Gentoo scared me back to Arch...
For the past few days I've been trying to get Gentoo working on my desktop computer. It was a nightmare. Firstly, the module for my network card was not loaded, and X failed to start on the live cd. When I did get the live cd working, the installer died at random points with an empty log file.
Convinced that my problems were just due to a bad burn, I tried the Gentoo 2008 beta live cd. That just didn't work at all. I then re-burned the 2007 live cd on a much slower burn speed on a newer disk. Same problems.
I'm moving away from Gentoo and will be sticking Arch on that machine. It will be my "Impress the Laymen" machine, so I'll be investing heavily in the eye-candy department. I tried Gentoo originally because of the performance gain from optimising everything, and the learning experience. However, unable to even install it, I've given up for a while.
I've been a Gentoo user since 2001 and a linux user since 1998. Gentoo was the distro that finally helped me to learn (a few things at least) about linux and weaned me off dual boots.
I actually find their documentation to be some of the best there is and given the number of times it's referenced on the arch wiki I can't be the only one with similar opinions.
30 minutes to a base install from a minimal livecd is entirely realistic if you're familiar with the process and have a half-decent machine - I can do it in just over 30 on a dual PIII 1GHz with 2G RAM and 15K rpm scsi HDs. My PII-400 takes noticeably longer...
The GUI installer was ill-conceived and indicative of how the distro had lost it's way - I still use a 2005.x or 2006.x livecd IIRC, you can grab the latest and greatest grub and splash artwork from portage anyway and you download the latest snapshot of the toolchain as part of the base install process so having a 'new' livecd is not really such a great deal. IMO they should ditch it because GUI-tools and point-and-click installation/administration are not gentoo's unique-selling-point.
I don't see the point in mudslinging other distros, seems a bit childish to me. Likewise, referring someone to LFS when they've been quite open about not feeling comfortable with X or Y distro strikes me as an odd proposition - will you be there to offer more constructive support when they run into problems with LFS?
Should anyone 'stick with' gentoo? That's all personal choice. What I can say from experience is that from my first encounter with RH5.1 through to successfully installing gentoo I distrohopped feverishly, ultimately learning very little other than there was more out there than just KDE vs Gnome. For the same reason, I am sticking with arch (alongside gentoo). It's been just under a year now, and I have to say I like the arch way a lot. I have a hunch that it's a 'greener' distro since my box is not pegged at 100% cpu busy compiling source.
Whichever distro you settle on, enjoy it.
Last edited by tj (2008-05-05 11:34:47)
Similar Messages
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Moving back to Arch, but got a few things I'm kinda 'scared' about :(
It'll be probably a week as I wanna wait for my new monitor to arrive, but I'm thinking about moving back to Arch. I've used Arch before for a few months off and on, but I could never stay here, I don't know why but I just couldn't. Anyone have any advice on what I should give a shot at this time? I've only really used Openbox the last few times and I'm trying to stay away from KDE and Gnome. What should I give a try and what's the learning curve for it like? Also, if I were to add hard drives in at a later time, would they auto-recognize or would I have to mount them in /etc/fstab myself? If so, how would I find the name of it (/dev/sdb4, etc)?
Is Arch even for me though? I mainly do web dev, music, some games (which I think should work in wine), and graphics editing. Now, I've bought the Adobe suite so would that run perfectly normal in wine or should I dual boot for that? Or would a virtual box of Vista be enough for it? Yes, I know it's Vista, but it's what I've bought (I must of been high when I did it to). I'm not worried about RAM and CPU requirements for the Virtualbox, so would that be a better route than a dual boot. Because every time I try and dual-boot I end up screwing something up and have to re-format anyways, so what would you suggest?
When I am ready, I still need to find some applications that would be useful for me in Arch, etc. But how would this partition scheme work for something like this on a 750gb drive?
/boot - 100mb
/ - 20gb
/var - 200gb
/home - rest of drive
Also, any applications you could recommend I give a shot for the last and hopefully good experience here.E17 is a nice bit of fun, or you could try a straight up Compiz desktop. Personally I use Openbox, but i have been thinking about making a second user to try out a Compiz desktop without all of the Gnome or KDE clutter.
I'll recommend a VM over duel boot if you have the memory and CPU horsepower to back it up. (if it's less than 2 years old you're probably pretty good) The VM allows more flexible switching between the systems, you can set it to a specific desktop so all you have to do is switch between them with a keystroke, and it will run everything for Windows flawlessly, unlike Wine. (Not knocking wine but it's not perfect yet.)
Welcome back!
For apps:
web dev: you could try bluefish. I am not sure how it compares to others, but I rather like it. (Only used it for a class for about two weeks)
Music: depends on your style to be honest. if you really wanted to, you could use VLC to play music. There are more music players in Linux than any other type of app. At least from what I have found so far.
Graphics editing: Well there is always GIMP. It has a sharp learning curve, but it is just as functional as Photoshop. I think there is a Gimpshop that makes it more like Photoshop. Icescape is another one, and again high learning curve. (That might just be because I am still not exactly sure what Icescape is supposed to be used for...) There are others, but they generally are not on the technical level of Photoshop/GIMP.
