“The philosophy of Arch is simply simplicity. The user is in total control of the system. There are no flashy GUI installers – only a simple ncurses based installer that is easy to use and does its job well. No services ae started by default and their rc.conf is a thing of beauty – very simple to understand and maintain.”
I wanted to get rid of hotplug, since it was causing a long time for the system to boot. To get rid of hotplug and instead replace it with the equivalent function hwd, I executed pacman -S hwd as root. Then I replaced hotplug with hwd in the DAEMONS array of /etc/rc.conf. I rebooted and up came the system with all the needed hardware modules loaded. Cool!!!
Hmm… Making system boot faster is all good but will hwd detect my usb-stick and create the appropriate device node when I plug/unplug it, or do I need hotplug for that?
Hwd replaces hotplug only at startup, where hotplug is painfully slow. You still keep hotplug around, and it is normally called when a new device is plugged in.
So don’t worry – no functionality is lost, you only have your boot-up speed increased :^)
An even faster way to boot is to find which modules you need loaded at boot, put them in the MODULES array in rc.conf, and remove hotplug/hwd alltogether from the DAEMONS array
No. I think you can do it without.
A friend of mine recommended Arch as an alternative to Gentoo- something along the same lines, but with a compliment of both precompiled packages AND source installation files.
Having both sounds like a boon to the maintainer- they can speed optimize or they can have the package right now.
Not having tried it I can’t speak to any sort of simplicity, but it sounds like something I felt Gentoo lacked- It didn’t happen often but I remember ebuilds “randomly” failing because buried in the emerge logs from the overnight merge was a message about running who knows how many other programs to fix library files…
Gentoo Portage also has an option to install a binary instead of compiling from source. Just add the -k option when emerging.
Interesting, where’s a binary repository?
However, there aren’t that much binary packages available, everyone knows gentoo focuses on source. I dunno bout the respiratory, it’s usually the GRP CD which is used.
this is true but only certain packages are available in binary form.
Although, i am sure it would be easy to build a binary repository for portage to download and install packages from.
I think Arch is one of the nicest linux distros out there. I use it on a couple of my slower machines for 2 reasons, 1.)it’s fast, and 2.)I have the flexability I need without the need to burn cpu cycles and time compiling from scratch.
I probably could have phrased that better. What I meant was Arch (based on what I’ve heard) doesn’t rely too heavily on one or the other.
I’m well aware of (and use) Gentoo’s precompiled OO.o binaries on the pentium 2 system I sort of administrate (who’d want the system to be sluggish for a week [versus overnight] if people are supposed to use the dang thing?). I’m also aware that Debian can easily install from source. It’s just the preponderance of packages for Gentoo are only available as source, and the preponderance of software for Debian are precompiled binaries.
The source system in Arch wouldn’t be something you’d wanna build your whole system from. ABS just builds packages from source with one command: You still need to install said packages.
You could, for example, setup a server which just syncs ABS daily and builds all as amd64 packages, then you could use that as your package mirror.
Of course, you might want sort of a junk machine for this as it’d be its whole life: Remember, you can build any code from any processor; you just can’t test it.
Hey enough with the I heart linux b/c is has this cool do-hickey, and can run some killer games from windows. If you are all so good with snazy installers, and hacking skills why dont you try you hands at NetBSD and then post an article on what you realy do.
I have used over 40 distros and most recently have been using FreeBSD for 2 years. Last week, I reinstalled Arch Linux and am loving it. Stability has improved greatly, speed is wonderful (15 seconds to boot up to KDM; programs run great) and security is pretty good.
The great thing is, I compiled with srcpac firefox & xorg and FTP’ed the resulting packages up to my website server. As long as the versions remain the same, I simply FTP them back down when first setting up Arch and use pacman -A mozilla-firefox…whateverversionhere.tar.gz and it quickly installs my compiled package without compiling again (I used this because I was testing various filesystem speeds and reinstalling Arch from scratch a few times as a result).
Anyhow, this is by far the best Linux distro I’ve ever found. Vector is a little faster with some things, but never replaced Arch for me.
