gentoo to arch - good to see

dtw · 2005-04-21 09:05:48

Some people might be aware that I have said some bad things in the past about a certain type of gentoo user. However, it is undeniable that gentoo offers something unique to the linux community and that, in the right hands, provide some powerful tools.

In this respect I would just like to say how proud I am that a few (more) gentoors are now trying out Arch - not that we need a seal of approval or anything but you know what i mean.

The Arch community could certainly benefit from insight from contributing members of the gentoo community and could learn from some of their stronger projects. in this respect it is almost a bit sad that distro monogamy is so strong

by the way, if this turns into (yet another arch vs ...) flame war, i'll be:
· extremely pissed
· deleting the thread

incinerator · 2005-04-21 10:06:41

my 2 cents,

I switched from Gentoo to Arch about 2 months ago. I am very satisfied with Arch and I currently have no plans to go back to Gentoo. The main reasons for this are:

1.) Maintenance effort: Arch reduces the time I have to spent to keep my system up-to-date by ca. 90%.
2.) Simplicity: According to my experience, more things in Arch work out-of-the-box. Also, the Arch wiki is better explaining how to handle things that don't.
3.) Less breakage: With Gentoo, something borks badly every now and then, that happens way less often with Arch (I only remember a minor udev screw-up).

Things that I miss in Arch are:
- etc-update, that tool rocks
- automatic determination of startup order for /etc/rc.d scripts. The user should not have to worry about what order he has to place the initscripts in rc.conf in.
- kernel-package (Debian, not Gentoo), though ABS works quite well for this.
- a nicer way to install nvidia's geforce-drivers. Having to stop X to update the drivers is inconvenient (not much, though). Debian/kernel-package is a good example on how to handle that, too.
- a small and nice MTA. Fortunately, we now have esmtp in AUR.

Cheers,
Dominik

phrakture · 2005-04-21 13:50:53

hey, gentoo was actually the distro I used right before Arch - yeah it was for about 2 weeks, but I still used it.... I respect the distro, but it just wasn't for me... I wasted too much time...

Meshuggin · 2005-04-21 16:03:45

phrakture wrote:

I respect the distro, but it just wasn't for me... I wasted too much time...

Good point, before I changed to Arch, I was wondering what distro is coming for me: Gentoo or Arch? (being a Debian user at that time); I installed Gentoo a couple of times last year but ... I don't have much time and installing a package take a lot of it, so Arch was my decision ... and a right decision

LB06 · 2005-04-21 16:12:39

Hmm, I actually did it the other way around. Meaning, from Arch to Gentoo, because I suddenly felt the need for an extremely fast distro with a lot of eye candy. And with Gentoo it was easier to implement speed tweaks like prelink and get stuff like gensplash to work. I liked it, until I wanted to switch from gnome to kde, and nowbody could tell me how to properly uninstall gnome (emerge wanted to reinstall all gnome packages when I did emerge -uDa). And so I got back to Arch (via Ubuntu, but I wanted up-to-date software).

MasonM · 2005-04-21 16:35:53

I find Arch to be a distro with all the simplicity and elegance of Slack with the speed on Gentoo.

I went from Slack to Gentoo. I really liked Gentoo but got tired of the compile times. Back to Slack, and then to Arch.

Seems to be the best of both worlds.

LB06 · 2005-04-21 18:45:34

It is not my intention to hijack this topic, but I'm wondering how do you see (Free)BSD in this picture? I mean, it's simple, it has a binary and source based package manager and it's fast. At least on the surface it does look a lot like Arch, even more than Gentoo does imho.

phrakture · 2005-04-21 19:13:47

I never got into {Free,Open,Net}BSD - I installed FreeBSD once, but it just never "struck" me the way Arch did. I had a similar reaction to slackware...
EDIT: s/stuck/struck

shadowhand · 2005-04-21 19:21:06

phrakture wrote:

hey, gentoo was actually the distro I used right before Arch - yeah it was for about 2 weeks, but I still used it.... I respect the distro, but it just wasn't for me... I wasted too much time...

Sounds like my experience with Gentoo.

