Disadvantage of using Arch Linux?

Cows · 2010-08-23 04:38:16

Xyne wrote:

this

LMFAO, dude.. I believed the entire thing until you said Allan broke everything hahaha, nice story man. I tweeted that out.

Allan · 2010-08-23 05:04:42

Acecero wrote:

splittercode wrote:
Allan wrote:
You would hope a lesson would be learnt...
By who? It was easy to remedy with some ignorePkg'ing, so there wasn't really any lesson to be learned on my end. I'm just curious.
I am assuming Allan was referring to the people who maintain the GHC updates.

Correct.

Ari'osika · 2010-08-23 06:14:33

snyda wrote:

I've fallen into that trap more than once. I had an issue with connecting to wifi, but for some reason with GDM it worked. So, just install GDM and move on, right? No, I had to spend a whole day trying to figure out exactly why my wireless wouldn't work without it. A great learning exercise, for sure, but I did lose a whole day of working (or fishing) because of it. That and fighting back the urge to fire up VirtualBox and set up LFS..

Hahaha, well, my problem goes a bit deeper;
* I don't like pacman, not because it doesn't work but because I don't HOW it works.
* I've never like the whole *nix file-system layout.

My solutions;
* Once I get my hands on pacman's source code, coding it into something familiar would satisfy my power-user needs (for the time being).
* Symlinks anyone?

BTW; Another disadvantage of using Arch; having to explain what Arch is as a distro and the whole KISS philosophy. In my experience the only other people to know of Arch and its philosophy are Gentoo users, while the rest are all Red-Hat users, (oddly).

CoochKook · 2010-08-24 17:51:27

So far, the only disadvantage to Arch for me is having to install the developer tools just to compile the AUR/Ubuntu versions of fontconfig, freetype, libxft, and cairo, so that I can get nice looking fonts. Other than that, I am really enjoying Arch so far.

kcirick · 2010-08-24 18:12:37

Installing developer tools is the first thing I install on my system regardless of the distribution I use. Being able to compile applications from the source is the big advantage of *nix systems, is it not?

drcouzelis · 2010-08-24 18:42:02

Ari'osika wrote:

* I don't like pacman, not because it doesn't work but because I don't HOW it works.
* I've never like the whole *nix file-system layout.
* Once I get my hands on pacman's source code, coding it into something familiar would satisfy my power-user needs (for the time being).
* Symlinks anyone?

It certainly is easy enough to get the source code for pacman. Is that a serious project you are thinking of starting? Would you make pacman into something that is similar to another application that already exists? Or, are you thinking of something new?

I also dislike the Unix file system layout. That's one of the reasons I like Haiku. And, of course, you must have already heard of or tried Gobo Linux.

CoochKook · 2010-08-24 20:49:55

drcouzelis wrote:

Ari'osika wrote:
* I don't like pacman, not because it doesn't work but because I don't HOW it works.
* I've never like the whole *nix file-system layout.
* Once I get my hands on pacman's source code, coding it into something familiar would satisfy my power-user needs (for the time being).
* Symlinks anyone?
It certainly is easy enough to get the source code for pacman. Is that a serious project you are thinking of starting? Would you make pacman into something that is similar to another application that already exists? Or, are you thinking of something new?
I also dislike the Unix file system layout. That's one of the reasons I like Haiku. And, of course, you must have already heard of or tried Gobo Linux.

I am a HUGE fan of BeOS, so of course I like Haiku, but right now it doesn't work for me because it can't work with my wifi configuration at home. Maybe one day I will be able to switch to it, but for right now, Arch (on my desktop) and Ubuntu (on my netbook) are working out fine.

As far as the layout of the filesystem, I have no problem with it, although I am not a fan of Xorg not having its own directory inside of /usr. I also liked how NetBSD did things, by keeping all application files in /usr/local, but it is not too big of a deal, as Pacman seems to go a great job of keeping track of files.

kpbotbot · 2010-08-25 01:25:59

Good:

- More control.
- Users learn stuff [because I truly believe that making everything in life easy dumbs people down]
- Most likely turns out fast, because the user decides whether he'd bloat the installation or not.
- Unique! Because it's a world of Ubuntu/<InsertTop1st-5thDistroHere> users. By the way, Arch is currently top 9.
- The name rocks. I don't like OSs named badly
- The logo rocks.
- The wiki has 99% of the stuff you need.
- Rolling release. I wouldn't need to reinstall once there's a new release.

