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I have been a UNIX system admin since 1987, and a Linux user since 1996. I have stuck mostly with SuSE, but I've tried all the majors. SuSE was nice because of the support for just about every piece of hardware, but lately my 2GHz 2GB laptop has been running out of steam; not quite enough CPU, not quite enough memory, a bit slow on networking, not doing 3D acceleration with my 945GM, and sound was getting to be a real problem. I went looking specifically for a performant but well-supported distro.
Congratulations, folks, this is it. I've got everything I wanted and more. It makes x64 SuSE 11.0 look slow, and it supports everything except my memory stick reader (it'll read MMC and SD but not memory sticks... YET. I may do something about that myself if I get around to it). I've got RDP access to all my Windows boxes, and VNC to all my Linux boxes. I can surf my file servers, join my Windows domain, use my wireless at full speed, and burn DVDs. It's got Compiz with ALL the options enabled. And NetworkManager finally works.
And the install to get all of this working took less than half a day (not counting getting hosed by a network script update).
It's not for newbs- but then again, what is... that's GOOD?
Once again, congratulations, this distro absolutely rox.
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The vanilla-ness and KISS of Slackware, except more cutting edge, nicer configs, and (IMO) the best package management available. Only thing I miss is probably USE flags from Gentoo, but I'll definitely give that up for Arch simplicity, more binary packages, vanilla-ness, and less elitism.
Simple isn't just good, it's the best.
Couldn't have said it better myself. ![]()
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Well, after getting my suspend to work today with Arch Linux, I have to say it is THE best distro (for me, of course) around. First, I was able to get my native resolution at boot (I have an Intel x3100 graphics card) using 915resolution (something I couldn't do on a distro like Ubuntu), and now I was able to get my suspend working due to the uswsusp package with an included demo patch (just put mine in and away I went). And to top it all off, creating packages for your favorite programs on Arch is very easy. Arch is just perfect (again, for me, so that I don't run into any future critics)! ![]()
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Ranguvar wrote:The vanilla-ness and KISS of Slackware, except more cutting edge, nicer configs, and (IMO) the best package management available. Only thing I miss is probably USE flags from Gentoo, but I'll definitely give that up for Arch simplicity, more binary packages, vanilla-ness, and less elitism.
Simple isn't just good, it's the best.
Couldn't have said it better myself.
I like this....
...carry on..
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I've been a full-time Linux user for almost 6 years now. Back in 2003 I was using Gentoo on my then-new Athlon-xp box. That same year, I came across an article or post where the writer praised Arch strongly. I'd never heard of it but was intrigued enough to make room for an Arch installation, and it's stayed ever since. By 2006 it was my main distro, although I've never stopped experimenting with others. For me, Arch's commitment to passing on the intent of upstream developers unadulterated to end users is key. Controlling my system the time-honoured way by editing simple text files feels right. Whenever I run something like Suse or Fedora (or Ubuntu, most of the time) I find myself losing patience quickly.
Arch's rolling release model does result in occasional breakage, but it occurs seldom and is easily fixed. These days I'm on Arch64 on an Intel quad-core, and everything Just Works - mostly better than any of the big distros' 64-bit versions.
More noteworthy strengths for Arch are pacman and the abs system, and how easy it is to create and modify PKGBUILDs in order to get customized versions of packages. And let's not forget AUR, the TU's who maintain it, and the Community repo. Together they provide Arch an extraordinary range of packages for a volunteer-maintained so-called "small" distribution.
In fact, you could say that Arch and the way it operates is a microcosm of everything that's right about open source - simple, open and on the leading edge.
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hello,
i have entered linux world with mandrake (mandriva now days) then switched to suse, opensuse, debian, slackware then i saw arch entering on distrowatch for the first time, well slackware was good enought but with times going on and life becoming complicated it helps on nothing passing hours looking for a missing dependecy for an out of list slackware packages policy.
pacman, abs, aur, rc files, kdemod = pure happiness !
archlinux is what a linux system should be !
archlinux + kdemod is what an operating system should be !
in fact, arch is on continuous evolution and things are always moving from good to better.
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Like many others here, I've done my fair share of distro hopping, some staying for a couple of months, others not even a couple of hours. My first foray into Linux, somewhere between 2003 and 2004, was Debian Woody. While not quite as hard as Gentoo, Debian is (was) not exactly the easiest distro to start out with... I spent days trying to get X up and running, booting back and forth between Debian and XP cos not even my network was working (and I hadn't heard of lynx yet) but eventually got it all up and running.
