“Many Linux distributions have taken the path of easy GUI-based installation, in order to appeal to a broader mix of users. But not Arch Linux, which emphasises simplicity of technical complexity over general usability. Richard Hillesley explains.”
“Many Linux distributions have taken the path of easy GUI-based installation, in order to appeal to a broader mix of users. But not Arch Linux, which emphasises simplicity of technical complexity over general usability. Richard Hillesley explains.”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=flmX9GYwyiI&feature=player_profilepa…
GParted as a dependency of GTK-QT engine!!
+1
pacman is terrible, AUR is worst
Better get Gentoo is you want a flexible distribution. It has the best, but the slowest package manager.
Portage is quite good IMO. I think there was a distro that was using NetBSD’s pkgsrc … but I forget it’s name.
My favourite package tools are OpenBSD’s … I find they very simple to use. Ports system works flawlessly to.
I am mainly like Redhat based stuff since I used to look after a server room of CENTOS servers. So I don’t mind YUM … I am sure some people hate it.
Edited 2011-09-17 05:12 UTC
There’re several such distros in fact, all of them Slackware based: Dracolinux, Voltalinux, Blackmouse… It’s a real killer combo. I’ve tried Arch and Gentoo (portage depends on python, WTF?! If I wanted YUM (quite decent actually) I know where to get it.) but none comes close to that. Source Mage seems promising.
Edited 2011-09-17 09:11 UTC
Yeah, it’s not as if it’s, I dunno, written in it.
>> portage depends on python, WTF?!
> Yeah, it’s not as if it’s, I dunno, written in it.
Yeah, well, it’s not as if python and all exciting pyfoo packages, I dunno, didn’t take about 1/4 of the space required for a fairly complete NetBSD X-less install (or Slackware, while we are at it) at the time. Oh, and portage was advertised as written in python and bash. Turned out there was very little bashing involved. Mighty fine, but that’s definitely not my Favourite Package Manager. Been naive, I guess.
Edited 2011-09-17 14:17 UTC
I believe you are referring to Crux Linux. It was based on Slackware and Arch if I’m not mistaken.
Arch is a pretty good distro but I haven’t used it in some years.
The ports system in CRUX was not based on NetBSD’s pkgsrc. It did however use CVSup from FreeBSD, back when the ports tree was stored in CVS, which is no longer the case.
Also, it is the other way around. Arch was based on CRUX, but I guess now days there’s not much resemblance between the two.
Portage is good, its the packages that are created for portage that suck. Compile directives are often changed from one minor version of a package to another without any explanation or warning. You have to be pretty careful emerging a new version of a package. Which, can be pretty painstakingly difficult when a ton of dependances are attached.
This is just plain troll bait. The problem was fixed ages ago. We could also go on about how gentoo messed up more than once with the libpng fiasco, eh ? Bottom line, every distro has had its hiccups. (Gentoo and Arch included)
The best package manager is… no package manager. Hint: Gobolinux.
If not Gobo-solution – there’s always possibility to use Zeroinstall. Why the package managers, when actually there’s no need?
so you come and post a video older than one year… things have changed and that was fixed…. pacman is one of the best package managers I’ve ever worked with.. and AUR works very well if you use one of the community built scripts (like packer or yaourt).
# pacman -Si gtk-qt-engine
Repository : extra
Name : gtk-qt-engine
Version : 1.1-2
URL : http://code.google.com/p/gtk-qt-engine/
Licenses : GPL
Groups : None
Provides : None
Depends On : libbonoboui kdelibs
I suspected that it is fixed now (I didn’t bother to check) … but it shouldn’t have got like that in the first place. Alarm bells should have been going off in that guys head when he was packaging it.
That’s partly a result of not compiling the binaries yourself (you’d get similar issues with RPMs and Deb packages too). The solution is to compile your own source, but not everyone has the time, expertise nor motivation to do so.
