31–40 of 127 posts
Would not Linux From Scratch get even closer to "do it yourself"? http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/
There's value in a shorter more targeted tutorial, but the canonical install instructions for Arch are instructive and detailed: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Beginners%27_guide Also, if you want to use Arch in a dependable way, subscribing to arch-announce is important[1]. It's a low traffic mailing list that notifies you of any manual steps you may need to take during a package upgrade. (I've been using Arch…
That's often true, but I was disappointed that this was little more than a rephrased version of what's on the Arch Wiki.
I love the Arch documentation on the Wiki. It's perfect for me– laid out well, easy to follow, arranged in a logical wiki order, and stuffed with insanely useful tips. The pages on stuff like tmux are fantastic.
Why not Gentoo, which provides source packages. Compile it yourself!
Gentoo is a much more rewarding and educational experience: https://www.gentoo.org/get-started/ https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Handbook:Main_Page
That said, some distros like nix and guix are addressing a much needed problem now---how to be able to get reproducible builds. Sadly, they haven't learnt many lessons Arch taught us. Last time I tried nix, installing mutt eventually pulled in python as a dependency!
I really like Arch, because contrary to the popular belief it is the most hassle-free distro I've encountered. As vanilla and up-to-date as possible, but with the right amount of automation (binary pkgs and great simple utilities) baked in. That said, some distros like nix and guix are addressing a much needed problem now---how to be able to get reproducible builds. Sadly, they haven't learnt many lessons Arch taught…
I completely agree. I tried switching to Linux a few times in high school (early-mid '00s), and always had false starts with Fedora or Ubuntu. Usually the package manager would break and everything would fall to pieces. I ended up installing Arch as a Subversion server for some personal projects, and that's what finally made it click.
I use Arch exclusively at work and at home. I do Linux development, which means I have to test out our product on other distros, usually Ubuntu. Eight-plus years later, and Ubuntu's package manager still falls over nine times out of ten. Fedora falls over. Mint falls over. I don't know what I'm doing wrong.
Arch Just Works. It's dead simple, requires very little maintenance, and when something does go wrong (maybe once a year), it's easy to fix or roll back. Arch is just files on a hard drive, not some nebulous set of five different package sources and databases and "releases" and blech.
Gentoo is a much more rewarding and educational experience: https://www.gentoo.org/get-started/ https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Handbook:Main_Page
Gentoo is a much more rewarding and educational experience: https://www.gentoo.org/get-started/ https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Handbook:Main_Page
http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/lfs/view/6.6/chapter01/how.h...