Games... Well there is a games repo that has a few nice things in it. If your games play in Wine, cool! If not, look for the VM that virtualizes the GPU so you get a little better gaming. If your really serious about the games, dual booting is the only way to go. (Hint for dual boots... install Windows first, then shrink it to to left side in Gparted, which is the beginning of the disk in English, before making partitions. Gparted does make it a little easier to do in my opinion.)
Edit: Ok... minimalistic as possible... hmm ... Awesome Ratpoison and perhaps Musica all seem to be the minimal types. dvtm with screen is another that just came to mind...
Last edited by LeoSolaris (2009-04-14 03:59:30) -
Why I always have to go back to Arch?
Hi there!
A little story about me. I discovered Linux a long ago (6-7 years ago) while I was interested in computer security and hacking, and got a hint the 1337s uses Linux (or any other unix based system), so I decided to try it (I choose for Linux because it was the most popular *nix based system atm).
My romance with Linux started with Mandrake (today Mandriva) and included distributions like Red hat (it wasn't enterprise oriented that time and AFAIK there were no Fedora yet), and the lovely Gentoo. Its funny tough, Ubuntu wasn't that popular at the time (I even remember how I was on an open lecture in University about open source and Linux, and I got a free CD of Ubuntu and no body heard about it before )
Anyway its stopped there for few years and I got back to Linux about 2 years ago, with Ubuntu on my desktop machine.
My nature is to discover and be different. If everybody uses Ubuntu, I must use something else (even now, I'm on Xubuntu).
This nature lead me to replace Ubuntu with Arch. This was the first time I encountered a very similar distribution to Gentoo, that were optimized to i686 and did not require you to compile every package (for instance I installed Gentoo like 2-3 times from scratch [those were beautiful Friday evenings-nights :romantic-smiley:]) and I remember how compiling Xorg took me hours (and when I say hours I mean hours, something like 6-8 hours).
Then I got back to windows since my old PC died and I got a new one and a laptop.
This leads us to nearly today. Right now I'm using my laptop as my main computer at home and at work (the desktop PC had a motherboard issue that was replaced under warranty. While they were fixing it, I switched to use my laptop).
I started with Ubuntu, simply because it works! But I hated Untiy and I switched to Xubuntu. But you do remember my nature right? This lead me to switching to Arch.
A few days of configurations and I got stable up and running system. Then I came to work and had some issues (especially with keyring) and they blocked me from working, instead I needed to fix them. Then I said "This is it! I need a machine that works!".
I removed Arch, installed Xubuntu and promised my self never to do this pointless Distro_name->Arch->Distro_name path, because well, it ends the same way always.
But you do remember my nature right? So right now I'm standing in front of a decision whether to go back to Arch or not. I must say I really like the rolling release scheme, I'm in love with pacman (its a lot more superior than apt-get or yum IMHO), I like the way you can customize Arch.
But Archs customization is also its weak point, you have to devote hours or reading and configuring to get a stable and running system. And sometimes (especially if you use your laptop for work or for studies or both) you need to have a running system and you don't want to mess with cups just because its 2 A.M. and you need to print your project to submit it in 5 hours (yes you must take care of it at a lot earlier point than 5 hours before deadline )
Ubuntu is nice, but its bloated. It doesn't even give you the option to select what packages you want to install (unlike Fedora for example). Its comes with (IMHO) stupid meta packages like ubuntu-desktop, xubuntu-desktop so its nearly impossible to try gnome3, xfce, openbox on the same system without breaking something.
Ubuntu simply works, but as soon as you need something deeper, you are screwed.
I don't really ask sort of a question here, but I know many of you use Arch (I'm on bbs.archlinux.org doh -.-' ) as your everyday system, so I would like to know how do you handle its configuration, what you do when something breaks and you don't have the time to fix it (you are at work, hitting the deadline of your university project or whatever). Maybe you will be able to convince me why I always want to get back to Arch and what I need to do to choose it as my the one and only distribution. Maybe you will be able to suggest me another distro that fits my needs. Or maybe you want to tell me how sucky I'm.
So simply go on and post, this is why I created this topic.
Thanks you for your timeskwo wrote:
Hi there!
A little story about me. I discovered Linux a long ago (6-7 years ago) while I was interested in computer security and hacking, and got a hint the 1337s uses Linux (or any other unix based system), so I decided to try it (I choose for Linux because it was the most popular *nix based system atm).
My romance with Linux started with Mandrake (today Mandriva) and included distributions like Red hat (it wasn't enterprise oriented that time and AFAIK there were no Fedora yet), and the lovely Gentoo. Its funny tough, Ubuntu wasn't that popular at the time (I even remember how I was on an open lecture in University about open source and Linux, and I got a free CD of Ubuntu and no body heard about it before )
Anyway its stopped there for few years and I got back to Linux about 2 years ago, with Ubuntu on my desktop machine.
My nature is to discover and be different. If everybody uses Ubuntu, I must use something else (even now, I'm on Xubuntu).
