“The recent emphasis of the Linux community has been on desktop distros that make it easy to install and configure the system without venturing beyond the GUI. Despite the success of these beginner-friendly systems, a significant segment of the Linux population prefers a simpler approach. These back-to-basics users want clarity, stability, and speed, and they do not care about the proliferation of redundant tools and glossy configuration helpers that populate the GUI-based systems. In the past, no-frills Linux users gravitated to systems such as Slackware, Gentoo, or Debian, but another back-to-basics distro is gaining favor among the Linux
faithful: Arch Linux.”
Getting Back to Basics with Arch Linux
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli
Arch is a very usable distro. The pacman package system is as simple as efective. The ABS could be improved by better PKGBUILD’s stability and integration with the pacman system. Also the documentation isn’t the bigger of them all but the community is helpfull enough to surpase that.
I hope that they continue the work being done until here.
Arch is an awesome distro but i have to agree about the documentation, but yes, the community does make up for it. Anyway, anybody who is running Gentoo but wants to switch to a binary distro, Arch is an excellent choice, configuration is very similar and files are mostly in the same places you would find them in gentoo and pacman is great
I personally run arch on one of my servers and it works great.
ABS integration with pacman is great with srcpac. If you want to install a package from source instead of the binary, just do a ‘srcpac -Sb foo’
Not so hard now is it?
Kinda off topic, but if you are using any distro, you can use GNU Source Installer. This is a piece of software that will install a package (one that uses ./configure && make && make install) from source and also allows you to uninstall the package if needed at a later date. Been using it for 6 months and it works great! The URL is:
http://www.gnu.org/software/sourceinstall/sourceinstall.html
“Make sure you select a udev kernel, not a devfs kernel, …”
Thank you for the tip, Captain Ignorance!
After trying all of the “big” distros over the years…Red Hat, Mandrake, back to Red Hat, Debian, Slackware, back to Red Hat, Fedora Core, Gentoo, Ubuntu, and then finally Arch.
Arch is a little bit of work to set up (there is almost no hand holding) but once you get the feel for pacman and ABS (the automated build-from-source system), there is a lot to like here. The initscripts are by far the best and easiest to understand and tweak of any Linux I’ve ever used. So far, most of the software I’ve wanted to install is accessible via either pacman or ABS.
Like Gentoo, Arch is always up to date. The releases are really there just for first time installers. You should never have to reinstall again unless you bork your system or you just want to reinstall. Stability is overall quite excellent. The NVidia and NForce drivers were easy to install, and have worked flawlessly ever since. If you’ve progressed past the easy to use handholding Linux distro stage, I highly recommend Arch.
As an ex-Slacker, i love Arch Linux. I use Ubuntu on the desktop, but on the server, or using bleeding-edge packages, Arch is great.
Ubuntu’s underpinnings are a little too complex to screw around with, but Arch is clean and stable.
Highly recommended to Debian users or Slack users who want package management.
I use arch for a year and I think arch is great but is not much “bleeding-edge” like you said.
glibc (2.4) – 2.3.6 (arch)
gcc (4.1.0) – 4.0.3 (arch)
gnome (2.14) – 2.12.2 (arch)
gtk (2.8.16) – 2.8.12 (arch)
…
gnome 2.14 is on the way. i think it will deffinately be out by the end of the week. There are also testing and unstable repos that have some of the latest things. There is also a gnome 2.14 repo floating around somewhere. I haven’t tried it myself but check the arch forums and you will find it.
Once you go Arch, you never go back baby!
thats original…
Indeed, and it looks like it was made on iWork -> Pages
(it looks like one of the templates, but I don’t know).
Indeed, and it looks like it was made on iWork -> Pages
(it looks like one of the templates, but I don’t know).
It’s actually Adobe InDesign CS, according to the info in the PDF file.
Didn’t know that was available for Linux….
just a useful little tid-bit of info for those that love pacman but want less of a power user type install
One that is very similar to Arch is Frugalware but it is slightly easier to set up and is a little more slackish but still uses pacman as it’s package management (a damn nice os imo)
I believe rubix also uses pacman although I’ve never personally installed rubix.
