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Why I Fell in Love with Arch Linux (2015)

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Re: Why I Fell in Love with Arch Linux (2015)

#71

Post by KozmoNau7 »

bbv-if wrote: post #38
number6 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This Never happened to me in 5 years of arch. I always considered this a hoax. How did Arch break?

To name a few: when systemd was introduced; when there were changes made to the file structure (moving everything to /usr); when kde4 was replaced with kde5. And there were more issues, I just don't remember all of them. Reading the news before the update could have helped sometimes but I don't do that every time I execute `pacman -Syu` for various reasons; and sometimes problems are unexpected or just bugs fixed on…

I will second this, I faced these exact same issues, for the same reasons.

If you don't subscribe to the Arch news feed, you're taking a chance on every upgrade, that your system will not boot correctly.

Re: Why I Fell in Love with Arch Linux (2015)

#72

Post by zdkl »

jrimbault wrote: post #29
zdkl wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my opinion, the selling point is that arch requires you to take interest into how it works and some level of understanding of the major parts. To get a working arch install you'll be taken through The Install Guide that summarises the steps necessary to have a base install with links to relevant specialised articles. Once you have a bootable system, they provide links for further customisation if your system. The…

You should quickly edit your comment s/yaourt/pacaur/g. No one has recommended yaourt for years, but thanks to SEO I guess it still comes up https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/AUR_helpers#Comparison_...

Really? First time I hear of it being subpar. Fwiw, I've never had an issue with yaourt that wasn't pebkac

Re: Why I Fell in Love with Arch Linux (2015)

#73

Post by jcelerier »

mac01021 wrote: post #40
jcelerier wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In arch the compile flags are set in /etc/makepkg.conf. Got my system compiled with CFLAGS="-march=native -O3 -flto -pipe -fstack-protector-strong --param=ssp-buffer-size=4" CXXFLAGS="-march=native -O3 -flto -pipe -fstack-protector-strong --param=ssp-buffer-size=4" LDFLAGS="-Wl,-O3,--sort-common,--as-needed,-z,relro,-flto" MAKEFLAGS="-j16"

Interesting. So how does this set of options tend to differ from those used by the guys who build the normal binary packages?

Default is

    CFLAGS="-march=x86-64 -mtune=generic -O2 -pipe -fstack-protector-strong -fno-plt"
    CXXFLAGS="-march=x86-64 -mtune=generic -O2 -pipe -fstack-protector-strong -fno-plt"
    LDFLAGS="-Wl,-O1,--sort-common,--as-needed,-z,relro,-z,now"
which ensure that it would still work with an AMD Athlon64 from 2003, but you don't get any "new" things such as SSE4, AVX, etc. unless the developer hand-codes specific cases for these CPUs.

Re: Why I Fell in Love with Arch Linux (2015)

#74

Post by boomboomsubban »

KozmoNau7 wrote: post #60
s0l1dsnak3123 wrote: post #18

I fell in love with Arch about 5 years ago. I use it every day as my daily work machine: One of the best things about arch is its documentation - specifically its wiki. Arch lets you start off with a fairly simple installation, but you always have the option of moving off the beaten path and doing something different. It's that flexibility which allows people to create arch installs with a very low memory footprint,…

"One of the best things about arch is its documentation - specifically its wiki." I don't know how it is now, it's been about a year since I needed the Arch wiki, but back then it was stuffed full of outdated articles, which were useless or even counterproductive in the context of current package versions.

A few of those exist, almost everything has caught up to systemd now though. That's a common problem with wiki's, the Ubuntu one is abysmal.

Re: Why I Fell in Love with Arch Linux (2015)

#75

Post by KozmoNau7 »

a3n wrote: post #66
KozmoNau7 wrote: post #59

I fell in love with Arch, after having used Gentoo for years, and Debian before that. The straightforwardness appealed to me, it's a binary distribution with a rolling release cycle and no custom-finagled packages. But after a while, I got tired of manually configuring everything , doing all kinds of weird house-keeping and having to randomly boot from a USB stick to rescue my system from some update with untested co…

Similar Mint fan. I used Arch for awhile, and enjoyed learning how FDE and other things work (because I had to), but it's nice not to have to. My only concern with Mint is, what happens when Ubuntu goes away or becomes nonviable as a distro base? Canonical seems intent on making Ubuntu cool in some area, and even more intent on monetizing Ubuntu, and there's a risk that their pivots, and forward and back steps, could…

I have wondered about that, and I'm sure the Mint devs have a contingency plan in place (probably convert to being a properly Debian-based distro).

