The Official Unofficial 'Arch is Best' Thread

falkman · 2009-01-23 14:12:44

Hell yes, arch for the win.

evr · 2009-01-24 22:39:21

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.

ninjaprawn · 2009-01-25 23:12:39

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!

mihi · 2009-01-27 11:45:14

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!

hvannentir · 2009-01-27 13:46:21

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

switch86 · 2009-02-03 01:53:31

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.

pippin · 2009-02-14 22:07:41

As a KDE developer (and so as someone who has experience from the "other side" of the bug tracker), I would say that if you are not sure about whether something is a bug, REPORT IT. Sane bugtrackers have things like INVALID and WONTFIX resolution states that developers will happily use if they don't believe something is a bug. If your bug report is detailed enough, developers can often tell at a glance if this is the right response.

That said, I've noticed that bugs (even ones that are trivial to fix) tend to linger on Arch's bugtracker for a lot longer than they should. I posted a comment on a bug that had been open for a while, and the assignee posted back saying "oh, sorry, completely forgot about this". And there's another bug (again, a trivial fix) that's been sitting open for ages, meaning I've been having to compile my own mysql from aur every time the [extra] packages are upgraded.

I wonder if Arch would benefit from a team of non-dev triagers to confirm bugs and weed out ones that are no longer (or never were) valid. Certainly, they are effective in KDE.

Allan · 2009-02-14 22:24:21

Arch does have a team of three or four people whose job it is just to deal with the bug tracker. There has been talk about having a bug day soon so that we can get rid of most of those trivial bugs but no-one has decided to organise it....

ataraxia · 2009-02-16 01:00:14

In addition to other reasons why people don't report bugs, I can add one more - many of us have had bad experiences with surly, rude developers on other Free Software projects. There are definitely a few dev teams that I don't bother interacting with any more, since I just get abused for my trouble. The Arch devs and TUs have always been polite to me, but how would new people, or those who don't participate much, know what kind of people work here?

LeoSolaris · 2009-03-01 23:13:53

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)

bwh1969 · 2009-03-02 03:16:24

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.

Alxe · 2009-03-02 10:41:30

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.

bwh1969 · 2009-03-02 11:21:57

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.

aaaantoine · 2009-03-02 16:33:02

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.

boogachamp · 2009-03-02 18:08:37

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)

Gen2ly · 2009-03-06 02:15:25

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!

shanghai · 2009-03-07 16:43:40

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!

Svenstaro · 2009-03-13 04:20:20

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)

IHateSnow · 2009-03-24 13:19:51

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!

MilesRdz · 2009-03-30 05:47:48

I've distro hopped for about three years and I had most success with Ubuntu. One day I decided to give the ever so praised Arch Linux a try and I loved it! Now I have a home OS.

Primoz · 2009-03-31 14:10:22

Well I must say I really like Arch. I won't say that it's perfect. But it's close to perfect. The best thing is that all problems that you do are easily troubleshot.
I ironically enough heard about Arch on Linsux forum which many could percive as Windows troll den, but it's more a forum for Linux and BSD users that don't agree with mainstream Linux distros and their users (especially zeal of some Ubuntu users).
Anyway I heard a lot of good stuff about it on Linsux and thought if this guys who pretend to "hate" Linux say it's good then it's really good.
I did a bit of distro hopping, as everyone else, but my main OS was Kubuntu.
But recently I tried to make my Kubuntu too much like arch with arch-like boot process (now I know that Arch uses different init than Kubuntu) And I was as bleeding edge on Kubuntu as I could be
without having any serious breakage. And I did only tired Arch and knew how to get things done on it while getting same things done on Kubuntu was shrouded in mystery.
So I decided to take a jump. One thing why I was convinced was the AUR, and ABS I knew that if there isn't a package of something in repos I can easily compile it myself while anything I
tried to compile on Kubuntu didn't compile or didn't work.
But now I don't even need AUR nor ABS that much. But it's good to know that you have that power available to you.
So yeah Arch is pretty close to perfect. It's only fault is that it emulates the user too much.
meaning that if I make a mistake it will show in Arch. But that's not even that big of a problem it' more a part of learning experience.
When I was still on Kubuntu I would do full system reinstall if I broke my system. Now I don't need to.
I just remove whatever I broke and start over. Even if I borke X I know how to repair it. that's the real beauty of Arch.

Last edited by Primoz (2009-03-31 14:12:35)

bwh1969 · 2009-04-02 18:30:39

It is funny that Ubuntu has trouble with hardware, as it is supposed to be a more "out of the box" experience.

Here is what happened to my laptop with an atheros card... connection to my wireless sucked... like 1 MBPS sitting 3 feet from the access point. The it would stall, showing full strength. Before I learned about Arch, I stuck the broadcom card back in and used fwcutter. It worked but was flaky. The Ath5k driver was blamed.

The ath5k driver in Ubuntu still stank on my eee-pc not too long ago. Arch fired it right up.

