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Arch Linux turns 20: Small, simple, great documentation

theregister.com

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Re: Arch Linux turns 20: Small, simple, great documentation

#81

Post by JonChesterfield »

ilyt wrote: post #68
JonChesterfield wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been installing Ubuntu this week. Checking download updates during install gave me a broken libc dependency graph which blocked installing ssh or gcc. Libpci-dev conflicts with gnome as far as I can tell, installing that took down X and the network. Changing to the server iso of the same version gave me an OS that can't use the builtin intel NIC, though the desktop version can. The driver errors on modprobe, -2.…

I'm now firmly confirmed that it is Ubuntu that fucks something up. Upgrades seem to work much better with plain Debian. We've seen many failures during upgrade, from both novice and advanced linux users, meanwhile one of our sysadmins accidentally upgraded Debian by two releases at once (From Debian 9 to 11) and it still "just worked"...

Debian occasionally falls over on me when running unstable but that's kind of the point. Testing hasn't failed on me in at least a decade.

Re: Arch Linux turns 20: Small, simple, great documentation

#82

Post by Jnr »

laerus wrote: post #32

pacman corrupted my installation twice in a year. Obviously I did something wrong but who knows.

I have been using it for 10+ years and it hasn't corrupted things for me. It can't corrupt.

It could get a bit tricky if you update very rarely, like once a year, but not sure what else there is to do to break things. Please elaborate a bit more.

Re: Arch Linux turns 20: Small, simple, great documentation

#83

Post by mcbuilder »

I've been using Arch for well over 10 years, they say it's true that you "learn Linux" using Arch. It's an excellent distro, but a few things make it a great learning OS.

First it's as vanilla as possible, which mean that packages are modified as little as possible from upstream. This means you don't learn anything distro-specific by mistake, and you actually learn more how the package is intended to function.

The second is great documentation and community. The Arch wiki is full of common tweaks that you'll likely have to do, many other distro's may have just held your hand and assumed you wanted those boxes checked, but Arch makes you check them.

Being minimal also helps, it really doesn't overwhelm you. Arch doesn't, it's just that only at a time is usually broken, so you're doing something like that.

Re: Arch Linux turns 20: Small, simple, great documentation

#84

Post by me551ah »

bradrn wrote: post #19

> The installation process, and the documentation behind it, lead to the third virtue: a complete installation tends to be very small and simple, because you only install the bits you need. If you don't know what bits you need, the documentation will help you to work it out, and the result is something that is both fairly minimal and that, with luck, you understand. You know what's in there because you installed it.…

You should try Manjaro Linux, it's based on Arch but has more stuff out of the box.

Re: Arch Linux turns 20: Small, simple, great documentation

#85

Post by me551ah »

rmbyrro wrote: post #29
bradrn wrote: post #19

> The installation process, and the documentation behind it, lead to the third virtue: a complete installation tends to be very small and simple, because you only install the bits you need. If you don't know what bits you need, the documentation will help you to work it out, and the result is something that is both fairly minimal and that, with luck, you understand. You know what's in there because you installed it.…

If we could combine Ubuntu's easiness of use with Arch's simplicity and performance, that'd be my ideal distro for work. I love Arch for its simplicity and performance. But it just wasn't productive for me to get everyday tasks done. I'm not advanced Linux user, occasionally I'd need hours to get seemingly simple stuff done. For a hobby desktop, fine. For a work tool as a developer, I moved back to Ubuntu (though I h…

Manjaro Linux is what you are looking for then.

Re: Arch Linux turns 20: Small, simple, great documentation

#86

Post by mtlmtlmtlmtl »

Been using Pop OS for a while for the It Just Works(tm) experience, but I'm missing Arch more and more.

Mainstream Linux distros feel a lot more like Windows these days. Sure they require less condiguration, but they're also mich harder to mess around with. Starting up htop reveals a jungle of daemons and weird systemd shit I don't even know what does. Systemd is a terribly documented nightmare to configure, etc.

It's so nice in Arch to know pretty much know what everything is for because I was the one who installed it. And to have documentation that isn't infuriating to navigate.

Re: Arch Linux turns 20: Small, simple, great documentation

#89

Post by jonfw »

WastingMyTime89 wrote: post #40
bradrn wrote: post #19

> The installation process, and the documentation behind it, lead to the third virtue: a complete installation tends to be very small and simple, because you only install the bits you need. If you don't know what bits you need, the documentation will help you to work it out, and the result is something that is both fairly minimal and that, with luck, you understand. You know what's in there because you installed it.…

> Then I tried installing Arch in a VM… and it took me several days and several attempts, but when I finally got it working I felt, for the first time ever, like I actually understood the system I was using. Honest question: why days? I have installed arch multiple times in the past decade and I don’t remember anything exceptionally out of the ordinary. You just follow the step-by-step instruction and you are good to…

If you know most Linux file systems well, you would probably choose one in a few seconds. If nobody has ever asked you to pick a file system before, you could probably spend a couple of days researching.

I think there’s a lot of decisions like that to make in Arch

Re: Arch Linux turns 20: Small, simple, great documentation

#90

Post by rhaway84773 »

candiddevmike wrote: post #39
bradrn wrote: post #19

> The installation process, and the documentation behind it, lead to the third virtue: a complete installation tends to be very small and simple, because you only install the bits you need. If you don't know what bits you need, the documentation will help you to work it out, and the result is something that is both fairly minimal and that, with luck, you understand. You know what's in there because you installed it.…

You can install Debian the same way you installed Arch (manual, CLI) via debootstrap. It's not really advertised, Debian really wants folks to use their installer. I built a tool that does this, you can look through the code and see how I do it--it's just bash spaghetti. Download a Debian live ISO (or use my tool to create an Arch-like minimal live USB) and you can install it however you want. https://github.com/cand…

But isn’t that the whole point of Arch. It is advertised and promoted and therefore its well documented with a lot of support.

As a novice, if I am stuck somewhere the odds that I find the answer in the Arch Wiki or can ask an Arch enthusiasts and get an answer is orders of magnitude higher than the equivalent sources for Debian.

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