Bad:

- Takes considerable time to configure, especially if you're "new" to the heart of Linux (like me)
- Stuff that involves problems with new software. Not really a major annoyance, and I believe its a part of learning.

In case you'd ask, I switched to Arch so I could learn I plan to install Gentoo, but only on a VM anytime soon.

kcirick · 2010-08-25 02:41:51

kpbotbot wrote:

Good:
- More control.
- Users learn stuff [because I truly believe that making everything in life easy dumbs people down]
- Most likely turns out fast, because the user decides whether he'd bloat the installation or not.
- Unique! Because it's a world of Ubuntu/<InsertTop1st-5thDistroHere> users. By the way, Arch is currently top 9.
- The name rocks. I don't like OSs named badly
- The logo rocks.
- The wiki has 99% of the stuff you need.
- Rolling release. I wouldn't need to reinstall once there's a new release.

I'd say the wiki has 90% of the stuff you need. Of the other 10%, about 5% you can easy get from googling, and the other 5% is problem specific to your computer because it's not common or it's uber-old.

kpbotbot wrote:

Bad:
- Takes considerable time to configure, especially if you're "new" to the heart of Linux (like me)
- Stuff that involves problems with new software. Not really a major annoyance, and I believe its a part of learning.

In case you'd ask, I switched to Arch so I could learn I plan to install Gentoo, but only on a VM anytime soon.

Problems with new software specific to Arch? What, for example? If you compile from the source, it should have the same problem under any other distros, no?

Also, I don't think you'll learn anything by installing Gentoo on VM... Most of the difficult steps comes from knowing your hardware, and VM is, well, virtual. Am I mistaken?

marfig · 2010-08-25 02:57:39

Also, I don't think you'll learn anything by installing Gentoo on VM... Most of the difficult steps comes from knowing your hardware, and VM is, well, virtual. Am I mistaken?

Oh! A VM comes with its own baggage of challenges. Make no mistake!
For one, a VM emulates hardware. "Virtual" is only a catchphrase. Don't hold on to it. A VM is hardware. And many things can and go awry in a second on a VM that you would never expect elsewhere.

kcirick · 2010-08-25 03:13:41

marfig wrote:

Also, I don't think you'll learn anything by installing Gentoo on VM... Most of the difficult steps comes from knowing your hardware, and VM is, well, virtual. Am I mistaken?
Oh! A VM comes with its own baggage of challenges. Make no mistake!
For one, a VM emulates hardware. "Virtual" is only a catchphrase. Don't hold on to it. A VM is hardware. And many things can and go awry in a second on a VM that you would never expect elsewhere.

Yes, I understand VM has its own challenges. What I was getting at was that because one successfully installed Gentoo on VM machine doesn't mean actually installing it onto the system is going to be the same (for example, vmware uses xf86-video-vmware). You will be able to learn the installation process and the feel by installing on VM machine, but it will be completely different.

I have Arch installed on VMWare on Macbook. Once OSX goes through another major change, I won't bother to pay (I paid $100 for Snow Leopard upgrade) and I'll install Arch right on it.

Last edited by kcirick (2010-08-25 03:15:16)

Ari'osika · 2010-08-25 04:44:19

drcouzelis wrote:

It certainly is easy enough to get the source code for pacman. Is that a serious project you are thinking of starting? Would you make pacman into something that is similar to another application that already exists? Or, are you thinking of something new?

Depends on what you mean by "new", all I'm thinking about doing is coding pacman into another completely different language (one that I can at least understand), and use that new variant. This obviously will give me the ability to extend upon it's existing functionalities as well as break my system as I see fit

As for the pacman source code? From where? I've been looking for a page or link and have yet to find it. (Possibly another disadvantage of using Arch?? Being unable to find things??).

If all goes well and presuming that I can even translate pacman from (C)? to something like Perl; I may even release it as one of my few contributions to the Arch community.

drcouzelis wrote:

I also dislike the Unix file system layout. That's one of the reasons I like Haiku. And, of course, you must have already heard of or tried Gobo Linux.

Sure have, but it looks like I'm gonna have to take a gander at Haiku. (I never even knew that Haiku used an alternative hierarchy).

ngoonee · 2010-08-25 05:58:03

Ari'osika wrote:

As for the pacman source code? From where? I've been looking for a page or link and have yet to find it. (Possibly another disadvantage of using Arch?? Being unable to find things??).

Did you even try to get the PKGBUILD and read the URL pointing to the source?