T-Dawg · 2005-04-21 20:17:30

I used gentoo for about a week. I had fun with it but I soon realized I was spending way too much time configuring and building to be a practical os for me. So I decided I wanted something that still offered user customization without going overboard with so much of it, and something that I could get up-to-date prebuilt packages with a simple command. Arch fit the bill perfectly for me. I do miss things like etc-update, and their more abundant selection of packages. On the other hand makepkg works just fine for building my own that's not in the repos. Arch is much simpler than gentoo in every respect. I believe this is what makes this distro excel the way it does...less complication, less problems.
I welcome our former gentoo user's, and their ideas and support in improving Arch.

MasonM · 2005-04-21 22:04:17

how do you see (Free)BSD in this picture?

If hardware support evolves more it wouldn't be bad. Last time I tried FreeBSD it wouldn't support half my hardware, and from what I've read on their HCL, it still isn't much better.

Kern · 2005-04-21 22:18:24

Tried Gentoo back at rc1.2 ish.
Problems with me being too inept to run a "needs configuring" distro and SCSI Cd / IDE drive compatibility probs prevented things going further, altho it looked a superb distro. back to Redhat/Fedora.

Tried Vidalinux, recently, so things worked out the box, nice, clean , fast, good looking .... but oh! the compile times.
Much as i like tweaking, it was all too much.

Before i got any further i'd found Arch, which addressed all the qualities i sought, but without the longish compile times.

Its nice to view others posts on this issue, as i havent got the time or inclination to (try) installing Gentoo again.

Big respect to Dibble for starting a thread, on this topic, as i must admit having recently turned Distro monogomous, i really hate, with a vengeance, posts that involve "Arch is OK but ... < +gentoo promo>". This in turn blinds me to any positives about it that may follow the original statement. Thats my loss unfortunately.

uuuuh, im not sure whether to be proud ive become Distro monogomous, as before i suppose i was kind of a Distro whore ! The Wife wore a Redhat, the Mistresses were many.

/me wanders off to open another tinnie and lament his lack of mistresses.

pwe · 2005-04-21 22:31:19

now im using arch and gentoo at the same time. why gentoo? because is 64bit, arch - NO :cry:
short answer: arch simplicity is the best!

ps gentoo boots 30sec, Arch 18sec this is funny

jerem · 2005-04-21 22:38:30

Yes but Gentoo has a more complicated boot sequence, with heavy service dependencies handling and calculation.

pwe · 2005-04-21 22:46:28

its good? You (everyone) need it?

deft · 2005-04-22 06:49:12

Yes, one of the reasons that I prefer Arch to Gentoo is because of the Gentoo "time issue", and of course the many Arch positives - similar to what Dibble's alluding to, if you've got a specific requirement from a distro, and it can only really be found with Gentoo, then that's fine - however, many users will no doubt find sufficient simplicity and flexibility in Arch without the need to resort to Gentoo and it's compile times.

luisfelipe · 2005-04-22 07:17:31

Well, I recently moved from arch to gentoo, so let me just post my opinion.
Configuring gentoo does take a lot more time than arch, but for me that's no real problem, I mostly do that away from home through ssh.
I was already compiling lots of stuff from source in arch (srcpac is really good).
USE flags rock, and gentoo has alot more packages than arch. This may not make a huge difference to the majority of the users here, but after having to make 8 PKGBUILDs just to install lxdvdrip on my system, I got to say that it helps alot to have a greater userbase.
I still love arch (we still use it on our server), and I think things are going to improve fast with the new AUR release.

sweiss · 2005-04-22 09:58:14

I used Gentoo for about a week. Didn't like it from the technical side. Another thing I didn't like was this sort of arrogance it had, calling itself a metadistribution and all that.

Anyway, the way I see it, Gentoo is Gentoo, Arch is Arch. Arch is not a simpler Gentoo, maybe it's simpler *than* Gentoo. Arch is mature enough to stand on its own without being constantly compared to others, because it is like no other.