Arch has one of the best communities I’ve seen. I use a variety of distros depending on what I need. I use Arch on my laptop because that is my main machine and it’s where I notice the lack of bloat the most.
On servers I choose Debian or Ubuntu primarily because, like Arch, they have great package repos, but, unlike Arch, they are multi-platform which means I can just remember one way of doing things without worrying too much if it’ll work on my AMD64 servers.
(Now before you get all huffy, I realize full well that there is a AMD64 version of Arch but last I checked it was not nearly at the level as the 686 version.)
To anyone curious about Arch I would recommend going for it, but keep /home on a separate partition. Install is a snap if you can read a page worth of docs. To anyone using Arch, take a look at the CK kernel.. it’s a bit faster and includes some great patches over the vanilla kernel.
I agree with you that it is the excellent Arch Community that makes it so great.
Arch is a distro for Linux aware users, even when someone asks very novice question, rarely do we come across the famous RTFM word. To an extent, I saw a post on Arch forum, where the current moderator want to study for his grad school exam and cannot continue to work as moderator. That fellow is so decent that he wrote a mail to the forum, seeking applogy for his inability to continue.
http://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?t=14194
hats off to such a man, this posts reflects what a community Arch has.
I think that the more fancy desktop features you want, the better it is to go with a large desktop distro like Ubuntu, Fedora, or SuSE.
I mean, if you mostly just use your desktop for ssh’ing into the servers, you can get by with something lean just fine (I use Debian + IceWM, ATM). But as soon as I try hooking anything up to my computer (like printers or multiple monitors for example), I curse myself and start looking at that Ubuntu iso again.
BTW, I can’t *imagine* using any other distro on a server besides Debian because of apt and the official Debian pkg repository (and mirrors). And also because of the great hardware detection these days. So, for the server, for me, the questions are:
a. Do Slack/Arch have good hardware detection and recognition? Or will I end up having to fiddle around with modprobe?
b. Do Slack/Arch have an apt-like dependency resolution install/remove tool, and
c. if so, do they have a pkg repository large enough to cover the usual stuff? That is, something like the same packages you get with a base install of Debian (no packages selected) plus, oh, I don’t know: MySQL, Apache2, Python, exim4, firefox, thunderbird, … I mean, it’s a nuisance to have to install that stuff by-hand after you’ve been spoiled rotten by Debian.
Not only that, but Debian’s packages configure themselves after installation (a la dpkg-reconfigure). So, even if you’ve got apt, and even if you’ve got the repos, Debian *still* makes it easier for me to get rolling with a given software package.
they have the same hardware detection as anything with a 2.6.15.6 kernel, arch also has hwdetect and hwd/lshwd if you want
slack has a third party tool called slapt-get or swaret.
arch is built around the pacman manager much like debian is around apt-get (interestingly rubix and frugal ware both use pacman as well despite being derived from slack)
speaking for arch, my preffered distro, yeah its got pretty much every thing you’d need on a normal server although you can check pretty easily on the arch front page (www.archlinux.org) its not the size of the official debian repo but it’s got a good deal, and the forum is generally pretty good about making you a pkgbuild if you ask nicely.
or check the AUR (our community repo)
again can’t speak for slack ware but for the most part no arch doesn’t configure things for you thats pretty much half the ‘arch way’ right there.
Edited 2006-03-19 08:11
a) You’ll have a choice about this: Either fiddle around with modprobe and choose the modules in /etc/rc.conf, or compile your own kernel or use some hardware detection system. Of the hardware detection systems, either set MOD_AUTOLOAD=”yes” in /etc/rc.conf or install lshwd and set hwd as a daemon in /etc/rc.conf
b) IMO pacman exceeds apt-get. Examples of pacman use:
– “pacman -S package” installs package and all dependencies
– “pacman -Sy package” syncs to mirrors and installs package and all dependencies
– “pacman -Syu” syncs to mirrors and updates the system (like apt-get update && apt-get dist-upgrade iirc)
– “pacman -R package” check for dependencie conflict and remove package
– “pacman -Rcs package” removes package, and it’s dependencies that are not needed by any other packages and everything depending on it
Pacman will always ask for confirmation before installing anything.
c) Search http://www.archlinux.org/packages.php for the packages you want. In http://aur.archlinux.org/packages.php you’ll find the community maintained packages, some of them are in the binary “community” repo, while others are “unsupported” and you have to compile them yourself (either with “makepkg” or with a frontend like “aurbuild”). Many of the unsupported packages, plus some more, can be found in unofficial user respiratories.