That is the quote that intrigued me the most. It looks like it has a bit of debian in there as well.
I mean gentoo and portage is nice. But i hate how there is only one portage tree and you cant disobey the great portage. Gentoo was too dependant on portage imo.
Slackware is real nice. I love the checkinstall package and how I can use that to seeminglessly include packages in pkgtool. But u know…. dependency argument blah blah blah. And it took me until using swaret and slapt-get to understand why i dont use automatic package management systems that are not inclueded with the OS.
I like how there are multiple trees (stable, testing, unstable) ala debian.
and i like the ABS system which looks to be like checkinstall.
I just might try a new distro!!!
ABS isn’t really like checkinstall, it’s about writing your own pkgbuild, you then can make a package from that, distribute the pkgbuild (arch’s AUR is a collection of them) yadda, yadda, point is it’s like an gentoo ebuild, or the script that makes a .deb or rpm, although it’s pretty damn simple mostly just fill in a url to grab the source from, the name, version and dependencies then hit makepkg
for checkinstall replacement many of use the usercontributed creapkg, which works quite well.
ahhh ok sounds good.
How good is it in terms of stability. I am a gnome/enlightenment user (though i am thinking of dropping enlightenment).
Should I expect to work relatively well? And Im a guy that likes things as the developers intended. Is everything vanilla, or do the arch developers go and change packages so that its “better”.
things are quite stable, i use quite a bit of cvs/svn packages, mixed in with the most recent versions in the official repo’s and i haven’t had any problems (of course i’m not exactly stress testing it or anything)
the devs and most of the users are pretty big on keeping things as pure as possible.
as far as enlightenment goes, one of the users maintains a pretty nice e17-cvs repository.
I mean gentoo and portage is nice. But i hate how there is only one portage tree and you cant disobey the great portage. Gentoo was too dependant on portage imo.
That’s exactly what I love about Gentoo. Portage offers me every piece of software I need in a convenient way, and most of it it’s quite up-to-date. Unlike many other distros that make the user go hunting third parties repositories through all the Internet for even the most basic things, with Gentoo everything is there and ready to use without hassles.
By the way, in Gentoo you can have additional software trees if you so desire. They’re called overlays.
um also to any one here who actually is going to give it a try right now the .7 cd defaults to devfs, this is a bad thing because recently arch has switch to udev, so the first time you pacman -Syu it’ll stop working (nothing gets trashed or anything just can’t boot).
the 7.1 cd defaults to udev and it ought to be out soon.
just sort of a warning, if you use .7 make sure to use udev.
the 7.1 cd defaults to udev and it ought to be out soon.
How soon is soon? Any idea? We aren’t talking debian timeframes here are we?
Also, I noticed that the next release, Noodle, changed from 0.8 to 0.7.1. Is 7.1 just 7.0 with a udev fix? Can we expect a 0.8 quick on it’s heels — say in January maybe?
Arch is a great distro… and have used it for quite a while now.
Not having to wait for a new OS release to get the latest packages is great. This is one of the things that bothers me about Ubuntu/Fedora/Suse. KDE 3.5beta2 comes out, I want the ability to play with it right away without having to do dastardly things to my list of repos.
It is almost trivial to create and share your own packages for anything that is not already in the repos. And the system for quality checking those packages is progressing nicely.
The community resources are great – Wiki, forums, package info, mailing lists, and IRC all being readily accessible from the main archlinux.org page.
There are a couple of nitpicks about Arch that keeps it from being the *perfect* distro for me. It can be a pain to do a lot of the configuration manually and can be a lot of work to get a real nice desktop environment like Suse/Fedora have complete with GUI configuration tools. Arch chose to remove the user documentation out of the packages. You have to take care with upgrades sometimes… For example kernel upgrades mean that I need to manually rebuild things like my ndiswrapper drivers and ATI drivers against the new kernel – and there isn’t a clean solution to do this automatically yet. And one last nitpick – the lack of changelogs in package upgrades. I like knowing why a package needs upgrading – bugfix/security update/packaging error/etc…
So – I am still looking for the *perfect* distro – but Arch suits my needs until then.
but i don’t have 64 bit CPU.
if I have 64bit CPU then i would not get optimizations since arch optimized for i586 or something.
so, people should make arch64 distribution and archppc distribution. but what’s really good about arch is that it’s clean and it has a good package management system.
what if there is a standard linux base that is so minimal and clean and people can just add pacman to it?
