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Arch Linux turns 10

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Re: Arch Linux turns 10

#51

Post by demetris »

old-gregg wrote: post #43
chimeracoder wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly, I'm not sure Ubuntu even excels at that anymore. When I switched my parents over to Linux, I installed Mint, not Ubuntu. This was well before the Unity debacle, but even besides that, I'm glad I did. Mint looked familiar to them (coming from Windows), and while it may be heavily bloated from a software perspective (the stuff that makes Arch users cringe, since they ship everything by default to maximize con…

No need to bash Ubuntu just because it lost the coolness/freshness factor. It's still a great distribution, and the only one I know which serves excellent font rendering out of the box. I love Arch as much as the next guy, but their default font experience is awful. The biggest headache of using it was constantly fighting/maintaining patched cairo/freetype from AUR (because they'd occasionally conflict with a newer v…

For folks who want Ubuntu’s font rendering on Debian, there is a simple hack you can try:

Get Ubuntu’s /etc/fonts directory, remove or rename your own /etc/fonts, and put Ubuntu’s in its place.

I’ve been using this hack in Debian Sid, I have applied it to several machines, and it always gets the job done.

Apologies for veering off topic.

Re: Arch Linux turns 10

#52

Post by old-gregg »

leif wrote: post #47
old-gregg wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No need to bash Ubuntu just because it lost the coolness/freshness factor. It's still a great distribution, and the only one I know which serves excellent font rendering out of the box. I love Arch as much as the next guy, but their default font experience is awful. The biggest headache of using it was constantly fighting/maintaining patched cairo/freetype from AUR (because they'd occasionally conflict with a newer v…

I have had the best font experience on arch, out of gentoo, debian, Ubuntu, fedora, centos, and FreeBSD. It wasn't straight out of the box, but it was easier to make happen than on any of the others.

That means you belong to the 1st group, i.e. people who prefer pixelated/rough text look from the 90s. No offense, but this "looks fine to me" attitude is what has been historically handicapping the Linux desktop.

Below are two examples of "looks fine":

Case #1. Thin non-antialiased fonts sirca Windows 95:

http://i1-linux.softpedia-static.com/screenshots/Arch-Linux_...

Case #2. Default Arch anti-aliasing with poor quality:

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-JZ2dKqaJUYw/TqCuVyI3WDI/AAAAAAAAAj...

Just look at "archlinux" rendering in the URL.

And this is how Ubuntu looks by default:

http://www.documentingreality.com/forum/attachments/f111/334...

Notice the excellent typeface they developed themselves, consistent and high-quality anti-aliasing, etc. This looks gorgeous on a modern high-DPI screen. Group #1 thinks this "looks blurry" and Arch works fine for them.

Simply put, It is technically impossible for Arch to provide you with the best font experience because their freetype is compiled with, hm... parts of code removed. The parts that are responsible for hinting, bytecode interpretation and subpixel rendering. And the way they ship Open Office and Firefox (well, last time I checked) makes their fonts non-configurable at all, since they ignore system/global version of freetype.

Re: Arch Linux turns 10

#53

Post by leif »

old-gregg wrote: post #52
leif wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have had the best font experience on arch, out of gentoo, debian, Ubuntu, fedora, centos, and FreeBSD. It wasn't straight out of the box, but it was easier to make happen than on any of the others.

That means you belong to the 1st group, i.e. people who prefer pixelated/rough text look from the 90s. No offense, but this "looks fine to me" attitude is what has been historically handicapping the Linux desktop. Below are two examples of "looks fine": Case #1. Thin non-antialiased fonts sirca Windows 95: http://i1-linux.softpedia-static.com/screenshots/Arch-Linux_... Case #2. Default Arch anti-aliasing with poor qu…

You could not be more wrong.

I have probably worked more for my fonts than for anything else about my system, on any linux distro I've tried (on OSX, the rendering's fine but the actual font choices kind of blow...there I have other problems that consume much more of my time than the fonts).

On arch, I install the infinality patched freetype stuff from the AUR, set some preferences in .Xresources, install the fonts I like, and I'm good to go. On any other distro, installing patched freetype and overriding the distro-maintained font configuration invariably leads down the path of madness. I don't run the software you mention, but I have never seen an incompatibility issue.

You mention ubuntu. Honestly, its defaults are fine. That is, as long as you never try to use a different font, or install software that ignores the default, or try to use an alternative program like rxvt-unicode instead of gnome-terminal, or visit a web page that specifies its own font, or have a lowish dpi screen. Ubuntu's great if you stay inside the garden. I just barely don't, but it's enough to piss me off.

Also, I happen to not use openoffice or firefox, so I haven't run into the problems you describe. But I expect that they would look great on my system, because the only version of freetype I have installed has patches that do what I like.

EDIT: here's my screenshot with a 'd' and a 'p'. looks fine to me: http://imgur.com/UZJ17

Re: Arch Linux turns 10

#54

Post by dkersten »

Deinumite wrote: post #31
bitwize wrote: post #16

Arch rules. It is literally just what I wanted from a Linux distro: the dead simplicity and austere Unix-ness of Slackware combined with the up-to-the-minute-ness and easy source package integration of Gentoo. A true gem and reminder of what Linux is and can be, when Ubuntu makes it seem like we've lost our way...

Ubuntu is the best distro around... for what it's purpose is. Ubuntu isn't around to cater to power users, the whole idea behind it is shipping a distro thats so easy your grandma can install and use it.