It didn't take long before I was using Debian for most of my PC needs, and soon the choice was made to get rid of the dual boot system and go 100% Linux, so a Debian reinstall followed.
By then I had also acquired a laptop (a Toshiba Portege 7200, P3 650 MHz with 320 MB RAM which simply choked on XP) on which I installed Xandros, which was quickly replaced by Yoper but lack of updates/development meant it was time for another distro hop. I attempted a HD install of Knoppix after being mightily impressed with its outstanding hardware detection - this is what Windows was meant to do, but never did! - as well as being Debian based (I had already learnt to love apt-get) but the installer wasn't that great at the time and the install failed (probably lack of Linux knowledge kept me from fixing it).
Then I heard rumours about a new distro on the block that everybody was talking about: Ubuntu. The fact that it was Debian based instantly appealed to me and it looked really polished so I installed it on both my desktop and my laptop and that was the start of a long term love affair with Ubuntu. Somewhere along the way my dislike of KDE turned into another love affair and Ubuntu made way for Kubuntu.
Having become a real distro hopper by then and wanting some exposure to other distros (read: non Debian derivatives), the laptop saw various incarnations of Mandrake/Mandriva, SimplyMepis (OK, Debian based), Fedora, PCLinuxOS, Linux Mint (fair enough, Ubuntu based), Dream Linux, SUSE/OpenSUSE (which, while really polished and well designed, ran like a dog on my geriatric Toshiba), Xubuntu, DSL, gOS (my first encounter with E17, wow!!) and yes I was even foolish enough to attempt to run Sabayon Linux on it, which worked well enough... as long as I didn't try to install software!
However, I just kept going back to Kubuntu as it was an up-to-date Debian and I just could not let go of the awesome apt-get (and later aptitude).
Always hungry for another distro to play with, I considered Slackware but was put off by the lack of proper dependency handling, then came across CRUX which looked really interesting but ultimately led me to discover Arch Linux.
I installed it on my laptop which was struggling with the bloat and treacle effect of OpenSUSE, and I could almost hear a sigh of relief from the poor machine when it first booted into Arch. This was, bar perhaps Yoper, by far the fastest distro I had come across.
Sadly the hard drive died a couple of months ago so I bought an Eee PC 901 in November. Although still a happy Kubuntu user, I opted for Mandriva 2009.0 because of their official out-of-the-box support for the Eee series and I needed something installed really quickly (which ruled out Arch) as I was going on holiday and I sure wasn't gonna stick with Xandros. As it turned out, the promise of out-of-the-box support wasn't quite true (yet) for the 901 model, but it ran well, looked really good and I was determined to this time stick with a non-Debian derivative so as to broaden my horizon.
But then I got annoyed by the numerous bugs in KDE4.1, and the wireless just refusing to associate with my WPA2 protected home network and one or two other places (although it worked fine pretty much everywhere else!!) so I started to look around for another Eee friendly distro and decided it was time to bring Arch back into the game.
My Eee PC is now running Arch Linux for the third day and it feels like it's on steroids, it's as if I have overclocked the CPU! Not only that, wifi at home now works fine. I have now spent a bit more time playing with Arch than I did on my old Toshiba, and I think I have found my new permanent distro! My longstanding love affair with Kubuntu is now reaching the final stages and I'm planning to replace it with Arch on my desktop in the next week or so. I still love apt (and always will) as it's simply one of the best package management systems around, but pacman seems to be at least on par and I'm currently being wowed by the holy trinity of pacman, yaourt and powerpill!
Nothing against Kubuntu, it has served me really well, but as far as I'm concerned Arch Linux is simply the best distro around, it's lean, it's fast, it's simple, so a big THANK YOU to the people behind this impressive distro!
Oh, and as for Debian, my first Linux love, I'm running Lenny on my two Linksys NSLU2s!! ![]()
(I guess that makes Debian my Linux mistress?)
Last edited by MrE (2009-01-14 04:37:14)
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I too was completely unaware of this dependance. In fact I was so sheltered that I'd actually started to -- wait -- for bug fixes and updates...on linux! It felt like I was back on Windows! Luckily I woke up and downloaded Arch, and I've never been happier.
P.S. ABS and AUR rock!
Haha, yes I so recognise that! ![]()
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Hey! Sorry for my bad english, but i would like to thanks to Archlinux.. I always has been afraid of linux at all, because i tried to install Ubuntu about a year ago, and it wasn't successful
.. Second attempt was about six mounth ago, and i tried allmost every basic distro: Ubuntu, Fedora, Debian, CentOs, Slackware, LinuxMint, Gentoo.. After some time, i stayed with Ubuntu, because ot its "polishness", BUT! I feel with that distro boringly, and found too much things that i wasn't needed (in default install).. Than i found Arch. It took to me about two weeks to
understand how to make things work, how to configure, and what a benifits of this distro.. I liked this community also, very helpful.. Thanks to all of you!!! Maintainers, comunity, all!!!