“so, people should make arch64 distribution and archppc distribution. but what’s really good about arch is that it’s clean and it has a good package management system. ”
you mean like http://www.arch64.org/download.php
Hmmm i wonder if i should run x86_64 or i686.
I mean i have an amd64 and x86_64 should be my primary choice. But I dont wanna deal with 64 bit problems and compatibility issues.
Is arch64 officially supported by the arch team?
hi, I am the lead developer of the port. There are plans in the works for integrating arch64 with 32bit arch. I don’t know when this is gonna take place and stuff, but I have been talking with xentac about it. There are also plans to integrate the ppc port. I don’t have the links for it anymore but i think there is an irc channel on freenode just go to #archlinux-ppc and talk to kth5. There is also an arch-ports mailing list http://archlinux.org/mailman/listinfo/arch-ports
so for right now consider arch64 to be like slamd64.
Arch64 is still hard to install but for the moment ( http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Arch64_Install_page ) no 64bit distro beat(in speed and capacities) my arch 32bit … didn’t try the 64bit version of arch yet 😀
Anyway it’s not too much complicated to install ( great wiki !! ) works and updates like a charm impressive !
I don’t know, slackware is pretty fast. That, and it 1) doesn’t have a repository-based package manager and 2) it comes with fairly nice defaults, e.g. udev, hotplug, and xorg.
It might not have a lot of packages available for it, but I make up for it by using a custom nautilus script that will compile an untarred source directory into a slackware package, and then I just double click on it to install.
-bytecoder
Sad to see that OSNews feels in it necessary to delete posts. There were some posts about other FOSS OS’ and their were posts correcting this idea.
My objection is that people saw some of the FUD involved with out the corrections. So with out correcting thses mis-percenptions; the myth goes on in some peoples mind.
Deleting posts stops people from posting. I use to be a regular poster but it becaume more rare based on the censorship. One good thing about the net was freedom of speech; apparently it doesn’t exist on OSNews.
Please be informed that new initrd changes will affect the upgrade from a new install via CD and that the noobie should read the forum(s)for procedures to enable upgrade to kernel 2.6.14 when that kernel becomes a “current”pkg in arch.
Arch definitely has many qualities. It IS fast. I tried it recently and, well, it does run fast compared to the standard ubuntu setup. Then it IS simple. The setup up is really clean : you have to cope with CLI, but only two or three files and you’re all set.
Drawbacks so far : documentation still lacks. Gentoo still stands miles ahead of everyone. The existing documentation is enough to help anyone, but it isn’t clean and complete as Gentoo docs are.
And “DE-dentric” BIG drawback : KDE is distributed in plain version. Which means no split packages. You want kmines? Get the full kdegames packages. It’s insane.
I really wish the kde crew understood that no one needs the whole KDE desktop. Split packages is the way to go, otherwise, of course, KDE seems awfully bloated.
Well, if you don’t use KDE, try Arch. Definitely try it. If you like KDE, you’ll have to wait for Arch to offer split packages or for KDE to change the way they distribute their DE?
Well, if you don’t use KDE, try Arch. Definitely try it. If you like KDE, you’ll have to wait for Arch to offer split packages or for KDE to change the way they distribute their DE?
Why would I want do that? I’m a KDE/Arch user, I think I would be wasting my time installing hundreds of little packages. (I agree though that it would be nice for non-KDE users to have individual packages for apps).