This nature lead me to replace Ubuntu with Arch. This was the first time I encountered a very similar distribution to Gentoo, that were optimized to i686 and did not require you to compile every package (for instance I installed Gentoo like 2-3 times from scratch [those were beautiful Friday evenings-nights :romantic-smiley:]) and I remember how compiling Xorg took me hours (and when I say hours I mean hours, something like 6-8 hours).
Then I got back to windows since my old PC died and I got a new one and a laptop.
This leads us to nearly today. Right now I'm using my laptop as my main computer at home and at work (the desktop PC had a motherboard issue that was replaced under warranty. While they were fixing it, I switched to use my laptop).
I started with Ubuntu, simply because it works! But I hated Untiy and I switched to Xubuntu. But you do remember my nature right? This lead me to switching to Arch.
A few days of configurations and I got stable up and running system. Then I came to work and had some issues (especially with keyring) and they blocked me from working, instead I needed to fix them. Then I said "This is it! I need a machine that works!".
I removed Arch, installed Xubuntu and promised my self never to do this pointless Distro_name->Arch->Distro_name path, because well, it ends the same way always.
But you do remember my nature right? So right now I'm standing in front of a decision whether to go back to Arch or not. I must say I really like the rolling release scheme, I'm in love with pacman (its a lot more superior than apt-get or yum IMHO), I like the way you can customize Arch.
tl;dr
But Archs customization is also its weak point, you have to devote hours or reading and configuring to get a stable and running system. And sometimes (especially if you use your laptop for work or for studies or both) you need to have a running system and you don't want to mess with cups just because its 2 A.M. and you need to print your project to submit it in 5 hours (yes you must take care of it at a lot earlier point than 5 hours before deadline )
That is the strong point. Arch's customisation allows me to use it on the craptop and on the desktop. I prefer to see it as an investment of time to get a system I want instead of one a developer thinks I want (don't get me wrong open source devs do an amazing job!)
Ubuntu is nice, but its bloated. It doesn't even give you the option to select what packages you want to install (unlike Fedora for example). Its comes with (IMHO) stupid meta packages like ubuntu-desktop, xubuntu-desktop so its nearly impossible to try gnome3, xfce, openbox on the same system without breaking something.
Ubuntu simply works, but as soon as you need something deeper, you are screwed.
Bloat is the price you pay to have a distro that works out of the box.
I don't really ask sort of a question here, but I know many of you use Arch (I'm on bbs.archlinux.org doh -.-' ) as your everyday system, so I would like to know how do you handle its configuration, what you do when something breaks and you don't have the time to fix it (you are at work, hitting the deadline of your university project or whatever). Maybe you will be able to convince me why I always want to get back to Arch and what I need to do to choose it as my the one and only distribution. Maybe you will be able to suggest me another distro that fits my needs. Or maybe you want to tell me how sucky I'm.
So simply go on and post, this is why I created this topic.
Thanks you for your time
My arch setup is relatively simple, I set cron jobs to back up files with rsync and keep important config files backed up too. I am lucky by the fact I have a laptop I can use if the desktop breaks and vice versa but the sensible solution is to upgrade after work is done.
I keep coming back to arch because of pacman and the AUR. No package manager comes close. -
I have forgotten my restrictions passcode and i dont want to lose any media on my iphone, or any apps, i am scared to back up my media for restore in future as these photos and videos mean a great deal to me, is there any way i could get around it? Thankyou if you can help; oh and last time i restored my iphone it didnt restore ALL the media only some and very improtant photos went missing :(
All media and apps on the device should already be in iTunes on the computer.
If you have forgotten the restrictions passcode, the ONLY option is to restore as new.
Then sync back any media, apps, contacts, etc back to the device.
You can not restore from backup as the restrictions passcode is included in the backup. -
I stopped using Arch about a year ago, not due to any problem I had with Arch. Been running Ubuntu ever since does what I need.
Then I installed Virtualbox, thought I would load up Arch as a virtual machine and suddenly remembered all the good things about Arch.. its speed, ease of use, and flexibility, not too mention it looked damn good.
After reading Whitson Gordon's article about Arch on lifehacker I knew I had to reinstall it.
Installed and was up and running in not time.
Now for some reason which is beyond me my monitor is not running at the resolution I have on my virtual machine and frankly I am stumped.
Still love Arch but maybe my system is getting old, or maybe I am!
Could you send Cactus over to fix it for me?
MrG
Last edited by Mr Green (2010-12-11 20:19:23)I'm running a small IT company based 100% on GNU/Linux and FOSS: http://www.microlinux.fr. The company provides solutions for small town halls, public libraries, schools, small companies and the likes, and my job mainly consists of replacing crappy Windows networks by crispy Linux networks. Sometimes, I also do mixed setups, though I only integrate existing Windows machines into a network (that is, I never do fresh Windows installs). Besides that, I also do some training on Red Hat Enterprise Linux and Oracle, and I published two printed books about Linux (search "kiki novak" on amazon.fr if you're curious).
