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My Arch Linux Setup with Plasma 5

sadanand-singh.github.io

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Re: My Arch Linux Setup with Plasma 5

#21

Post by broodbucket »

microwavecamera wrote: post #14

Question for all the Arch peeps, what's the goal/purpose of Arch? As an outside observer it seems needlessly complicated and most of the complexity being specific to Arch. Why not just run Slack or Debian if you want a barebones full distro? Slack and BSD's are closer to old school UNIX. Arch is after my time, am I missing something?

Latest stable software (this is such a massive deal), it's as lean as you want it to be, and you have the AUR where you can install pretty much any piece of software on the internet in one command. Once you get it running (which doesn't take long once you know what you're doing), it does exactly what you want it to do, is always running the latest and greatest, and in my experience lets me get what I want done faster than anything else.

Slackware and Debian are nowhere near as current as Arch, and don't have anything near comparable to the AUR.

The main downside of Arch is that you want to be updating somewhat regularly (every couple months at max). This isn't an issue for desktops/laptop I regularly use, and I run Arch on my home server that gets updated around monthly, but it's not a "set and (almost) forget" like Debian stable or CentOS.

EDIT: I run Arch on my work laptop and my home server (which runs my blog and some services) and it's never fallen over in several years. Occasionally updates will require me to do something, but if there's an update that requires manual intervention they post about it on archlinux.org.

Re: My Arch Linux Setup with Plasma 5

#22

Post by Tomte »

viraptor wrote: post #15
microwavecamera wrote: post #14

Question for all the Arch peeps, what's the goal/purpose of Arch? As an outside observer it seems needlessly complicated and most of the complexity being specific to Arch. Why not just run Slack or Debian if you want a barebones full distro? Slack and BSD's are closer to old school UNIX. Arch is after my time, am I missing something?

Debian is not kept as up to date as arch. There's also no AUR equivalent. AUR had Steam for Linux packaged for example about 2h after the official release, with people adding the missed dependencies very shortly. Also not having many prescribed defaults is sometimes nice. I want KDE with that display manager / lockscreen. And I can have it without uninstalling some metapackage which will make updates harder in the fu…

So Arch community packages are "released" without even cursory testing whether it works (missing dependencies)?

And you feel that's a good thing?

Re: My Arch Linux Setup with Plasma 5

#23

Post by qarioz »

microwavecamera wrote: post #14

Question for all the Arch peeps, what's the goal/purpose of Arch? As an outside observer it seems needlessly complicated and most of the complexity being specific to Arch. Why not just run Slack or Debian if you want a barebones full distro? Slack and BSD's are closer to old school UNIX. Arch is after my time, am I missing something?

It's only complicated for the first time. My setup is running just fine for 5+ years.

Compared to when I use Ubuntu, have to upgrade every 6 months and suddenly I got headache because all custom configuration doesn't work anymore or custom repository doesn't work anymore because the maintainer is missing.

Slackware is fine, but Patrick and a bunch of guys is only a small team, and custom package can only do so much. Bless him and may Guinness always flow freely.

Debian is problematic, because their libraries are usually old.

Re: My Arch Linux Setup with Plasma 5

#24

Post by microwavecamera »

viraptor wrote: post #15
microwavecamera wrote: post #14

Question for all the Arch peeps, what's the goal/purpose of Arch? As an outside observer it seems needlessly complicated and most of the complexity being specific to Arch. Why not just run Slack or Debian if you want a barebones full distro? Slack and BSD's are closer to old school UNIX. Arch is after my time, am I missing something?

Debian is not kept as up to date as arch. There's also no AUR equivalent. AUR had Steam for Linux packaged for example about 2h after the official release, with people adding the missed dependencies very shortly. Also not having many prescribed defaults is sometimes nice. I want KDE with that display manager / lockscreen. And I can have it without uninstalling some metapackage which will make updates harder in the fu…

Well Debian stable, but you can sync up to testing, unstable or experimental (if you want bleeding edge) for newer packages and have a rolling release. I'm running Kubuntu right now, not that I'm a huge ubuntu fan, but it has the latest KDE plasma desktop with the debian package manager if you just want a KDE that works with minimal effort plus a kick ass package manager and you can upgrade without reinstalling like Fedora. I know how to do stuff manually, I'm old lol, but I use Linux as my main desktop OS and have been for years. More years than I like to think about because it just reminds me how old I am now. It's nice to just be able to install a distro and be up and running in a few hours instead of a few days. You can add grsec (are anything else kernel related) to any distro, just compile a kernel. If your going for the retro thing, Slack and BSD's is the way to go. I guess what I'm getting at is what need is Arch trying to fulfill?

