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Arch Linux turns 10

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Re: Arch Linux turns 10

#71

Post by Spakman »

NeutronBoy wrote: post #69
jon6 wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a bunch of painful stories about using Arch but the best one happened most recently. I had some outdated package that I wanted to update so I asked in the #arch irc room how to just update that one package. I was told upgrading a single package is generally a bad idea and its better to just update the entire system. I have had a server running Gentoo for ~5 years and I frequently upgrade single packages at a t…

> I frequently upgrade single packages at a time so I saw no problem with this but ok, I'm not an Arch expert so I followed the #arch people's advice. Imagine your window manager relies on libX as a dependency. You update CoolNewApp, which relies on an updated version is libX. So it installs that from your repos and CoolNewApp works great. However, your WM needs an update to be compatible with the newer version of li…

I imagine the GP means "upgrade single package, including dependencies". This is very common, at least on Gentoo.

Re: Arch Linux turns 10

#72

Post by babarock »

NeutronBoy wrote: post #69
jon6 wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a bunch of painful stories about using Arch but the best one happened most recently. I had some outdated package that I wanted to update so I asked in the #arch irc room how to just update that one package. I was told upgrading a single package is generally a bad idea and its better to just update the entire system. I have had a server running Gentoo for ~5 years and I frequently upgrade single packages at a t…

> I frequently upgrade single packages at a time so I saw no problem with this but ok, I'm not an Arch expert so I followed the #arch people's advice. Imagine your window manager relies on libX as a dependency. You update CoolNewApp, which relies on an updated version is libX. So it installs that from your repos and CoolNewApp works great. However, your WM needs an update to be compatible with the newer version of li…

This is exactly the kind of things that pacman should take care of. Simply "upgrade everything" is not a good practice, it will break for some people, enough to have them annoyed.

Re: Arch Linux turns 10

#73

Post by karolist »

I'm using Arch on the desktop lately and liking the bleeding edge updates and simplicity however I'm still loving Gentoo more on the servers, the portage system forces you to build everything just according to your needs where by default with Arch I'm getting pre-compiled stuff.

Anyone running Arch on servers, how does it compare to Gentoo in your opinion?

Re: Arch Linux turns 10

#74

Post by dsrguru »

lloeki wrote: post #67
dsrguru wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been using Arch for about five years, and I can tell you that things break more frequently than with any other distro I've used for a suffiently long amount of time. Things break more frequently when you're tinkering with things, but sometimes even on routine updates. If you want something more stable, use Debian Testing or Slackware. That being said, Arch is great. Try it!

> things break more frequently Yes it might be more frequent, yet each time it is of a more limited scope since it concerns a single, maybe two packages. Following the news and maybe the forums helps a lot. Example regarding the scope: I upgraded some machines Ubuntu 11.04 to 11.10, and so much breakage occurred that the machines required such an extend of work that they simply were declared unrecoverable and reinsta…

Yes, following the news is incredibly useful for preventing breakage on updates, and the forums are especially useful for repairing breakage since other people will often have had the same issue on a big update. Probably half the time something "breaks" on a `pacman -Syu' for me, it's just a quick fix that was the result of me neglecting to read the front page news.

Re: Arch Linux turns 10

#75

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

Re: Arch Linux turns 10

#76

Post by laumars »

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…

Looks fine in KDE4. Definitely not as crappy as the screenshots you've posted

Re: Arch Linux turns 10

#77

Post by hkolek »

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…

Hm, interesting. I think all those examples look terrible. First thing I do on a new ubuntu install is this: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=208396 The result looks exactly as it does on my Windows 7 install (cleartype disabled, it makes my eyes bleed).

Re: Arch Linux turns 10

#78

Post by qba »

yabai wrote: post #36
phzbOx wrote: post #4

I love Arch. Best distribution by far in my opinion. Sadly, I had huge problems one week ago when I did a full system upgrade (took me 2 days to fix everything that was corrupted and lost lots of money because of it) but then it was my fault. (Never use --force with a system upgrade!) To be fair, there should be a warning when you try to execute the command as it's probably not what a user would want to do.

The more I use Arch, the more I do things on the command line. That means a lot less software to maintain. I think if you run tons of different software, you are asking for things to break. I happily run dwm, and a handful of CLI tools. This minimalistic setup is enough for me - and seems to cut down on things breaking.

I think using the 'cutting-edge' distros (Gentoo, Arch) in general pushes one to use more CLI tools rather than GUIs. At least that was the case with me.

> This minimalistic setup is enough for me

I think that's a poor choice of words ;). It implicates that a GUI, or 'less minimalistic' setup is something 'more', something better. I think it's just something different, for differenet needs. Being very careful, maybe using less GUIs and handful of CLIs is an evolution (in certain areas). You can do more (stuff) with less (commands). But "great power, comes with great responsibility" = you can easily shoot yourself in a foot, and so it is not for everyone.

Re: Arch Linux turns 10

#79

Post by udp »

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.

Check out the Infinality patches: http://www.infinality.net/

I've used these successfully on Debian, Arch and FreeBSD, and always had great results.

Re: Arch Linux turns 10

#80

Post by jiggy2011 »

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.

Yes , because grandma just loves it when she does a system update and her entire desktop suddenly changes to something else or it decides to replace the Java distribution from under her so half of her stuff doesn't work any more.

If you want to get and keep non technical users consistency in terms of metaphors and the software itself is #1 thing.

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