My first contact with Linux was back in 2001, when I installed Slackware 7.1. Over the years, I've been using nearly every distro under the sun. From time to time, I gave Arch a spin, and looking back, my forum inscription here dates back to 2005. Until now, I'd say I really liked Arch's KISS approach, which is probably due to my Slackware beginnings. There was only the odd little problem here or there that prevented me from using it in a production environment. But I've always got the feeling that Arch "almost" did the job, and I promised myself to come back from time to time just to check it out again. Right now, my company works mainly with CentOS (a Red Hat Enterprise Linux clone).
I'm also running a few production servers on CentOS, and I recently saw that my dedicated server provider (OVH France) now also offers Arch as an "expert" distro. I even remember sending them a mail a few years back and asking them if they could include Arch in their distribution list. At the time, they didn't seem to like the idea. This has been some sort of showstopper for me, since I like the idea of using one single distribution on servers as well as on the desktop. (Some basic laziness maybe )
Arch seems very mature now, and a glance on the wiki leaves me impressed by the sheer wealth and quality of the documentation. I even bought the printed Arch Linux Handbook, which is only slightly outdated. Right now, I'm wading through the documentation and fiddling with Arch on a few sandbox machines. I have a 60+ items checklist, and if things go well (which I have a vague feeling they'll do), 2011 will see Arch on many servers and desktops around here.
Cheers from the freezing South of France... -
How do I migrate from KDEMOD back to Arch's KDE package?
I've been a fan of KDEMOD for a long time, now that they are phasing it out, I'm kinda stuck in the limbo and would like to move to Arch's KDE package, is there a seamless way that you guys can recommend while keeping my KDE configurations?
Thanks!I would back up your ~/.kde4
cp -vR ~/.kde4 ~./kde4bak
In theory you should be able to comment out the kdemod repos in pacman.conf and then run
pacman -Syyuu
to refresh the databases and downgrade from kdemod.
You should then be able to install KDE from [extra] or [kde-unstable] if the latter is enabled
You might also want to get a list of installed KDEmod packages to know what KDE packages to get -
i deleted a bunch of texts by mistake and know they are in my phone's flash memory, how do i get them back ? should I back up to my i tunes ? Thanks
There is no way to get them back, unless you backed up your phone regularly to iTunes on your computer or to iCloud.
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*Strange* Issue with WPA2-LEAP Authentication
I suppose I should preface this with the fact that my poor little laptop uses one of the dreaded Broadcom cards (Dell Studio 1555 & BCM4312).
A while back, I decided I would experiment with Gentoo on my laptop. No wireless. Couldn't get it to work for weeks. Ditched Gentoo and went back to Arch. No wireless. Tried that for another couple of weeks. No wireless, tried Ubuntu, Ubuntu Studio, OpenSUSE, Puppy, Debian, and Arch, again. On the last try, it finally worked. By accident. I discovered that my computer now reads the ethernet port as eth1 and the wireless as eth0 for whatever reason (I've seen eth1 as wireless before, this is the first time that I've seen it as eth0).
Now, here is my issue. I live on a university campus which requires a username and password to log on to the campus wireless. I am currently connected to a contraband router in a student lounge because I can't connect to the standard dorm wireless.
My computer seems to have no problem with connecting to regular WPA2 networks, but it fails connecting every time that it tries to authenticate the university network.
Just wanted to hear your two cents. I'm moving off-campus soon, so it doesn't matter, I just wanted to hear y'all's opinion on this and how to possibly fix it in the few days that I am still here.
EDIT: I am using wicd.
Last edited by janvaletin (2012-05-07 11:22:18)Found the cause of this issue. For authentication against LDAP with APEX you have to make sure that your APEX_XXXXXX has the correct network ACL priviliges.
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Slashdot article compared Yoper with Gentoo? How about Arch?
Hey all,
first here is the article http://www.linuxforums.org/news/article-24256.html
While Yoper sounds pretty good and it was interesting to see the comparison, I would like to see an comparision between Arch and both of those Distros. I used Gentoo before I started using Arch and it was cool but the main reason I switched was the time that it took to update and maintain the system. I just don't have the time for that anymore. Then I found Arch! Fast, lightweight, and very customizable. I was in heaven . I have tried almost every distro listed on Distrowatch and I always come back to Arch. One thing I hate most about distros like Yoper is that you have no choice but to install KDE. I find that to be relevant in most distros and thats another thing that keeps me using Arch. I don't use KDE or Gnome and I don't want that to be installed on my system if I am not going to use it.
I closing of my ramblings , I would love to see someone do a comparison article of Arch with other distros and give Arch the credit that it truely deserves. Thanks to all who work with Arch for a fast, stable, bleeding edge, and fully customizable distro.
P.S. Also I think that the community with Arch is much better than being treated like s!@t like with other groups and I do mean Gentoo the most. I hated to even try to ask for help in IRC I'm sorry to say because they were horrible. Sorry if I offended anyone with that but thats the experience I had.
Cya! 8)Yes I agree but still I would like to see perhaps a little recognition in the Linux Community for Arch and its Dev's. They deserve it. Well lets just say that if anything I am very pleased with the work they have done. I have been using Arch for almost 2 years now and yes I have tried others on a seperate partitions just to see what's up but my primary is and always will be Arch. I read the article and just thought Hey, Arch is better than both of them as far as I can see so I had to open my mouth about it. Thanks for your response. I had Yoper installed for about a day. I don't care for KDE that much and I hate RPM. So it was not for me for sure. Others, fine but I will stick with Pacman thank you.
