A few months ago I was a Slackware Junkie. I loved it, and laughed at those who used ‘more automatic’ distributions (ok, I didn’t actually laugh). Then Arch Linux 0.5 came out and I was very intrigued by it. I was getting tired of having to compile updated packages myself. Now you may wonder why I didn’t go with Debian. I have Debian on one of my other machines and I simply didn’t like it. APT simply wasn’t as good as I would have hoped, and I found the community discouraging. Why not Gentoo? I dont want to compile everything, that was my problem.
So no more distro bashing, I chose to try Arch. I began the download of the 650MB ISO image (there is also a 100MB Base ISO). On to a big point: I read all the documentation on the Arch site first. This was probably one of the things that made my experience so good, so I suggest you do the same.
Install:
Now onto the install. The install is very much like Slackware’s or FreeBSD’s. Its Curses based, so its not exactly ‘text’, but its not exactly Graphical. The install is relatively strait-forward. You partition drives using FDISK or CFDISK, you then mount the partitions, choose your packages, install, and then install LILO or GRUB.
One nice thing about the install though is that you can edit your configuration files during the install, so you can have a fully working machine before you even reboot. This is important because ArchLinux doesn’t do much hardware detection. It will handle hard drives, motherboard, and other basic components, but you better know the kernel modules for your sound card, Ethernet card, modem, video card, etc.
Actually, if you at least know your Ethernet/modem module, you can run it and download HOTPLUG(this is what Slackware uses) or HWD(this is what Knoppix uses), and it will detect the hardware for you. There are Arch packages for both of these.
While they are not included in the 0.5 ISO, ‘hwd’ should be in the 0.6 ISO.
Was the install perfect? No, it wasn’t. My big problem was that when I would try to ‘modprobe’ the emu10k1 driver (for my SB Audigy sound card) it would fail. This is actually a problem others were having, as I found out later.
So I popped into the Arch IRC room, and got lots of help from users and developers. They had me install ALSA, and use those drivers instead of the OSS emu10k1. All worked great after that.
So that was really my only problem in the beginning.
I was able to set up my cd burner, Sound, and internet all using the ArchLinux documentation.
Now, I have pretty generic hardware:
2Ghz Pentium4
256MB RDRAM
Intel i850E Motherboard
Nvidia GeForce4MX440
SB Audigy
DVD and CDRW drives
So your experience may differ on hardware support of course.
This brings me to a very important point. ArchLinux is i686 only. This means you need a P2 or better (or Athlon). So if you run something older, you’re out of luck. There is a i586 port in Beta, but since you cant use the standard repositories, its not very good.
Advantages:
I’ll now proliferate on some of the advantages of ArchLinux over other distributions:
1. Pacman and ABS. This is Arch’s package manager and PORTS-like build system. They work perfect. What more can I say? Pacman will fetch binary packages from servers (there’s 3, Current, Unofficial, and Unstable) and install and upgrade your system.
It is able to fully upgrade your system without a hitch. For example, the Arch CD comes with GCC3.2.2. I upgraded to GCC3.3 (and then to 3.3.1 later) without any problems.
I was able to upgrade kernels perfectly as well. The system really works.
“Pacman -Syu” is all you need to update your system.
Then there’s ABS. It allows you to simply compile and make a package. Just browse to the proper directory of the program in /usr/abs and type ‘makepkg’ and that will download and compile and a package.
This is very useful because its is amazingly easy to make your own Arch package. There is an example PKGBUILD (the script that builds the package) included, and you just fill in the blanks. Basically, you fill in the program name, version number, dependencies, and the steps to compile it. Since the steps are usually just ” ./configure, make, make install”, you can probably leave that section alone.
Because its so easy to build packages, the repositories are packed with up to date software. There are very few programs I did not find, and when I didn’t find them, I simply made my own package very easily. I also have contributed some packages. Its very easy to submit packages to ArchLinux. They provide free uploads to “ftp.archlinux.org/incoming” for review and eventual submission into the repositories.
2. The init and config files. They are the best I’ve seen (though not Arch specific). your /etc/rc.conf file controls most things, and its extremely easy to modify. You can then start/stop services like:
/etc/rc.d/cups start or
/etc/rc.d/network stop
Its very easy. Arch also makes use of ‘profile.d’. Basically, it allows packages/scripts to add things to your PROFILE without actually modifying your /etc/profile file.
