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Apricity OS: A Beautiful Arch Linux Distro

apricityos.com

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Re: Apricity OS: A Beautiful Arch Linux Distro

#81

I've had a lot of fun playing around with Arch, and it's taught me a lot about Linux, but it seems to me like the "rolling release, mostly unmodified sources from many third parties" update model is a no-go for anyone other than a very seasoned Linux user or someone with a lot of time on their hands. Things just break or otherwise don't work far too often. So, kudos to the guy who put this distro together but without…

Interestingly I've had far, far less issues in Arch over a year or so of using it, than I did trying to use Debian stable ~10 years ago.

It could be that I'm just more of a unix beast now and so do it automatically without thinking. I remember having to edit Xorg configuration files, having tons of unsupported hardware, etc.

Arch has basically just worked for me on all my machines with the exception of some esoteric features (e.g. zfs requires a bit of fiddling).

What problems have you had in particular?

Re: Apricity OS: A Beautiful Arch Linux Distro

#82

Idle mem 500Mb for a gnome based desktop. That's impressive. Trying out tonight!

That didn't sound impressive to me at all, then I checked my memory use on Debian with Gnome Desktop, and was a bit shocked. It's hard to gauge memory use, but considering I used to play with OSs that would load to 64MB of RAM it's hard to see what I'm really getting here in terms of perks. Network manager and some mounting help is about all that's useful from Gnome Shell for me.

Re: Apricity OS: A Beautiful Arch Linux Distro

#83

An Arch system with defaults is not an Arch system. The beauty of Arch is that you set it up from head to toe, so you only have the things you need most. And if something breaks, you're more likely to be able to fix it. Accept no substitute. Vanilla Arch forever. (I accept that some people don't care about how the sausages are made. In that case, use Fedora or Debian or Ubuntu, in order of similarity to Arch.)

I like Arch. I would love to have it installed on my laptop, but then I don't want to spend the time actually installing and configuring it. I got fed up with that stuff using linux 15 years ago. I remember the days when you had to write your own device drivers. I don't long for them. In fact, I still cry a bit when I think about that day my RedHat 6 install configured eth0 for me. Imagine: Plugging a network cable i…

For me the issue with Just Works distributions is that I actually spend more time reconfiguring all the parts than if I do it by myself from the ground up. In my opinion, Arch has the perfect balance between things just working and allowing you to decide whatever you want ro use.

I just recently bought a new laptop that I had set up within a day. A lot of that time was spent playing around with various hidpi settings, though.

And it certainly helps that I have most of my configurations in my dotfiles repo (including media key bindings).

Re: Apricity OS: A Beautiful Arch Linux Distro

#85

I've had a lot of fun playing around with Arch, and it's taught me a lot about Linux, but it seems to me like the "rolling release, mostly unmodified sources from many third parties" update model is a no-go for anyone other than a very seasoned Linux user or someone with a lot of time on their hands. Things just break or otherwise don't work far too often. So, kudos to the guy who put this distro together but without…

Interestingly I've had far, far less issues in Arch over a year or so of using it, than I did trying to use Debian stable ~10 years ago. It could be that I'm just more of a unix beast now and so do it automatically without thinking. I remember having to edit Xorg configuration files, having tons of unsupported hardware, etc. Arch has basically just worked for me on all my machines with the exception of some esoteric…

Or maybe hardware is now much better supported whatever the distribution you use ?

Re: Apricity OS: A Beautiful Arch Linux Distro

#86

Idle mem 500Mb for a gnome based desktop. That's impressive. Trying out tonight!

That didn't sound impressive to me at all, then I checked my memory use on Debian with Gnome Desktop, and was a bit shocked. It's hard to gauge memory use, but considering I used to play with OSs that would load to 64MB of RAM it's hard to see what I'm really getting here in terms of perks. Network manager and some mounting help is about all that's useful from Gnome Shell for me.

Let's say they built it for an average user. And it's kinda impressive. So how much was your Debian taking up?

Re: Apricity OS: A Beautiful Arch Linux Distro

#87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interestingly I've had far, far less issues in Arch over a year or so of using it, than I did trying to use Debian stable ~10 years ago. It could be that I'm just more of a unix beast now and so do it automatically without thinking. I remember having to edit Xorg configuration files, having tons of unsupported hardware, etc. Arch has basically just worked for me on all my machines with the exception of some esoteric…

Or maybe hardware is now much better supported whatever the distribution you use ?

That is certainly true. All distributions work much better because the kernel and userspace are just more solid now.

Re: Apricity OS: A Beautiful Arch Linux Distro

#88
post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"This is what everyone throughout the world is attempting to do. Truth is narrowed down and made a plaything for those who are weak, for those who are only momentarily discontented. Truth cannot be brought down, rather the individual must make the effort to ascend to it. You cannot bring the mountain-top to the valley. If you would attain to the mountain-top you must pass through the valley, climb the steeps, unafrai…

What does this quote mean? And what does it have to do with someone's package manager configuration?

It's from Atlas Shrugged, and I think it's trying to draw some kind of parallel between using Arch and struggling against oppressive forces of mental tyranny. As represented by Apricity perhaps? Arch is for heroic individualists?

Arch is great and all. I love using it, but I get pretty impatient with people who think they're smarter than everyone else because they can follow the detailed instructions in a well-written and lovingly maintained wiki. I get similarly impatient with B.S. Arch derivatives. If you want Ubuntu, just use Ubuntu. It's based on a perfectly legit distribution.

Re: Apricity OS: A Beautiful Arch Linux Distro

#89
post #74
post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suggest the disclaimer route. Everything on GitHub really ought to have an indication in the README.md about why it is there. A single line saying "I'm just hosting it here and you've got no reason to ever use this" can be very helpful. (Plus when someone posts your GitHub repo to HN for some random reason, that disclaimer can save you a lot of hassle.)

To be fair, he not only put up his code on GitHub, he also created a semi-professional looking and analogously worded website. That's not something that is posted to HN by "mistake". It sounds more like a startup than a hobby project: > We are a Chicago based team of developers, dedicated to creating useful, intuitive software that helps people better integrate digital computing into their daily lives The GitHub repo…

My favorite part of that:

http://storage.j0.hn/Screen%20Shot%202016-04-04%20at%209.35....

3.2 million additions, 916k deletions 20 commits.

Re: Apricity OS: A Beautiful Arch Linux Distro

#90

I've had a lot of fun playing around with Arch, and it's taught me a lot about Linux, but it seems to me like the "rolling release, mostly unmodified sources from many third parties" update model is a no-go for anyone other than a very seasoned Linux user or someone with a lot of time on their hands. Things just break or otherwise don't work far too often. So, kudos to the guy who put this distro together but without…

Interestingly I've had far, far less issues in Arch over a year or so of using it, than I did trying to use Debian stable ~10 years ago. It could be that I'm just more of a unix beast now and so do it automatically without thinking. I remember having to edit Xorg configuration files, having tons of unsupported hardware, etc. Arch has basically just worked for me on all my machines with the exception of some esoteric…

I can't speak to problems with Arch either -- I've installed it on a number of machines and never had a serious issue. Every now and then something minor will break. For 15 minutes once I couldn't use VTE-based terminal emulators because of a configuration bug. This was easily fixed with googling. And that's literally the worst thing that's ever happened to any of my Arch installs.
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