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The Arch Way

dgeex.de

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Re: The Arch Way

#71

Post by anonbanker »

dgeex wrote: post #3
alexggordon wrote: post #2

Cached version: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://... I'd actually argue a different point from the author. If you're a beginner at Linux, and want to learn more I would highly recommend Arch to you. Arch was the first *nix system I ever installed by hand (OS X doesn't count), and even as a developer, I learned more spending 3 weeks installing the OS than I'd ever known about linux previousl…

Sorry for the downtime, it's fixed now. Maybe some advanced users could start with Arch, but most of the people I know, will find it too difficult and give up on it. Yes, it's a great way to learn how stuff works, but it's just not for everyone. And in my opinion, beginners should start with something different. I'd never recommend my mom to try Arch for example.

Girlfriend's first linux install was Arch. Made her install it herself, and now she has a full KDE desktop.

It was pretty much the sign she was a keeper. :)

Re: The Arch Way

#72

Post by crdoconnor »

hobarrera wrote: post #64
tormeh wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

It's not that simple. Ubuntu has a lot of patches to make stuff interact nicely, and installing a diferent DE/WM is not as trivial as you'd think. The opposite is true in Arch: it's extremely simple to change de WM, and chances of breaking anything else are minimal. This is especially due to the fact that you build the system yourself, so you know exactly what changing the WM affects.

apt-get install xubuntu-desktop

apt-get install kubuntu-desktop

it is as trivial as you'd think.

Re: The Arch Way

#73

Post by anonbanker »

dgeex wrote: post #6
vezzy-fnord wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If your goal is to learn without totally assembling something from scratch, I'd honestly recommend Gentoo, CRUX or Slackware, instead. Latter is what I use daily, and it's the closest to vanilla that you'll get while being suitable for daily tasks. Arch is a rather odd duck in that it has long cultivated this cult image of being a "hardcore" distro, but I never understood much of the appeal myself. It seems to attrac…

What kind of recent decisions do you mean? I've heard good things about Gentoo, I'd definitely give it a try someday. How would you compare it to Arch? Can you make a brief explanation what you like/dislike about them?

Gentoo is for people that get tired of binary distributions. Imagine this:

* As a Redhat/RPM user, rpm -iUvh is dependency hell.

* As a debian user, dpkg -i usually leads to dependency hell.

* Yum/Apt will eventually break, leading to manual repair of the package database, or a stuck dependency that makes life miserable.

Either way, a sysadmin ends up compiling most of their bleeding-edge or otherwise need-to-have-it software, rather than relying on rpm's/deb's/ppa's to handle it for them. These people tend to install a base system, then compile the rest of the system on top of it, in order to not rely on a package maintainer who usually volunteers their time (when they have it). I personally have fond memories of 1999, compiling GNOME 0.98.1 and Enlightenment 0.15 on my Redhat 6 machine (Pentium 133Mhz - full day to build) in order to keep up with development.

If you find yourself working around rpm, deb, or even tgz or xz files, give Gentoo a shot. Ebuilds are clear instructions on how to build a package reliably. Should you want to enable custom options (i.e. VLC with VDPAU), most ebuilds have USE flags listed, which bring in any other libraries you may need, and can be set per-package or globally.

The first five or six times you build a kernel you just configured, it will fail to boot. You will have to earn your system (sound/video/peripherals) a piece at a time. And once you've done it, you'll feel like you climbed Everest. You will know Linux intuitively, and it won't feel like a foreign environment.

I like to compare Gentoo to driving a manual transmission. Automatics like Ubuntu/Redhat/Debian are useable, but you don't get a feel for the machine like you do with Gentoo.