More compliments and a complaint:
What else is good about it? Well, because its i686 compiled, its VERY fast. It boots in under 20 seconds and shuts down in about 5. The system is very responsive, no sluggishness.
Probably my main problem with the distribution is that some of the packages in the repositories are not built of the highest quality. Every once in a while a package will have a missing dependency, or not work as well as it should. This isn’t a huge happening (and its never killed my system), but it is annoying.
Arch does have a BugTracker though,and packages are usually fixed very quickly. Also, if you are not risky, you can stay with ‘stable’ which is not as up to date, but better tested (its nothing like Debian Stable though).
Support:
I think the best thing about ArchLinux is its “support”. Even though ArchLinux is not profit, it has got lots of people willing to help you.
There are active forums at both Archlinux.org and linuxquestions.org.
There is a very active IRC room where the developers (and other users) are always willing to lend a hand. I always learn something new when talking to them.
There is also a mailing list to post to.
I have had some minor problems since the initial install (the previously mentioned ‘broken’ packages, and some configuration issues) and everyone was always quick to help me.
Arch really does promote a good community. Its use of an INCOMING is proof. They will take packages from anyone, and you don’t have to ‘prove yourself’ before submitting.
Conclusion:
ArchLinux is not for everyone. I would say its for people like me. The intermediate to advanced linux user who wants a system that helps them, but doesn’t control everything. Arch is simple, powerful, fast, and the community is wonderful.
Also, because it has ABS, it can act as a source-distro too. You can easily compile all your updates from source using ‘makepkg’ or ‘makeworld’.
There are still some bugs, but nothing major, so don’t let this distribution seem immature.
What more could you want?
Misc things:
Fonts. Fonts in ArchLinux look beautiful. The repositories contain both the BITSTREAM VERA fonts and the MS CORE fonts.
Along with that, FREETYPE is compiled with the bytecode patch enabled, making fonts look extra sharp. Also, most packages are compiled with XFT enabled.
Like movies? Archlinux comes has MPLAYER and all the codecs (even the ‘iffy’ ones) in its repositories.
If you want GNOME 2.4, you can get a complete set of packages from ftp.archlinux.org/incoming. Its still in testing, but it works very well.
You may also want to try the 2.6 series of the kernel. There is no Arch package, but many Arch users are running it,so you can get plenty of help.
>I was getting tired of having to compile updated packages myself.
Ever heard of GRP?
I’ve a concern about reader-contributed OS reviews. That’s right: lately, all of these reviews tend to be highly _opinionated_ in one form or another of “OS XYZ (which I’m reviewing here) is better than OSs ABC and DEF, or all OSs for that matter”. I find this slightly unnerving, to say the least. This is a news site, and not an opionion-spread-o-mat. From what I understand, at least. And there’s also always the forums.
Ben: Sorry for the hard words, no offense against you, personally, intended. I found your above review to be well-structured, and it contains all information I’d have asked for. Thanks for taking the time and writing it.
I would totally agree. I stopped reading slashdot for this very reason. Please don’t let it happen to OS News too!
I’m getting a little tired of all the compaints about reviews being opinionated as if they could be anything different. This review was excellent and informative. I didn’t think it was bashing other distros at all. It was more of a comparison. Take it or leave it. Read the article or not. Personally, I don’t give a hoot.
Well if you don’t want a NEWS site to be diluted with opinion oriented articles, then submit news!
The article mentioned that Arch Linux’ init scripts and config files are the best. How do they differ from other distributions?
Then it is said that everyone can submit packages and has not to “proove” himself. What about security? Can everyone submit malware and broken packages or is there some QA?
From the article it sounds like the init scripts might be the same as Slack’s or at least similar.
Then it is said that everyone can submit packages and has not to “proove” himself. What about security? Can everyone submit malware and broken packages or is there some QA?
That was a major concern of mine as well. I don’t know if its a good idea that you don’t have to “proove” yourself to submit packages. Is anyone security checking the packages and checking them for stability?
I think I’m going to pass on Arch. I just recently started running slack, and quite honestly it’s been the only distribution I’ve ever run that makes sense. This sounds like a cross between gentoo and debian, neither of which I liked because I felt helpless when a package b0rked my system. He said he didn’t like debian, other than being able to get newer (potentially unsafe and unstable) packages, how is Arch different?