Plus RPMs come with a whole boatload of other issues on top. So Pacman’s only real rival is Debian’s apt-get. Personally I prefer Pacman, but each to their own.
As for AUR, Yaourt is an awesome tool. It’s the only thing I prefer to FreeBSD’s ports for source.
You are missing my point …
Having something which is clearly not even related (Basically similar to partition magic) as a dependency is a poor show.
I am no expert at the GTK-QT engine or whatever it is … but I common sense must tell you that including GParted is just wrong.
So you have this wonderful pacman tool, with people misusing it.
I’ve seen packages with bad requirements from Arch, Gentoo, and Fedora. It happens from time to time with bleeding edge distros. Things get fixed eventually. That being said, I don’t think I had a bad one when I was running debian, open suse, or slackware.
Yes that particular packager had a ‘poor show’, not the package manager as you implied.
From my own experience as a long time user of Arch, I sometimes see packages which I personally find poorly packaged (which is easily spotted since all dependencies are listed when you are about to install a package).
But this is a debate between community and packager, and at the end of the day I can easily rebuild any package using abs (ports style) with the dependencies (and optimization settings) I prefer.
And if I’m too lazy for that then there’s a huge chance someone else has done it and put it up as an AUR (Arch User Repository) package.
The Arch guys tend to say (somewhere, I guess it is in the wiki) that you should be wary of what you install and upgrade as it is a rolling release distro.
They do check, but sometimes things get missed and it is the responsibility of the user to make sure stuff works on their system (and downgrade if it doesn’t)
As you can see here http://www.archlinux.org/packages/extra/i686/gparted/, gparted is NOT required by any package. That was probably a bug. The youtube link is from 27 de Fev de 2010!!? You really are desperate.
I thought about going to Arch but ultimately I think I’ll end up at Fedora when 16 comes out.
I haven’t tried Arch but I have to think it would suffer from the same packaging problems that Gentoo has (no compiling isn’t a problem of mine).
Gentoo is nice. Their packages are a lot farther ahead than other disto’s, but I only really care about a handful of them being the latest. The problem with Gentoo is that if you want one package to be bleeding edge all others need to be as well or you can’t update your system.
We’ll see how it goes.
No, packages does not depend on versions, you can always unmask them one by one and mask older version. It’s something only gentoo can do. If a package require a newer library, so be it, but 99% of the time, you can just >=package-category/package-0.* in /etc/portage and only that package will be bleeding edge.
I don’t understand the hype about Arch. I used it for a few months and it wasn’t really that incredible. The package manager (pacman) was awful. At the time, the main hype was that they built all their packages for i686, which was supposed to make your system moar faster, though to their credit I don’t believe that the dev team was touting this themselves (though I could be wrong). Anyone who has ever rolled their own packages (or built Gentoo a few times) knows that’s a bunch of malarkey.
If you want simplicity, why not just use Slackware? Slackbuilds.org works beautifully as a rough ports-equivalent (nevertheless, the various BSD ports systems are much better, obviously). The only objection I can think of is if you didn’t want to install the full package set since Slackware packages don’t do dependency resolution, but who can’t afford 5 GB in 2011?
Agreed with the above poster about OpenBSD.
For me, it’s the ease of system administration.
Everything is so logically laid out and well documented to boot. In fact, it’s what I liked about Slackware too when I used to use it.
I cut my Linux teeth on Red Hat back in the day, but Slackware was what I ended up using for many years. It taught me how Linux really worked, and I liked the fact that Pat cared more about usability than having a pristine GPL only install. I switched to Ubuntu after the Great GNOME Purge from Slack, but eventually went back to Slackware with Xfce when Ubuntu started the Unity bullshit.
I had tried Arch a few years ago based on a recommendation by Eugenia Loli-Queru, but I wasn’t impressed at the time. It didn’t seem to offer anything over Ubuntu and Slackware. Then earlier this year, I gave it another go when I kept getting frustrated with the 13.37 release of Slackware. The past few months I’ve installed Arch twice on my laptop, twice on my desktop and I’m about to put it on my new (old) netbook.