Chomp On!! -
Can someone help me with a grub entry I'll need for my Gentoo grub.conf to boot Arch?
I want to skip the arch bootloader section on install, so I won't know what kernel is and stuff they use. (well, I guess I could mount the arch partition from gentoo to find out ).
I'll be using the latest cdrom I guess.
Ignore what partitions I'll use. I'm just not familiar how arch boots the kernel.
Thx
My current /boot/grub/grub.conf is:
cat /boot/grub/grub.conf
default 0
timeout 10
splashimage=(hd0,2)/boot/grub/splash.xpm.gz
title=Gentoo Linux 2.6.20-r6
root (hd0,2)
kernel /boot/kernel-genkernel-x86-2.6.20-gentoo-r6 root=/dev/ram0 init=/linuxrc ramdisk=8192 real_root=/dev/sda6 udev
initrd /boot/initramfs-genkernel-x86-2.6.20-gentoo-r6
title=Windows Vista
rootnoverify (hd0,0)
makeactive
chainloader +1I also have Arch and Gentoo, but I use the grub of Arch to boot. However the following is the menu.lst
parts regarding Arch.
# (0) Arch Linux
title Arch Linux
root (hd0,2)
kernel /vmlinuz26 root=/dev/sda1 ro vga=773
initrd /kernel26.img
# (1) Arch Linux
title Arch Linux Fallback
root (hd0,2)
kernel /vmlinuz26 root=/dev/sda1 ro
initrd /kernel26-fallback.img -
My thoughts (and yours too!) about Arch (I'm in love already!)
Hello all! I suppose I would be called a newbie to Arch, but certainly not to Linux. I've been running Gentoo for five months. If I were running, say, Ubuntu for five months, I would probably still be considered a newbie, but five months of Gentoo has made me pretty proficient at Linux.
I (if you haven't guessed yet) am a Gentoo user , and it seems like there are a lot of Gentoo users who go to Arch. That's how I heard about it, through the Gentoo forums. I am currently looking for backups in case Gentoo comes crashing to the ground. I was perfectly content in my little bubble of happy compiling until I learned about the unrest inside of the Gentoo community. I never realized that things were in such bad shape... like a downward spiral. The result cannot be good. I feel like I'm on a sinking ship and am praying for my life here. I've seen a lot of threads at the forums lately like "If Drobbins fork Gentoo, will you follow him?" and "Will you stay with Gentoo if the Foundation is handed over to a 3rd party?" I find these a little unsettling! I understand that the Foundation is a terrible state right now, and the founder's attempt to get it back has failed, so now I don't things are going to head up. So I've started to face facts, that I better have some backup plans so that I'm not starting over from square 1 when this all burns to the ground (hopefully if, not when, because I like Gentoo and really don't want to have to give it up). Now I admit that I don't like EVERYTHING about Gentoo, but I like almost everything, and Arch seems to be like Gentoo in many respects.
Some of my personal desires in a distro:
1.Bleeding edge with rolling updates (and thus no need to ever reinstall the distribution)
2. A large repository for the package manager
3. Not a newbie distro... a distro for those who like the command line and to do things themselves
4. Good community
5. Customizable
6. The ability to choose between a stable and unstable package on a per-package basis
7. Install from source
Arch seems to satisfy 1,3, 4, and 5 correct? And pretty well satisfies 2, though I can see its package manager is not as big as Gentoo (though bigger than like Slackware).
I guess for the most part it doesn't satisfy 6 and 7 though, right? I realize that AUR is source-based, but on the whole, Arch is binary, so I'm referring to the overall tendency of the distribution.
Is there the ability to choose between stable and unstable packages though, to be as bleeding-edge as possible? (I'm thinking no but thought I'd ask)
Many other distributions such as Ubuntu probably wouldn't meet my needs at all. They seem to have a great repository and community, but I just don't want a GUI-based distro. The truth is, I want to feel like my computer needs me. It's my baby. XDDDD Okay, that's pretty sad, especially because it's a Pentium II (I can't WAIT to get my new laptop!!!!!!!!!!!), but I appreciate my Gentoo box way more than our Windows box upstairs, a lot of that having to do with the work I had to put into it to get it working correctly, and all that I had to learn. It makes me appreciate it a lot more, and it makes me a lot better at solving problems. (If it ain't broken, why not break it so you can fix it? XD)I don't want a distro that does everything for me; I won't feel needed anymore. Plus, I'm addicted to the command line. I have a window manager, sure (Thunar with Xfce), but I mostly still use the command line to view my files. Sometimes I don't even start up X (I never start it up by default) and am just as efficient as when I have it open. I insist on knowing how to do everything manually... when I wanted to make keyboard shortcuts for X, I chose to use xbindkeys rather than use the GUI with Xfce, so I could do it manually and still have it working if I ever switched desktop managers. I manually edit pretty much ALL my config files and, like I said, I am just as efficient without the GUI as I am with it. I can't go five minutes in GUI without having a virtual terminal open. So I think, in these respects, Arch would meed my needs quite well, just as Gentoo does now. I have deiced to try out Arch now anyway, regardless of the state of Gentoo, because you know, i might just like Arch better. I know a lot of Gentoo users have said they've gone to Arch. I'm trying to get my friend Evan to let me use his 8 gb hdd to try it on, because my current 6 gig drive for Gentoo is like... 99 percent full (I swear, I'm not kidding, I have 100 mg left, I REALLY have to prune XD), so once I get it, I'm going to install Arch (after unhooking my /home hard drive because I only have two slots for hard drives, and they're both already filled! I will probably end up moving the /home directory onto that 8 gig drive anyway. I realize it's hard to share things between distros, but I will at least be able to have a place to put files for both distros in the same place and would probably end up symlinking some same location to my desktop for both distros
Okay, now I'm just ranting. Back to point! I'm definitely going to try out Arch, and so far I like what I see. I even recommended it to a friend who is also thinking of leaving Gentoo (for Ubuntu, so he can support his amd64 processor). I pointed out Arch64 and he's considering it. I don't think he'd like Ubuntu any more than I. He originally used Slack and only switched to Gentoo because Slack really doesn't have a good package manager. I think he'd like Arch as well.