I agree about the original commenter’s DE comments. It disgusts me to see the way KDE stuff is all packaged to gether. There is the Unix world of developers and applications and some more-or-less standard accept norms of doing things (like creating an app as an actual, seperate appp) that KDE just ups its nose to. What would be otherwise good/useful apps become entagled packaged crap that doesn’t install easily nor cooperate with other applications or in other types of environments. My biggest complaint in this regard in konqueror, which by all means should be a seperate app. Bundling konqueror into kdebase would be like bundling mozilla into gnome or something stupid like that. Finally, I tried Arch and the package dependencies for kde were inanae. For example it required lm-sensors to install KDE. That to me is just indicative of packagers who don’t have a clue as to what they are doing and was enough to frighten me away from the distro for the time being. Maybe down the road it will normalize, attract better package maintainers and have more sane packaging.
Tried it, but upgraded versions of packages broke my system, and I don’t like having stuff broken when it’s not my fault (I don’t like it then either but atleast I have an idea what I did and I can’t blame someone else.)
Sure some people did and will comment with bla bla you should/could fix it, but still, I don’t see the fun in having a broken system, I want something which works. I should have to try to figure out wtf someone else did which ruined my system.
(To be more specific: Broken alsa packages where the mixer either crashed (they where broken two times..) and then lacked the capture setting, screwed USB support which left me without printer and camera.)
For Linux I would recommend Ubuntu (updated Debian can’t be all that wrong), Gentoo (Worked great, only problem is “you have to” recompile for every small change) or SuSe (Probably the best of the easy/rpm dists, althought I haven’t tried it.)
Personally I prefer the BSDs, for desktop FreeBSD over any of them aslong as you don’t need games (native or wine), my next os reinstallation will be Solaris (Which I don’t know shit about but it will be fun to learn.) and Win XP for games thought.
Well, the problem with repository based systems is that they’re more susceptible to breakage. The fact that these types of package managers usually touch most, if not all, system files and programs means it’s bound to break sooner or later, because no program is perfect. Slackware doesn’t suffer from this problem–if the base system works, it will continue to work and won’t mysteriously break. The only time the base system will ever break is when you install a new version, which means you know how to fix it if it ever happens (reinstall the older one).
-bytecoder
Also I don’t like their way of having quite few Pacman packages availble from Pacman -S and then add packages from personal distributors to the list. I would prefer to have one large repr… don’t know the word ;D
you don’t have to use pacman in a way that is any more controlling than slackware, creapkg and makepkg and pacman -A work perfectly well. On top of which pacman is pretty much designed to touch as little as possible anyway, specifficaly in response to the more pervasive ones like apt and portage.
and arch uses udev, xorg and hotplug too. the mention of hwd/lshwd was just an example of an alternative.
you don’t have to use pacman in a way that is any more controlling than slackware, creapkg and makepkg and pacman -A work perfectly well.
I was refering to pacman & friends, not arch linux. Obviously you can use that as an argument against my post, but then you would just be side-stepping my whole point, anyway.
On top of which pacman is pretty much designed to touch as little as possible anyway, specifficaly in response to the more pervasive ones like apt and portage.
If you can upgrade your entire system with it, then it can break your entire system.
-bytecoder
if you can update your system period you can break it you said so yourself, just don’t tell pacman -Su.
if you do install some version of something that breaks shit you just grab the pkgbuild change the version number back to whatever the working one was and install. no harder than grabbing an older package and installing that.
“Very simple to understand and install”
Everything is configurable with a decent GUI like Yast?
Anyone else get “Precondition Failed” when trying to visit the link?
I found out I have learned Linux in this way.
– Read Gentoo document.
– Learn Linux from Arch Linux.
– Use Debian everyday.
I have used Arch Linux for 6 months everyday and absolutely loved it. It is simple, easy and fast. It is still one of the best distributions I have ever used.
But it has its weakness. The main weakness is that it hasn’t got as many pre-packages as Debian and Gentoo. This is the reason why I switched to Debian 3.1 sarge.
Having tried several linux distros for years as alternative of my default server OS, I rest my search to ArchLinux. I hope they stick to their “simple+total_control-bloat” philosophy.
Best thing since sliced bread..
Very fast and configurable..
Only for P2 and above..
I tried arch b/c fedora was getting too bloated
and kernel recompile was a BIT**..
I run X with ICEwm.. Compiled all from scratch
no problems @ all.. Running on 6 boxes…