If you insist on comparing I'd say Arch is a simpler Slackware with more advanced package management. But still, Arch is Arch.

luisfelipe · 2005-04-22 18:31:28

I know that. Arch's simplicity is beautiful.
pacman is a great app (and now with ILoveCandy it's even better),
and if you master it, together with makepkg, then you know almost
everything you need to know to fully use your system. Instead of
having to use 20 different scripts

nuopus · 2005-04-25 21:04:05

My Linux order goes like this:

Slackware
Debian
Redhat
SuSE
Gentoo
Fedora
Gentoo
Ubuntu
Gentoo
Fedora
Gentoo
Ubuntu
Gentoo
Debian
Gentoo
Debian
Gentoo
Arch!

The distro I have always seemed to go back to has always been Gentoo except for my start in Linux a long time ago. Each switch from Gentoo has always been because of the whole management thing with compiling. So I venture back out to a new distro only to be disgusted and come crying back to the power of portage.

Now, there has no been running back to portage .... mainly because of ABS and the ease of creating PKGBUILDs. God bless Arch Linux ... and God bless its users! Cheers! ;-)

nuopus · 2005-04-25 21:05:38

luisfelipe wrote:

I know that. Arch's simplicity is beautiful.
pacman is a great app (and now with ILoveCandy it's even better),
and if you master it, together with makepkg, then you know almost
everything you need to know to fully use your system. Instead of
having to use 20 different scripts

What is ILoveCandy?

cactus · 2005-04-25 21:21:04

A flag in /etc/pacman.conf that makes the little pacman like ascii char chomp the status bar when downloading. It is kinda cute.

Just put it under the [options] section..

[options]
ILoveCandy

phrakture · 2005-04-25 21:22:23

Add it to your pacman.conf - In the section with "IgnorePkg" and stuff.... then do a "pacman -Syu" - you'll see

T-Dawg · 2005-04-25 21:48:02

Well hotdog! Isn't that some fancy schmanchie $#I*! I'm completely dazeled!
Thanks cactus, being able to replace pound signs with a yellow astericks eating pacman has officially made my day.
*bows to cactus*

phrakture · 2005-04-25 21:52:20

Penguin wrote:

Well hotdog! Isn't that some fancy schmanchie $#I*!

It's spelled schmancy! Heh

Yeah, Judd added "ILikeCandy" due to someone's patch (can't recall) - it was a Christmas present to all of us 8)

Arch Linux

#1 2005-04-21 09:05:48

gentoo to arch - good to see

#2 2005-04-21 10:06:41

Re: gentoo to arch - good to see

#3 2005-04-21 13:50:53

Re: gentoo to arch - good to see

#4 2005-04-21 16:03:45

Re: gentoo to arch - good to see

#5 2005-04-21 16:12:39

Re: gentoo to arch - good to see

#6 2005-04-21 16:35:53

Re: gentoo to arch - good to see

#7 2005-04-21 18:45:34

Re: gentoo to arch - good to see

#8 2005-04-21 19:13:47

Re: gentoo to arch - good to see

#9 2005-04-21 19:21:06

Re: gentoo to arch - good to see

#10 2005-04-21 20:17:30

Re: gentoo to arch - good to see

#11 2005-04-21 22:04:17

Re: gentoo to arch - good to see

#12 2005-04-21 22:18:24

Re: gentoo to arch - good to see

#13 2005-04-21 22:31:19

Re: gentoo to arch - good to see

#14 2005-04-21 22:38:30

Re: gentoo to arch - good to see

#15 2005-04-21 22:46:28

Re: gentoo to arch - good to see

#16 2005-04-22 06:49:12

Re: gentoo to arch - good to see

#17 2005-04-22 07:17:31

Re: gentoo to arch - good to see

#18 2005-04-22 09:58:14

Re: gentoo to arch - good to see

#19 2005-04-22 18:31:28

Re: gentoo to arch - good to see

#20 2005-04-25 21:04:05

Re: gentoo to arch - good to see

#21 2005-04-25 21:05:38

Re: gentoo to arch - good to see

#22 2005-04-25 21:21:04

Re: gentoo to arch - good to see

#23 2005-04-25 21:22:23

Re: gentoo to arch - good to see

#24 2005-04-25 21:48:02

Re: gentoo to arch - good to see

#25 2005-04-25 21:52:20

Re: gentoo to arch - good to see

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