Last edited by Turgon (2009-01-14 09:23:02)
My life is my message.
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Hell yes, arch for the win.
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I've been using arch for a few months now. Like many others, I have gone through numerous other distros and never felt completely satisfied. Arch's philosophy and amazing community have kept me using Arch for longer than any other distro I have ever used. I love how you can customize everything to fit your needs perfectly. Additionally, Arch64 is the best 64 bit distro I have used yet. I just wanted to say that Arch rocks, and thanks for everyone who contributes.
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I love Arch!!!
my story seems a lil similar to a lot of others!
Started with a few live cd's, then installed OpenSUSE 9.2 then 10.2, it was too heavy, moved to ubuntu. hated all the gui configs and installation stuff! if something went wrong, there was a lot to fix! Went to zenwalk, liked it a lot, just wasn't quite refined enuf. tried pc-bsd, very very easy to use, in fact boring and too easy!! it was like being back on windows!!! did wot it did, and well enuf, but not very much else!!! then went back to kubuntu, for a week or so, then turned up here with arch!!!!!!!!!!! have been here for 18 months and no issues to complain about!!
arch works for me because it is so straight forward to achieve anything at all, and do it properly, with no gui's!! the wiki has all the answers, and if it doesnt, 99% of issus are solved by searching the forum!
I have recently been trying to put a small linux on my usb pen, but hate them all!!! they all rely to heavily on gui configs! its only 128meg, so options are limited, but tried puppy, dsl & feather! not achieved wot i wanted! when i get a spare moment, im going to play with arch, n try and get it on the pen!
thanks Arch team!
Arch Linux on 4 machines - all vnc'ed and samba'ed - Asus 1001px
- P4 2.8GHz, 1Gb ram, GeForce6200, 290Gb (media centre)(no keyboard or mouse)
- HP Pavilion G6 Dual core 2.2GHz, 4Gb ram, 750Gb
- Samsung Series 3, i5, 6g ram, 750gb
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Archlinux is on my radar for quite some time now (I also tried it some time ago, unfortunately I tried the 64bit version...). Until recently I didn't have the urge to reinstall, last week I switched all my computers to Archlinux and I'm much more satisfied with it than with any other distro I've ever tried.
I was searching for a clean and slick distribution which stays as close as possible to the vanilla sources. Second, I wanted a simple and understandable method for providing my own packages (if I ever need to). Last but not least, I want good binary packages with the possibility to compile them myself.
So thank you for this awesome distribution, I hope I can help out sometime too ![]()
Cheers!
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I'm glad to see that I'm not the only guy who want to say out loud how Archlinux makes him happy.
I've told few words on how I love Archlinux on the "Hi everyone" thread but I want to say it again. ![]()
In more than ten years of linux distros installation ( from redhat 6 to opensuse 9 going through ubuntu, gentoo, mandriva, knopix , ... ), I never was completely satisfied and allways fallback to windows at some point. ( yeah yeah shame on me
)
And one day, wanting to install a light distro on my laptop, I've tried archlinux. And you know what ? All I wanted to do and have was standing right there. Simplicity ( in the right way ), easy cutomization, easy rebuild of packages, easy building of own package. And fast, soooo fast.
One year later, my windows has been wiped out from my laptop, and archlinux is installed on my desktop too ( xfce on laptop, gnome on desktop ).
All is working great : my software raid, my bluetooth ( a2dp, sms and internet through my phone), display export, windows games etc, etc
I installed Archlinux under virtualbox too at work. I can't get enough ![]()
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Just to join the chorus here...
Debian and Arch battled for control of my home server box for awhile, but Arch finally prevailed.
I rried quite a few distros since my first attempts at running Linux during the last two years or so. Ubuntu bothered me for reasons I won't get into, and I ran with Fedora for awhile. I found OpenSUSE to be decent but not particularly compelling. Mint just had too much of an Ubuntu feel for my like. Debian bothers me for a few reasons I also won't get into.
I loved Slackware when I first installed it (ran 9 months straight on an old PIII box I had until a storm knocked out the power), and I still like Slack. But my main reason for not running Slack on my desktop is the lack of a native 64-bit compile. Running Slamd64 or Bluewhite just wouldn't be the same as an official 64-bit Slack.