Ari'osika · 2010-08-25 07:14:55

ngoonee wrote:

Did you even try to get the PKGBUILD and read the URL pointing to the source?

Just did, and apparently and without realizing it I guess my last ABS update, which was a while ago, got corrupted or interrupted and left out some PKGBUILD's... Interesting..

(Thanks for the tip anyways).

kpbotbot · 2010-08-25 13:39:34

kcirick wrote:

Yes, I understand VM has its own challenges. What I was getting at was that because one successfully installed Gentoo on VM machine doesn't mean actually installing it onto the system is going to be the same (for example, vmware uses xf86-video-vmware). You will be able to learn the installation process and the feel by installing on VM machine, but it will be completely different.

I know. I feel exactly the same way when I installed Arch on a VM, and then on a real computer. Think of it as a training ground. It's just that I don't have a spare computer to tinker with. Besides, when I do something wrong, and I have to do something else ASAP, I wouldn't have anything to use. Just a safety precaution.

kcirick wrote:

Problems with new software specific to Arch? What, for example? If you compile from the source, it should have the same problem under any other distros, no?

No, i didn't say that they were specific to arch. What I meant with this is that most of the packages are bleeding-edge new. There might be a number of major changes that cannot be helped by googling alone since a problem MIGHT also be bleeding-edge new Things change, and not everything we google out apply for current problems that MAY arise It doesn't have to be specific to arch. It's just that some other distros prefer stability over extremely new packages. You get the point.

marfig wrote:

Oh! A VM comes with its own baggage of challenges. Make no mistake!
For one, a VM emulates hardware. "Virtual" is only a catchphrase. Don't hold on to it. A VM is hardware. And many things can and go awry in a second on a VM that you would never expect elsewhere.

And I still can't play with VirtualBox running XP

valium97582 · 2010-08-30 20:35:56

No disadvantages at all.

But I feel bad using a distro that does not use only FLOSS. But I can live with this (that is why I have a (not that great (nothing is that great after using Archlinux GNU (OMG, that sounds strange))) Fedora installation).

marfig · 2010-08-30 20:44:03

Should the forums implement parenthesis matching?

brisbin33 · 2010-08-30 20:59:38

heh, was that post in scheme or lisp?

on-topic: Arch requires thought and time. Some lack one, others both. I find value in the required expense.

KlavKalashj · 2010-08-30 21:47:18

The biggest 'bad' for me is that I get more picky about what I install. For example, I have a spotify free account, which doesn't (yet, I hope) work in the native spotify for Linux. But installing wine pulls in so many lib32-deps that I simply can't do it. I like it nice and clean, too many packages makes me feel that my installation is broken, or something.
From time to time, I bounce back to Ubuntu for a while, and there I just go to the software center and install wine, without caring what deps it will pull. A bit like using Windows. I always go back to Arch since I know deep down it's my distro of choice, but it's annoying that I want to install wine but... don't want to
Right now I have 643 packages, using Gnome. I should probably clean that up soon or I'll go mad.

archman-cro · 2010-08-31 05:23:59

KlavKalashj wrote:

The biggest 'bad' for me is that I get more picky about what I install. For example, I have a spotify free account, which doesn't (yet, I hope) work in the native spotify for Linux. But installing wine pulls in so many lib32-deps that I simply can't do it. I like it nice and clean, too many packages makes me feel that my installation is broken, or something.
From time to time, I bounce back to Ubuntu for a while, and there I just go to the software center and install wine, without caring what deps it will pull. A bit like using Windows. I always go back to Arch since I know deep down it's my distro of choice, but it's annoying that I want to install wine but... don't want to
Right now I have 643 packages, using Gnome. I should probably clean that up soon or I'll go mad.

Why don't you consider using a DEless setup, then? That way you'll have minimum bloat.
I feel the same way as you when installing apps, btw.

KlavKalashj · 2010-08-31 08:21:18

archman-cro wrote:

KlavKalashj wrote:
The biggest 'bad' for me is that I get more picky about what I install. For example, I have a spotify free account, which doesn't (yet, I hope) work in the native spotify for Linux. But installing wine pulls in so many lib32-deps that I simply can't do it. I like it nice and clean, too many packages makes me feel that my installation is broken, or something.
From time to time, I bounce back to Ubuntu for a while, and there I just go to the software center and install wine, without caring what deps it will pull. A bit like using Windows. I always go back to Arch since I know deep down it's my distro of choice, but it's annoying that I want to install wine but... don't want to
Right now I have 643 packages, using Gnome. I should probably clean that up soon or I'll go mad.
Why don't you consider using a DEless setup, then? That way you'll have minimum bloat.
I feel the same way as you when installing apps, btw.

