From macOS to Arch Linux • Hacker News Board

Re: From macOS to Arch Linux

#211

Post by pxc » Sat, Nov 06, 2021, 12:52 AM UTC

trevcanhuman wrote: post #110

stonemetal12 wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would you recommend Arch to someone without a lot of Linux experience? Ubuntu has me thinking of switching to a different OS.

I’d recommend going for it, and as others have said, be prepared to read the Arch Wiki, a lot. I think what’s most important would be to simply have the guts and the inspiration to keep going, even if you think you’ve lost all hope. Personally, I started out my Linux journey with Ubuntu, then distro hopped and tried PopOS, and Ubuntu-based distro with extra things here and there. Then, I took a Linux course online (f…

I had a similar experience when I was a kid, with Gentoo rather than Arch.

It doesn't stay hard for very long. And when it gets easier, it stays easier basically forever, no matter what distro you use.

Manually configuring everything with Arch is a pretty good way to learn a lot about what goes into a working GNU/Linux system, and not as painful as some people make it out to be.

Re: From macOS to Arch Linux

#212

Post by II2II » Sat, Nov 06, 2021, 1:08 AM UTC

pxc wrote: post #198

II2II wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is probably a reference to the AUR, but its use is not as common as some people seem to think and is somewhat discouraged (since, like PPA, the packagers are not necessarily trusted). I would also have a hard time claiming that programs from the AUR are compiled yourself. Yes, the software is usually compiled on your own hardware. On the other hand, the compilation process is handled by makepkg or an AUR helper. W…

> It is probably a reference to the AUR, but its use is not as common as some people seem to think and is somewhat discouraged Arch proper has like 60% the package count of openSUSE, fewer than 1/2 as many packages as Fedora, fewer than 1/3 as many packages as Debian, and fewer than 1/6 as many packages as NixOS.[1] Maybe some of this is Arch having larger packages (splitting fewer of them out), but whatever fudge fa…

What matters is the relevance of the packages in the main repositories, not the quantity. While the quantity will affect some people, it will primarily affect those who use obscure packages.

As for the fudge factor, it would be difficult to even agree upon criteria. For example: should python or rust libraries be included, given they have their own package managers?

Re: From macOS to Arch Linux

#213

Post by pxc » Sat, Nov 06, 2021, 1:10 AM UTC

evol262 wrote: post #92

MegaDeKay wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As another plus, the Arch wiki itself is absolutely fantastic. People will point to the Arch wiki even when running other distributions. For example, it is the place to go when doing something like GPU passthrough to another OS running on qemu/KVM.

Which, honestly, is grating. It's great that the Arch wiki is as good as the Gentoo wiki was in 2002, but it would be even better if the Arch wiki actually acknowledged the people doing the work. For GPU passthrough, for example, the initial author/current maintainer of VFIO published a development blog which has a [multi-part series explaining VFIO and passthrough from the bottom up]( http://vfio.blogspot.com/2015/0…

> Worse, the Arch wiki (and various subreddits) are almost as bad as the Arch/Ubuntu forums were in 2005. They often lead to a bunch of "shotgun debugging" where users are copy and pasting things they don't understand at all in the hopes that it will fix whatever problem they're encountering for reasons they won't understand.

This drives me absolutely fucking nuts.

> The community in general is full of people who intentionally shoot themselves in the foot and are then proud that they find superglue for the wound on the Arch wiki instead of using a distro with better engineering practices where they never would have had these problems at all.

This. A thousand times, this.

> The mistaken belief that doing any of this somehow "teaches" you meaningful things about Linux as opposed to solving real problems (since 99% of the "problems" Arch users encountered will never be seen on other distros, due to the fact that the maintainers carefully ensure there are limited footguns out of the[m]) is terrible.