I also had issues with the Intel driver (I have the 945 GMA in my eee-box - can u tell I like the miniature Asus products?), doing all sorts to "tearing" and had to majorly rework the xorg.conf.

Not so with Arch. I am using the Chakra Project live distro, but it is Arch.

mikesteele81 · 2009-04-13 06:30:37

About a week ago I installed Arch on my Samsung NC10 netbook. I come from a Debian / Ubuntu background, but decided to try out something that would give me a bit more control over this somewhat underpowered computer.

Arch linux is a great example of the old adage that "less is more". With just a few sessions of configuration I've got a system that boots to the desktop in under 20 seconds, has all the software I need and nothing I don't, and makes perfect sense.

If my wireless interface won't come up I know exactly which configuration files to check. If I want to install evince, say, without having to install half of gnome along with it I can just modify the installer through ABS. I'm finally liberated from running printing and mail services in the background just to satisfy dependancies for software I do use. When I check the process list I actually know what just about everything is. Best of all, so far I've been able to find an answer to every question that has come up within a few minutes of checking through the wiki and forums.

This is the best first impression I've ever had of a distro. Thanks to everyone who has made Arch linux what it is.

combuster · 2009-04-15 07:55:28

Well I'm a Linux user for 10 years now and I've used all the "major" distributions so far. 2 years ago I've got access to broadband connection using adsl and it opened a whole new world for me, before I sticked to the distro's that ship a majority of packages on dvd (debian, mandriva etc...) but then I've tried distro's like ubuntu, gentoo etc... Ubuntu did a nice job for me (no problem with deps, fast and stable) but while testing the upcoming 9.04 I came across some bugs (touchpad and keyboard doesn't work after a cold boot, solved by removing initrd but hey) and I was looking for a distro that, in case something goes wrong, I can fix and a distro that it doesn't chase faster boot times at all cost.

When I installed arch a few days ago I was dissapointed. Problems with intel X3100 and xorg gave me a whole lot of trouble but lucky me xserver 1.6 popped up in repo and I was thrilled. Everything works ok now, it's fast, it's configurable (when something troubles me I know where to look and how to fix it) and I like the fact that arch gave me the opportunity to build my linux box from scratch (not like gentoo though from stage 2 but hey this is great too). KISS ruleZ, I dont have to bang my head to the wall and guess what my distro did and why I cant get rid of annoying error messages or even can not boot my os because anything happens to arch - I did it and can easily revert it to the state in wich everything worked ok.

As far as I can see most of the major distro's are competing and trying to bring linux more accesible to windows users. And we, old faithfulls are being forgotten. I'm happy that there are distro's out there like gentoo and arch. Between these two I've decided to use arch beacause I really not too keen on compiling x and gnome on my box for 24-hours ;-)

Good work arch dev's, u got yourself another satisfied user...

hauntergeist · 2009-04-16 18:52:32

Where should I begin ... I directly started to try Gentoo cause a friend of mine recommended it. I was willing to learn and managed to install Gentoo. But afterwards I grew weary of tuning my USE flags and compiling every program.

So I searched for a distro that is lightweight, configurable and optimized for i686 as it should run on my old and still-in-use laptop. And that was Arch. Since then I used Arch as much as possible, I love the KISS principle and I nearly migrated from windows - there are a few programs I have to use and are only useable under M$.
I love my little minimalistic system and though I have problems there and then and sometimes overhelmed or confused by the amount of programs and ways to get something done I am able to master it with some time and the support of this great community of developers and committed users :-)

Arch is best! \o/

Last edited by hauntergeist (2009-04-16 18:53:22)

Arch Linux

#326 2009-01-23 14:12:44

Re: The Official Unofficial 'Arch is Best' Thread

#327 2009-01-24 22:39:21

Re: The Official Unofficial 'Arch is Best' Thread

#328 2009-01-25 23:12:39

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#329 2009-01-27 11:45:14

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#330 2009-01-27 13:46:21

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#331 2009-02-03 01:53:31

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#332 2009-02-14 22:07:41

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#333 2009-02-14 22:24:21

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#334 2009-02-16 01:00:14

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#335 2009-03-01 23:13:53

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#336 2009-03-02 03:16:24

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#337 2009-03-02 10:41:30

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#338 2009-03-02 11:21:57

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#339 2009-03-02 16:33:02

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#340 2009-03-02 18:08:37

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#341 2009-03-06 02:15:25

Re: The Official Unofficial 'Arch is Best' Thread

#342 2009-03-07 16:43:40

Re: The Official Unofficial 'Arch is Best' Thread

#343 2009-03-13 04:20:20

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#344 2009-03-24 13:19:51

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#345 2009-03-30 05:47:48

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#346 2009-03-31 14:10:22

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#347 2009-04-02 18:30:39

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#348 2009-04-13 06:30:37

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#349 2009-04-15 07:55:28

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#350 2009-04-16 18:52:32

Re: The Official Unofficial 'Arch is Best' Thread

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