I've also done research on other distributions someone like me might like (especially coming from Gentoo).
This is my current list:
Arch Linux
Frugalware (based on Arch, right?)
Zen Walk
Vector Linux
CRUX (I'm leaning away from this one, as of now)
Lunar
Source Mage
Sorcerer
FreeBSD (but I've decided not to go with FreeBSD, as much as I like installing from source, because their philosophy of stability over currentness (like not having flash 9 because it's not "stable") just doesn't fly with me.. Linux is better for me, I think)
LFS.. okay, not really, but if I ever have a weekend when I'm REALLY bored.........
I've used Slack before but I would prefer to have a package manager, so I'm steering away from that direction, as much as I liked Slack.
Have I missed any other distros people in this sort of mindset like us might like? ^_^
My primary focus right now is Arch, and it's definitely my first preference as far as switching goes.
I think my biggest problem with Arch is that I REALLY like to compile everything from source (or at least, have Portage do it for me :-p), so I"d miss that. Especially USE flags. However, Source Mge/Lunar/Sorcerer don't sound as good as Arch, and FreeBSD just... isn't my thing. Their package manger seems great, it's their overall philosophy I disagree with.
This post really isn't asking for help with anything, but isn't that fine? This is just the Arch Linux General Forums, right? I just wanna talk about Arch as compared to other distros. I've wiki-ed it some, but I just think it's a fun thing to discuss.
So what things do you guys like better about Arch, and what things do you like better about Gentoo, or maybe about some other good distros?
I can't wait to try out Arch; I'm so excited! No Xubuntu for me! ^___________^ (Gnome and ESPECIALLY KDE would lag far too much for this computer)
-Megan M-Well, I technically have 14 gigs... I have the 6 gig and a 4 gig which has /usr/portage (the portage tree probably takes up so much space it would outweigh any space saved through USE flags XD) and /var/tmp, since that can get huge while compiling and I don't have space on the 6 gig for the fluctuations in space... I had to install the binary for OpenOffice just because the temporary space required to compile it was bigger than the space I had on my hard drive!!!!and I actually have so little space left I am permanently using a ext3 formatted flash drive as my ~/Desktop (it's in my fstab and everything XD!) This gives me 4 extra gigs for all my stuff.
But anyway, just you people answering this thread so nicely confirms my feelings about the Arch community. I can easily see a thread like this simply being ignored on the Gentoo forums, or just merged with other threads. >.<
Actually, to be honest, most pakcages I am running unstable on Gentoo had to do with compile errors and such, or some feature not working correctly in the older version. The only ones that I just wanted to run unstable are.. lemme check my /etc/portage/package.keywords... Skype and Pidgin. And possibly Mplayer too, I was thinking of. Everything else was either because of problems or of it being in the Sunrise overlay (everything in there is masked as unstable since it's not an official part of the Portage tree).
How easy is it to get an older version of a package? I ask because I want Flash 9.0.48.0-r1, NOT 9.0.115.0. The newer one made my Firefox commit suicide and just close with an error when I viewed certain pages (youtube, etc. was fine, but even going to www.adobe.com made it crash *irony*). Gentoo forum users told me that then newer one was unmasked because of a security flaw found in the older one, but for me, I'd rather take my chances with the hole than have firefox crash every five minutes!!!! Is there any way to specify not to update a package either, for when you do a world update (or whatever they are called in Arch)? This also has to do with Flash... I'll give the newer one a try... maybe it was just a Gentoo issue... but if not, I'm DEFINITELY downgrading!
I like how easy it seems for Arch users to add packages to AUR so they are available to others... this is harder to do on Gentoo, despite that everything is source-based. It's most like there is a wall between the users and the developers that cannot be broken easily. This seems like a good way to let users have a little fun in the developer's world without *being* one.
