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#1 2010-10-05 03:21:05

jwhendy
Member
Registered: 2010-04-01
Posts: 621

Pause and remember Arch is AWESOME!

=== Preamble ===
Sorry for a weird post, but I just had to do it. I've distro-bounced for the last probably 4 years now and finally settled on Arch by accident. I stated with [of course] Ubuntu just to try things out and then researched and researched and researched and settled on Zenwalk which I still think is the bomb. Then I got antsy again and looked at some others like Wolvix, straight Slackware, Salix OS when it came out via ex-Zenwalk developers, CrunchBang... who knows what else. I have the pile of CDs to show for it all.

In any case, I went for Arch because I needed a 64bit distro for work. I actually looked at Arch once before a couple years ago but made the mistake of thinking it was a source-based/focused distro (I now know it can be but does not need to be) and thus once I saw the install screen and mirror setup and a bunch of other crap I got panic-attacks and flashbacks from my stint with FreeBSD. Yes, that was a quasi-fun time and I *finally* got FreeBSD booting on a MacBook and felt amazing but realized that compiling all through the freaking day was sucky and the hardware support was really bad as well.


=== Meat ===
Ok, enough back story. Fast forward and I've been using Arch for perhaps 6 months now. I started this thread to remind everyone who takes it for granted that it is AMAZING. I cannot freaking believe the packages I find out about somewhere and then find in the AUR. I can't remember the last time (if ever) I didn't find what I wanted. Texlive-Localmanager makes things seamless for emacs work and keeping track of things in pacman/yaourt. Netpkg in Zenwalk was great, but I really missed the ability to find *true* orphans like with portmaster in FreeBSD. Arch can!

What brought this about? I was curious about how one might make a "live" version of their distro in a kind of "generic" way because I wanted to use something like "Arch Live" and didn't know if it existed. I want a live distro on CD or USB but love Arch and want to make it custom and not have to be stuck with some other distro's live version. So... I googled "how to make a live version of your distro" and was not satisfied.

For the sh*t of it I googled "arch linux live" and right there was a link to the Arch Wiki about making a live version of Arch. "Fu*#ing-A that's awesome," I exclaimed, completely alone in my kitchen and then decided to make this post. What in the world *doesn't* Arch have documented for the user?? Seriously, what an amazing distro and what a shame it took me so long to find it! It's literally got everything a geek like me wants: don't do what I don't tell you to do (because I want to feel like a power user), superb documentation (for all the times I realize I'm not actually a power user), an amazing forum, packages out the butt, and the best system for managing packages I've seen to-date (though to be fair I only know netpkg, variants of [g][sl]apt[-get], and brief encounters with openSuSe). Linux heaven.


=== Takeaway ===
Keep making Arch better! I try to give back. I update the wiki when I find broken links and just added a bunch of crap to the section on getting the Canon iP4300 printer to work. I could have just taken from the wiki, filled in some missing pieces, and dealt with the broken links... but I tried to document it for 2 reasons: 1) selfishness: next time I reinstall and have to do this, I'll remember those little tricks I figured out the last time! 2) Arch is awesome and one should contribute where possible!

Okay. Enough of a rant. I hope this helps the community to re-remember how sweet Arch really is!

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#2 2010-10-05 03:24:27

jasonwryan
Anarchist
From: .nz
Registered: 2009-05-09
Posts: 30,424
Website

Re: Pause and remember Arch is AWESOME!

Your enthusiasm is fantastic, however, there is already an official 'Arch is Awesome' thread:
https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=12926

as well as any number of others with a similar slant, ie: https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=105881

Closing


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