonline.com/productdet ... uctid=4119

snarkout · Post by **snarkout** » Thu Dec 29, 2005 9:05 am

Wally Balljacker wrote:Just out of curiosity, you find Debian testing to be too out of date? I've been quite happy with it myself. No breakage whatsoever, and unstable packages of the latest applications like Firefox 1.5 are only a "dpkg -i" away from packages.debian.org.

I'm sorry, but this simply isn't true. Two major ABI conversions in less than a year and lots of very open and public posting of "DO NOT UPGRADE/INSTALL SID RIGHT NOW -- YOU WILL BREAK SOMETHING!" from the debian devs does not sound like "no breakage whatsoever." You've posted here yourself no less than twice recently with fairly major breakage. I'm certainly not saying Arch is breakage free, but Sid is not meant to be workstation safe, and at this point it simply isn't.

snarkout · Post by **snarkout** » Thu Dec 29, 2005 9:12 am

However, yes, Sid is plenty up to date for me, and I do miss the huge repos. For the most part, though, I tended to compile and checkinstall more often than I grabbed debs from the internet -- I still did both though. Debian was my first true love when it comes to Linux, and I still think it makes a damn fine server (unless you need packages from the last year or so), but it's just not doing it for the desktop right now IMO.

FWIW, I'm still running Etch on my mail server.

Wally Balljacker · Post by **Wally Balljacker** » Thu Dec 29, 2005 1:22 pm

Snarkout wrote:
Wally Balljacker wrote:Just out of curiosity, you find Debian testing to be too out of date? I've been quite happy with it myself. No breakage whatsoever, and unstable packages of the latest applications like Firefox 1.5 are only a "dpkg -i" away from packages.debian.org.
I'm sorry, but this simply isn't true. Two major ABI conversions in less than a year and lots of very open and public posting of "DO NOT UPGRADE/INSTALL SID RIGHT NOW -- YOU WILL BREAK SOMETHING!" from the debian devs does not sound like "no breakage whatsoever." You've posted here yourself no less than twice recently with fairly major breakage. I'm certainly not saying Arch is breakage free, but Sid is not meant to be workstation safe, and at this point it simply isn't.

I'm using TESTING, not Sid. I got tired of breakage, and constant maintenance in Sid, and now I couldn't be happier with testing. It's the best balance of stability, and up to date-ness I've seen.

snarkout · Post by **snarkout** » Thu Dec 29, 2005 4:18 pm

Sorry. My eyeballs are failing or something. I'm not familiar enough with Etch's repos to say whether they're up to date enough, but I suspect they are.

I'm actually running etch because of a similar mistake - my repos pointed to "testing" rather than sarge, so next time I did an upgrade, I got all the new etch stuff. Security fixes are a bit slow coming down the pipe for testing IIRC - or at least they were for sarge. That is an idea though - I might give Etch a try as a desktop on a spare drive. It sure works fine as a mail server.

doublejoon · Post by **doublejoon** » Sun Jan 01, 2006 5:38 pm

Well Success with my Arch install. I'm at 0.7.1 already using the 0.7 install disc.
I had small issues with my xorg.conf and grub.....forgot to load initrd in menu.lst. pacman is pretty sweet....reminds me of portage a little bit. Arch does have a Gentoo Like feel with out the hassle of waiting for compiles (Gentoo still rocks for total tweaking though)

Very fast

Got my Xfce,gdm,alsa,k3b,ooffice2,firefox pretty much setup quickly

next is installing ndiswrapper with wpa_supplicant...very nice distro folks

oh yeah what would be the equivalent pacman command for say apt-cache search "package"?

thelinuxlink.net

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