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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)

#251

Post by saghm »

catpolice wrote: post #164

I used to love Arch wholeheartedly. The systemd transition left a bad taste in my mouth, and I haven't felt like I've had full control of my system since then, but I periodically try other Linux distributions but I always end up coming back to Arch. My experience with other distributions always goes something like this: Oh this is nice and easy Hm, there isn't a package for this thing I love. I guess I'll build it my…

I recently installed Artix Linux[1] (Arch with openrc) on a spare hard drive on my laptop, and although the GUI installer gave me a few issues, installing manually from the text ISO as I would normally with Arch worked flawlessly, and I've yet to run into any issues with it. I'm working up the courage to switch to it as my main driver on my desktop.

[1]: http://www.artixlinux.org

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

#252

Post by mpwoz »

OtterCoder wrote: post #158
lunchables wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree, except for the installation. Manjaro I think would be a great compromise.

Argh. I spent most of yesterday trying to set up a dual boot with Manjaro and nearly bricked my machine. It is really dependant on hardware I think.

Same! I've tried the community, kde, and xfce isos on a second drive and have yet to achieve a bootable system. I'll probably tinker with it a bit more this weekend since Manjaro sounds like the perfect distro for me, but I'm getting close to giving up :/

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

#253

Post by KGIII »

adrusi wrote: post #131
KozmoNau7 wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought Arch was easy, and then I tried an actual mature well thought out desktop distro ;-)

I tried Debian about a year ago hoping to share your insight, but I discovered that if I wanted to understand how to configure some piece of software, I had to look at both the Debian documentation and the upstream documentation for it, and I found that creating custom packages was harder, or at least harder to learn (when I made my first arch package, it took me less than an hour to figure out how ABS works, and pac…

That's one of the reasons that I stick with the Ubuntu family. The community, and thus the support, is vast and easily discoverable.

If you're curious, I prefer Lubuntu.

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

#254

Post by OJFord »

KozmoNau7 wrote: post #175
AsyncAwait wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can also keep your configs in git and just pull.

Because that's perfectly reasonable to expect. After all, everyone has a git repo, right?

How many arch users do you imagine don't have any git repos?

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

#255

Post by s0l1dsnak3123 »

gribbly wrote: post #197
nextos wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I usually describe Arch as the simplest possible binary distribution. It's just a thin layer (pacman mostly) on top of vanilla packages. This reduces complexity a lot. I understand most of what is going on in my install because I explicitly configured everything, and packages don't contain weird patches. While I love Arch's ethos, I think the next step in distributions is to embrace declarative configuration, non-des…

>NixOS & GuixSD provide this. Yes, as a decade+ user of Arch, these two are the only new distros that have made me consider switching, sort of waiting for some spare time (like a free weekend) to give each of them a try.

Same here!

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

#256

Post by diffeomorphism »

bananicorn wrote: post #13
mariusmg wrote: post #3

So why exactly is Arch a better Linux distro compared with the rest ? There's no "sellingpoint" in the article except this "dig" at the other distros : "apt-get dist-upgrade or something similar every 6 months or so (and risk breaking everything)"

It's something you kinda have to try to actually feel the difference. I can tell you a few things I noticed after a few months of use: -Pacman (their package manager) is amazing - and if you want to install community packages from the AUR[0], you can use yaourt (if they've got dependencies on other AUR packages), or just git clone the package and run makepkg -si I've never had any problems with it, and I've messed ar…

> pacman is amazing

From a user point of view, how would you notice this "amazingness"? Having used yum, dnf, zypper, apt-get, apt, emerge and also pacman for a while I only saw very superficial differences and maybe formatting. (packaging is different,yes, but usage? Also speed is apples to oranges and "pretty" output I don't really care for.)

> no bloat at all.

_Any distro_ does that. Either use the netinstall or open the archinstall guide and replace pacstrap by debootstrap. Heck, for opensuse you even get the full package manager during installation and can select/deselect any package you want. How is arch any different?

> surprisingly stable, though you should be careful before you upgrade.

So much less stable than, say, debian testing.

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

#257

Post by diffeomorphism »

lettergram wrote: post #218
KozmoNau7 wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Arch and Debian use the exact same kernel (Linux...), so they support the exact same hardware.

Except, Debian doesn't regularly release updates for theirs - where Arch is always up-to-date.

Debian backports has 4.12: https://packages.debian.org/search?keywords=kernel&searchon=...

Arch also has 4.12 and 4.13 in testing: https://www.archlinux.org/packages/?sort=&q=kernel&maintaine...

Doesn't seem like an appreciable difference.

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

#258

Post by nextos »

gribbly wrote: post #197
nextos wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I usually describe Arch as the simplest possible binary distribution. It's just a thin layer (pacman mostly) on top of vanilla packages. This reduces complexity a lot. I understand most of what is going on in my install because I explicitly configured everything, and packages don't contain weird patches. While I love Arch's ethos, I think the next step in distributions is to embrace declarative configuration, non-des…

>NixOS & GuixSD provide this. Yes, as a decade+ user of Arch, these two are the only new distros that have made me consider switching, sort of waiting for some spare time (like a free weekend) to give each of them a try.

GuixSD is really easy to get up and running. Like 5 commands: start network, partition, start guix, edit configuration and install.

I find NixOS a bit less elegant, but it has many extra features.

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

#259

Post by earenndil »

bartkmq wrote: post #135
sevensor wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I even migrated my install in-place from x86 to amd64 after upgrading the CPU My hat is off to you -- I would have guessed that wasn't possible!

I guess that's the magic of the Arch Wiki¹. Even if not using Arch I often find it far more useful and up-to-date than the wiki of my own distributions (Ubuntu and Manjaro). [1]: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Migrating_between_archi...

I know what you mean. Hell, I've even used arch wiki for freebsd!

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

#260

Post by boomboomsubban »

OtterCoder wrote: post #158
lunchables wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree, except for the installation. Manjaro I think would be a great compromise.

Argh. I spent most of yesterday trying to set up a dual boot with Manjaro and nearly bricked my machine. It is really dependant on hardware I think.

Installing Manjaro as a second OS and think bricking is a large possibility, I'd bet you have a UEFI install of Windows and used a crappy USB writer that doesn't allow for UEFI.
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