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My Arch Linux Setup with Plasma 5

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Re: My Arch Linux Setup with Plasma 5

#41

Post by SCdF »

tuxxy wrote: post #3

When you overwrite the disk, you say you should use dd if=/dev/random, but the reason why this is much slower is because /dev/random blocks. Use /dev/urandom because it doesn't block -- Before you ask, yes this is still secure. Or you can use dm-crypt and create a temporary container with a random key to wipe it. This will be a bit faster than the above. See the Arch wiki for details[1] [1] - https://wiki.archlinux.o…

On the subject, is there any evidence that wiping to anything more complicated than 0s is actually helpful?

Are there are practical attacks where you take a zero'd hard drive and derive data from it that you wouldn't have been able to derive were it written over randomly?

Re: My Arch Linux Setup with Plasma 5

#42

Post by roadbeats »

makepanic wrote: post #26
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_...

I'll try it, looks neat. Cower is not building due to PGP errors at this point though.

Re: My Arch Linux Setup with Plasma 5

#43

Post by Zancarius »

RealityVoid wrote: post #20
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…

I thought the same thing but I set up arch on my main machine a couple of months ago and apart from the setup pain, it has been a much smaller hassle than I anticipated. It's pretty stable, didn't have any breakage until now. I love it! But I do admit the initial setup was pretty intense, I loved the learning experience. I'm also using Cinnamon, on Arch. It's quite clean and nice. :)

> I thought the same thing but I set up arch on my main machine a couple of months ago and apart from the setup pain, it has been a much smaller hassle than I anticipated. It's pretty stable, didn't have any breakage until now. I love it!

As an Arch user of ~5-6 years, I do have some advice outside the obvious realm of "keep regular (working) backups" that can help minimize future headaches (not necessarily for you since you've likely already encountered these points; mostly for others who may be interested in dabbling with Arch):

1) Update often (at least once every 1-2 months; try not to let it get more than 6 months out of date), and keep a close eye on the news items--or, better yet, subscribe to the arch-announce mailing list. You'll get a heads up on anything that could be a potentially breaking change. When breaking changes come down the turnpike, don't panic--the Arch maintainers post upgrade instructions walking you through the process along with the appropriate news entry and it's usually fairly straightforward. There's also the forums if you get into a bind, and there's tons of great people willing to help (but search first!).

2) Keep your configurations up to date (either with `yaourt -C` or examining the .pacnew files by hand with vimdiff or similar). This isn't really Arch-specific, but because Arch is* a rolling release distribution, sometimes new versions of things come out fast enough that existing configurations can fall out of date and present unique challenges. But it all very much depends on the upgrade policy of upstream packages. Usually this isn't a problem unless.

Fortunately, the lion's share of "breaking" changes you'll encounter will be minor. The most recent one you've probably encountered by now may have been the certificate path issue with ca-certificates existing already. I suspect most of the major architectural changes are in the past at this point (mostly due to the disruption caused by systemd), but keeping your system relatively up to date is a great way to inoculate it against unnecessary future effort. It's always possible to upgrade ancient installs if you let them lapse (I should know!), but it's better to avoid that if possible.

I hope you continue to enjoy Arch for many years to come!

Re: My Arch Linux Setup with Plasma 5

#44

Post by viraptor »

microwavecamera wrote: post #40
viraptor wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Experimental Debian is still far behind arch. As you said, you could get grsec in any distro by recompiling kernel. In Arch it was available immediately as a package. People took care of updating it / applying the new releases.

https://wiki.debian.org/grsecurity Just install it yourself. I don't get what the big deal is. If you have to edit a bunch of config files then just do it yourself. If you want something straight forward there are better options. If you want something closer to traditional *NIX there are better options. If Arch is your thing that's cool, but as an oldish (41) Linux user that's been using Linux primarily since the lat…

I said grsec was available in few distros prebuilt. Debian was in that group as well.

It may not be for you. I ended up packaging new libraries every few weeks on other distros. Debian experimental included. Arch solves that problem for me. I guess Gentoo, nixos, and others would do that as well. But this one's my choice.