Just my 2 cents.
I’ve had Arch on my hard drive(s) for more than 6-months and it is the first distro to _stay_that_way_(!). It is, simply, a best-of-class distro for anyone who has contemplated the benefits of a LFS(Linux from Scratch) distro while wishing to leverage the efforts of others via a brilliantly simple/powerful package/build management system. Gentoo and Arch seem more a complement to each other than the reverse. Innovation with choice is the fruit to those who partake of either. Give me binaries for the basics and I’ll build/re-build the rest, if need be. Control and access thru the entire install and setup of the system is re-freshing and important to me — without the need to re-invent the wheel. All I can say about the ‘community/developers’ is that they’re probably 50% or more the reason I stuck with the distro rather than gravitate on to the older or more mature Gentoo/LFS proper. Arch is a forward-thinking evolutionary spear-head for GNU/Linux and I’m love’n be’n a part of this process.
BTW: I’m a Linux nOOb. Only been using Linux for 1-year after 8-years of being a Windows zealot. I came to Arch via Red Hat; Mandrake; Vector; Slackware essentially.
Cheers.
Yes, it _is_ true that anyone can contribute to the ‘incoming’ folder — however, all packages are screened by designated ‘maintainers’ before they are migrated into the ‘Official/Unofficial/Unstable’ folders. Use the ‘Incoming’ folder ‘At Your Own Risk’. But, since all submitted packages contain the entire ‘build’ scripts, you can easily re-build on your own system rather than accept an unknown binary. It is as simple as downloading the package, untarring, and ‘makepkg’.
If your to afraid to risk that, then, stay with the ‘official’ repositories or compile on your own. This is _NOT_ a distro for fence-riders or the squeemish, IMHO. You’ll either end-up with one of the most elegent/fast systems you’ve ever had(for little effort) _OR_ you’ll learn a whole lot you’d never have had the chance in the more ‘automated’ distro’s.
Choice.(sums it up best, I think)
Cheers.
does it just give you a fat binary/ a package that contains all dependancies so when it does a dep check it can install the one in the package if need be?
that would be a nice way to do it, and I think Windows and Mac do it this way (well macs do it slightly different because the the nature of the app folders.
I selected it because it was small and easy to make customized packages. So far it has been working great. Pacman works as well as could be expected, and there are many good packages available.
Of course, it didn’t include most of what I needed for the PVR, so I still had to compile from source, but if I want to make packages myself it looks to be a lot easier than for some other distributions.
I’ll be testing Arch on an alternate partition setup on my laptop tonight. Currently Ive got an install of Gentoo on there, which took a painstaking amount of time to setup, but if Arch does as well as Gentoo I might just consider switching over!
The only thing I’m worried about is the package base, though I’m perfectly able to do things myself, I’d rather be using the inbuilt manager. Maybe I’ll just have to contribute to the incomming folder!
It would be nice to know how good ABS is when compared to FreeBSD’s ports or Gentoo’s portage. How many applications are there available in Arch’s repositories?
And how is Pacman different from Debian’s APT? Which has more applications in repositories? I’ve personally had positive experiences with APT – the way that FreeBSD, for instance, handles binary packages is nowhere near as sophisticated as Debian’s APT. Perhaps the writer of this article didn’t read APT’s documentation properly and experienced problems for this reason?
Alot of people are bringing up a security concern with the packages and the ‘incoming’ ftp site. This comes from not knowing how makepkg works. Inside all those packages on the ‘incoming’ ftp site there is a PKGBUILD file. This PKGBUILD file contains all the information to build that package using the “makepkg” command. This file is very easy to read and understand as the bulk of it is just declarations and bash scripts. Most importantly the PKGBUILD file contains a link to the source files from the publisher. Makepkg will download the “official” files and create the package from those files. By creating packages off of the PKGBUILD you eliminate the contributor as a security risk.
ABS is very similar to ports. Its job is to build a package from source, and it does it. Simple I suppose, but useful.
How does PACMAN compare to APT? Well, I wouldn’t say its better. Its equal. But you get this and ABS, which is why I like it.