Idk. There are definitely some Arch-specific footguns (like the lack of distinction between upgrade and dist-upgrade, so that ordinary pacman updates can do things like uninstall literally all of your kernels (lmfao)). But I don't think the basic approach is necessarily fatally flawed. When I installed Gentoo for the first time as a kid, getting everything working taught me:

  - how to identify hardware using using common utilities (like `lsusb`, `lspci`, and `lshw`
  - how to set up a chroot environment, how to use a chroot to manage or repair another system
  - how to install and configure a bootloader, what configuration a bootloader needed
  - how to use basic CLI networking tools to get online
  - how to manage kernel modules (blacklisting them or adding them to initrd), although admittedly a good distro will *usually* be able to anticipate those needs for you
  - how to think about package version constraints and manage packages from different sources
  - fundamentals of building and managing software (i.e., what compile-time options are, how to think about dependencies and reverse dependencies)

Probably the first two are the most valuable, and I guess nowadays the Arch installation tools basically hide what is going on in the chroot environment from you (and actually make it tricky to customize, like if you want to add extra mountpoints to it). But I don't think the whole ‘set everything up yourself once’ approach is worthless.

Re: From macOS to Arch Linux

#214

Post by GekkePrutser » Sat, Nov 06, 2021, 1:11 AM UTC

popey wrote: post #49

"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" For me, this is one of those things that should work out of the box. I appreciate Arch is one of those distros you configure manually, and can thus choose whether to implement this or not. But I'd rather not have my laptop burn out in my bag because the system didn't suspend pro…

Yeah if you want any semblance of anything working 'out of the box', arch is just not for you.

There is no default install on arch. There is not even an installer. There's just the command line on a live system and then you create the partitions and put all the files in place automatically.

It's really great that arch exists but it's just not for everyone.

Re: From macOS to Arch Linux

#215

Post by bigmadwolf » Sat, Nov 06, 2021, 1:15 AM UTC

kaladin-jasnah wrote: post #36

rbut wrote: post #31

Not Arch, but macOS to Linux related. As a developer, used macOS for 13 years. Switched to Ubuntu after Apple went to M1. It's been pretty much flawless and required no more tweaks during setup than a typical macOS install would. Developing on the same environment as our servers is a massive plus. The key is choosing the right hardware from the start. For my desktop, I chose an Asus TUF gaming motherboard that had ev…

Not only is the hardware support better, but even with good hardware support, you have to do more on Hackintoshes (manually download and copy tens of kexts, edit a very, very long plist file for OpenCore, screw with the serial number if you want iMesasge, etc., etc.). Linux usually "just works."

True. For a Hack as with Linux, using compatible hardware is the key. However once that configuration process is done (and done right) from then on its typically a rock solid experience until the next major Mac OS version upgrade. In some ways it is superior to an actual Mac since you have the ability to inject kexts without having to stuff around with reboot to recovery mode, disabling SIP to install and so on. OpenCore is an impressive piece of software.

Re: From macOS to Arch Linux

#216

Post by pxc » Sat, Nov 06, 2021, 1:26 AM UTC

ubercow13 wrote: post #126

nonameiguess wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm honestly not sure what you mean by apt or dnf being more comprehensive. The feature set of all Linux package managers are pretty similar. The major difference with Arch is you're heavily recommended not to do partial upgrades, but pacman will do it if you really want to. That's a difference in update philosophy between batched releases and rolling releases, not a difference in the package managers. If you mean co…

> package managers are pretty similar. The major difference with Arch is you're heavily recommended not to do partial upgrades, but pacman will do it if you really want to. That's a difference in update philosophy between batched releases and rolling releases, not a difference in the package managers. No it’s a difference in package managers. Pacman doesn’t take into account library versions when resolving dependenci…

> > package managers are pretty similar. The major difference with Arch is you're heavily recommended not to do partial upgrades, but pacman will do it if you really want to. That's a difference in update philosophy between batched releases and rolling releases, not a difference in the package managers.

> No it’s a difference in package managers. Pacman doesn’t take into account library versions when resolving dependencies, it’s why partial upgrades aren’t supported because the only way to ensure every package you have installed is linked against the version of its dependencies you have installed is to have every package on your system come from a snapshot in time of the whole repo package tree.

Ding, ding, ding! This is the same dumb behavior that Homebrew has for the same dumb reason that the lead maintainer discussed here on HN just a few days ago.[1]

Pacman is extraordinarily naive as a package manager. And that's just talking about the absolute bare minimum, main job of a package manager, never mind the more peripheral features (like repo management) that are commonly incorporated into modern package managers like dnf and zypper nowadays, the lack of useful abstractions and metadata (like the representation of vendor and vendor change), or the comparatively obtuse CLI vs. modern subcommand interfaces.