Arch’s philosophy want you to configure stuff yourself, and therefore does not autoconfigure stuff for you.
IMO pacman exceeds apt-get. Examples of pacman use:
– “pacman -S package” installs package and all dependencies
– “pacman -Sy package” syncs to mirrors and installs package and all dependencies
– “pacman -Syu” syncs to mirrors and updates the system (like apt-get update && apt-get dist-upgrade iirc)
– “pacman -R package” check for dependencie conflict and remove package
– “pacman -Rcs package” removes package, and it’s dependencies that are not needed by any other packages and everything depending on it
Pacman will always ask for confirmation before installing anything.
Apt-get is just one frontend to APT (Debian’s dpkg based Advanced Package Management system). I don’t see how any of your examples should prove that pacman somehow “exceeds” APT.
On the other hand, APT has many features that pacman lacks, for instance, sorting dependencies to “depends”, “recommends” and “suggests”. This is not to say that pacman isn’t a very solid and simple package manager.
So is pacman like pkg_add in FreeBSD. I haven’t yet tried Arch Linux, pacman sounds like a promising package manager to me.
I want to try Linux, by I can’t. I already love FreeBSD ports. Is pacman comparable to ports? Also the most confusing is, why there are /opt, /var/opt /usr, and /usr/local directories for installing application?
Pacman itself is a binary packages manager. But you also have Arch Build System that is similiar to Gentoo’s portage or FreeBSD’s ports. In your directory structure you have /var/abs and thera are subdirectories (base, devel, editors, community etc.). If you are looking for software you just change the directory to the category you desire, choose program, change directory to programm’s dir and then simply run “makepkg”. This will execute buildikg script, wchich will download sources and patches, compile and make proper pacman package. Then you may install that package or put it on your own packages repository for example.
But what realy makes Arch Linux excellent distro isn’t it’s package manadgement. Most of the time you’ll use only pacman, wchich is comparable to apt-get or urpmi. The thing that I love most about Arch linux it is it’s flexibility – modyfiying each part of system is easier than I’ve seen in any distro before. Init scripts are so logical, well writen and easy to understand/modify. Most of the configuration you simply put in /etc/rc.conf. There are network profiles available (very useful on laptops
), graphical bootsplash (gensplash – ported from gentoo) and hwd as default hardware detection method.
For me as an ex-slacker, Arch is perfect. I’ve tried Mandriva/Ubuntu/Suse/Fedora and none of them offered me desired simplicity and easy of use. No, I realy men that – using Arch for medium-skilled Linux user is realy simple thanks to it’s not-“bloated” architecture and design
.
Does apt support recursive removal?
This is subjective, but I like the interface when downloading and the configuration files better…
With the interface when dowenloading, I mean compared to apt-get – I haven’t tried any other CUI apt frontends then apt-get and aptitude (which I don’t like), but synaptic looks good
Does apt support recursive removal?
Aptitude checks the dependencies for packages to be removed and if no other package needs them, the dependencies are also automatically removed. Aptitude has two interfaces: the command line interface and the ncurses interface that you can also use for browsing the available packages (and their dependencies). Aptitude can also show the changelist history for any given package, installed or not-installed.
One can also install apt-listchanges that shows the changelist history automatically whenever you install a package that has had major changes. And you can install apt-listbugs that automatically checks bug reports for all packages to be installed and warns if there are bugs that haven’t yet been fixed.
With APT you can easily build your own binary packages (and their dependencies) from source. APT has also extensions that allow you to build your whole system from source with your own optimizations — just like in Gentoo.
Hmm, Guess I got to try aptitude again… I got an ubuntu box in the other room to test on, thanks for the clarification.