One nice advantage is that the packages in the repositories are more up to date then even Debian Unstable. Its not that Arch uses BETA and CVS versions, but Debian sometimes falls behind (xfree86 4.2.x).
Thank you for the postive comments. I realize I bashed some distros a little in the beginning, but I didn’t want people to post “Why not use Gentoo?”, and similar.
Just a small suggestion – could you add a screenshot showing Arch’s font rendering? It seems a bit dodgy that the default Freetype is compiled with bytecode, and i’d just be intrested in seeing how that compares to other distro’s by default (Redhat’s fonts are great till you read them for more than a couple mins, can’t stand the AA settings they use).
Great review though, covered all the important points – think I may just have to run this alongside my slack setup for a little bit.
Here is a screenshot I took when GNOME 2.4 came out:
http://screenshots.haque.net/screenshots/view/5844/screenshot-5844….
*WARNING* Big dual monitor shot.
They look great on my LCD.
i just downloaded Arch-0.5 and installed it just because i can…
Good distro, clean and no bloat…
i did compile the kernel from source omiting a couple of items that i do not use and adding one item i do use, sure makes it run lighter & fast, i like Arch better than Slackware especially since Slackware-9.1 is up to using two CDroms…
i will keep it in a extra disk partition and use it once in a while just to keep up with the geeky tech side of Linux, meanwhile i mostly use a easy disro named JAMD-Linux http://www.jamd-linux.com which is a Redhat-9 clone that was optimized for i686 and had the bloat trimmed off to make it all fit on a single CDrom & uses KDE for a default desktop (which i dont use) but it is 100% compatible with redhat packages so windowmaker & xfce4 installed nicely…
Thanks for the answers. Usually distros choose between source packages and binaries, favouring one and dropping the other altogether. If Arch handles these both well, this makes Arch a gem among Linux distros.
Also the option to activate hardware autodetection (hotplug/hwd) during installation sounds very promising. I don’t need too much handholding, but I appreciate intuitiveness in system design. Must try out this one as soon as possible. 🙂
It looks like a nice alternative to Gentoo. Sometimes you don’t want to wait a few hours to have the new gnome or widget to compile. I really think the BSD way of installing packages is the best. long live ports!
I’ll try to find a space box somewhere in a dark corner full of dust to try it
To recommend the use of Arch Linux as a server seems premature for now. I quote:
“Probably my main problem with the distribution is that some of the packages in the repositories are not built of the highest quality. Every once in a while a package will have a missing dependency, or not work as well as it should. This isn’t a huge happening (and its never killed my system), but it is annoying.”
Use a tested Linux Distro. I have never had Red Hat, Suse or Mandrake break anything with their provided packages.
I also find it laughable this search for a more hands-on distribution. Yeah, I really enjoy configuring my scanner by hand…
It is as if the distros that have better hardware detection had removed the wonderful terminal. They haven’t and if you need to boost your ego by modprobing your soundcard, you can do so with any of the three named above.
Just turn off Kudzu or yast and modprobe to your heart’s content. It is funny to see all this silly implicit messages of “I like to use a distro that is not too simplistic”, because the messengers of these missives are usually teenagers with little experience.
The people who are doing interesting work with Linux such as distributed computing, clustered CRM, and CMS systems that have automatic failover, actually want a system that does the tedious work for them so that they can focus on more interesting things.
Find out how cool Mandrake’s urpmi paralell installation is or how advanced their clustering solution is. Give the Red Hat and Oracle combination a shot.
I applaud everyone who works on Linux and I like the abundance of distributions, but it seems to me that the open source movement would make greater technological progress if there was less duplication of effort and if we all became aware of the incredible tools that the main Linux distros already offer. These guys are ahead of the league because they simply build a better product.
Just my perspective on what appeart to be a recurring theme. Nothing personal. In the past few weeks, I interviewed about 30 people who claimed to be qualified for a new position as an administrator where I work. We gave them a set amount of time to accomplish a series of standard tasks that would be part of their job.
We gave them 30 different distributions to choose from as we did not want distro specific idiosyncrasies to color our evaluation of the candidates. Most of them chose to install Gentoo, Slackware and Red Hat as that was what they run at home. Had they been familiar with what Red Hat and Mandrake already offered, they would have passed with flying colors and would have completed the assignment in a timely manner.
