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On switching to Arch Linux

mikethecoder.com

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Re: On switching to Arch Linux

#2

Post by Ideka »

First of all, nothing works out of the box. You will have to manually set up the driver for your video card, support for your sound card (which can be a little difficult if you use USB headphones), wifi support, Xorg, your desktop environment and/or window manager of choice, etc.

Literally everything mentioned here worked out of the box for me when I installed Arch (except for USB headphones, which I do not own).

Re: On switching to Arch Linux

#4

Post by km3k »

Ideka wrote: post #2

First of all, nothing works out of the box. You will have to manually set up the driver for your video card, support for your sound card (which can be a little difficult if you use USB headphones), wifi support, Xorg, your desktop environment and/or window manager of choice, etc. Literally everything mentioned here worked out of the box for me when I installed Arch (except for USB headphones, which I do not own).

Out of the box typically means "with no effort after initial install". I'm sure you did a pacman -S gnome or something like that after the initial install.

That said, Arch does have very sane defaults, so I'm sure after using pacman to install your DE or graphics drivers, it worked fine.

Re: On switching to Arch Linux

#5

Post by mcrittenden »

Ideka wrote: post #2

First of all, nothing works out of the box. You will have to manually set up the driver for your video card, support for your sound card (which can be a little difficult if you use USB headphones), wifi support, Xorg, your desktop environment and/or window manager of choice, etc. Literally everything mentioned here worked out of the box for me when I installed Arch (except for USB headphones, which I do not own).

Author here. I think we're talking about two different things. By "nothing works out of the box" I mean that you need to set it up yourself. For example, the Beginner's Guide leads you through setup of your video driver [1], ALSA [2], Xorg [3], and wifi [4]. These are all things that require manual work. Maybe there's a more appropriate term for this than "doesn't work out of the box" (?) but it's the first term that came to mind.

[1] https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Beginners_Guide#Install...

[2] https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Beginners_Guide#Sound

[3] https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Beginners_Guide#Install...

[4] https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Wireless_Setup

Re: On switching to Arch Linux

#7

Post by bwarp »

I like Arch as a whole but I've found that for my purposes it is a time sink compared to Debian for example.

Debian has lots of sensible well thought out defaults. Arch has lots of disparate defaults each provided by the package vendor (as they don't customise packages).

It's not a criticism, but a difference to bear in mind.

Re: On switching to Arch Linux

#8

Post by ElliotH »

My favorite thing about running on an Arch system is I know what's going on all the time. If an Ubuntu system breaks I'm generally dealing with a mass of preinstalled things, it's hard to know what's relevant.

Similarly for increasing boot speed, I really like knowing exactly what I need to be running at any one time.

I appreciate it's not for everyone, but I imagine most coders around here who run a Linux system would benefit a lot by taking the time to set up an install and having it work how they like.

Re: On switching to Arch Linux

#9

Post by cgag »

I'm running arch and home and have a love / hate (mostly love) relationship with it. It's certainly taken up a lot of my time, but I learned more about linux just by installing it than I did in months of using ubuntu. Getting something to work is so satisfying, as it usually involves learning quite a bit about how it works, but there are times when you just want something working and it can be frustrating.

Being forced to make all those choices was the best part about it for me. I'm sure it's possible to customize Ubuntu to look like my arch set up, but if I hadn't been forced I likely wouldn't have tried. I'm currently running i3 as my window manager and I love it. I use a macbook pro at work, and It's nice but going back to a non-tiling window manager after getting used to i3 is pretty painful.

Re: On switching to Arch Linux

#10

Post by markokocic »

ElliotH wrote: post #8

My favorite thing about running on an Arch system is I know what's going on all the time. If an Ubuntu system breaks I'm generally dealing with a mass of preinstalled things, it's hard to know what's relevant. Similarly for increasing boot speed, I really like knowing exactly what I need to be running at any one time. I appreciate it's not for everyone, but I imagine most coders around here who run a Linux system wou…

I was running Gentoo before. In Gentoo, you could configure everything up to the smallest details, and you had the system that worked exactly as you want it too. The cost was frequent recompiles and a bunch of time lost playing with the things.

After I swithced to Arch, I found it much easier to configure, and it required almost no maintenance. It is a great balance between ease of use and full power.

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