Does anyone know why Arch insists on installing some applications (like firefox and DE’s) under /opt? And, once they’ve decided to install stuff in unusual places, why don’t they add /opt/*/bin to users’ PATH by default? I’m not asking for hand-holding but sensible defaults do make things easier for new users.
They do, whenever something goes in /opt they put a file in /etc/profile.d that adds it to PATH
OK, but what’s the rationale of installing under /opt in the fist place?
I think the point is to install packages without any customization. If the designers of an app decided to use /opt the Arch package will be installed in /opt.
It isn’t hard to change the location though, recompile takes time but the process is quite automated.
The designers don’t choose were the apps will install, ./configure –prefix=/someplace decides that, with the standard being /usr/local if unspecified.
http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Arch_Packaging_Standards#Direct…
“/opt
Large self-contained packages such as KDE, Mozilla, etc. “
KDE’s default installation directory is /opt as well as the OpenOffice.org office suite.
The distributions RedHat/Fedora Core don’t seem to like /opt at all, and compile KDE to be placed under /usr instead. SuSE has a different view in that DE’s are not a part of the core system and so KDE as well as Gnome are placed in /opt. (Although I notice that WindowMaker and XFCE are still in /usr). Slackware, on the other hand, leaves everything untouched. Gnome (when it was part of Slackware) is installed in /usr and KDE is in /opt.
I have to update /etc/ld.so.conf occasionally for ./configure to find libraries, but not very often.
I have really given this distro a chance. All three times I had it installed, it started suffering from missing files and broken packages – and all I did was use Pacman to install/uninstall. It’s probably more of a Pacman-problem than an Arch-problem.
But otherwise it seemed pretty stable. Horrible installer, though – the instruction texts are so bad, and it has absolutely no error handling.
Like JohnMG said, we Debian users tend to get a bit spoiled over time by our OS. But while managing a Debian box is very smooth, I can not help to notice that the system itself sometimes feel a bit sluggish, I mean i386…
So, some more questions:
1) Is the performance of Arch better than a i386 system? (Say, running on vintage hardware, or X11responsiveness)
2) How much of the speed, control and flexibility in this configure-all-yourself system is hampered by time consuming configuration? Is it Gentooish in that after X hours I can use the program I wanted to use X hours ago? (Say, a fairly lazy Linux buff like me want to have wireless and suspend or whatever going on my laptop as quickly as possible – how much will an OSX user laugh at me trying to get it going the first time?)
Well as arch is i686 optimized, which means the binaries were compiled using the i686 flag it will be faster providing you aren’t running on hardware from like early 1990’s.
So I guess I answered #1 for you lets go on to two.
2) Well there is some configuration in arch. If you want to setup supsend your should use the archk kernel package in the repo because it has the suspend2 patchs. Wireless well you’ll probably have to use ndiswrapper. I wouldn’t believe it is all that more time consuming then other distros. The wiki will probably have most of want you want to do. From my experience I’d say if I went to think about everything i had to configure and do all the configs (cups,samba,rc.conf,fstab,hosts,setting up ssh, and a few more) it’ll all take me about 1-2hours. I know how do most of this so of course it becomes much faster.
Search:
Wireless: http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Special:Search?search=wireless&…
Ndiswrapper:
http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Special:Search?search=ndiswrapp…
There doesn’t seem to be much on suspend but gentoo wiki’s tend to be very good also.
So basically to sum this all up I’d say if you know how to use linux you have arch setup and to your liking in a day or two.
Debian here. If I wanted a back to basics system it would be easy to set one up: a netinstall iso followed by a lean package selection, maybe leaving off KDE/Gnome and using say fluxbox. With this I still get access to Debian’s superb repos and management tools. And if I stick to i686 I’d be surprised if it wasn’t darn fast. I am running a fully loaded system here using KDE on Unstable and it is still fast, though I do recompile the kernel and modules using settings optimized for my system.
Arch Linux sounds really nice, though I’ve never tried it. However, I don’t think it’s the only way to achieve the desired end. A pleasant thing about Debian-based systems is that they are fairly easy to build down or build up if you want all the goodies, and either gives you access to all of Debian. As another poster points out, it is easy to be spoiled by this flexibility and so stick with it.