Instead, most spent almost a whole day and were unable to actually complete all aspects of the assignments. So, if you want to work as a Linux admin, let me share one one quick tip: learn what Suse, Mandrake and Red Hat already offer as it is more than meets the eye.
Once you are confident that you know the above inside-out and can deploy it in a variety of roles using a variety of authentication schemes on a heterogeneous network that may or may need to meet high availability and scalability numbers, then branch out to the esoteric and fun projects.
Of course, if you just want to play, then by all means.
I just met a friend that active in multimedia sector which during our discussion he received a call requesting advice on reading CD in Linux. Actually the guy calling is one of the winner of our government education project.
My friend later explain told me about the project which our government request on using Linux as the operating platform. However during the the tender presentation all except of the multimedia CD (which more than 20 companies involved) cannot run on the Linux PC at the government office.
So if looking at the above scenario, there are still lack of support of multimedia format in Linux (I not saying it is not supported but too compliated to configure). Maybe those who expert will give (maybe bash me) many way to resolve this. However I’m writing this on to highlight that most of the CD are targeted at young student that know very little about computers but it is proven they can use the CD themself in Windows.
If any linux distribution that can resolve this, I think those youngsters will be among the supporter in the future.
You are forgetting a few things:
1. The GUI/Automatic systems can very often interfere with the standard methods. Ive had issues with this in RH8 and Mandrake 9.1. (Ive never used Suse). Simply put, the GUI tools do more harm than good sometimes.
2. Some people can do things quicker via the CLI. I know I can do many things quicker on the CLI (not everything of course).
3. What does this have to do with my review? You just went off onto a huge tangent.
I stated in my review that this is targeted at the intermediate (which is what I am) to advanced Linux user. I didn’t say Arch was better because it did things by hand, and in fact, I said it was better because it AUTOMATED things (pacman/ABS).
I think all posters will agree that no matter which distro you use, there will be some problem encountered by somebody, somewhere. To suggest that Suse, Red Hat or Mandrake are silver bullets is laughable.
Whether one has GUI config tools up the wazoo or nothing but nano and a manpage – there will be pains encountered. If you’re new to Linux and using a distro for the first time, you’ll make wrong moves. And if you’re an admin of many years with expertise in A, B and C you’ll make mistakes when you’re tasked with D.
Sounds like most of your candidates were simply not qualified at all – hope someone worked out in the end? Was that an argument for or against a distro though – sounds like a non sequitor?
I’ve been using arch for a few months now and have been quite comfortable with it. It’s at 0.5, but runs fast and stable considering 1.0 remains a ways down the road. Unless the project goes to hell, I’ll be hanging out a while. I’m a SOHO user and it’s perfect for MY needs. What’s more, I get to experience the speed of my machine from the get-go.
The golden rule of all distros is that “Your mileage may vary…”.
The dependency problems and bad package builds mentioned are the very reason Gentoo is so cool. As long as there is source code out there (and there always is) Gentoo ebuild simply grab it with a list of dependencies and compile it for your system and its version of glibc, gcc etc. Regular users often create their own ebuilds for new software simply by pointing to new source code.
As for “accomplishing tasks” in business… I agree that the distro choice for business server use and desktop home use will likely be very different. However, it is essential that an IT person understand the guts of the O/S in order to solve problems. Ie. it may be easy to set up XYZ on Redhat and take a lot longer in some other distro, but a real set of tasks would be to diagnose and solve problems ABCDEF in this server and see who can cope without simply re-formatting/rebooting like windows “system administrators”. That is a real test.
I agree these “reviews” are very personal. That’s not the problem. The problem is the people writing them demonstrate so little experience in writing about a given distro. For instance, describing how quickly or slowly something installs really means very little unless you are installing it all the time.
However, ongoing use (longitudinal experience) such as the easy keeping up with security and feature updates and new versions (ie. latest kernel versions, beta and latest Gnome 2.4 etc) is much more important. Here, Gentoo shines as I have been using the latest stuff long before release. I can keep another system up to date despite the fact it is locked into an older glibc (ie. commonly-available binaries are no good for it) because of Gentoo’s source code focus. Perhaps Arch has similar long-term strengths, but who knows?