Re: My Arch Linux Setup with Plasma 5

#25

Post by oxplot »

Nauxuron wrote: post #16
noinsight wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or, you can use the (S)ATA Secure Erase[1] command which was designed from the start to securely wipe a hard disk and should handle wiping reserve space etc. properly. [1] https://ata.wiki.kernel.org/index.php/ATA_Secure_Erase

Apparently, this is not always implemented correctly on SSDs. It should take quite some time, but if it finishes after a few seconds, it probably didn't really wipe your SSD securely.

Most SSDs should be encrypted by default and all secure erase would do is to wipe the encryption key and generate a new one which takes no time and does effectively and securely wipe the entire disk.

Re: My Arch Linux Setup with Plasma 5

#26

Post by makepanic »

roadbeats wrote: post #10

Arch Linux is so powerful thanks to its amazing community. You got access to over 70k packages with one command (stable: pacman, community: yaourt). Whatever you're looking for, it's there. I run the same setup for almost 7 years without any issues, and it's always fast, always reliable and productive. I prefer Xmonad over pretty stuff like KDE though, just like many Arch users. It's not beautiful and there is a lear…

If you like yaourt, check out pacaur.

There are other alternative aur wrappers that have more features: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/AUR_helpers#Comparison_...

Re: My Arch Linux Setup with Plasma 5

#27

Post by larschdk »

microwavecamera wrote: post #14

Question for all the Arch peeps, what's the goal/purpose of Arch? As an outside observer it seems needlessly complicated and most of the complexity being specific to Arch. Why not just run Slack or Debian if you want a barebones full distro? Slack and BSD's are closer to old school UNIX. Arch is after my time, am I missing something?

For me it's the easy of keeping up to date with the latest-and-greatest versions of packages too (NodeJS, GCC, CMake, etc.). The latest Ubuntu/Debian typically gives you TWO YEAR OLD versions of common software. Upgrading packages on Ubuntu/Debian feels such cumbersome (add a PPA, compile yourself). It even feels easier to keep up to date on Windows...

The lack of layers of configuration is subjectively simpler and clearer for me. It rather read 'man someprogram.conf' and use 'vi' than try to understand how some other package generates its configuration file.

Yes, it's not as stable. Sometimes stuff breaks. I'd rather fix it now than later.

Re: My Arch Linux Setup with Plasma 5

#28

Post by larschdk »

Tomte wrote: post #22
viraptor wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Debian is not kept as up to date as arch. There's also no AUR equivalent. AUR had Steam for Linux packaged for example about 2h after the official release, with people adding the missed dependencies very shortly. Also not having many prescribed defaults is sometimes nice. I want KDE with that display manager / lockscreen. And I can have it without uninstalling some metapackage which will make updates harder in the fu…

So Arch community packages are "released" without even cursory testing whether it works (missing dependencies)? And you feel that's a good thing?

Packages go to the 'testing' repository to allow checking for thing being broken. They usually only stay there for a short time (a week or so, often less).

Re: My Arch Linux Setup with Plasma 5

#29

Post by klodolph »

mxvzr wrote: post #17
paines wrote: post #12

Almost agree 100%, but why would you encrypt the whole disk? There is no need for that. It's 100% free software availabe for anyone. Encrypt your home directory. And this has Ubuntu figured out quite nicely IMHO.

Encrypting the home directory ensures the privacy of your data should someone get his hands on your machine. Under the same scenario, full disk encryption would also gives you the guarantee the system hasn't been tampered with.

That's profoundly incorrect: full disk encryption provides no guarantees that your system has not been tampered with. I don't see how that would even be possible.

Re: My Arch Linux Setup with Plasma 5

#30

Post by klodolph »

Hydraulix989 wrote: post #13

Arch is just too much time for me doing sysadmin and keeping up with breaking changes (it's a rolling distro, so all kinds of system configurations are possible, many are untested or just bleeding edge). If you like using an unstable bleeding edge system where you have to configure everything yourself by hand with absolutely zero tolerance for user error, use Arch. If I'm on a tight schedule with doing mission critic…

That's my experience too—I used to use Arch, but switched to Debian because I have better things to do with my time. I know quite a few people IRL who have made the same switch (or to Ubuntu).
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