Coming from Slackware, I really enjoyed Arch since January.
But there are some issues with this distro :
* some packages are broken, like fam actually (see this forum thread http://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?t=19641) : the bug was reported while the package was in testing, but it has gone in current with no changes at all, why ?
* a lot of major changes happens continuously, so you have to read the forum/wiki/mailing-lists in order to update successfully your box
* pacman is a great and versatile package manager, but it has some drawbacks : post-install messages are issued on the console, and with large updates they may not be all readable (one can use a pipe to the tee(1) command to work around this)
* dependencies are not always very well handled (sometimes missing, sometimes requiring incompatibles packages)
So from my experience Arch is a great distro if you have time to manage it, but I now need something that just work so I may go back to Slackware or try FreeBSD. But I will keep an eye and a partition for Arch, that’s a very promising distro (its rc.conf system and package manager are the bests I have ever seen in a linux distro, i686 is good too).
Just my two cents and first post on osnews ;^)
welcome to osnews posting
That’s indeed one of its main drawbacks (not a huge one though). But that’s more or less inherent to being as bleeding edge as Arch is. I’m not neccesarily referring to version numbers, but also to more general or system-wide issues.
For example, Arch was the one of the first distro’s to fully incorporate udev, gcc4 and NPTL. Also, a lot has been going on in the area of the initscripts. Arch has ditched hotplug, in favor of another system that is just as reliable and detects and loads the modules almost as fast as if they were listed statically.
But yes you are right, they do come at a price. But major changes (like deprecation of devfs) are announced weeks in advance. So updating is not nearly as tedious as you say it is.
Btw you do read /usr/{src,ports}/UPGRADING in FreeBSD don’t you?
Actually, the ports collection changes far more often than Arch’s binary repo.
Indeed, you’re right on this point
Some big updates like udev or xorg7 were pretty smooth on my systems, mainly because I read the doc and was able to fix some little issues myself. Actually, I was pretty impressed by theses updates : bleeding edge and working great (no longer hotplug = less time to boot, and the xorg7 via driver is great).
But not everybody read the docs (forums can prove this), so I pointed it out as it can be a very bad experience.
What do you have against GUIs? It’s the logical evolution of Linux, the lack of GUIs is what has left Linux behind all these years. People don’t want to type text to install or configure stuff.
Back to basics? Then why not just removing the desktop environment and use Links to surf the net? Now this is “back to basics”, but only a handfull of users will use your system.
Figures don’t lie: These are the 5 most used distros according to Distrowatch:
1 Ubuntu
2 SUSE
3 Mandriva
4 Fedora
5 MEPIS
What do they have in common? They are easy to use, and they have GUIs to manage and install everything. FYI, Arch is #21 on Distrowatch. Got the picture?
I’ve tried all of those, (SUSE being my favorite, though, admittedly the last version I tried was 9.1, as the install DVDs seem to have a tendency to not download correctly) but I still use arch as my desktop OS. Why? Because, in Arch, everything is fairly organized, and heavily customizable, and fairly up to date, among other things (For example, instead of making me alter several configuration files to set up module loading, init scripts, etc. the developers decided to consolidate them into a single, relatively straightforward configuration file)
Since I personally don’t like minimalist window managers, (Xfce is about as basic as I’m willing to go, and even that’s a stretch) I use Arch with a Gnome desktop and XGL/Compiz from a pacman repository run by a forum member. It suits my needs, and has so much eyecandy it’s distracting. (Of course, that’s my preference.)
Now, admittedly, I could have set up a system with Ubuntu or one of the others you mentioned in a shorter time frame, but I chose not to for several reasons.
1) I need kernel 2.6.15 for my motherboard to work correctly, anything older and I don’t get DMA, so Ubuntu Breezy was out of the question, and Dapper was too buggy at the time to consider.
2) I like the idea of being able to customize my system to a great extent.
3) I wanted to learn more about setting up a linux system
OK, I’m done rambling now.
Learning Linux is more than installing.
