I love the rolling release aspect of arch but I'm looking for something more user friendly. Anybody know of a good linux distro that is user friendly and has rolling releases?
I've been using Linux Mint, Debian Edition, for years now. It's rolling.
Arch Linux pulls the plug on 32-bit
141–150 of 201 posts
Re: Arch Linux pulls the plug on 32-bit
#142Earlier quoted context omitted.
>If I disagree, I reply. >I'm going to bow out. Cheers. Thanks for acknowledging it, then.
...and now you are trolling. You edited out your original post, calling the people replying to you "Arch fanboys" (even though I stated my own disdain for Arch), reposted it with an addendum to make it appear you were talking about Upstart all along when you were initially only talking about systemd , and now you're paraphrasing me in a way that makes it look like I agree with you. Consequently, I have now flagged al…
>you were initially only talking about systemd
Systemd and Upstart are both advanced init systems and serve a very similar purpose. Complaining that one wasn't initially mentioned is just a way to prevent admitting that you're wrong. Arch took a very long time to make the step. That's a fact.
Flagging posts that are correct and provide sources should rather make you consider your own actions, but Arch users are often notoriously bad at facing reality.
Re: Arch Linux pulls the plug on 32-bit
#143FreeBSD did this too, right after I had just setup a local Minecraft server on an old Pentium D. It's a shame because it works perfectly for that purpose and now it'll just have to sit on FreeBSD 10 for the rest of it's life. I don't plan expose it to the outside world so that's OK for me, but surely 32-bit machines still have a purpose.
As far as I know, the only BSD operating system to drop 32-bit support was DragonFly, back in 2014:
https://www.dragonflybsd.org/release40/
Re: Arch Linux pulls the plug on 32-bit
#144Earlier quoted context omitted.
All modern x86* CPUs are 64bit anyway and if this move means maintainers are freed up a bit, then I think it's worthwhile for the distro as a whole. Arch isn't really meant to be that one distro you can stick on a PC from the early nineties anyway. There are much more suitable distros for legacy hardware. And about the downsides of 64bit: I think the vastly improved address space offsets the improved memory use by or…
> the early nineties 64-bit computers started gaining popularity in the consumer market only, what, 5 years ago?
What do you mean gaining popularity?
Athlon 64 came out in 2003, Pentium 4F in 2005. I'll concede that 32-bit Atoms were reasonably popular in certain market segments, but hasn't generally every consumer computer been 64-bit for over 10 years?
Re: Arch Linux pulls the plug on 32-bit
#145Earlier quoted context omitted.
I agree, but I'd guess the chief complaint is that doing so requires the `python2` symlink to be available. There's at least one claim up thread that it doesn't exist on all systems (create it yourself?). I didn't catch the distribution used, but I DID check an older Ubuntu image I have (I run Arch) and there's definitely a python2 link pointing to python2.7 (`python` also points to python2.7 and there's a `python3`…
In 2017, indeed everyone has added python2, but I assure you it wasn't that way when Arch originally did the python3 -> python rename. While this is a small issue, this original thread used it as an example of how Arch is good and pragmatic. To me it seemed like the opposite -- it broke lots of code and packages for no good reason. Why should users of older distros have to add a symlink, when before Arch everyone cou…
> I assure you it wasn't that way when Arch originally did the python3 -> python rename.
I disagree. I don't believe it was as painful as some make it out to be. The official packages were updated within a relatively short period of time, and while the AUR packages took longer they're also not officially supported. There was also a news announcement [1]. Honestly, I think of a few other transitions over my years of using Arch as being far, far more painful. The Python2 -> Python3 defaults change isn't one of them.
Although I would agree that Gentoo's approach was somewhat better via eselect, which I believe predated Arch's migration.
> Why should users of older distros have to add a symlink
You're right. That should be the responsibility of the package maintainer. Conversely, why should I, as a developer, have to continue assuming `/usr/bin/python` points to any particular version of Python when most distributions have migrated away from this anachronism? sed does magic, and you really should be using the appropriate symlink for your desired version anyway. Python 3 isn't new. I have a hard time seeing this as problematic because 1) things change and 2) the solution is easy. I'd be happy to entertain a use case where this actually has presented material difficulties, however.
