I'm choosing between Arch and Debian Sid - what would you suggest?
Both are good. It depends on your needs
The Arch Way
41–50 of 82 posts
Re: The Arch Way
#42If someone made an Arch installer that automatically set up networking and persisted the setup, as well as partitioning/mounting, I would be on board. The argument I've heard against this is, "but it's simple, it's only like 10 commands to set these up". The problem is, it takes like an hour to read through the entire wiki page (and you need to read it all in case there's an important detail that may screw your syste…
You're asking for something Arch will never provide. Having a "next > next > next" installer defeats the entire purpose of Arch. I once shared the exact same wish, and I never truly adopted Arch until I installed it 3-4 times on one of my secondary computers. It is only by taking that path and practicing that I truly learned to appreciate what it is that Arch gives. I'm sure you'll have that experience too, some day.
Oh yea, Arch is not for the lazy, that's why it's fun!
Re: The Arch Way
#43I use Arch because its the only distro that "Just Works" for me. I like to use the latest version of every software I use, and this is almost impossible on non-rolling-release distros. Installing from source almost always ends up breaking something on distros like Ubuntu. Also, Arch is predictable. There are no weird quirks and distro-specific patches. Almost everything that is on the system is something that you con…
>Installing from source almost always ends up breaking something on distros like Ubuntu. Example? I've never once "broken" something by installing a program from source.
I haven't either, but I've had trouble trying to uninstall them later.
Re: The Arch Way
#44I used Slackware, Gentoo and Arch for ten years but in the end I'm on Ubuntu. I liked feeling in control on those systems and it was great to have everything available immediately on Portage or AUR, but after a while I just got tired of having to read a wiki page for doing something as simple as setting up Bluetooth and ending up with a less convenient end result. I find there's almost always a PPA for an obscure package I need, so I found Ubuntu pretty convenient for actually getting stuff done.
Re: The Arch Way
#45"I've seen good documentations, but nothing beats the Arch Wiki. It's the most comprehensive Wiki you could imagine." I have heard this a number of times from Arch Fans, but I think I disagree. While I have referenced their wonderful Wiki often for "cook book" style answers (like how to fix URXVT+Tmux interactions), I do not view it the same as good documentation. I would also not really call it "comprehensive". To m…
I'd call the Arch wiki comprehensive, but not cohesive. A prerequisite for cohesive documentation is that the system it's documenting is cohesive. The BSDs, as you noted, have cohesiveness down to a science, and their documentation reflects that.
Take as an example the network configuration for FreeBSD [1] and Arch [2]. FreeBSD, because it's a cohesive system, is able to document the One Correct Way of configuring the network.
The Arch instructions are much more "choose your own adventure", but that reflects the array of actual choices that you have in Linux for network config. Should you use systemd-networkd, dhcpcd, netctl, ifplugd, etc? Or maybe some combination? If you need wireless networking [3] which connection manager do you want to use? How is it going to interact with the thing managing your wired networking?
Linux, for better or worse, gives you a very fragmented set of options compared to more cohesive systems like the BSDs. The Arch wiki does a good job of documenting those fragmented options.
[1] https://www.freebsd.org/doc/handbook/config-network-setup.ht... [2] https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Network_configuration [3] https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Wireless_network_config...
Re: The Arch Way
#46If someone made an Arch installer that automatically set up networking and persisted the setup, as well as partitioning/mounting, I would be on board. The argument I've heard against this is, "but it's simple, it's only like 10 commands to set these up". The problem is, it takes like an hour to read through the entire wiki page (and you need to read it all in case there's an important detail that may screw your syste…
I think ArchBang tries to do that. It might be a nice in-between for a new arch user's first time.
Then again, I think I had a set of other problems when I tried it.
I have spent a decent amount of time trying to understand all the steps of the process just so that I can troubleshoot without immediately needing to access the arch-wiki. The knowledge is nice to have, and building familiarity with the system one uses should never be seen as wasted time :)
Re: The Arch Way
#47>Unlike other distributions, on Arch you’re not forced to use a specific Window Manager, a Desktop Environment, a File Manager, and so on. Excuse me?
It's like the people complaining about Unity, not realizing that all the major WMs, DEs and FMs are a single apt-get command away...
Right. MAJOR. For example I use awesome 3.5 as my WM. It's a pain in the ass to install it on Debian. Wheezy libraries aren't compatible with the latest version of awesome. If you want to upgrade libc, you'll break the whole system.
Re: The Arch Way
#48I think the Arch Way really shines if you stick to small applications that do one thing and do it well. This is the essence of Unix. There are periodic surveys among Arch users, and it's pretty interesting to see a majority of them sticks to this ethos: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1_LisP8224B2yahtZTYB-pnIt0aP... Such a choice would be considered hardcore in some more mainstream distros. I began transitioning to t…
Why emacs and then vimperator? And why not pentadactyl?
I prefer emacs for editing text, but modal vim-like interfaces for simple tasks such as browsing a document (zathura) or the web (vimperator).
I switched back and forth between vimperator and pentadactyl many times. Pentadactyl is a bit more complex, and used to break often. Perhaps it is no longer the case?
Re: The Arch Way
#49Arch is my workstation and it works very well (for maybe 5 years)
You just have to check the arch website for important updates (filesystem, etc) which may broke your system.
I had ubuntu before and it was impossible to upgrade to the new version after 6 months. I was obliged to reinstall my system ...
It was difficult t first to install Arch but like the article said, it makes you undesrtand Linux and your computer. A very good way to improve your skills
Re: The Arch Way
#50Not an Arch user, but I'm glad it exists. It's incredibly helpful to know which devs love tedium, boilerplate and hand-rolling; makes it easier to avoid them...