If they don't and Mint becomes unavailable or nonviable for some reason, I will find another distro similar to Mint, or simply go back to Debian proper.

I don't care much which distro I use, my important files are the same no matter which distro I use to access them.

Re: Why I Fell in Love with Arch Linux (2015)

#76

Post by enobrev »

KozmoNau7 wrote: post #59

I fell in love with Arch, after having used Gentoo for years, and Debian before that. The straightforwardness appealed to me, it's a binary distribution with a rolling release cycle and no custom-finagled packages. But after a while, I got tired of manually configuring everything , doing all kinds of weird house-keeping and having to randomly boot from a USB stick to rescue my system from some update with untested co…

I honestly have this experience with plain Ubuntu, provided I wait at least a month to upgrade (my triple-monitor setup does not play well with brand new releases, but does fine soon after).

I have it running on two laptops (which I never have an issue upgrading) and my desktop and I almost never deal with maintenance, nor do I ever want to anymore.

I've considered Mint, but even just switching to another "Just Works" distro seems like more effort than I'm willing to commit to my desktop.

Re: Why I Fell in Love with Arch Linux (2015)

#77

Post by zdkl »

KozmoNau7 wrote: post #71
bbv-if wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To name a few: when systemd was introduced; when there were changes made to the file structure (moving everything to /usr); when kde4 was replaced with kde5. And there were more issues, I just don't remember all of them. Reading the news before the update could have helped sometimes but I don't do that every time I execute `pacman -Syu` for various reasons; and sometimes problems are unexpected or just bugs fixed on…

I will second this, I faced these exact same issues, for the same reasons. If you don't subscribe to the Arch news feed, you're taking a chance on every upgrade, that your system will not boot correctly.

Yeah but that's the point of Arch: teaching new blood to RTFM when it's patchday.

You can trivially fubar an arch install by updating your base install+user additions if you're not in the loop with the releases of whatever you installed.

Re: Why I Fell in Love with Arch Linux (2015)

#78

Post by auxym »

KozmoNau7 wrote: post #59

I fell in love with Arch, after having used Gentoo for years, and Debian before that. The straightforwardness appealed to me, it's a binary distribution with a rolling release cycle and no custom-finagled packages. But after a while, I got tired of manually configuring everything , doing all kinds of weird house-keeping and having to randomly boot from a USB stick to rescue my system from some update with untested co…

The main reason I stay away from anything debian based these days is apt. I've been stuck in apt-hell a few too many times.

Antergos (arch-based) seems to be treating me well.

Re: Why I Fell in Love with Arch Linux (2015)

#79

Post by zdkl »

arc_of_descent wrote: post #16
bbv-if wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And he didn't mention that in Arch a routine upgrade can break everything which rather doesn't happen in the release-based distros. It has happened to me more that once over the last 8 years. I still use it nevertheless, but it's definitely not for everyone.

I used Arch Linux around 4 years back. I did a routine upgrade and it broke my system. What is this rolling release fiasco? Even Ubuntu, which I use now has a "release" (technically an pt-get upgrade), almost every other day. But I've never had it break my system. If you keep your Ubuntu updated a dist-upgrade works just fine. I might try Arch again, but for now I'm sticking to Ubuntu.

No judgement, I've been in the same place.

What you describe sounds like the consequence of installing a lot of packages. Arch "prefers" when you strip it down to what you need, if only because that way you don't need to worry about too many version mismatches.

Re: Why I Fell in Love with Arch Linux (2015)

#80

Post by rocqua »

s0l1dsnak3123 wrote: post #18

I fell in love with Arch about 5 years ago. I use it every day as my daily work machine: One of the best things about arch is its documentation - specifically its wiki. Arch lets you start off with a fairly simple installation, but you always have the option of moving off the beaten path and doing something different. It's that flexibility which allows people to create arch installs with a very low memory footprint,…

Arch focuses on being easy to understand for someone doing something weird. This comes at some cost of ease of use, simply because making something easy to use probably means making things happen 'automagically'. Things that work automagically are very hard to understand.
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