Once all those do it more or less yourself distros are installed there’s nothing more to learn then on other distros.
Learning Linux is in my opinion working and grinding the OS nothing more nothing less.
Nothing against GUI, I use a full Gnome desktop on my Arch. But when configuring/upgrading the system, I prefer the good old command-line and runlevel 1, to get the full options available from configuration files and minimise bugs.
BTW I wrote a script to setup my Arch the way I want, not the way an installer wants. Maybe not everybody want/need such a functionnality, but I appreciate it.
After all Libre Software is all about choice, no ?
Edited 2006-03-19 16:56
The popularity comes in my opinion amongst other things due to the continuity and reasources standing behind.
windows is more used than those top 5 most used distros from distrowatch , and that does not mean its better than any of those.
got the picture ?
People just got lazy and like the developers to do the stuff that you should do to learn.
If u really want to learn linux u need to do it by yourself, understanding what makes it work.
Edited 2006-03-19 18:39
“What do you have against GUIs? It’s the logical evolution of Linux, the lack of GUIs is what has left Linux behind all these years. People don’t want to type text to install or configure stuff.”
well I do, and it’s my computer.
“Back to basics? Then why not just removing the desktop environment and use Links to surf the net? Now this is “back to basics”, but only a handfull of users will use your system”
thats okay i don’t really care if my personal property has mass appeal
“Figures don’t lie: These are the 5 most used distros according to Distrowatch:
1 Ubuntu
2 SUSE
3 Mandriva
4 Fedora
5 MEPIS
What do they have in common? They are easy to use, and they have GUIs to manage and install everything. FYI, Arch is #21 on Distrowatch. Got the picture?”
arch isn’t trying to be #1 thats the whole thing. it isn’t aimed at windows switchers or people who want everything done for them.
of course arch is #21 (which is still above red hat and linspire) it says right in the about its not for everyone, it has no really press arm, it’s spread almost entirely by word of mouth, heck osnews (well eugenia’s preference for it) is probably the only reason we’re even at 21.
“What do you have against GUIs? It’s the logical evolution of Linux, the lack of GUIs is what has left Linux behind all these years. People don’t want to type text to install or configure stuff.”
I won’t pretend to speak for Arch users in general, let alone for the devs. I personally have nothing against GUIs, I’m all for GUIs existing and for distros that use them heavily for installation and configuration existing. I used a distro like that, Fedora to be exact, when I first started using Linux extensively. However after about a year on Fedora I looked at some other distros and found I could now also do what I wanted just editing the configuration files by hand. I often find that this is at least as simple since I don’t have to figure where the GUI has put the option I want.
“Back to basics? Then why not just removing the desktop environment and use Links to surf the net? Now this is “back to basics”, but only a handfull of users will use your system.”
Reductio ad absurdum works both ways. Why not stick a GUI on your fridge with a point and click interface to open or close the door? Why not put a GUI on your faucet to select hot and cold and the force of the stream? That would really be embracing the GUI but only a handful of people would use it because for the vast majorty of people the simpler interfaces are actually superior.
“Figures don’t lie: These are the 5 most used distros according to Distrowatch:
1 Ubuntu
2 SUSE
3 Mandriva
4 Fedora
5 MEPIS
What do they have in common? They are easy to use, and they have GUIs to manage and install everything. FYI, Arch is #21 on Distrowatch. Got the picture?”
Is distrowatch ranking the ultimate goal of making a distro? Should it be? Also Gentoo & Slackware, 9 and 10 respectively, are not known for their extensive GUI configuration tools. Neither for that matter is Debian number 7.
Different people have different distros that are most suited to them. For me Arch was that distro. I was testing it along with 2 other distros, at one point I just found I hadn’t booted either of the other two in several weeks.
The mere fact that different distros exist is about having a choice. For me the choice between a GUI heavy and a GUI light distro is just one of those choices, and neither option is more generally valid than the other.
Figures don’t lie: These are the 5 most used distros according to Distrowatch:
Figures don’t lie but the context in which they’re referenced often does. DW is in no way an indication of actual install base, you may as well be quoting google pageranks.