Anywho, a few weeks ago, I set up Arch x86_64 on my main desktop after deciding that maintaining Windows for an ever-dwindling amount of gaming was moronic. It's been great. I'm running 32-bit WINE for my little gaming fix, and other than that I'm completely 64-bit (well, I do need to look at getting VMware set up in a 32-bit chroot for school lab purposes).
Arch is great. To each his own, but I've had fewer problems with Arch than any other distro.
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My road to Arch was fairly direct to be honest.
I hopped on Ubuntu at 7.04 and stuck with it through 8.04. I distro hopped the whole time, trying out the world of Linux. (Distrowatch quickly because the most used site in my bookmarks) I tried Sabayon, PCLinuxOS, OpenSuSe, Mint, DSL, Dream Linux, Puppy, Zenwalk, Debian, Fedora... I started to get more than a little bored with the 'beginner' distros, and wanted more of a challenge. I nearly went with Gentoo after trying out Slack for about 2 days, then remembered the positive buzz on the Ubuntu Forums about Arch, so I tried it.
Bang -Done
I get my fix of fiddling, and I am pretty confident that I can fix most issues that I come across on Arch, which is more than I can say for most distros. I like being able to scale back to console to do what I need, then if I want X.. it's there, too. I like being able to actually find and understand how to edit config FILES. GUI's are great for the little tweaks in the day to day stuff, like changing resolutions on the fly, but the more permanent default stuff, I prefer to have access to the files.
I love the documentation. The wiki is well laid out, contains more information, and is better written than any other resource I have found. Pacman is pretty cool, quick, and plays well with others, (a la yaourt and powerpill) with makes it fairly slick.
But most of all, I like that Arch does not nail you down with the dev's choices. If I want to make my arch strictly console, it's easily done. If I want to use e17, Openbox, and Compiz (stand alone) All I have to do is fiddle with pacman for a little bit, then there they are. It Arch needs to be a server, I can ignore updates. If I need a desktop, it rolls right on!
I love Arch. It is manageable, it doesn't manage me, and it is as flexible as Linux, which is to say more than *any* other OS currently in the offering.
Yes, one of these days I will try to install Arch on a kerosene-power lawnmower, just because I want to show that it can be done! (Might make a good project for making an automated lawnmower, like a roomba... hmmm.... Geek+Lazy=Automation)
I keep getting distracted from my webserver project...
huh? oooh... shiny!
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I used Kubuntu since 6,04... and now they released 8.04/8.10
I found Arch from using FaunOS... a defunct live distro (site is still up but few updates) and someone there recommended Chakra (live-kdemods)
It is now on all 3 of my computers and is my default OS.
Kubuntu is still like a parent to me. I don't live there anymore, I have a great deal of respect for it and visit often with great love, but Arch is where I live now:-) It is just faster and seems to be what works for me right now.
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It's my second Linux distro, first was Ubuntu, and I didn't enjoy it for the week I used it, I was going to be distro-seeking, but I finally met Arch, I like all of it, all. But as a newbie, everyone has problems, and thanks to the community they can be solved.
Arch64
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Ubuntu is designed to work with more hardware I think and is better at "out of the box." I don't really like the look of gnome so I always used Kubuntu. Arch seems to be more attuned to "pushing it" with getting the best performance. I also find that the forum users agree with this and are more helpful in advising. I find that Ubuntu is more like, "be safe." I respect that but have grown beyond it.
What really pushed me to switch is that the latest release of Ubuntu had a quirky video driver for Intel (at least on my GMA 915). I eventually resolved it in xorg, but it was also really slow using desktop effects in KDE 4.
I also like to use a persistent mode live distro in a laptop and FaunOS and Chakra are really good with session saving. The live system, once loaded, uses the hd in a minimal manner and actually I have it on an SSD so my battery usage is improved from 1.5 to 2 hours.
By the way, Chakra is a good way to install Arch with some really decent hardware detection... if you like KDE 4.2.
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I upgraded from Ubuntu 8.04 to Ubuntu 8.10. This introduced a lot of new bugs for me. I stayed with it for a month hoping they would have the showstoppers patched up by then, but they didn't.
I aimed to follow these steps, stopping when the problems were solved:
1. Reinstall Ubuntu 8.10 from scratch
2. Install Ubuntu 8.04.1
3. Screw it, go back to Windows.
Since I was going to clobber my Ubuntu install anyway, and since I heard a lot of good things about Arch, I decided to try it out. Hence step 0 was added: Try out Arch Linux.
That solved the problem. As a bonus, I'm now using packages that won't see the light of day in Ubuntu until April at the earliest, otherwise October.
