Hot off the compilation press, Arch Linux comes to its full 2009.08 grandeur with a myriad of new and updated features, including exciting new additions to be utilized in the AIF (Arch Linux Installation Framework) and more, detailed within.Arch Linux, somewhat popular amongst the OSNews population, has been updated to the latest version of 2009.08, and the images have been released for download. It has the latest and greatest of core software, including kernel 2.6.30.4-1, udev 141-5 and pacman 3.3.0-3. The AIF also has been developed quite a bit, featuring a betterdisk editor with support for dm_crypt and lvm setups, automated installations using config files,a framework to build one’s own installation procedures, better date and time settings including ntp support, andrefactored grub installation methods.
Other points of interest are:
• Aufs instead of unionfs• Enhanced boot device detection on image start
• Bugfixes (xfs freeze, mirror setting, clock correctness, network settings, …)
• More useful automatic configuration settings for your target system based on your settings during the installation
• Ftp images are renamed to netinstall to avoid confusion
The snapshots can be downloaded via bittorent or HTTP/FTP here.
Back then, in 2003, I read an article here about a new Arch Linux release. It was one of the first releases they had ever. About 0.6 or sth.
I installed Arch Linux to give it a try. I ended up dumping my Debian installation for it.
Since then, I never reinstalled my system. Arch Linux progressed _a lot_, just as the linux kernel and a lot of userspace stuff did in the last five years.
My old Arch installation is still running. Some updates broke stuff, and you had to keep an eye on them: the transition of configuration files has to be done manually. But in the end, it is the same system as in 2003, but completely up-to-date with the latest and greatest.
Congratulations! This small “cutting edge” distro has proven to be a stable system; it never let me down.
Keep up the good work!
Seconded. I did some distro jumping until I found Arch 0.5 and never looked back. It’s the perfect distro for me.
I haven’t done a new install since 2005, but when I did, I didn’t even need to use the installer. Just create partitions, format them, mount them, and pacman –root /mnt -S [list of pkgs] to install the system.
EDIT: typo
Edited 2009-08-11 09:28 UTC
That’s the only thing that’s stopped my loading Arch on the misses laptop (opted for Xubuntu after reading the review on here) as she’s not that good with computers.
However, for me at least, Arch is easily my favourite Linux distro. I even run it on non-critical servers due to it’s default minimal install and easy maintenance.
Can you go into detail? I’m thinking of moving to Arch, because the rolling release concept fits me better than the traditional way of most other Linux distros with their individual releases every x months.
I’m no newb, but I don’t like surprises.
I ran into “updates wouldn’t install” during the period that I used Arch.
It wasn’t hard to resolve. Shaman (the KDE GUI for Pacman) told me exactly what would have to be removed in order to avoid conflicts. I had to manually remove the indicated library, which in turn meant removing an number of applications that depended on those libraries.
However, trusting that it would work out, I did perform the manual removal, and I was then able to install the application I wanted, and then re-install the removed applications (at later versions themselves). All that it required was that manual first step to be approved, and the situation was then “unlocked” as it were.
A smarter package manager, such as aptitude, is able to work out this type of solution for you, and automatically perform all of the necessary removals of orphaned packages and installations of updated or new dependencies.
However, if you don’t mind getting a bit “hands on” in the technical details of the OS, Arch is very good. One just has to accept that every now and then it will be a bit more “mandraulic” than some other distributions are.
I would not say a “smarter” package manager, more like a auto configuration one. That’s the thing about Arch, you configure the system, not the other way around. =)
Well, the toughest that can happen to you is that some services stop working because the configs you had are not compatible any more. Warnings about this are normally printed during the update and can also be found in the pacman (package manager) log file.
Back in the early days, there was a lot going on with udev as a replacement of devfs etc. which could even make your system fail to boot. Here, crucial changes had to be made, like editing grub config. All the changes needed to stay compatible in general have to be done manually.
So every time you do an update: Watch out the messages printed and perhaps gather additional information on the website/forums.
Situation has improved a lot in the last years:
1. big changes like the transition to udev which led to “breakage” of the whole system are over
2. pacman and packaging policies have been improved to make life easier for the user (compatibility warnings were not common back then, you had to read them on the website)
3. for really tricky cases, even Arch starts using transition scripts (lately: change from vt* to tty — nothing to be done by the user to keep the system booting/running)
I have tried a lot of Linux distributions, so I thought I’d give Arch 2009.08 a try. Here are the “mandraulic” things I had to do, that I haven’t had to do on other distributions.
1. On first install of the core, I had a command prompt, and had to log in as root. I used another machine, side-by-side, to view the “beginners setup” wiki page, and I followed the instructions I found there. A lot of people would stumble right here, before they have even begun.
2. The wiki page instructions allowed me to install xorg and test it. Good. I had to guess a bit with editing rc.conf, but it wasn’t too bad … but I had to just know to add myself as a user. I used adduser, and followed all the defaults, which was a mistake as it later turned out.
3. I went to the chakra-project wiki, and found out how to add the kdemod repositories. Another manual edit, as it turns out, this time for pacman.conf. But OK, fair enough, after a very large download I had KDE 4.3 installed.
4. I booted, and most everything worked but not sound. Bummer. I looked at the logs … seemed OK. I looked at the sound diagnostic commands given on the wiki … yes, drivers were loaded, but I had no mixer. alsamixer wasn’t installed, so I found it and installed it … it wouldn’t run. I scratched my head for a long while before the penny dropped … and I added myself to the audio group and all was well (this was my mistake in following the defaults in the initial adduser). Oh well, live and learn.
