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Arch Linux turns 20: Small, simple, great documentation

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Re: Arch Linux turns 20: Small, simple, great documentation

#31

Post by nijave »

lproven wrote: post #12
anthk wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Great documentation? Yes. Compared to BSD's, mediocre and subject to dramatic changes by nature.

I disagree, actually. (For clarity, I wrote this article, 9 months ago.) This year I have done short reviews of FreeBSD, OpenBSD and NetBSD. IMHO the docs for Arch are more helpful than any of theirs.

Subjective, but I also find Arch documentation to be "better" because it more frequently answers my question in less time.

You could say *BSD documentation is more "comprehensive" but I usually find myself wading through an ocean to find what I'm looking for. On top of that, every time you try to look elsewhere, you just see RTFM. I can respect the sentiment, but having different variations of the same documentation can help understanding imo

Re: Arch Linux turns 20: Small, simple, great documentation

#33

Post by yakubin »

gnull wrote: post #21
kadotus wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you elaborate? In what way is Alpine more minimal than Arch? (I really just don't know) Also are you suggesting that Debian netinstall is not minimal?

Alpine base rootfs is just a few megabytes, while Arch is like 100-200MB. I usually encounter Alpine in Docker containers when people want to wrap just one specific service and have save space on things that are not essential for it (it would be wasteful to ship your 20MB app in a 200MB Arch/Debian container). I didn't know Alpine was useful as a working machine though.

A Debian Slim Docker image is 20MiB, and in my experience by the time you install all the dependencies of your app in an Alpine image, it’s bigger than the equivalent based on Debian Slim.

Re: Arch Linux turns 20: Small, simple, great documentation

#34

Post by bradrn »

rmbyrro wrote: post #29
bradrn wrote: post #19

> The installation process, and the documentation behind it, lead to the third virtue: a complete installation tends to be very small and simple, because you only install the bits you need. If you don't know what bits you need, the documentation will help you to work it out, and the result is something that is both fairly minimal and that, with luck, you understand. You know what's in there because you installed it.…

If we could combine Ubuntu's easiness of use with Arch's simplicity and performance, that'd be my ideal distro for work. I love Arch for its simplicity and performance. But it just wasn't productive for me to get everyday tasks done. I'm not advanced Linux user, occasionally I'd need hours to get seemingly simple stuff done. For a hobby desktop, fine. For a work tool as a developer, I moved back to Ubuntu (though I h…

This summarises my feelings so far precisely. Alas, I’m not quite sure it’s possible to have this: the easier and more full-featured something is to use out of the box, the more components it needs — or at least, its components become more complicated in and of themselves.

One alternate approach I find interesting is that of NixOS: everything is declaratively specified in a single place, so it’s easy to configure stuff, but also easy to see how everything works. I actually tried out NixOS before installing Arch on the aforementioned desktop box, and if it wasn’t for the sheer opaqueness of Nixpkgs I’d still be using it. On the other hand, I can hardly call Nix ‘simple’… as with everything, it’s all tradeoffs, I suppose.

Re: Arch Linux turns 20: Small, simple, great documentation

#35

Post by pantalaimon »

rmbyrro wrote: post #29
bradrn wrote: post #19

> The installation process, and the documentation behind it, lead to the third virtue: a complete installation tends to be very small and simple, because you only install the bits you need. If you don't know what bits you need, the documentation will help you to work it out, and the result is something that is both fairly minimal and that, with luck, you understand. You know what's in there because you installed it.…

If we could combine Ubuntu's easiness of use with Arch's simplicity and performance, that'd be my ideal distro for work. I love Arch for its simplicity and performance. But it just wasn't productive for me to get everyday tasks done. I'm not advanced Linux user, occasionally I'd need hours to get seemingly simple stuff done. For a hobby desktop, fine. For a work tool as a developer, I moved back to Ubuntu (though I h…

I'm afraid simple and easy don't go well together.

You either have automation to make things easy to the user, but then it's no longer simple.

Or you require the user to do everything manually, but then it's no longer easy.