I've been happily using Arch for the past 3 years, but installed the latest Ubuntu a week and a half ago. I happily used Ubuntu before I used Arch, but my experience with Ubuntu over the past week and a half was pretty bad. I think its really Unity that I hate, not Ubuntu itself - Unity is slow as hell, really buggy and the user experience has been pretty bad... can't wait to reinstall Arch in a few days.

Re: Arch Linux turns 10

#55

Post by _sh »

drostie wrote: post #38

It's a couple days too late to wish Arch happy birthday, but if you're very quick, you can still wish Albert Einstein happy birthday. He'd be 133 today. Unfortunately there's no real location of his corpse that you can visit as he was cremated, but last I heard, his eyes are kept in a safe deposit box somewhere in New York, there's a couple slides of his brain at the Mütter Museum in Philadelphia, and the majority of…

If you can, try and track down the documentary Einstein's Brain by Kevin Hull[1], an amusing yarn about a Japanese professor's trip across the US in search of the great man's grey matter.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relics:_Einsteins_Brain

Re: Arch Linux turns 10

#56

Post by pavanky »

old-gregg wrote: post #52
leif wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have had the best font experience on arch, out of gentoo, debian, Ubuntu, fedora, centos, and FreeBSD. It wasn't straight out of the box, but it was easier to make happen than on any of the others.

That means you belong to the 1st group, i.e. people who prefer pixelated/rough text look from the 90s. No offense, but this "looks fine to me" attitude is what has been historically handicapping the Linux desktop. Below are two examples of "looks fine": Case #1. Thin non-antialiased fonts sirca Windows 95: http://i1-linux.softpedia-static.com/screenshots/Arch-Linux_... Case #2. Default Arch anti-aliasing with poor qu…

Arch linux by default does not even have X installed by default. So while I install X, gnome, and nvidia drivers, the installation of the fonts of choice is the least of my concerns.

P.S. I am not bashing arch linux, I am just pointing out that the default Arch linux does not even have a ui and you can not compare this to Ubuntu.

Re: Arch Linux turns 10

#57

Post by pavanky »

Vergle wrote: post #3

Happy birthday! And... A question for people using arch: If I install arch correctly and study the basics, will I need to spend time maintaining it? I like the idea of having a distro I can customize and play with to really learn how linux works, but when I want to stop messing about and get work done, it would be nice for it to be as stable as OSX. Unrealistic?

I have been using Archlinux for over 2 years. During this period I have installed it on all the machines I _own_ (3 laptops, 1 work desktop). The biggest problem I had was when I had /usr on its own partition. This behavior was not recommended and an update broke it. However this was easy to fix and took Also, try to use pacman as much as possible.

Re: Arch Linux turns 10

#58

Post by rufugee »

hollerith wrote: post #45
rufugee wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been using debian based systems (including ubuntu) for over a decade now, and I can't think of more than a handful of times time I've had to jump through hoops to keep apt and dpkg happy. You may not always have the latest version of the software, but the productivity compared to compile.everything or rpm-based systems is significant. Almost everytime I need a piece of software, it's one command away.

It is hard to see what your comment has to do with Arch Linux since it is neither a compile.everything nor an rpm-based system. But yeah, for users willing to adapt themselves to a system, as opposed to adapting the system to their desires, the debian-based distros are probably the best Linux distros.

My comment was in response to "avoid all the hoop jumping other distributions make you do in order to keep their package managers happy, while still giving you all the benefits". Personally, I believe those hoops to be a myth.

Re: Arch Linux turns 10

#59

Post by phzbOx »

drzaiusapelord wrote: post #22
phzbOx wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, well the thing is I never had to use it before. But a package required it, so with a quick google-fu it said to include --force. What wasn't clear is that you had to do a --force for only that package.. while I simply added it to my already crafted command. (I.e. ctrl-p --force ). Let's say I've learned that one the hard way ;)

This is why I'll never jump on the "GUIs are for stupid people" bandwagon.

Well, the thing is that it complained about only one particular file which I didn't care and knew it was safe to --force on it. So, basically, you type:

  foo -abc
And it tells you, "Can't alter file bar.conf".

After a google search you read, "bar.conf needs the --force switch to be altered".

So you're like, fine..

  foo -abc --force
* Everything crash *

Next reboot,

"Press to get in the shell"

Me pressing enter.. and even the keyboard isn't working.

That's what happened.

Re: Arch Linux turns 10

#60

Post by beamso »

demetris wrote: post #51
old-gregg wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No need to bash Ubuntu just because it lost the coolness/freshness factor. It's still a great distribution, and the only one I know which serves excellent font rendering out of the box. I love Arch as much as the next guy, but their default font experience is awful. The biggest headache of using it was constantly fighting/maintaining patched cairo/freetype from AUR (because they'd occasionally conflict with a newer v…

For folks who want Ubuntu’s font rendering on Debian, there is a simple hack you can try: Get Ubuntu’s /etc/fonts directory, remove or rename your own /etc/fonts, and put Ubuntu’s in its place. I’ve been using this hack in Debian Sid, I have applied it to several machines, and it always gets the job done. Apologies for veering off topic.

I install iceweasel from http://mozilla.debian.net/. As part of the dependencies for this iceweasel, the patched fontconfig comes through with the nicer font smoothing.
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