As the dust from battle settled...one survivor remained

aikidoist72 · 2005-04-15 05:17:23

His name was Arch!!!

I offer a mini review of Archlinux from a new users perspective. After reading many posts on the Arch forums, and several reviews from other websites, I am aware of the strong feelings and loyalties people have about thier distro's. My intention is not to initiate a flame session or create a lively debate about personal philosophies regarding linux/unix practises, but simply to offer a personal review.

I do this in the hope, that this may help other linux users out there, who are looking for a distro that suits their needs.

First my distro journey.

First ever - Redhat
Second - Mandrake 9.1
Third - Libranet
Fourth - Debian
Fifth - Mepis3.3
Sixth - Kubuntu
Last - Arch

Have installed for interest sake - Zenlinux, Mandrake10.1, Bonzai
Interested in - Slackware, BSD

Installation :- This indeed was a large shock for me. I do not like the Mandrake "4 click" solution or indeed the Mepis "install to hardrive" setup. I do appreciate the debian installer due to its configurability and flexibility (and maybe I got spoiled in the process), but this part of Arch was a disappointment for me. For my first attempt I used several existing ext3 partitions from a previous Debian install on 20Gig. I could not seem to preserve my home drive data without mounting issues latter. That is not to say that it can not be done, but the 0.7 Wombat version did not seem to like mounting without formatting the partition. My solution was to backup my docs, perform a complete repartition and format of the drive and then incorporate what was needed after install. IMHO, for a newbie to Arch, this might be the extent of their experience.

The next attempt was a complete fresh install and the results were excellent, but I missed a crucial factor that /opt was not /var/opt and filled my 1 Gig / drive as soon as I attempted to install kde and openoffice.org. The third attempt I had completed the entire install in 35 minutes because I had backed up the pacman cache so no downloading was nessecary.

System configuration :- Coming from Debian, this part for me was rather exciting. Instead of just answering 'Yes' or 'No' without really knowing what was going on in the background or trying to find config files later to customise, this forces you to learn about your system and understand the configuratons required for your system to operate. Also, you control what goes in there, and learn where files are for later access.This step was suprisingly easier than I thought, and I would love to see this remain a part of the installer in the future. If preconfiguration becomes fashion with Arch - have an expert feature that preserves this area. Although some may not like this aspect of Arch, and wish for more automation and preconfigured files, the question you need to ask is "When are you going to learn how to optimise your linux box?" If you need a quick solution to what modules to load, grab a live cd and do a 'lsmod' at the CLI, and print!!!!

Pacman :- What more can I say? Just like the game - simple easy and fun. apt-get vs pacman - very tough! Synaptic vs pacman - sorry CLI lovers, I choose GUI for this one. The main reason for this is the sheer size of the *.deb caches. For Sarge there is just over 16,000 packages. With descriptions for each package, I found out more about linux packages than anywhere else by using Synaptic. If Arch caches bloat out to a similar size of Debians, I would be programming a GUI myself - and this is not a pretty sight seeing as my last attempt was pascal some....years ago!!! Wow, I feel old now!!

Xserver :- I have a Nvidia Geforce mx440 video card and dreaded the Nvidia install. With Debian I ended up compiling my own 2.6.10 kernel purely to avoid all the problems I had installing the Nvidia driver. This was by far the most painless Nvidia install of all the distro I have tried - including Mepis. Well done Arch-ers, you won huge brownie points here!!!!!

I used to think that WIKI was like some sort of tropical disease to avoid at all costs. When I was a complete noob to linux, I couldn't even understand the basics of what most distro WIKI pages raved on about. After reading through Archlinux website, I am amazed at the simplicity and logical format that this site has to offer. I am quite sure with an easier installer, Archlinux would become a competitor in the desktop market as the instructions to get Arch up and running are far superior to others I have read - including Ubuntu's.

From "What is Archlinux?" and "Installation guide" to friendly forums, I found out how to install Archlinux from beginning to end in less that 20 minutes. I commend everyone for there contributions. Well done.