I have been using standalone wm's in the past, and I don't really know why I'm not doing that now. All I really need my computer for is web browsing, IM and consuming media, so I could use just about anything. But I'm a bit lazy nowadays also. I probably will go Openbox again, but it'll take a while to gather strenght for the switch

medonja · 2010-08-31 09:38:23

I'm new to Arch and have virtually spent half of the previous day just to set things up. At first it seemed like the learning curve is steep, but I actually learned more in 1 day of Arch than in 2 months of Ubuntu. Here are my 2 cents:

Pros:
* Maybe the best wiki an OS has out there. Also the most up to date. Heck, even when I used Debian, I consulted the Arch wiki for help.
* Veeeeeeery knowledgable user group not saying: "Did you 'sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade' ?" as an answer to every question
* It's bleeding edge, but feels more stable than many new "stable" distros (granted, I use a rather minimal *box environment for now).
* Configs are so straight forward and not scattered across a gazillion of folders.
* All the extra control, like adding users to groups etc. just makes sense
* Maybe it's the bleeding edge kernel and drivers, but things like video playback, X in general, etc. just feel very snappy

Cons:
* As many of you stated, it's not a McDonald's distro -- things need to cook in Arch for a while. Granted, it's still way more expedient than Gentoo, let alone LFS
* Well, I could just list the obvious n00b gotchas here -- the repos look rather odd to me -- I'm not used to random errors of missing deps (mostly, I used only stable or Debian Testing-like distros). I also managed to mess up grub due to a previous instance of grub2 on my hd. All things which, thanks to the uber documentation, were quickly fixed.

kheophex · 2010-09-01 08:57:58

The only bad thing is that you become spoiled to use anything else as presumably you've configured ArchLinux just the way you wanted it to.

kpbotbot · 2010-09-01 13:40:12

@medonja - Is that Magus from Chrono Trigger?

anonymous_user · 2010-09-03 03:21:35

Arch Linux also spoils you because it makes other distros and their repos feel old.

"Damn the repo only has Program version 3.1. Wheres 3.4?"

Arch Linux

#51 2010-08-23 04:38:16

Re: Disadvantage of using Arch Linux?

#52 2010-08-23 05:04:42

Re: Disadvantage of using Arch Linux?

#53 2010-08-23 06:14:33

Re: Disadvantage of using Arch Linux?

#54 2010-08-24 17:51:27

Re: Disadvantage of using Arch Linux?

#55 2010-08-24 18:12:37

Re: Disadvantage of using Arch Linux?

#56 2010-08-24 18:42:02

Re: Disadvantage of using Arch Linux?

#57 2010-08-24 20:49:55

Re: Disadvantage of using Arch Linux?

#58 2010-08-25 01:25:59

Re: Disadvantage of using Arch Linux?

#59 2010-08-25 02:41:51

Re: Disadvantage of using Arch Linux?

#60 2010-08-25 02:57:39

Re: Disadvantage of using Arch Linux?

#61 2010-08-25 03:13:41

Re: Disadvantage of using Arch Linux?

#62 2010-08-25 04:44:19

Re: Disadvantage of using Arch Linux?

#63 2010-08-25 05:58:03

Re: Disadvantage of using Arch Linux?

#64 2010-08-25 07:14:55

Re: Disadvantage of using Arch Linux?

#65 2010-08-25 13:39:34

Re: Disadvantage of using Arch Linux?

#66 2010-08-30 20:35:56

Re: Disadvantage of using Arch Linux?

#67 2010-08-30 20:44:03

Re: Disadvantage of using Arch Linux?

#68 2010-08-30 20:59:38

Re: Disadvantage of using Arch Linux?

#69 2010-08-30 21:47:18

Re: Disadvantage of using Arch Linux?

#70 2010-08-31 05:23:59

Re: Disadvantage of using Arch Linux?

#71 2010-08-31 08:21:18

Re: Disadvantage of using Arch Linux?

#72 2010-08-31 09:38:23

Re: Disadvantage of using Arch Linux?

#73 2010-09-01 08:57:58

Re: Disadvantage of using Arch Linux?

#74 2010-09-01 13:40:12

Re: Disadvantage of using Arch Linux?

#75 2010-09-03 03:21:35

Re: Disadvantage of using Arch Linux?

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