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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)

#81

Post by sevensor »

Latty wrote: post #53
Majestic121 wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you have to configure and set up everything yourself, it can not really be called 'just works'. I'm definitely a fan of setting things up and diving into config myself, but let's be honest : Arch is not a 'Just works' distribution. Ubuntu could be considered one, maybe elementary as well

As I said, it's a different definition of "just works" - obviously no non-technical person is going to run Arch - it's never going to be Ubuntu and it's not trying to be. I wasn't trying to make that claim. As a power-user, Arch "just works" for me far more than other distros have, because I know the system and it's simple, I've never had a problem where I didn't have a handle on it.

I can affirm that. I don't understand how Arch gets this reputation for breaking during an upgrade. In the four years I've been using Arch on a variety of systems, I've never had anything break in a way that didn't have a trivial, obvious fix, and most of the time pacman points out potential problems during the upgrade. Arch has allowed me to spend way less time on system administration than I used to before I switched. Are people doing "sudo make install" or running binary driver installers as root? Or maybe it's because I switched right after the systemd transition and missed all the fun? Maybe I'm just lucky?

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

#82

Post by apetresc »

The best feeling in the world is running `ps aux` on a fresh Arch installation and having the output all fit on half the screen, and you can precisely identify why every single thing line is there. And then having that still be true two months later.

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

#83

Post by pmilot »

Been running Arch since March, and I have to say that, after years of trying Ubuntu/Debian/Fedora/openSUSE unsuccessfully, this is the one that finally made me switch to desktop Linux.

The documentation is the main advantage for me. The Arch Wiki is a real treasure trove. I have learned more about the internals of Linux in the past few months than I have in the few years before that. And that's coming from someone who did a full stage one Gentoo install back in 2007!

I was always very skeptical of rolling releases until I tried Arch. I always feared an "unstable" system. In practice, however, I never ran into many problems, and when I did, a full system upgrade a few days later usually fixed the issue. The maintainers are very reactive.

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

#85

Post by rocqua »

rantanplan wrote: post #56
Latty wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's just not true. My desktop is Arch and I run maybe 5 or so AUR packages - and they are all for dev tools. You can definitely run a completely functional desktop without them.

Well then, that's what I wanted to hear. Next thing would be for Arch to officially support SELinux and we're good to go :D

There is a policy where, if an AUR package gets popular enough (I think it is around 15 'votes' in favor), it is added to the official repository.

There are notable exceptions where the package license doesn't allow that. E.g. chrome (not chromium) spotify and dropbox.

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

#86

Post by sevensor »

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…

> Maybe this all marks me as fallen from the ranks of the Linux cognoscenti, but I don't care. I just want to get on with my life. In the same way that I see a lot of people gush about Mac OS, Mint simply gets out of my way and lets me get on with stuff I actually want/need to do.

Interesting -- this is what I would say about Arch. I switched to Arch right after the systemd transition, so I'm sure I missed a big opportunity for breakage. But in those four years I've barely had to think about system administration, beyond routinely running pacman -Syu. I used to have to do a fresh install every six months when a new Fedora would break everything. I don't think this makes me a member of the cognoscenti at all, and I think the whole "Arch is for the l33t" meme is wildly inaccurate. Arch is by far the easiest distro I've ever used.

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

#87

Post by ekianjo »

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…

It's not exactly like Arch (there's no AUR and way less packages available) but Solus is another new Rolling Release distro, written from scratch, that is worth looking at these days.

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

#88

Post by discreditable »

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…

Regarding Linux Mint, how do you feel about their issues surrounding timely delivery of security updates? https://www.infoworld.com/article/3182824/

Another problem with any Ubuntu-based distro is that packages in Universe don't receive security update support.

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

#89

Post by lettergram »

Ive gone through a lot of distros Mint, Ubtuntu, Debian, Fedora, mint (again), Debian (again), etc.

However, when I finally got to Arch I did so because I had no choice. I recently bought a new graphics card and it was the only one supporting many of the new features out of the box. The Linux kernel is always up-to-date, and I haven't had an upgrade problem in the 2 years I've been using it.

It's been interesting, because my second Debian computer which I keep around as a server has way more issues. It appears Arch supports more hardware, and in general (due to minimialist style) works a bit better on machines.

Idk just my two cents

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

#90

Post by skummetmaelk »

KozmoNau7 wrote: post #61
erikbye wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This "configure and set up everything yourself" bit is overstated. It's not like Ubuntu, or similar batteries-included distros, doesn't require configuration and tweaking to get it your personal liking, anyway. And it's not like you cannot make choices during installation that affect the final state of your system. The difference between the Arch manual installation process and Ubuntu's is simply that you use a CLI a…

"Yes, it's a rolling release, so you have to update your system now and then, but this is a good thing--install once and run an up-to-date system for years on end." In my experience, this also lets the system collect all kinds of cruft over time, which can definitely impact stability and predictability when it comes to updates, unless you're extremely vigilant about housekeeping.

A pacman -Syu a day keeps the doctor away.

As long as you remember to check the website for manual intervention requirements....

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