> but this actually caused the most problems for little 20 line python scripts, because often the users of those didn't even realise they were using python.
Well, I do agree: It's a problem for the end user, but the solutions aren't difficult (if someone's using Linux, they probably know enough to fix it). So, either change the hashbang, add a symlink, and--failing that--complain to the package maintainer if it's been packaged up by the distro and the upstream software itself has changed (it should).
My recommendation for developers would be to use the appropriate /usr/bin/python* symlink. Nearly all distros have them in place now (including Ubuntu from a couple years ago). Perhaps assuming /usr/bin/python will always point to a fixed version is a matter of misplaced assumptions.
Re: Arch Linux pulls the plug on 32-bit
#146Earlier quoted context omitted.
Which ones provide a similar approach to Arch? A six-year-old 32-bit processor (e.g. an Atom in an EeePC 901 or HP Mini 311c) is more than capable of running a modern desktop system.
FYI It's actually 8 years old for the EeePC 901 and the last 32-bit Atoms came out in 2009.
I erred on the side of caution. :)
I've successfully run Arch on a set of 10 EeePC 901s for a club. Linux plus Arduino programming = awesome kids.
Re: Arch Linux pulls the plug on 32-bit
#147Other tech folk have always talked about 32 bit support as a necessary evil since smaller types mean less memory. The complexity of managing a secondary 32 bit environment has been worse than the memory usage of 64 bit apps for a very, very long time.
That need has been met by the x32 ABI for some time now, it combines some of the best parts of the x86_64 arch with the lower memory consumption of 32bit (still limited to 4gb max memory though) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X32_ABI
> (still limited to 4gb max memory though)
4GB max address space per process. It should support much more memory through PAE [1], which makes things more reasonable.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physical_Address_Extension
Re: Arch Linux pulls the plug on 32-bit
#148Earlier quoted context omitted.
The switch to the 'python' command running python 3, as a non-arch user, put me off Arch forever. It just broke everything, which had long assumed 'python' would run python 2. Not installing python 2, and just python 3, with the name python3, would have been fine. Arch put us in a situation where it was basically impossible to run python 2 with a #! line, as some distros hadn't yet introduced a 'python2' symlink yet.
I'm an Arch user, and it literally broke nothing for me. Packages were updated, life went on. You seem to be complaining because other distros hadn't done the right thing. I don't see how that's Arch's fault. Are we to hold back for the lowest common denominator? Do we need every distro to join together and agree to a switchover date? There was official guidance from Python on the switchover, this wasn't some maveric…
The decision is pretty simple: if a user doesn't like the way Arch does things, they're free to use any of a hundred other distros. I'm with you, I think this is fine.
Re: Arch Linux pulls the plug on 32-bit
#149Off topic: I've been in the market for a new laptop that runs Linux, I've never had a PC that ran Linux (closest thing was a Macbook running MacOS, I'm also discounting my work laptop that allows me to VNC into SuSe). After doing some research it seemed like Arch Linux might be a good fit, it seems like a very minimal OS that allows for great customization. However I'm unsure how user friendly it would be for someone…
The installation is the most challenging part but it really just boils down to "Can you follow directions?"
Best simple/minimal install: use XFCE without a login manager. This gives you a very nice "default" environment without having to spend any time configuring.
Re: Arch Linux pulls the plug on 32-bit
#150Earlier quoted context omitted.
Except that python says that python 3 should be an executable named `python3` and `python` should refer to `python2` [0] 0: https://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0394/
Using the official, graphical installer for Python 3 on Windows with no previous version installed creates an executable 'python' that refers to Python 3. (Normally not a Windows user so I have no idea why this is the case or if by design.)
Windows doesn't support shebang lines, so the exact name/location of the interpreter doesn't matter as much as it does on 'nix.