I don't use Arch personally, but I have found that every time I've looked for documentation on something lately (like setting up xmonad), I would be directed to the Arch wiki and forums quite a bit. They seem to have a good community going on over there.
ArchLinux, Not Just For The Elite
21–30 of 59 posts
Re: ArchLinux, Not Just For The Elite
#22"Arch Linux is a very fun and stable distribution that successfully blends the bleeding edge, stability and hackability of Linux" let's define 'stable' http://www.tuxtips.org/?cat=3
I would say it has a bit of both kinds.
I wouldn't call making /usr/bin/python point to python3 stable. I got nothing against their philosophy per se, but let's not make it something that isn't. a primary feature of a 'stable' system is that you wake up to the same one you left the day before.
Re: ArchLinux, Not Just For The Elite
#23that's it ... i'm moving to gentoo.
Re: ArchLinux, Not Just For The Elite
#24I like arch, except for the stupid command line arguments to pacman. I wish they had just kept it more standard. There's nothing wrong with naming "install" install and "search" search. Feels to me like a case of inventing complexity just to make it feel a little more elitist. pacman -Ss gnome # searches for gnome pacman -S gnome # installs gnome
Command line tool use much more often -x or --foo arguments that a word. Also -S is still faster to type than install, personally I won't switch for 'install'. Nevertheless, you may add some alias to change the behavior if it's annoying you.
I never liked CLI tools that have a "mode" switch that then overloads command arguments.
Pacman is especially confusing since -S actually means the sync mode. Which doesn't really fit with the idea of installing a package. Also, why do you use sync mode to install a package, but have a special remove (-R) mode to remove a package? Shouldn't there be a -I to install?
To take it further, standard use cases for a package manager should be install, upgrade, search and remove with standard arguments -i/--install, -u/--upgrade, -s/--search, -r/--remove.
It seems that most of the package managers get this wrong. For apt-get what's the difference to update, upgrade and dist-upgrade? For yum why is there both an update and an upgrade and why is there a special groupinstall? I know the answer to these questions, but it's confusing until you wrap your head around it.
Re: ArchLinux, Not Just For The Elite
#25I like arch, except for the stupid command line arguments to pacman. I wish they had just kept it more standard. There's nothing wrong with naming "install" install and "search" search. Feels to me like a case of inventing complexity just to make it feel a little more elitist. pacman -Ss gnome # searches for gnome pacman -S gnome # installs gnome
That's just how CLI apps work, there is nothing elitist about it. Its "cd" and "ls -la" and "cat", not "change-directory," "list-directory long-format everything" and so on. The learning curve might be steep, but it's well worth it, especially for those of us who "live" in a shell.
In the particular case of pacman, I really like the design of the arguments, in particular the top level ones. -S is for syncing, -R is for removing, and -Q is for querying and so on. Nice!
Re: ArchLinux, Not Just For The Elite
#26>The installation process may take a while (several hours.. or less) It depends on what you're talking about. With relatively fast internet (I have 20Mb/s), I can have a functional box up with my favorite DE in just an hour or so. It's true that I configure things here and there for the next couple days as I need them, and each configuration is simple and only takes a second or two, but several hours seems a lot long…
Two things helped me a lot with my Archlinux installation: 1) I previously tried in a virtual machine 2) I had a second machine next to mine to look up stuff in the wiki and follow the installation guide.
I can't recommend this configuration enough. The wiki is super-informative and got me out of many jams during setup.
Re: ArchLinux, Not Just For The Elite
#27I like arch, except for the stupid command line arguments to pacman. I wish they had just kept it more standard. There's nothing wrong with naming "install" install and "search" search. Feels to me like a case of inventing complexity just to make it feel a little more elitist. pacman -Ss gnome # searches for gnome pacman -S gnome # installs gnome
I guess it's a matter of what you're used to and once you get used to pacman/pacaur/yaourt, then I guess it becomes fairly standard.
Package managers are funny beasts. They're like children, when someone rips the flaws of one, the community comes rallying to its defense.
Having said that, I've personally always hated Zypper.
Re: ArchLinux, Not Just For The Elite
#28Earlier quoted context omitted.
I would say it has a bit of both kinds.
I wouldn't call making /usr/bin/python point to python3 stable. I got nothing against their philosophy per se, but let's not make it something that isn't. a primary feature of a 'stable' system is that you wake up to the same one you left the day before.
The python move was the only stability issue I've ever had.
Re: ArchLinux, Not Just For The Elite
#29Arch taught me a lot about my computer. I use a libre/Free Software distribution of it, Parabola GNU/linux-libre.
Re: ArchLinux, Not Just For The Elite
#30Earlier quoted context omitted.
I would say it has a bit of both kinds.
Anecdotally, ArchLinux has bitten me before with its rolling releases. They moved the hostname utility to a new package, but pacman (their package manager) didn't prompt or download the new package. This promptly broke my laptop's network stack right before I left for a weekend trip. Now I didn't have internet, and I didn't have internet to find out how to fix my internet. It all worked out fine by writing a bash scr…
It is absolutely recommended to check their http://www.archlinux.org/news/ before update. They (usually) do warn on stuff like this.