Arch Linux – "It is what you make it" • Hacker News Board

Re: Arch Linux – "It is what you make it"

#81

Post by copper » Sat, Sep 17, 2011, 4:41 AM UTC

Adaptive wrote: post #74

Legion wrote: post #35

I think I am going to have to give Arch a try. One thing that has kept me on Ubuntu family distros is font rendering. Ubuntu's patches for freetype, cairo, xft, etc are quite simply requirements for me for a desktop Linux. Some distros have these by way of some guy maintaining his own set of patched packages. I have always been reluctant to rely on these. I was thrilled when Linux Mint came out with Linux Mint Debian…

It took me a while to get font rendering working the way I wanted in Arch, but it is possible (that's by way of encouragement... don't let this be a showstopper for you; I understand why it's important). Infinality is great but even it requires some massaging to get it to the state I like (though of course now I have my configs pretty much ready to install off a repo).

A link to your infinality config, please? I use what are (I assume) the default infinality settings, and the chopped-off way that the Monaco '%' is rendered always grabs my eye.

Re: Arch Linux – "It is what you make it"

#82

Post by Jach » Sat, Sep 17, 2011, 4:58 AM UTC

albertzeyer wrote: post #46

I never used Arch but I have used Gentoo for really long. Everything what I read about Arch sounded a bit primitive to me. Are there any advantages of Arch over Gentoo? Or are there good comparisons?

I have a friend who uses Arch, she likes it a lot. I've been a Gentoo user for a number of years. From my outside perspective, Arch is similar to Gentoo in terms of configurability and power but without the beefy install process and it has a mirror of pre-built binaries for packages (you can compile from source if you want) where Gentoo typically only keeps binaries around for big things like OpenOffice, browsers, and proprietary drivers. Arch definitely seems more Linuxy though in the heritage of Debian, whereas Gentoo seems to take a bunch of ideas from the BSD folk.

One thing I love about Portage over pacman is the masking. Arch seems to take bleeding-edge a little less seriously.

Re: Arch Linux – "It is what you make it"

#83

Post by fakeempire » Sat, Sep 17, 2011, 5:06 AM UTC

graywh wrote: post #73

davidhollander wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The "shallow mental model" most likely refers to fewer initialization files and locations. When starting out, most everything you need is in /etc/rc.conf . Also, Arch and its package manager don't use /usr/local/, instead simply using /usr. "It really does take time" most likely refers to the fact that you are responsible for building up the OS yourself. So unlike in an OS like Ubuntu, where you do not have to know w…

No package manager should use /usr/local/.

would you elaborate? i guess i agree for historical reasons but for practical reasons i think package managers actually should use /usr/local/. basically everyone uses a package manager now (except lfs). where would you like package managers to install.

Re: Arch Linux – "It is what you make it"

#84

Post by jvinet » Sat, Sep 17, 2011, 6:02 AM UTC

MatthewPhillips wrote: post #50

For those who've never used it. You know all of the "boilerplate" frameworks that have been hot recently? HTML5 Boilerplate is one, iOS Boilerplate is another... well Arch is the Linux Boilerplate if there ever was one. It gives you only the essentials that you need and leaves the rest up to you.

That's a good analogy - I've never heard that one before.

Re: Arch Linux – "It is what you make it"

#85

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Sep 17, 2011, 6:11 AM UTC

VMG wrote: post #56

Adaptive wrote: post #5

I switched from Ubuntu to Arch on my servers and linux desktops a while back. Here's are the key benefits from my perspective: - shallow mental model: I know where everything is, I know all the moving pieces - pacman: outstanding package manager. - aif: dieter has done a great job making a modular install framework. - AUR: compared to PPAs, AUR is simple and easy to contribute to (both commentary and packages) It rea…

> It really does take time if you want to understand Arch deeply. I'm don't get what you mean. I've been using Arch for 4 years or so and I don't think I know much more about the system internals than I did 3 years ago, because there aren't many. The system config is stored rc.conf , the package manager is configured in pacman.conf . That is Arch Linux. You open these with vim, read the comment, edit, save, that is i…

[deleted]

Re: Arch Linux – "It is what you make it"