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I was a big fan of Kubuntu since 6.04, but since post-7.10 I was unable to get everything set-up right on my laptop, but always kept the latest on my desktop.
My power supply died on my Desktop and while I am awaiting a replacement, I decided to get something running on my laptop again.
It was either going to be openSuse or Arch. I tried both, but I fell for Arch. Can't wait to get it running on my desktop soon!
Last edited by boogachamp (2009-03-02 18:09:25)
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Great distro, guys! I'm a Gentoo user but heard so many good things about arch that I had to try it. Eloquent package system, KISS attitude, mean and lean. Thanks for all your hard work!
Setting Up a Scripting Environment | Proud donor to wikipedia - link
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Just started using Arch. I got everything I like installed now and I'm using the Kdemod 4. I'm quite impressed actually by the speed and the simplicity of the distro. Pacman is sweet as well and the system upgrade has been working so far trying to do that with portage would certainly leed to breakage.
All Thumbs Up so far!
LG P310
Intel® Core™2 Duo Processor P8400, 4GB DDR III , NVIDIA® GeForceTM Go 9300M-GS, 13.3˝ WXGA LED Backlight, Intel® WiFiLink 5100 802.11 a/g/n, 320GB S-ATA
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Meh. I've been meaning to do this for quite a while now so here's my little story:
I originally started by using SUSE .. 5? 7? I don't know, it was a LONG time ago and my dad actually installed it for me. I was a lot into games back then, I did not touch Linux before in any way and all I knew till then was early Windows XP. I've been using computers mainly to play games since DOS and went the usual Windows pathway of DOS, Win 3.1, Win 95, Win 98, skipped Win 2000 and ended up with Win XP. I have to say I liked it but I kept hearing some things about this new thing called 'Linux' and asked my dad to install it. My memory probably fails me and if you look up the release dates it might not match up at all, but I recall being 12 at the time.
Anyway, I tried out SUSE and pretty much instantly went back to XP. I tried, though, I really did. It was KDE, which I picked up pretty quickly but I disliked it for some reasons. Top reason was that ALL programs always seemed to crash. Split Konqueror and make it a decent file browser - it crashes. Use YAST and configure the sound - it crashes. And so on. Also, the Linux games back then were poor or non-existent so I was back on XP for a couple of years.
When I turned 15, I think, I got a dedicated server for my gaming clan and I didn't want to pay the Windows price, plus I heard Linux was supposed to be pretty good on servers so, after some research, I went with Debian. Looking back, it was the best choice I could have made back then. Needless to say, I basically threw myself into a half-frozen pond in Mid-December without being able to swim, or at least that's what the experience was like for me. It took me some time to figure everything out but when I was half a year into it I pretty much loved it and put Debian on my home server which went over pretty well.
Since then I have been putting a lot of different distros on some testing system, servers, desktops and laptops and my over all route must have been like this: SUSE, Debian, Knoppix, Fedora, Gentoo, Ubuntu, DSL, Ubuntu, Ubuntu, Ubuntu, --> ARCH <--.
I love Arch in every aspect, except for some misguided package maintainers on AUR. It's fast, rolling release, stable, fast, easy to manage, it keeps stuff simple, fast, and it has AUR which is the easiest way of sharing and creating packages with other users so far.
Last edited by Svenstaro (2009-03-13 04:20:44)
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One day at college, after going to a windows vista release party (which basically was a joke, a few of my friends that ran the campus LUG were going), I decided that it was about time that I removed Windows XP off my computer. I replaced it with Ubuntu 6.10. It was quite the accomplishment getting beryl to work with an ATI graphics card back then. After using it for a week I got beryl working. That really got my feet wet. After that it was Ubuntu 7.10. I messed around with Arch on my small eee 701 laptop, but I had little luck. I ended up selling it and I started distro hopping on my desktop. First was PCLinuxOS, then back to Ubuntu. Got sick of it again and then I tried PCLinuxOS Gnome edition. That broke and I moved to Debian w/XFCE on my desktop. I still have Debian on my desktop.
But once I got the new eee 1000 I knew I had to load Arch Linux. It took me roughly 6 weeks to get it fully functional. I've been using Arch for the last 5 months and I've never been so happy with linux until now. The arch forums are fantastic and it's great that no 2 installs are alike. Arch Linux allows me to be creative. It's like screenshots are each works of art. From conky configs, to desktop wall paper to different window managers/DE's. Arch Linux is a tinkerer's Dream.
I don't think I'll be distro-hopping anymore. Arch Linux rocks!
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