The reason I’ve installed twice on my main systems was deliberate: I had spare hard drives for both and I wanted a “let’s learn how this thing works” run on each before committing. I knew I would screw some stuff up, and I did. Now I feel I have a very good understanding of how Arch works, and I really like it!
The differences between it and Slackware might seem negligible, but there’s a lot more going on besides a rolling release and dependency resolution. For one thing, the documentation is quite thorough! If you follow the Beginner’s Guide exactly when setting up your system, you will have a solid base to expand upon within an hour of running the installer. By solid base, I mean a full core system with X and the DE/WM of your choosing, and all the tools and knowledge necessary to make it whatever you want.
I’m not saying Arch is better than Ubuntu or Slackware (or Gentoo or Fedora or whatever) but it’s definitely better for me. I like the balance of simplicity and control that I used to enjoy from Slackware so much, combined with great dependency resolution and extreme modularity. Overall, the Arch Way + pacman + AUR just works better for me these days than Slackware + Slackbuilds. I still believe Slackware has a slight edge on Arch in the area of stability, but that comes with running last year’s packages.
I also used Arch a few years back, so it’s good to hear the perspective of a fellow Slack user who was in a similar position on Arch today. Stability was my main issue back then. Also, I’m a big fan of Slackware’s fat DVD install, which means that I rarely have to worry about dependencies even when building my own packages.
At any rate, I’ll have to try Arch out again, though Slack works perfectly on my MacBook for now (almost–wicd has some issue with the Intel wifi chipset where if there are too many networks it won’t detect any, but this is surely a wicd/iwtools issue). Thanks for the heads up!
Interesting, the wicd problem in Slack was one of the things that drove me away. No matter what I tried, including building the packages from source, I couldn’t get it to find any networks. I tried all the fixes mentioned on support forums to no avail. My wireless card is the Dell 1390, a Broadcom based chip, but I had the same issue with an Intel wifi card and a Ralink card under Slackware. Strangely enough, the same packages under Arch work fine on my hardware, though I will say the Ralink 2500 card has terrible reception compared to the other two.
Of course, wifi support wasn’t the only reason I switched to Arch, it was just the final frustrating nail in the coffin. I do still love Slack on older, more mainstream hardware (though to be honest it doesn’t get much more mainstream than the Dell Latitude series, the best supported laptops in the alternative OS world in my experience). I just want my computers to work with minimum fuss, and on the Linux side of things that has consistently been Arch lately.
I’m not sure what your server needs are but every new system I deploy runs Arch. I too started with RHL and then found my home with Slackware. However, once I found Arch I never looked back ( Though I’ll still play with new distros to see if they can steal me away ). What got me was the similarity to Slackware, speed, small size and pacman. I’m not sure why people are complaining about pacman. I’ve tried them all and think pacman works just fine.
Also, I did the Gentoo thing for a while and realized as one person put it, “I was learning Gentoo, not Linux”. What they meant by that was that you spend an awful lot of time figuring out how to speak Gentoo. However, I did learn a bunch from Gentoo and definitely have a lot of respect for it.
In the end there’s no perfect distro that fits everyone’s needs, but there’s at least one out of the hundreds of imperfect distros that will be perfect for you
Arch Linux is very nice when it comes to the internal architecture [BSD-styled scripts] and modularization, but must of us live in GUI environments, which means that we have to install it anyway. Arch doesn’t provide any GUI by default which is perfectly fine when you have time to configure everything from scratch to get it working the way YOU want, but some people prefer – still – to get it all working by default. Unless it doesn’t work this way – it’s ok, because we have many well crafted distros these days. “simplicity” argument doesn’t apply anymore, because some of them are based on Arch, Slackware, Gentoo, etc …
I always thought Arch is like Gentoo only less choices.