So here is my entire installation procedure.

1. Installation with guide printout in hand
login: root
passwd

pacman -Sy xorg
pacman -S qt
pacman -S kde
pacman -S Nvidia hwd
hwd -xa

** a quick tweak of inittab init:5: and default to kdm**
** tune up xorg.config and rc.config **

reboot or startx!!

Arch runs almost twice as fast as the previous Debian Sarge installation. Now all I need to do is figure out what to do with all my spare time.

My final recommendations would be summed up by saying that I now run Archlinux as my main distro. I have never had a distro that I didn't have to tweak at some point, so why hide the config files away from the user, only to have them tweak something wrong or lose everything due to their own silly mistakes by touching files they think they know. Most people don't know how to recover from simple problems, but understanding a little about the config files helps greatly to understand and troubleshoot minor problems.

Yin and Yang exist in balance. In the world of linux, I believe Arch has found the right balance between flexibility, stability, adaptability and usability.

Cheers

dtw · 2005-04-15 05:56:40

Thanks - a bit of the tao te ching too?

phrakture · 2005-04-15 14:58:44

Well rock on! There's been so much positive stuff about Arch these days...
I also find it cool that alot more people are making use of hwd (way to go, rasat and z4ziggy!)

ozar · 2005-04-15 15:55:09

I still play in Debian on occasion too, but always come back to Arch. It took a few weeks for me to begin liking Pacman better than Apt-get, but now I see the advantages of Pacman.

Glad you took a liking to Arch... 8)

deft · 2005-04-16 23:38:26

Yes, some of the basic elements I like in Arch :

Small initial download.
Straightforward, quick install process.
Then tailor your own distribution from scratch using pacman, only incuding what you need.
Simple configuration via a small number of text files.
i686-optimised.
Pacman itself for straightforward updates, software installation etc.
Up to date packages.

T-Dawg · 2005-04-17 02:21:14

I think Arch's biggest advantage is it's KISS philosophy. Everything is kept simple, optimal, and easily configurable. It allows people to actually be productive with the fruits of linux and not waste time with the "What do I have to do to get this to work?" Because damnit, everything just works the the way it should have first time!

aikidoist72 · 2005-04-20 03:26:38

Thanks guys. I enjoyed reading your comments, and am glad to part of a great linux community like Archś. Hope you realise that I´m addicted now!!!! Hell - there wasn´t even a warning on the packet!!!

MasonM · 2005-04-20 22:16:33

Let's see, since 1995 I've used (in no particular order) Slack, Debian, Gentoo, SimplyMepis, Ubuntu (yuk), Libranet, SuSE, and Redhat. There are probably a few I've forgotten here.

I was pretty much a hard-core Slacker though, tinkering with other distros as a hobby. In another forum today, in a discussion about meta-distros Arch came up yet again and I realized that I had never given it a try.

Why not? As the important stuff is always backed up on a CD, I wiped out my drive and installed Arch. I have to say I'm glad I did. It's a pretty impressive distro. A great blend of Slack's simplicity and streamlined approach and Gentoo's optimized speed advantges.

So far I'm pretty impressed with Arch and I think I'll be keeping it a while.

Arch Linux

#1 2005-04-15 05:17:23

As the dust from battle settled...one survivor remained

#2 2005-04-15 05:56:40

Re: As the dust from battle settled...one survivor remained

#3 2005-04-15 14:58:44

Re: As the dust from battle settled...one survivor remained

#4 2005-04-15 15:55:09

Re: As the dust from battle settled...one survivor remained

#5 2005-04-16 23:38:26

Re: As the dust from battle settled...one survivor remained

#6 2005-04-17 02:21:14

Re: As the dust from battle settled...one survivor remained

#7 2005-04-20 03:26:38

Re: As the dust from battle settled...one survivor remained

#8 2005-04-20 22:16:33

Re: As the dust from battle settled...one survivor remained

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