One last question while I'm here.. my other friend who I sugested Arch to... I just want to confirm that Arch would support his CPU. He said to me:
"Oh, and my CPU arch is amd64 / x86-64 / emt64-t
thechnically its em64t since its an intel CPU but i am running a k8 optimized system (because I used to have a opteron)"
^_^
PS: Your forums may be smaller than those of Gentoo, but that is not necessarily a disadvantage. There is like a perfect size, I think. You can be too small OR too big... with bigger forums, it is so much easier for a thread to just get buried if no one can answer it right away, even though someone else might be able to but will never see it because it's already buried. This happened to me in the Ubuntu forums. I obviously do not run Ubuntu but posted a question there regarding mtpfs with a particular MP3 player, because I figured the forums were large enough that I'd get at least a few people with the same mp3 player and they could tell me their experiences with the program. HA! Instead, I just got 0 replies and it was simply buried. With forums, bigger isn't *always* better, imo.
PPS: What is your policy on patching the source code? For example, GTK+ recently deprecated a few features that TiLP(1 and 2) depends on. The source code will now not compile. I made a patch for it to fix it (I was supposed to submit that ebuild two days ago... grah, I really should do it tomorrow!), for otherwise it just gives errors. If it is TiLp2 you have in the repository, it is literally as simple as adding one line in the source code (and is the fix the developer himself recommended), but Gentoo did not even notice and kept the source code in the tree the same even though it would no longer compile! @_@ This kind of ticked me off, personally, which is why I have to submit that patch tomorrow! ha ha
Last edited by violagirl23 (2008-01-24 06:00:10) -
Arch Linux 0.7.1 - my feedback
please read the post before vote
Well, I've used Arch linux for many months in late 2004 / early 2005 and then I've switched to Ubuntu...
some days ago I've installed version 0.7.1 and updated it with pacman -Syu
I've seen a lot of improvement since the last time I used it and I was near to think "ok let's switch back to Arch" until I found I that thing I really hate :!: is still here..
You can't install old versions of some packages. For example, kernel.. or.. php (ok there is one in Aur that is maybe "too" old) and mysql..
in the php/mysql example it's true that version 5 is the latest one but they (at least php) still develope the 4.x version for security and many server still have it and also many scripts supports only php4 and 5.
also, as I am a php developer, I need to test scripts with old versions.
but as I said this is just an example. I think that while you can't think to have a big repository of binaries it would be great to be able to install old versions via source.
and recompiling software by hand using old PKGBUILDS is a problem case you don't have a tool that tells you wich packaged were "aligned" with wich.. I mean.. the new php works only with the mysql5 extension so even if you build mysql by yourself it won't work with php.. and so on for apache..
anyway.. if a user is able to block a package and prevent the automatic update he should also be able to use the non-latest version of it.
I know that arch is a bleeding edge distro but this shouldn't mean that you have only the bleeding things. (see gentoo for example)
Another thing that will help a lot in my opinion is to have in the wiki 2 lists:
- one very detailed with available daemons and their use.. for example.. ok.. fam is the file alteration monitor.. but why you need it and wich are the main programs that takes advantage from it and what happens if you doesn't run it? and so on for hal, etc. ..
- one list with all available standard groups that tells user to wich group subscribe in order to be able to performe a specific action
imho this 2 lists will help the (new) user understand better what is doing and why The arch philosophy of "do it yourself and learn doing it" is great but have to be encouraged, and in fact there already is a very good documentation.
Just my 2 cents. And sorry if some one else already said this before; in this case take my post as an underline mark btw.. I'll attach a poll to it.
bye,
Giovanni.iphitus wrote:To me this thread looks more like "i dont want to make a second package for myself, so let's get the devs to do it".
hmm.. this sounds a bit offenisve to me. Cause I don't actually need that packages as I'm not using Arch as main distro. This post was meant to give a feedback..
iphitus wrote:Especially as there isnt a huge demand for such a package, and you are most likely to be one of a very small minority to use that duplicate package.
ok I agree with this. but from my point of view it is because users that needed it too already switched to another distro..
and this leads us to this:
tomk wrote:I voted "No, there is no need", because I think this is simply an indication that Arch is not the right distro for you - it doesn't meet your requirements.
Imho, the point is that Arch have a lot of great features. The one I'd like to have is a feature that I think will just increase the number of great features Arch already have and will make Arch the right distro for more users. So users that switch to another distro will lose a lot of features that they like to get one or two that they need..
tomk wrote:This "thing that you really hate" is still there because firstly the Arch devs, and secondly Arch users, have not needed to change it. If you want to work "from within" to change that, with polls like this, feature requests, etc, I wish you the best of luck, but I think your poll result so far should tell you something about the support you can expect.
the poll was mainly for myself to get an idea of the users opinion not to change the things. And as I said it is not a change from my point of view, but just a new feature. About Arch devs I agree but about users I don't.. how you can say it if you say to me that I should change distro? In this way people that thinks like me will always remain a minority in arch community. And I don't think that having a old version of a "core" package would be against the Arch philosophy.
tomk wrote:Finally a general point, and this applies to wiki entries as well - you will get a better response if you do something, and then ask "what do you think?" instead of asking "Why doesn't Arch do this?"