5. Shaman doesn’t work currently … it always reports corrupt packages downloaded. I’ve had to use pacman from the command line.
6. I added firefox. Incredibly ugly look (the default Raleigh GTK theme … shudder). I happen to know the answer to this one though, so I installed gnome-themes and gtk-chtheme, I ran gtk-chtheme and selected the glossy theme. Much better … now firefox fits in reasonably well with the rest of KDE 4.3.
All in all … a nice enough distro, it runs very fast (especially with KDE 4.3) but it is very mandraulic and it doesn’t score well IMO for “out of the box polish”.
… but having said that, once you sort the issues and get it set up nicely … it really does fly.
Edited 2009-08-13 13:06 UTC
Thank you for sharing your experience.
You should probably add a bug report for shaman or how it is called. (I always use pacman (or yaourt for AUR packages)).
It is true that you have to do everything manually: edit configs, install nice themes, add users to groups like audio, video, camera. That is part of the Arch principles and probably will never be “fixed”. “Polish” is what they actually try to avoid. It was astonishing to me however, that there is actually not that much to edit-most times the defaults work pretty well. A great help for me as an Arch beginner was also the #archlinux IRC channel on freenode. You can ask stupid questions like “my mixer doesn’t work!!” there and people will suggest you to check the groups, etc. It made my life a lot easier to not have to figure everything out myself.
I hope you will enjoy Arch as much as I do!
Edited 2009-08-13 14:00 UTC
I used to be Gentoo user back in the day. When Daniel Robbins left, though, things started to go downhill. When he rejoined and I read about how he was being treated by some of the devs, I left that distro.
I found arch linux on distrowatch. Downloaded, installed and never had to re-install. Pacman is a great package manager and ABS is really nice. Arch just gives you the best of both worlds, in my opinon. I love how up-to-date that system is. Great job! Amazing, even.
Best distro out there, switched from Debian about a year ago and not looking back.
Arch was the first distro I went to when I left freebsd. but pacman a few times ate itself, unable to update etc. they were sloooow to get on the 64bit bandwagon.
I did alot of distro jumping, but I always came back to Debian, that was before I installed Arch, For two years now I don’t distro jump anymore, I just use Arch, it’s the perfect distro for me.
I use arch on my few core machines (netbook, laptop, older dual core machines) and gentoo on my 8 core dev boxes. I ran into gentoo first and consequently was never comfortable with debian based distros.
Arch seems to sit somewhere in between. I really appreciate the choices they made for systems configuration, it’s very simple and straightforward.
I have run into problems where an upgrade set has left a machine inoperable (once due to me shutting the lid on a laptop during upgrade, another due to a bad readline package install). Both machines were recoverable by booting from an arch distro, but it does indicate to me that arch isn’t a 100% distro yet.
Is good to see Arch Linux is being recognized by OSnews, not so surprising, because, I heard of Arch Linux here first, in 2004. We appreciated the feedback from our users, and would like to thank every one of them for such supportive behaviors everywhere in the net that Arch Linux is mentioned.
Guys, remember, to go to the archlinux.org website and check out the latest Arch Linux Magazine.
-Thanks
Eduardo Romero (kensai)
“… but it does indicate to me that arch isn’t a 100% distro yet.”
What does a “100% distro” mean?
First distro where Opera browser works to perfection. All the plugins are compatible with whatever I throw at it. Easy to update, easy to configure and full of endless options.
Hard to pay attention to another distro right now.
-t
…but it’s just a bit too much manual setup for me, and I never did grasp its package management system enough to be able to use it well (I was lucky to be able to install anything with it at all). pacman seemed to be nicely done from what I read, except its commands were cryptic and made no sense to me. Arch’s main system config file was really cool though, (what was it, rc.conf?). And with the introduction of KDE4, my originally-neutral opinion on rolling releases weighed down more on the negative side.
Anyway, with that said, Arch does seem to be a great distro. It’s just not for me. In fact, if the package management commands made more sense, I’d probably give it another shot, as that really was one of my biggest complaints.
Edited 2009-08-12 22:25 UTC
KDE 4.3 is great on Arch, what’s the problem?
As for pacman on the command line … yes it is a strange one. You need to know: (1) search
… and then install (press the up arrow, and remove the small s)
Update is “pacman -Sy”
Upgrade is “pacman -Syu”.
Remove a package would be “pacman -R k3b”.
Cryptic, I grant you, but it works.
Edited 2009-08-13 13:21 UTC
It has been a few years since I have used Arch Linux. I’ve been having a problem with getting centos5/opensolaris installed on a backup server at home and arch came out so i said what the heck, I’ll install it and no problems what so ever, clean, quick and running.
Created a 2TB lvm backup directory and synced 1.3TB of data over last night and this morning and still running.
So now I’m installing it on my desktop
[root@pillar ~]# df -h /home
Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/mapper/vg_home-lv_home
2.0T 1.3T 664G 66% /home
How do people start these… Ah yes, “I just wanted to say”…
After getting frustrated with the community problems in the Gentoo project back in the day, I used Arch Linux for a year or so. A good distribution, no doubt about it.
Being sort-of a UNIX-guy, I was instantly in love with the KISS philosophy and general BSD-feel of the distribution. However, I left Arch behind because the general “KISS of it” was overwhelmingly in sharp contrast with the highly rapid update cycles and bleeding edge goals, which — at least in my opinion — resulted a general drop in QA and too high maintanance costs for regular desktop use. I would probably still use it if the goal of constant package updates would have been replaced with the goals of robustness and simplicity — both of which were already present as ideals.
Edited 2009-08-15 13:45 UTC