Re: My Arch Linux Setup with Plasma 5

#45

Post by grumph »

I used to install Arch by hand, then I discovered ArchFI and ArchDI scripts. They do every basic step of the install wiki, and if you need you can do some things manually from another console. With those, I go from an empty machine to a fully functional system with total control/feedback on what is installed (Arch way) in about one hour (most of the time is waiting for packages to download and install).

https://github.com/MatMoul/archfi

Re: My Arch Linux Setup with Plasma 5

#46

Post by likeclockwork »

Tomte wrote: post #37
likeclockwork wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He's talking about the AUR not the official community repo. It was tested on the AUR and the feedback was integrated to identify the dependencies. It's since graduated from the AUR to the official community repo. The AUR has pretty much everything, community maintained. The arch build system makes it trivial to package something no matter where it comes from. You can use it to repackage a .deb or a .rpm (it'll even d…

You're playing games with names. I didn't say "official community repo", but "community repo", because I don't know about Arch. Then you're calling this repo which I must not name community repo "community-maintained". So it is a community repo. All while people in this thread advertise for Arch because this community non-community repo is so awesome. But when things break people are not allowed to take it into accou…

Nothing you've pointed at is a failure, it's simply the process. How can you call up in two hours, rapidly tested and brought to 100% shortly thereafter, a failure? How can using the software you want to use immediately after its release ever be called a failure? Success is waiting for two months for a release window? No thank you.

Re: My Arch Linux Setup with Plasma 5

#47

Post by microwavecamera »

Zancarius wrote: post #36
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?

> 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? I can't speak for other Arch users but to me, selecting it as my primary OS has been a natural evolution. I first cut my teeth on OpenBSD. Probably not the best choice, but it was the late 90s when I was first exposed to Unix-like OSes, and a friend of m…

Thanks for the detailed response. I just don't know myself. I'm sure me looking at the issue through the lens of my old ass perceptions (yea I'm old) is a factor. I read the guide in the article and other stuff online about Arch and it seems to involve a significant amount of manual work. I came from an era when there was no other option. You just had to do it. It seems to me that much of setting up Arch involves reading guides and copypasta. Things that other distros just do. If your into the whole old school thing, to me, there's better options. If you want to put in work and do some cool stuff to learn, there's better options. I'm not hating on Arch, I just don't exactly get it. If Arch is what got you into the whole Linux/open-source thing than more power to you. Don't take it as an a attack. :)

Re: My Arch Linux Setup with Plasma 5

#48

Post by favadi »

qarioz wrote: post #23
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.…

Ubuntu LTS is supported for 5 years, so you don't have to update every 6 months.

Re: My Arch Linux Setup with Plasma 5

#49

Post by Tomte »

likeclockwork wrote: post #46
Tomte wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're playing games with names. I didn't say "official community repo", but "community repo", because I don't know about Arch. Then you're calling this repo which I must not name community repo "community-maintained". So it is a community repo. All while people in this thread advertise for Arch because this community non-community repo is so awesome. But when things break people are not allowed to take it into accou…

Nothing you've pointed at is a failure, it's simply the process. How can you call up in two hours, rapidly tested and brought to 100% shortly thereafter, a failure? How can using the software you want to use immediately after its release ever be called a failure? Success is waiting for two months for a release window? No thank you.

I'm not saying that anyone did something wrong.

I simply find it remarkable that someone actually chose this failure for his advertising. There are certainly many instances of quick turnaround times that don't center on failure.

Re: My Arch Linux Setup with Plasma 5

#50

Post by executesorder66 »

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?

The reason I like it is because I can build my OS from the ground up. And Arch makes this super easy with pre-built packages and an awesome package manager.

Most other distros you download a pre-built OS, and then you remove all the stuff you don't want. And add stuff you do want.

With Arch you just add all the things you want. You know exactly what is installed, and where/how it is configured because you did it yourself.

It's also much easier to switch between DE and/or WM with Arch than most distros.

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