At work I want to apt-get any application so I can quickly continue my work, hence I use Debian. I am not interested in any optimisations there because I only use it to do cross compiling with my self-built gcc for arm.
I need the software to be stable and can not use a rolling release otherwise I will get out of sync with my colleagues (we had some issues over different svn versions one time).
At home I can take my time to choose my options, hence I use Gentoo. I can not think of a way in which Arch could get in between that.
Speed of Debian with the rolling release options of Gentoo?
Not having major dist upgrades to contend with, alone is one reason I’d stick with Arch.
I’ve tried Arch a few times but never gotten far with it. Weird errors that just shouldn’t occur do occur (easy example being the installer using the old hda, hdb naming convention when generating fstab but installing a system that expected sda, sdb, etc and dropping me to a busybox shell with no explanation when the filesystem couldn’t be loaded upon boot) and the Arch community was about as useless as Ubuntu’s (all too often, responders give ‘RTFM’-type responses, assuming that any errors have to be the users’ fault. I never ended up bothering to sign up to the Arch forums, after seeing people who’d suffered the same problems as myself dismissed out-of-hand under the assumption that they didn’t read the wiki).
Pacman and the init system are reasonable enough but Pacman doesn’t seem to do anything I can’t do with Apt and I’d rather the hassle of dealing with Upstart if it means I can get hardware acceleration. Debian also has the benefit of (seemingly) using the same install scripts but in Debian’s case, they’re actually set up correctly and I don’t have to keep jumping between VTs just to partition my HDD because the Arch install screen that’s supposed to enumerate my drives/partitions is just blank.
I’ve installed Arch on a dozen different systems with vastly different hardware configurations and never encountered those problems.
I’m not dismissing what you’re saying though. Any bug is a pity, but all distros and all operating systems have bugs. So what fails on your hardware might (and indeed does) work on other peoples hardware. Case in point: the last Debian install I performed failed.
This is why I struggle with threads like these; when people have technical gripes (eg dependencies in pacman, preferring non-rolling release distros, etc) then I can sympathise with their argument. However when people complain about a specific distro not behaving on their hardware like it does on other peoples hardware, well that kind of anecdotal reasoning I find more de-constructive to conversation.
Sorry if this makes me sound like an Arch-fanboy, but I just get tired of people publicising their own anecdotal misfortune as persuasive arguments against one product compared with another.
Edited 2011-09-17 09:34 UTC
Well that wasn’t what I was doing; I was offering an anecdote explaining why I don’t use Arch.
Hell, I’m someone who makes a point of repeating the mantra ‘results may vary’.
make a live-usb using dd, and have fun with archlinux and gnome-shell with firefox and plugins, all in live iso.
http://www.ahashare.com/torrents-details.php?id=180044
For me arch installation was no big deal, the main thing I like about it is you can setup a workstation and not worry about you’re distro to try and be `innovative` and impress you.
Its nice just to have access to the latest pakages and not worry about ubuntu’s / fedora’s new `direction`.
Btw, by KISS – I mean the system and package manager implementation, pacman for me is a lot faster then yum, making packages is also really easy.
Edited 2011-09-17 13:53 UTC
arch does not need mass adoption. it functions with a few contributors due to its simplicity.
one can use the distro he likes, and does not have to like arch cause “its getting more attention these days”
which is cool. personally i didnt like arch until they fixed most things (arch has some years behind its belt now). whats cool is how they kept it simple at the same time, so far
I have been using Arch Linux since before the release of Wombat. Recently I got a new HP system and try to install arch on it to use for my primary desktop the installation would succeed but the system would not boot, because the installation process was BROKEN which Arch themselves admitted with their latest release note “http://www.archlinux.org/news/20110819-installation-media/“. The problem I see with Arch is that they tend to push packages out of the door too quick and if you stay back and avoid pacman -Syu you may end up with a broken system the day you do pacman -Syu. Their IRC used to be very good but now they tend to be very unfriendly which is unfortunate. What I mean by the packages go out of the door too early is that for example when you do pacman Syu and watch a package being updated the next day you do pacman Syu the same packages will be downloaded again the next day the same will happen. This gives the user a hint that the first previous 4/5 build was not up to standard and please note this has nothing to do with the upstream patch of the package.
