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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)

#91

Post by Wheaties466 »

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 felt and feel the same way about Arch. If you are still feeling slightly adventurous I would suggest you try manjaro. It seems to be Arch but with the Mint feel of it just working.

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

#92

Post by grouchoboy »

Majestic121 wrote: post #35
Latty wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The biggest "just works" thing for me with Arch is that, because you configure everything yourself and set it up, you know what is in your system and how it's slotted together. Less magic, when something goes wrong, you have an idea where to look. It's obviously not going to be true for some, but for power users, it's surprisingly great. I've been on Arch for many years myself with the same story.

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

I would call it 'just works as you spected' contrary to 'just works as someone else spected'. Neither is good or bad, it depends of what are you looking for.

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

#93

Post by KozmoNau7 »

zdkl wrote: post #77
KozmoNau7 wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That also makes it a bad distro to choose unless you want to be a hardcore sysadmin and micromanage your personal system.

That's generally what distro maintainers are supposed to minimize for the end users.

I see people recommending Arch for newbies, who maybe just want to dip their toes. They're figuratively thrown into the deep end, and I just don't think that's a particularly good idea for most people.

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

#94

Post by KozmoNau7 »

skummetmaelk wrote: post #90
KozmoNau7 wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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....

Which is exactly my point.

Put off updating for a couple of weeks because you're got better things to do? You may end up borking your system unwittingly.

Not subscribed to the Arch news feed and intimately familiar with the packages installed on your system? You may end up borking your system unwittingly.

Arch is good for dedicated power users, who want to tinker around. But most of us just want to get stuff done, not mess with the OS.

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

#95

Post by thesmallestcat »

sevensor wrote: post #81
Latty wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 switch…

Do you understand the difference between Arch and distros like Debian? When GNOME ships a new version, it almost immediately hits the Pacman repos. Do that for every package and you're going to have integration issues. Your users also get to be the guinea pigs for new releases. Ship buggy packages and sooner or later your users' systems will install a critical package with bugs. This is why Arch gets "this reputation for breaking during an upgrade." And yes, you're just lucky. When I hear Arch users saying "it hasn't broken for me!" I hear "my girlfriend and I don't use protection, and she's never gotten pregnant!"

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

#96

Post by teekert »

I also love Arch, the only thing off putting is how hard it its to realize full disc encryption. I used Arch Anywhere but it works only with when choosing bios emulation and full disc encryption didn't work, Antergos makes too many choices for me, the base Arch image is to much work to install (where I have Solus or Ubuntu running in 20 min).

I did like it better when they still had their own minimal installer. I don't mind installing X and a DE but setting up encryption and partitioning manually is too much for me.

I love it most that you can really do anything with Arch, the wiki is very very good on any subject. Any suggestions on good Arch installers that just give you a working encrypted system (like Arch Anywhere but working)?

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

#97

Post by KozmoNau7 »

auxym wrote: post #78
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.

Personally, I have literally never had any issues with apt. Not when I ran straight Debian, not when I tried Ubuntu and not now with Mint.

I may not be stretching its capabilities quite as far as you may be doing, admittedly.

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

#98

Post by AsyncAwait »

sevensor wrote: post #86
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 oppo…

> I switched to Arch right after the systemd transition, so I'm sure I missed a big opportunity for breakage.

I experienced that transition and while you had to read the wiki somewhat carefully, I remember being a bit 'disappointed' afterwards as to how smooth/uneventful it was, it sounded way more scary than it actually was.

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

#100

Post by pjmlp »

enobrev wrote: post #76
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…

Same here with Ubuntu.

I started with Slackware 2.0 back in the day, used all major distros, had a FOSS zealot phase for a few years.

Now all my desktop devices run either Windows or Ubuntu.

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