If Arch Linux is for users who want to understand their systems, both because having them set it up themselves is supposed to ensure they understand it better and because its tooling is supposed to be kept simple so as to make it easier to understand, one would think these differences would be more transparent to Arch users. But perhaps in many cases it's been a while since they used other tools, and they never dug that deep into them.

—

1: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29081756

Re: From macOS to Arch Linux

#217

Post by 3836293648 » Sat, Nov 06, 2021, 1:27 AM UTC

GekkePrutser wrote: post #214

popey wrote: post #49

"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" For me, this is one of those things that should work out of the box. I appreciate Arch is one of those distros you configure manually, and can thus choose whether to implement this or not. But I'd rather not have my laptop burn out in my bag because the system didn't suspend pro…

Yeah if you want any semblance of anything working 'out of the box', arch is just not for you. There is no default install on arch. There is not even an installer. There's just the command line on a live system and then you create the partitions and put all the files in place automatically. It's really great that arch exists but it's just not for everyone.

Arch has an installer. It's had one for years. It was completely broken for a long time but they released a new working version back in April. Unfortunately most people thought it was a joke since it was released on the first of April.

https://github.com/archlinux/archinstall

Re: From macOS to Arch Linux

#218

Post by kaladin-jasnah » Sat, Nov 06, 2021, 1:34 AM UTC

bigmadwolf wrote: post #215

kaladin-jasnah wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not only is the hardware support better, but even with good hardware support, you have to do more on Hackintoshes (manually download and copy tens of kexts, edit a very, very long plist file for OpenCore, screw with the serial number if you want iMesasge, etc., etc.). Linux usually "just works."

True. For a Hack as with Linux, using compatible hardware is the key. However once that configuration process is done (and done right) from then on its typically a rock solid experience until the next major Mac OS version upgrade. In some ways it is superior to an actual Mac since you have the ability to inject kexts without having to stuff around with reboot to recovery mode, disabling SIP to install and so on. Open…

> OpenCore is an impressive piece of software.

100% agree with this in every way possible.

Cannot detract from how many features it (Audio support for boot chimes? Full graphics support? How many Linux bootloaders have that?). Tons and tons of configuration options and settings that you'll need to get a working Hackintosh.

Yes, OpenCore is an extremely impressive piece of software. It would be nice if Linux bootloaders even approached the featureset and level of polish that OpenCore has.

Re: From macOS to Arch Linux

#219

Post by matheusmoreira » Sat, Nov 06, 2021, 1:35 AM UTC

pxc wrote: post #197

apetresc wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you're confusing Arch with Gentoo or something - the Arch package manager is not from-source, it ships binaries just like apt. Perhaps you're thinking of the AUR, which does usually just host the PKGBUILD which you run makepkg on directly to compile, but that's analogous to something like an Ubuntu PPA, not the core package manager. The main thing that people like about it is the rolling release model; new pa…

> The main thing that people like about it is the rolling release model; new packages for virtually everything are updated within hours or days of an upstream release, with incredible practical stability. Fedora Rawhide and openSUSE Tumbleweed are both nearly as up-to-date[1] as the Arch repos but they have package managers with correct dependency solvers and continuous integration pipelines with tests produce their…

I had really bad experience with Fedora and Arch Linux just didn't give me any problems. Maybe it's better now, I don't know.

Re: From macOS to Arch Linux

#220

Post by matheusmoreira » Sat, Nov 06, 2021, 1:37 AM UTC

lgunsch wrote: post #81

apetresc wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you're confusing Arch with Gentoo or something - the Arch package manager is not from-source, it ships binaries just like apt. Perhaps you're thinking of the AUR, which does usually just host the PKGBUILD which you run makepkg on directly to compile, but that's analogous to something like an Ubuntu PPA, not the core package manager. The main thing that people like about it is the rolling release model; new pa…

I have used Arch Linux for the past 8 years. I've had 3 installations on four different laptops (I migrated one installation to a second laptop). Your comment would be a really great description of my experience.

Same here. I really don't understand why it has a reputation for instability. I use it on my home server.