Arch is like Gentoo's little brother with a systemd infection. He'll live a long healthy life, but expect breakdowns and sadness. If you have an AMD card, expect pain (even if you use V10L0's repositories). but the AUR is almost as big as portage, and you can seriously have a full system installed in less than 10 minutes (if you know the commands). I use an Arch LiveCD to chroot my Gentoo installs now. :)

Re: The Arch Way

#74

Post by techdragon »

lake99 wrote: post #36
raziel2p wrote: post #27

If 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…

> If someone made an Arch installer that automatically set up networking and persisted the setup, as well as partitioning/mounting, I would be on board. Netctl gets bundled in the install images because it is small. But after you have finished your installation, you can abandon it. No distro that I have come across handles partitioning and mounting automatically. I have come across a few that offer to wipe the entire…

But isn't offering to wipe the disk handling some of the partitioning work for you. It may just not be offering you the layout you like. Some installers offer to let you manually partition the disk and specify the various parts you care about, not many but some.

Re: The Arch Way

#75

Post by bitwize »

The Arch Way was kicked to the curb when they transitioned to systemd. It's one of those things -- like "the Unix Philosophy" -- that's nice on paper but has nothing to do with the way Linux is actually run in the real world now.

Re: The Arch Way

#76

Post by tormeh »

crdoconnor wrote: post #72
hobarrera wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not that simple. Ubuntu has a lot of patches to make stuff interact nicely, and installing a diferent DE/WM is not as trivial as you'd think. The opposite is true in Arch: it's extremely simple to change de WM, and chances of breaking anything else are minimal. This is especially due to the fact that you build the system yourself, so you know exactly what changing the WM affects.

apt-get install xubuntu-desktop apt-get install kubuntu-desktop it is as trivial as you'd think.

I second this. I have both KDE and GNOME Shell installed and working on Ubuntu. They really are one-liners.

Re: The Arch Way

#77

Post by nextos »

hobarrera wrote: post #63
nextos wrote: post #10

I 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…

Out of curiosity: How's connman working for you? Do you have a GUI for it, or just CLI? Does isync support IDLE? offlineimap has quite a few bugs and I can't wait to change it (I've a very similar mutt+offlineimap+notmuch+opensmtpd setup).

Connman is fantastic. Mind that it is used by Android and Jolla. I'm very happy with it. Super fast and robust, miles ahead wicd, networkmanager or netctl.

I use it from the CLI, but there are some QT GUIs around.

Isymc doesn't support IDLE, but its fast enough to be able to run it every 2 o 3 min. Ask in the mailing list thou, they had some discussions about implementing it.

Check mutt-kz too, soon it will replace mutt+notmuch.

Re: The Arch Way

#78

Post by enoch_r »

nextos wrote: post #16
enoch_r wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I started with Arch too, and am still with it several years later (typing this comment on a Pixel 2 running Arch). I agree that Arch isn't for everyone, but I think a sufficiently curious and motivated beginner will be fine. Mostly because of Arch's incredible wiki.

Oh, can you report what works and what doesn't on a Pixel 2 hardware-wise?

Sure! On install, a few things didn't work: trackpad, keyboard backlight, touchscreen, and I think screen brightness. However, https://github.com/tsowell/linux-samus solved all these problems. There are a few details to iron out (as described in the README) but at this point it's fully functional for me.

Re: The Arch Way

#79

Post by nextos »

enoch_r wrote: post #78
nextos wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh, can you report what works and what doesn't on a Pixel 2 hardware-wise?

Sure! On install, a few things didn't work: trackpad, keyboard backlight, touchscreen, and I think screen brightness. However, https://github.com/tsowell/linux-samus solved all these problems. There are a few details to iron out (as described in the README) but at this point it's fully functional for me.

Great, thanks! If you monitor hardware using powertop, do all devices enter into sleep modes when appropriate? Does the Pixel overheat?

Re: The Arch Way

#80

Post by enoch_r »

nextos wrote: post #79
enoch_r wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure! On install, a few things didn't work: trackpad, keyboard backlight, touchscreen, and I think screen brightness. However, https://github.com/tsowell/linux-samus solved all these problems. There are a few details to iron out (as described in the README) but at this point it's fully functional for me.

Great, thanks! If you monitor hardware using powertop, do all devices enter into sleep modes when appropriate? Does the Pixel overheat?

No problems with overheating, so far it's never even gotten uncomfortably warm. Battery life is good enough relative to my old laptop that I haven't bothered checking power usage carefully yet, but here's powertop's output:

https://jds.objects.dreamhost.com/powertop.html

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