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From macOS to Arch Linux

juxt.pro

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Re: From macOS to Arch Linux

#11

Post by gbrown »

jimjimjimjim wrote: post #8
gbrown wrote: post #7

Can an Arch person explain to me why their approach is worth it over something with a more comprehensive package manager like apt or dnf? I don’t mind compiling programs myself when needed, but for most things I’m happy to not have to hand-hold my OS when it comes to updates. From the wiki: > Before upgrading, users are expected to visit the Arch Linux home page to check the latest news, or alternatively subscribe to…

Sometimes there are some manual interventions that you may have to perform.

Yeah, exactly. Why?

Re: From macOS to Arch Linux

#12

Post by kwertyoowiyop »

otar wrote: post #4

Haha... I've used Ubuntu and then Arch prior to switching mac. If you have enough time and nerves to do OS/desktop env stuff yourself, then go ahead... In the end I decided to use my time for more effective things and stop geeking around.

This is HackerNews, not PracticalUserNews! :-)

Re: From macOS to Arch Linux

#13

Post by dainiusse »

otar wrote: post #4

Haha... I've used Ubuntu and then Arch prior to switching mac. If you have enough time and nerves to do OS/desktop env stuff yourself, then go ahead... In the end I decided to use my time for more effective things and stop geeking around.

Yeah. Sounds like geeking around. 20 years ago we had this cult of "living in the console" and ignoring X servers at all. It was fun for some time - even watching some video stuff using mplayer's aalib, playing mud.... But then again - this is not about productivity - it is just fun, while if you need to do work, family, etc... There's rarely time for that.

Re: From macOS to Arch Linux

#14

Post by slowmotiony »

fsflover wrote: post #2

> There are still many things I need to set up on the new laptop, for example: suspension/hibernation on closing the lid doesn’t always work Sounds like a problem of hardware not designed for Linux. Everything has been working out of the box for me on a Librem laptop.

To be fair, I've had those with all Dell laptops on Windows too. In fact I've never had a Windows laptop that could reliably wake up from sleep every time.

Re: From macOS to Arch Linux

#16

Post by kaladin-jasnah »

Kalanos wrote: post #6

Getting your custom stack tuned feels great, but maintaining that entire stack across updates is daunting. You can't join meetings because your headphone/ mic/ video drivers aren't working? yikes. i trust apple to handle hardware and os for me. I've switched to: macOS > brew (basic cli utils & gui apps) > some basic zshrc (not ohmyzsh) > docker (not environment managers) > done. ^ but i've lost trust for them to hand…

> You can't join meetings because your headphone/ mic drivers aren't working? yikes.

I really don't know where you're getting this from. This isn't 2004 and you don't have to screw with ALSA drivers to get basic audio functionality on Linux.

On both PulseAudio and Pipewire, I've never had this problem and I know many others who haven't had issues either, and I really just don't think audio input/output is a gigantic issue on Linux (other than, obviously, if you have niche hardware, but I still haven't had audio issues other than when I tried to install Linux on a Chromebook using the MrChromebox coreboot UEFI firmware). Audio drivers failing is something that people like to throw out there even though it's not very common. I've literally never had my audio drivers suddenly fail on me. The only mic issues I've had are the ones I'd have on any other system, like choosing the wrong input device and wondering why no one can hear me.

> maintaining that entire stack across updates is daunting

I've had Arch installs for long, long times. IME and in many other people's experiences, Arch doesn't really break that much (read: at all for me) through updates compared to other distros (eg. Ubuntu). It's a good example of a distro that you'd want to use on a desktop for this exact reason.

Re: From macOS to Arch Linux

#17

Post by hnrj95 »

Kalanos wrote: post #6

Getting your custom stack tuned feels great, but maintaining that entire stack across updates is daunting. You can't join meetings because your headphone/ mic/ video drivers aren't working? yikes. i trust apple to handle hardware and os for me. I've switched to: macOS > brew (basic cli utils & gui apps) > some basic zshrc (not ohmyzsh) > docker (not environment managers) > done. ^ but i've lost trust for them to hand…

i agree. the mental overhead is too much for me to justify, personally, for my own machine

Re: From macOS to Arch Linux

#18

Post by doubled112 »

gbrown wrote: post #11
jimjimjimjim wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sometimes there are some manual interventions that you may have to perform.

Yeah, exactly. Why?

Because many of the changes are large enough that it will break, and that's expected.

The KISS principle applies here.

If a config file format changes in a service between version 3 and version 4, should the package manager be responsible for it? Or the admin?

Sometimes it's not just merging changes in.

In a non-rolling release distribution, you only need to worry about those changes during major upgrades. In a rolling release distro, they can change at any time. It's no different than a user reading the release notes for Debian 11 while upgrading from 10, except the upgrades are constant.

Re: From macOS to Arch Linux

#19

Post by nvarsj »

gbrown wrote: post #11
jimjimjimjim wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sometimes there are some manual interventions that you may have to perform.

Yeah, exactly. Why?

It's the philosophy of Arch to stick to vanilla as much as possible and keep things simple. It's a rolling distro too with no fixed release cycles. When you upgrade fedora, ubuntu, etc. they perform various scripts to migrate existing configuration. In Arch, it just simply installs the vanilla packages whenever you tell pacman to update. Very rarely there is some breaking change, maybe once or twice a year, that requires manual intervention. Yeah they could automate it all but such stuff takes effort and breaks in other ways.
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