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Arch Linux – Do it yourself

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Re: Arch Linux – Do it yourself

#121

Post by hobarrera »

nextos wrote: post #35

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 agree that it's hastle-free, vanilla and up-to-date, but as a long-time Arch user, I feel the need to warn other: You will need to read on how things work to use it. There's a price to this huge flexibility, and it's learning how to make use of it.

Once you're past that initial stage, there's really no downside any more.

Re: Arch Linux – Do it yourself

#122

Post by amyjess »

antocv wrote: post #117
plorg wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've had apt-related troubles in the past, but they almost always were caused by the use of custom repositories/PPAs. Further, it might seem arcane to have to type "apt-get install -f" to install dependencies for an autonomous .deb package, but I'm not sure how different that is from having to learn, for example, the myriad switches for pacman.

> the myriad switches for pacman. Pacman doesnt leave me with a broken package-manager when a package fails to install. For example pacman -S thatprogram and if it fails, then next time I do pacman -S otherpgoram or pacman -Syu it goes fine, there is nothing from thatprogram which complains or bugs me. Unlike Ubuntu/Debian where apt-get install fail and thus everything I try to do now will fail unless I resolve the f…

> and thus everything I try to do now will fail unless I resolve the fail.

This is exactly why I detest apt.

Our products at my last company ran Ubuntu and Mint. I detested dealing with the package manager.

I wrote so much stuff to get around apt when dealing with software packages. I wrote a Maven-based update system (with user-friendly wrappers) for pulling down updates on customer units, and my boss wrote an SVN-based solution for internal dev work. I wrote our own validation system to determine if a package can be safely installed, and if it passed, it'd get shoved in with dpkg -i --force-all, because I didn't trust dpkg to do it itself. I wrote a meta-package system (basically a tarball of debs + a manifest file) so I could guarantee atomic installation (read the manifest, verify every deb in the metapackage, and abort before installing anything if even a single package fails verification).

> pacman also has far less switches, at least I know only of -Q -Qs -S -Ss -Sy -U and -Ql | grep for something Im looking for. Thats all I need to know really. Like 4 or 5 switches/commands.

-Qo is pretty useful, too.

Re: Arch Linux – Do it yourself

#123

Post by kasabali »

antocv wrote: post #116
kasabali wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Ive seen the same on most .deb based distros Ive tried - failure to update/upgrade a package or collection of packages - breaks the entire system. Which means you didn't try Debian stable. deb based or not doesn't matter, all that matters is distribution policies on packaging, migrations and releases.

Havent tried Debian stable, but then again, I dont live in 1999 either. What is the nginx version for Debian stable, is it even in the repositories yet?

> Havent tried Debian stable, but then again, I dont live in 1999 either.

> What is the nginx version for Debian stable, is it even in the repositories yet?

It's none of my business to stop you from hating Debian. Just don't blame ".deb based distros" as if them being deb based was the reason of your suffering.

Re: Arch Linux – Do it yourself

#124

Post by Tiksi »

hyperion2010 wrote: post #100
charliefg wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tick 3 for Gentoo: [] Do you enjoy building everything to the minutest specification, regardless of bins being available? [] Do you like the idea of building/rebuilding the entire system into your hardware instead of performing a quick fresh installation? [] Let's say you've been lazy with updates -- would you mind emerge ragging the CPU for 15+ hours? (Disclosure: I love Arch but (believe it or not) I've been die-ha…

Soon to be 10 year gentoo user. I've toyed with various update frequencies, and have found that multiple weekly updates is a good way to stay sane. That said, there are those time where you just have to help an emerge see itself through. I originally came to learn, but I've stayed for the USE flags. The number of times I have needed or wanted some feature on a package in arch (which I use for my linux vms) and have h…

>had to dig through the documentation and set up a compile environment

Make sure to check the AUR first, I've found that 90% of the time, someone else also needed that feature, and built a package for it in the AUR. For example nginx: https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/?O=0&C=0&SeB=nd&K=nginx&o...

Also I've found PKGBUILDs very simple to tweak if you need something extra. If you do start using the AUR, I recommend getting yaourt and letting it take care of that for you. I rarely use pacman directly, as yaourt takes the same flags and works for the arch repos as well as the AUR, plus it allows you to search for packages by omitting -S.

Personally I'm not a huge fan of Gentoo, I used it on my desktop years ago and ended up breaking things weekly when portage got cranky. Currently I manage a few thousand gentoo servers, and find it tedious and frustrating at the best of times. Clients refuse to upgrade for too long, so upgrades generally mean a reinstall. And as customizable as it is, if you wanna do something outside portage, everything will inevitably break.

Re: Arch Linux – Do it yourself

#125

Post by thrownaway122 »

FreeFull wrote: post #119
thrownaway122 wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some time ago I messed around and somehow managed to break my Ubuntu system so that it wouldn't boot. Instead of bothering to work out how to fix it I just re-installed (with a different version number) and kept my old /home partition. It all worked out of the box.

Yeah, what I meant was that I had my /home on / rather than on a separate partition, and managed to install a completely different linux distro anyway without losing it.

OK I misunderstood.

Re: Arch Linux – Do it yourself

#126

Post by anonbanker »

I trust Arch far more than other distros, but I can't really use it in a production environment. Unless you take the care to automate the upgrades every 1-3 months, your machine will quickly require a handful of hacks to fix. As a gentoo lover, this isn't very difficult, but when you have, say, a customized digital audio workstation for a client, that needs to "just work" during upgrades (which, debian/KXStudio handles admirably), yaourt -Syu is like rolling the dice whether or not things will continue to build.

AUR aside (even though, as an expert, it's a fantastic resource), the repositories need keys trusted before they can be used, but nowhere in the documentation is this mentioned. When browsing the forums, you are often encouraged to not use keys, and just do everything unsecured.

I no longer trust Debian or Canonical, so I'm trying to migrate to a distribution not registered in (or under the control of) a Nation State involved in Five Eyes agreements, which is pretty much limiting me to Manjaro, Arch and Gentoo.

Re: Arch Linux – Do it yourself

#127

Post by anonbanker »

minikites wrote: post #37
zx2c4 wrote: post #27

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 ridiculous: http://fun.irq.dk/funroll-loops.org/#fourth

Google uses it for ChromeOS, because nothing comes close to it's customizability. you should probably send that link over to those guys. they might not know it isn't cool to use Gentoo.
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