Re: Arch Linux turns 20: Small, simple, great documentation

#36

Post by jasperry »

bradrn wrote: post #23
hutzlibu wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"For this reason, I’m planning to install Debian instead on the new laptop I’ve ordered" Maybe have a look at manjaro, it is based on arch, but comes prepackaged, so you can just boot up the luve image and install, if everything works.

I’ve heard of Manjaro, but on the occasions when I’ve brought it up in conversation, people have almost unanimously warned me off from it in fairly strong terms… not entirely sure why, but that alone makes me reluctant to use it.

Another Arch/AUR-compatible distro with a more automated install process is EndeavourOS. Last time I checked, it was closer to vanilla Arch than Manjaro. But I've mainly used it for spinning up VMs to work remotely. For a long-term workstation I still feel better sticking to plain Arch.

Re: Arch Linux turns 20: Small, simple, great documentation

#37

Post by zokula »

blahgeek wrote: post #20
anthk wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Arch is not minimal. Debian netinstall does the same. Alpine is. If you think Arch is fast, try Alpine x86. On X.Org, VESA works everywhere.

I think it's more appropriate to say Arch is "simple" instead of "minimal". It does not sacrifice features. It does things in the simpliest way.

No post body was provided.

Re: Arch Linux turns 20: Small, simple, great documentation

#38

Post by rmbyrro »

pantalaimon wrote: post #35
rmbyrro wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If we could combine Ubuntu's easiness of use with Arch's simplicity and performance, that'd be my ideal distro for work. I love Arch for its simplicity and performance. But it just wasn't productive for me to get everyday tasks done. I'm not advanced Linux user, occasionally I'd need hours to get seemingly simple stuff done. For a hobby desktop, fine. For a work tool as a developer, I moved back to Ubuntu (though I h…

I'm afraid simple and easy don't go well together. You either have automation to make things easy to the user, but then it's no longer simple. Or you require the user to do everything manually, but then it's no longer easy.

True. Maybe there's a viable middle ground between Ubuntu & Arch.

Perhaps with a focus on the audience (e.g. a web dev distro), it becomes viable to make sensible compromises on both (easiness & simplicity) that result in a good combination for the user.

Re: Arch Linux turns 20: Small, simple, great documentation

#39

Post by candiddevmike »

bradrn wrote: post #19

> The installation process, and the documentation behind it, lead to the third virtue: a complete installation tends to be very small and simple, because you only install the bits you need. If you don't know what bits you need, the documentation will help you to work it out, and the result is something that is both fairly minimal and that, with luck, you understand. You know what's in there because you installed it.…

You can install Debian the same way you installed Arch (manual, CLI) via debootstrap. It's not really advertised, Debian really wants folks to use their installer.

I built a tool that does this, you can look through the code and see how I do it--it's just bash spaghetti. Download a Debian live ISO (or use my tool to create an Arch-like minimal live USB) and you can install it however you want.

https://github.com/candiddev/forge

Re: Arch Linux turns 20: Small, simple, great documentation

#40

Post by WastingMyTime89 »

bradrn wrote: post #19

> The installation process, and the documentation behind it, lead to the third virtue: a complete installation tends to be very small and simple, because you only install the bits you need. If you don't know what bits you need, the documentation will help you to work it out, and the result is something that is both fairly minimal and that, with luck, you understand. You know what's in there because you installed it.…

> Then I tried installing Arch in a VM… and it took me several days and several attempts, but when I finally got it working I felt, for the first time ever, like I actually understood the system I was using.

Honest question: why days?

I have installed arch multiple times in the past decade and I don’t remember anything exceptionally out of the ordinary. You just follow the step-by-step instruction and you are good to go.

It’s all fairly standard: boot on a live cd, get internet, format the disk, mount, arch provides a script to install the base and another to change the root and it’s vanilla Linux config from there.

Edit: Hmm, I guess how to configure a vanilla Linux might be quite complex for someone who has no idea of how to do that. I might have answered my own question actually.

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