I wish the package will transit in testing for a little longer, and the guys in IRC to look at a problem before starting the pointing finger game.
Regards,
Using a full blown DE and want apps from another DE to look good or want to use apps specifically written for another DE? Expect half of the other DE to be pulled in as a dependency.
Is it broken? File a bug report.
Don’t like it? Use ABS and recompile it yourself.
Cant’t be bothered? Choose another distro, there are plenty to choose from.
Arch seems great in so many ways… fast and simple like Slackware, fast package manager with dependency checking, a system-wide configuration file. I’ve tried to use it several times in the past, but I always fail when it comes time to use the package manager and start installing a desktop environment and/or updating the system. I can use Debian’s, Zenwalk’s and even Slackware’s package management systems fine, and with a bit of reading I could easily learn most of the others. But Arch… I just can’t figure it out, with its cryptic switches. Sy? Su? Syu? Whatever. I give up on it.
Uhm, if you read the man page, you’ll note there are long options like –sync –refresh and –sysupgrade.
When in doubt, use the man page!
I read various articles on the distro and IIRC even the Arch manual/wiki, with no luck, and I don’t remember seeing anything about long options. If I do try the distro again in the future though, I’ll keep that in mind. Thanks.
Edited 2011-09-18 05:54 UTC
man pacman or pacman –help will tell you what you are wanting to know, and that follows for any program on a Unix-like operating system.
By the way pacman -Syu translates into Sync, yes, and update.
Yeah, I just kind of assumed that for a distro whose users seem to prize its manual in a way similar to Gentoo, that reading the wiki and online manual would be enough. I was just kind of assuming that these manuals would give me all I needed to know–I wasn’t really expecting to need to use the man pages for the basics of a critical part of the system (package management) when Arch’s online instructions are so widely acclaimed. I plan on trying Arch again in a virtual machine sometime and I’ll see if I can get farther this time.
Edited 2011-09-19 05:42 UTC
It’s all in the online manual and wiki’s as well.
Besides, if you can’t wrap your head around –help nor man (which, let’s be honest, is be bare minimum you need to know when using the command line), then install a GUI front end:
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Pacman_GUI_Frontends
Fair enough–thanks for the suggestions.
I’m not trying to put down Arch, I really do appreciate its philosophy. I think it’s just that I was coming at it from the wrong angle. Or something.
That’s fair enough.
I’ve screwed up the simplest of processes countless times because attacking things from the wrong angle. Then, a month later, when I finally decide to fix my cock up, it works first time and I wonder what all the trouble was. hehehe
Actually it’s: sync, refresh and update.
Edited 2011-09-19 07:28 UTC
Thanks, I’m a little rusty from not used Arch in a while. I guess should check manpage or –help before I post.
Arch shares the BSDs’ approach to many things. It tries to keep everything reasonably minimal and simple and to provide as much flexibility as one would generally need.
I had to install some system to my grandmother’s laptop. First I tried Windows, but it got to unusable state just too soon. Next I tried Ubuntu, but it was too buggy. I replaced it with Arch and after a month my grandmother told me that she couldn’t believe that the system could be so reliable. It survived the GNOME3 update and is still fully functional.
I have read this whole thread and many others and have a hard time figuring out the appeal of distributions such as Arch.
Don´t want a GUI? Install (k)ubuntu from the alternate CD.
Want to know how the system works and how init scripts /upstart works?
Read the docs, visit the largest linux forums or irc. It´s all out there and you benefit from the brainpower of a large community, lots of how-tos, and lots of testing if you are using one of the stable (LTS) releases.
