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On switching to Arch Linux

mikethecoder.com

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Re: On switching to Arch Linux

#21

Post by nickik »

MatthewPhillips wrote: post #18
ElliotH wrote: post #8

My favorite thing about running on an Arch system is I know what's going on all the time. If an Ubuntu system breaks I'm generally dealing with a mass of preinstalled things, it's hard to know what's relevant. Similarly for increasing boot speed, I really like knowing exactly what I need to be running at any one time. I appreciate it's not for everyone, but I imagine most coders around here who run a Linux system wou…

Getting through the initial hurdles of getting wifi working and daemonized, getting X to start when you boot (if you want to run X), etc. can take a little time because it's not something you normally have to think about with the preinstalled distros. But once you get through those things it's pretty smooth sailing. Pacman is fantastic, and AUR is unmatched. The benefit of knowing exactly what is running is worth the…

I would never go away from running releases, its fantastic I have my laptop since quite some years now and since I did the install I never had a real problem with keeping it going.

Re: On switching to Arch Linux

#24

Post by pandeiro »

I've been using Arch for the last 7-8 months and I think my love affair with it has already peaked.

Everything written here is true re: learning about Linux, having more control, straightforward architecture, bleeding edge software, etc.

But the instability factor eventually will bite you in the ass, and per Murphy's Law, often at the worst possible time. It's happened to me twice in this time span.

My solution is to use a separate data partition for all my files and install Arch and a more stable distro (Mint in my case) in different partitions. Both OSs link to the data partition and grab dotfiles and things from a git repo.

Arch is my preferred environment, with a tiling WM and everything painstakingly set up for my preferred workflow. But when it crashes, I can still use my workstation to get stuff done, and go about troubleshooting when I have free time.

Re: On switching to Arch Linux

#25

Post by agumonkey »

lnteveryday wrote: post #16
mcrittenden wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Author here. I think we're talking about two different things. By "nothing works out of the box" I mean that you need to set it up yourself. For example, the Beginner's Guide leads you through setup of your video driver [1], ALSA [2], Xorg [3], and wifi [4]. These are all things that require manual work. Maybe there's a more appropriate term for this than "doesn't work out of the box" (?) but it's the first term that…

That's the beautiful thing about arch. While figuring out configurations, tweaks, or problems for yourself may seem daunting Arch has fantastic documentation through the web on tons of issues, ranging from software- to hardware-specific. It is one of the best documented linux distros I've had the pleasure of using.

- the arch wiki and community is really solid for bare naked yet simple linux knowledge. (gentoo wiki is my fallback)

- The arch way tends to attract users with strong|alternative ideas, IMHO they're a big part in the revival of tiling wm.

- Today I switched to nixos though.

Re: On switching to Arch Linux

#26

Post by gtaylor »

I started using Arch about eight months ago, when Ubuntu didn't have the latest ATI and Xorg packaged so I could use EyeFinity + 3 monitors. At the time, I was very sad to leave my comfy Debian/Ubuntu roots.

After struggling a little with the initial setup, I got everything in place, and it has just worked since then. Breakage from upgrades has been no worse than Ubuntu, and my Python work hasn't been disturbed at all.

For those who don't mind rolling up their sleeves and just RTFM'ing it, this is a great distro.

Re: On switching to Arch Linux

#27

Post by pnathan »

I read the article and groaned. My days of "tweak it until it works, just for fun" are pretty much past me (I'm typing this on a Mac, for instance). I like to spend my energy creating things these days.

But Arch seems really cool if you want to rebuild Linux systems for fun & knowledge!

Re: On switching to Arch Linux

#28

Post by klodolph »

bwarp wrote: post #7

I like Arch as a whole but I've found that for my purposes it is a time sink compared to Debian for example. Debian has lots of sensible well thought out defaults. Arch has lots of disparate defaults each provided by the package vendor (as they don't customise packages). It's not a criticism, but a difference to bear in mind.

That was my experience too. I switched to Debian from Arch a half year ago or so and I've spent far less time maintaining it; and once I'm used to "the Debian way" I can navigate new packages without having to think about it. And updates don't break my system or fail to deploy, and 'python' isn't a symlink for 'python3.2'.

I also reported a major security vulnerability in the default configuration of an Arch package but I had to reopen it because the maintainer said something stupid like "people who install this package should operate on trusted networks". What?

Re: On switching to Arch Linux

#30

Post by CJefferson »

bwarp wrote: post #7

I like Arch as a whole but I've found that for my purposes it is a time sink compared to Debian for example. Debian has lots of sensible well thought out defaults. Arch has lots of disparate defaults each provided by the package vendor (as they don't customise packages). It's not a criticism, but a difference to bear in mind.

I agree.

Glancing through the instructions, it looks like things might have got better than when I installed arch linux around 6 months ago. At the point I felt like installation involved a lot of carefully designed "busy work", which I couldn't imagine not wanting to do, but which had to be done exactly.

The reason I left is because of their incredibly bizarre choice to make /usr/bin/python run python3, and messing headers around so much you couldn't build gcc from source. Between these two features, it made the system basically unusable for me.

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