I did it for the software thing with the poll and anyway also for the wiki I didn't wrote it but I thought it was clear.. For the wiki I posted my idea and there was no need for the question "what do you think" cause is a discussion forum Also please keep in mind that I wrote the original post in late night and that I'm italian so my english isn't so good :oops:
anyway.. thanks for the tip about subit a feature request and for your answers.
bye,
Giovanni. -
Hi.
I just wanted to rename some mp3s I had lying around and wanted to do this with perl-expressions. Back in Ubuntu I just had to run "rename", which would take a Perl-like Regular expressions (complete with tokens and backreferences) and a file scheme and would throw every filename against that expression and rename the file accordingly. Link to Original Article that led me to that app
But the Arch-'rename' tool is much less capable of doing the tasks I need done.
After booting back in Ubuntu I found out that the rename-tool I had been using was actually "prename". I didn't find much info on the net about it so I just copied the binary back in Arch and it worked.
But I think such a great tool should be included in Arch. So if anyone knows something about prename post here so maybe I could make a package in AUR or so.prename seems to be part of the debian project.
In debian, it's part of the perl package. It's not in the original perl source, but separately added in the debian specific diff file. As ubuntu is based on debian, that would explain why they're using prename per default.
I don't know why they don't include it as a separate file, but you have to extract the program from the diff.
Fortunately, I've already succeeded in doing so, and have posted a package to the AUR.
As I'm not aware of any way to manage alternatives in Arch (like in e.g. debian or gentoo) I've simply left it as prename.
Have fun! -
Hey y'all,
I've been using arch for a while now...but debian sid always seemed like a decent idea due to the large software repositories available for debian. Considering the minimal, net install version: what are your opinions?sand_man wrote:
mutlu_inek wrote:
The only advantage is see in Debian is that it offers debug packages. I hate not having them in Arch.
Other than that, I cannot imagine a better distribution.
But with ABS you can create your own debug packages if you really needed to.
I do admit that the option of quickly downloadable binary packages of debug symbols is very nice.
I'm trying out Debian Squeeze on my laptop. I'll probably go back to Arch on it, for one main reason: It's MUCH easier to create a custom package, or a more up-to-date version of it in Arch (when it's not already there, thanks to the massive AUR). If I really want a new version of a package, and for some odd reason Arch doesn't have it, I can grab the PKGBUILD, edit the pkgver and md5sums, and usually, I'm done. On Debian... well, if there is anything like that, let me know please. I haven't used Checkinstall yet, I admit that too, but I'd be worried about using a package generator for Arch, let alone a much more heavily patched and such distro like Debian. Checkinstall is basically just a fakeroot-style wrapper around make install, right? While the Debian repos are expansive, they do miss edge cases more than you might think (Avidemux is missing! There is an unofficial repo for it though). Also gone is the ability to grab development (git, svn, cvs) snapshots of packages without much hacking, whereas on Arch there's a ton of devel PKGBUILDs in the AUR, and worst case it's fairly simple to make your own.
Really, PKGBUILDs have spoiled me... the only distro/OS even close to Arch's bleeding-edge updates and wide coverage is FreeBSD, which at least has a visible way of rebuilding packages and modifying the build files. Slackware, maybe (a little over-manual, but still nice), and Gentoo's ebuilds are quite complex, but I'm getting off topic.
I recommend that people who are considering Debian try it, like I have. Just be sure that all your odd software works fine. If not, welcome back to the land of ./configure and make, just with Checkinstall thrown in.
In the interests of NOT starting a flame war, the above is my own personal complaints about Debian. I think Debian is a very solid distro, and I'm glad Debian exists. I just like to state my opinion. All the above sounds decidedly negative, which isn't the impression I meant to give -- again, I think Debian's nice for a lot of uses and applaud their work. -
where i can start reading/learning about Arch internals, how Arch is designed etc. Gentoo has lots of Documentation in its "Documentation repositories and Forums". Arch Wiki is nearly empty. any pointers ?
shining wrote:Why are you making two very similar threads one just after the other ?
NO, they are not same. this one is specific about Documentation. the other one is about general design of Arch.
shining wrote:
Anyway, for answering your question, I guess arch is so simple it doesn't require any documentation
More seriously, you have the most general and important topics on the main page :
http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Main_Page
But if you need something more specific, just search for it in the wiki, it contains much more.
Though, while the documentation is not that bad, it's certainly not arch strongest point in my opinion.
Gentoo might be better for that.
But using the wiki and forums, you should find everything you need for the common stuff.
e.g i had "kernel panic" after "pacman -Syu" and i got this:
http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Kernel_Panics
this one *assumes* "Let's suppose you keep the previous versions.". i did NOT keep the previous versions and there is no clue for me then, i think this article is partial in information and needs to be completed.
similarly we need to write some articles like "gcc upgrade issues" or "pacman -Syu essentials thread (which can contain precautions, pre and post checks etc). how about the idea ?
NOTE: after "kernel panic" i switched to Gentoo but something inside pushes me back to Arch, don't know what it is, it's the simplicity i guess.
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