Let’s put installation and screenshots and all that stuff in perspective. It’s really not worth much these days. Long-term use is what’s key and Gentoo is the only distro I’ve kept using without a single stop for ages. There’s no need to reformat. The latest software is an “emerge sync && emerge world” away. Perhaps Arch is too… but who knows?
This is like those crappy car reviews in the papers and magazines. The only good stuff is the long-term Consumer-Reports type reviews that talk about using the same thing for months and months and months and months!
Slackware users with an itch to scratch will probably like Arch. Particularly those that use swaret and linuxpackages.net to keep up to date with the latest packages, i.e. those slackware users that install only binaries. These users will like Arch a lot. (only my opinion folks, not a blanket statement of fact)
Foreign language support, particularly cjk, is not a strength of Arch. But, if you are a Slackware user and your primary language is English, then Arch is definately worth a few hours of time to test and get more familiar with. I believe that many of you will switch and be happy that you did.
anyone knows when a 0.6 iso will be downloadable ?
What makes Arch & also CRUX Linux different from, say, Debian, Slackware & Gentoo, is that they are 1686 optimized binary-based distros (though having good source package management features too) designed to be streamlined & fast. I’d guess that there may not be much speed difference between Arch and some source-based distro like Gentoo, because the difference of being optimized for 1686 or, for e.g. Athlon XP, probably doesn’t make much difference in most cases. And source-based distros have their stability & other problems too.
It would be interesting to compare the real speed differencies of Arch, Slackware, Debian etc. For example, how fast the distros boot (with about same amount of automated processes) to a login prompt?
There’s a whole lotta talk about the speed advantages of hardware optimization of software/distros all the time, but not many actual unbiased test results anywhere (well, maybe objective testing is difficult, because the distros are different, but a bit more reliable testing shouldn’t be impossible).
Some say that Slackware is one of the fastest distros to boot, but CRUX & Arch being 1686 optimized should be faster. Has anyone done some actual testing? So, is there really a significant difference in speed, and if, how much, between e.g. Slackware vs. Arch, or Debian vs. Arch, or Mandrake vs. Arch etc.?
“1686 optimized”
meant “i686 optimized” of course… (how can I make the same typo 3 times…?)
Foreign language support, particularly cjk, is not a strength of Arch.
You’ve tried it? How easy it is to configure Arch for Japanese input and how well does it work? I’m asking this as a would-be Slackware user who seems to be hated by Canna (I’ve read everything I can find about installing & configuring it for Slackware, but I’ve never got it to work. A shame, since otherwise Slackware would suit my needs).
I use MiniDVBLinux Distribution myself ( http://www.activy300.1xu.de/ ). It was a bit hard to get it to work, because the documentation was in German and my DVB-card fails on SVideo under Linux). I instantly fell in love with the distro and VDR though.
I bought my DVB-card here btw: http://www.usa-x.org
>(how can I make the same typo 3 times…?
It must be a Freudian slip and you were probably remembering all the things that happened back in 1686.
Don’t ask me what happened that year though.
I have 5 distros loaded on hda. The fastest to boot is Plamo. The slowest is Redhat. Debian and Slack are about the same. All are loading the same daemons during the init process except Plamo, which is loading canna. Gentoo is 2nd fastest. Arch was about the same speed as Gentoo, 2nd fastest.
Loading kde, gentoo is the hands down winner. Starting mozilla goes to debian with gentoo the slowest. xfce4 starts fast on all. No noticeable difference among the distros starting gnome.
Not very scientific. Just my observations from daily use.
If you want Japanese support on Arch you will have to compile the packages yourself and edit all the profiles by hand. Same with slack but I am trying to cheat a bit. Plamo is a Japanese distro based on Slack 8.1. I have deleted the Arch partition and installed Plamo. I am slowly moving some of the Plamo packages over to my slack partition. I think I got the printing solved but have a ways to go with the inputting. Slack keeps breaking so I do a re-install and start over.
A few months ago I was a Slackware Junkie. I loved it, and laughed at those who used ‘more automatic’ distributions (ok, I didn’t actually laugh).
(First – sorry to post anonymously but I don’t read this site that often and don’t feel like creating an account right now.)
OK – you said you didn’t actually laugh. But the sentiment is there anyway.
What is it with this Holier than thou attitude with Linux? That one distribution is “better” than another. That a person is somehow less “l33t” if they choose to use a distribution that they find easier to use.