#86

Post by buster » Sat, Sep 17, 2011, 6:15 AM UTC

rkowalick wrote: post #59

SkyMarshal wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

- shallow mental model: I know where everything is, I know all the moving pieces How is that different than Ubuntu (or any other distro once you've used it enough)? (serious question, considering the same switch myself)

I have been using Ubuntu now for a little over a year, and honestly, I find it incredibly tedious to do the most mundane amount of configuration. I want to adjust what programs get run at start up. On Arch Linux, I go to /etc/rc.d and remove or modify any scripts, which are clearly labelled. On Ubuntu, I think I need to weed through the dozen or so numbered /etc/rc directories and find what I need and modify. I got p…

There have been GUIs for the init scripts for ages, why don't you use them? Also, what's wrong about learning the init scripts, it's a common concept you will find on so many Linux/UNIX systems, it's just nice to know.

Usage of lsmod/rmmod and /etc/modprobe.d isn't exactly hard to understand either, though i don't know of a GUI for this.

Re: Arch Linux – "It is what you make it"

#87

Post by syaz1 » Sat, Sep 17, 2011, 6:24 AM UTC

orblivion wrote: post #22

Adaptive wrote: post #5

I switched from Ubuntu to Arch on my servers and linux desktops a while back. Here's are the key benefits from my perspective: - shallow mental model: I know where everything is, I know all the moving pieces - pacman: outstanding package manager. - aif: dieter has done a great job making a modular install framework. - AUR: compared to PPAs, AUR is simple and easy to contribute to (both commentary and packages) It rea…

Can you explain to me what's so great about pacman? As of the last time I used Arch (a few years ago), you can't roll back to an old version unless it happens to be cached on your system. For a rolling release system it creates a lot of hassles. It seems like a very straightforward package manager, what does it have that apt doesn't have, for instance?

The great thing is there are other package managers built on top to be more friendly such as yaourt. So if you think pacman is too primitive then you have options.

Re: Arch Linux – "It is what you make it"

#88

Post by dragonquest » Sat, Sep 17, 2011, 7:38 AM UTC

beej71 wrote: post #54

dragonquest wrote: post #20

I've heard this argument multiple times that Arch Linux is what you make of it and it really teaches you Linux, but I'm getting older and trying out lesser distro's now. :) However while I admire its passionate community, I'm genuinely curious, how does it differ from Slackware? In the sense, how exactly does Arch differ from Slackware in terms of teaching you the guts of your own system?

I used Slackware for something like 13 years, and have been using Arch for maybe 2. If you'll allow me to post a link to my own stuff, I put together a blog entry about exactly this question: http://beej.us/blog/2009/12/arch-vs-slackware/ Both Slack and Arch are excellent, but not quite the same in their objectives. I run Arch on my netbook and desktop (with FVWM) and love it.

That is quite helpful, thank you. It helped me stick with Slackware for now since my criteria fits your Slackware objectives and strengths list.

Re: Arch Linux – "It is what you make it"

#89

Post by pimeys » Sat, Sep 17, 2011, 7:42 AM UTC

Adaptive wrote: post #21

pimeys wrote: post #18

A couple of days ago I was given more RAM to my work computer. I had to run couchdb instances with lots of allocated RAM. The 32bit Ubuntu was not enough anymore so I needed to install a 64bit OS. Somehow I wanted to try Arch and the installation from scratch to the everyday tool took a bit over two hours. I really like this distribution. Pacman (the package manager) is super fast, the system is much easier to config…

that colorscheme looks familiar... I making my dotfiles public today and I've got a solarized themed xmonad/xmobar config up at https://github.com/altercation/es-etc . The only difference with yours will probably be the tabbed decoration theming and xmobar theming. I'd love to see your xmonad.hs too if it's online somewhere.

Sorry to disappoint, but I really run xmonad with very minimalistic setup. I just need the different tiling modes, couple of hotkeys and xmobar for system information.

The more important part is my vim config, which can be found from github, of course. https://github.com/pimeys/dotvim

Re: Arch Linux – "It is what you make it"

#90

Post by crocowhile » Sat, Sep 17, 2011, 7:44 AM UTC

I run arch on all my daily machines: two desktops and a laptop. Two things are brilliant about arch: 1) how easy it is to improvise a new package if what you need to install is not available in the repo 2) how you can run the last version of every software without the system ever breaking.

If you are a linux power user, I cannot think of a better distro than arch.