But hey, whatever makes you tick is fine by me. It´s just that the technical arguments rarely seem to wash. I am interested in getting a system that is stable up and running in less than an hour. Two kids and a wife will do that to you.
Edited 2011-09-18 11:24 UTC
Forming an opinion without trying something yourself will often have that effect on people
i have no idea about any of the problems you guys have had with arch ie bugs. I’ve been using it for over a year now and haven’t one single problem. it’s been the fastest, most stable distro i’ve ever used. I did screw up my first arch install and yeah, that sucked. nothing worked right. I think a lot of you probably just missed/skipped a step during your install along the way. in my experience 99% of arch problems are caused by the user.
[ PROS ]
* No dev packages. I hate -dev packages! There is plently diskspace today.
* Excellent documentation through its Wiki site.
* IRC Channel support – they are very intelligent and friendly. Sometimes they kick your ass, but then it’s for your good.
[ CONS ]
* Inexpressive logo. Hate it.
* PACMAN is good, very good. Much better than yum, apt-get. However, PackageKit support would be SUPER-B! Having PACMAN on command line or using some known front-ends are extremely tiresome sometimes.
* No systemd yet…
* No splash screen…
* No ambition to take over Linux Mint, making a complete desktop live CD spin for newcomers.
“inexpressive logo” – rather trivial complaint.
“Having PACMAN on command line or using some known front-ends are extremely tiresome sometimes.” – Everyone’s different, but I personally prefer using the command line.
“No systemd yet…” yes, there is… Now
“No splash screen…” again, rather trivial con.
“No ambition to take over Linux Mint, making a complete desktop live CD spin for newcomers.” that’s not the point of Arch, arch simply isn’t developed for linux noobs, but if you want to try a live cd, you can use ArchBang, CtkArch or any of the other spins. There are a few other user made Live CD’s floating around out there as well
perhaps you may just need damn small linux with ratpoison, but that ain’t kinda happiness to me.
I actually did lol at that. It’s true, most archers prefer minimalist window managers as opposed to full desktop environments. Personally, I’m part of the latter. I’m a Gnome person. Always have been, always will be. I use Gnome 3 on my desktop and I’m testing the Mate Desktop Environment (the new Gnome 2 fork) on my laptop. Like I said, everyone’s different. To each their own. It’s one of the best things about Linux: choice.
still like that, you didn’t get the message i was trying to make it through…
* To be honest, I’m not a big fan of the logo either. But it’s just a logo, not a coat of arms that you’re obliged to have stitched onto your whites
* Agreed
* Can’t say I miss systemd. Arch’s init system is better than traditional SysV anyway plus daemons can be loaded in parallel via the background toggle in rc.conf.
* There is. In fact I run one myself (splashy). Admittedly it’s not the simplest thing to set up though.
* Again there is: http://chakra-project.org/
It may not be an “official” ArchLinux live CD, but then Linux Mint is just derivative of another distro (Ubuntu) anyway.
There’s also an Arch Live CD that focus on gamers:
http://live.linux-gamers.net/
It’s funny how I got modded down by -2 in my first comment, doing the PROS and CONS I thought of Arch. Let me tell you something, I was being really fair and good.
I did not mention weird bugs in installation, like that:
Where do you want to install Arch?
/dev/sda
/dev/sda1
/dev/sda1
/dev/sda2
So it’s time to wake up for reality here. Arch is good, but its philosophy won’t make it better. I’m pretty sure any user using it will be amazed on how control he can have on the system, however he will be tired by the 36th hour tweaking it.
I’ve been playing with Arch for a few months now while waiting on the latest Fedora to coalesce. I like what I see so far, but I’m not sure if I’ll stick with it or switch back to F16 once it lands. We’ll see what happens September 29th and go from there.
As far as the appeal of Arch. To me it’s very simple, the distro makes very few choices for the administrator and makes it easier to tweak the system than most any distro I’ve seen. It’s like Slackware with better package management or Gentoo without the pain in the ass that is Portage.