It’s so hypocritical. You think Slackware makes you more “l33t” than someone who uses RedHat? Well guess what – I could just as easily say that using any distribution at all is the cowards way out. Why not make your own distribution? Or are you not “l33t” enough for the challenge?
Get off yourself dude. It’s just an Operating System. Don’t demoralize people with your snide comments just because you are more interested in the inner workings of the O/S than they are. A lot of people couldn’t care less about the Operating System itself. They just want to use their programs. It doensn’t make them less of a human just because they choose to invest their time learning law, medicine, carpentry, etc… whereas you choose to geek out.
Lay off the hypocracy. Please.
“What is it with this Holier than thou attitude with Linux?”
I don’t think this has anything to do with Linux specificaly.
“Lay off the hypocracy. Please.”
This is no hypocracy. People always want to be better than other people. “My house is bigger than your house”, “my car was more expensive than your car”, “my girl friend has more sex than your girl friend”, “my job is cooler than your job”, “my dad is stronger than your dad” … it’s an age-old pattern. The “my os is better than your os” matches perfectly.
People always want to be better than other people.
True. But don’t you find it disconcerting that with Linux specifically, it never ends?
“Hey dude – install Linux. Windows sucks.”
Time passes
“No man. RedHat sucks. Install Slackware.”
Time passes
“Doh. Don’t use KDE. It sucks. Use Blackbox.”
Time passes
“Don’t use Mozilla man. It’s bloatware. Use Lynx.”
Repeat forever…
Yet these same people drive cars they didn’t build, wear clothes they didn’t fabricate, eat food they didn’t grow, live in houses they didn’t construct, etc… That’s the hypocracy of it. If they are so hell bent on being pure and l33t, then why is there a different set of rules for other aspects of their lives?
You see, some of us actually want to use our computers for real work and not be chastised for wanting it to be relatively intuitive. If that means it takes 3 more seconds to boot, so be it.
How many times did you say “Maybe arch does that…I dont know”.
If you read the review, you would I see I answered that.
Arch has a PKGBUILD (similar to an ebuild) for every package in the repositories. You can easily rebuild packages for customization. I even gave an example of that in the review.
And on the “hypocrite” comments, yes, I was wrong. I guess I should have been more clear. I was trying to explain that I use to think Dependancy-checking caused more problems than it’s worth (due to Debian issues), but now that I found Arch, I love that feature.
Also, like I said, I didn’t actually laugh. I never made any big deal about it. I maybe contempated it a total of 20 minutes.
It’s pretty easy to do a security endrun around building with PKGBUILD files. Just change the source url to get the ‘pristine’ sources to an alternate url which gets tainted sources.
The Arch Linux folk are great. I worked with them shortly doing GNOME packaging, and was very pleased with the experience. Pity about my lack of time, or I’d probably still be working with them.
Arch may not be the OS you give to your grandma, but it’s definitely a great OS for the experienced Linux hacker. ^,^
Hey, just because you’re not paranoid doesn’t mean to say they’re not out there to get you. 😉
Arch does Japanese. See here:
http://home.nyc.rr.com/computertaijutsu/jpninpt.html
“Just change the source url to get the ‘pristine’ sources to an alternate url which gets tainted sources.”
Yes that true. But that would only occur if you don’t take the time to read the PKGBUILD file. As stated before it’s very easy to read. It will be very obivous to anyone who reads the PKGBUILD file that ftp:\ftp.someprogram.comprogram.exe is replaced with http:\hacker.malware.com rojan.exe.
Arch may not be the OS you give to your grandma, but it’s definitely a great OS for the experienced Linux hacker. ^,^
Arch is not an OS at all. It’s based on one. I’m sure you knew that, but it just irks me.
First of all, vera and ms core fonts are both available in debian. Apt-get install msttcorefonts ttf-bitstream-vera should do the trick (for unstable).
Also, it would have helped had the author actually mentioned what was wrong with apt. In my experience it smoothly and easily upgrades and installs just about anything. And it’s simple to recompile debian packages specifically for your system (though technicallyn that has little to do with apt).
If this arch linux is better than debian, it should have been mentioned why exactly. Saying ‘it doesn’t suck’ is not exactly something that’ll get me to switch, because in my experience debian doesn’t suck either.