The Official Unofficial 'Arch is Best' Thread

tbroderick · 2006-12-22 01:46:39

Just came back to Arch after using Xubuntu for awhile. Nothing was faster and worked better for me then Arch+wmii+mutt+mpd. Thanks to all the devs and forums/irc helpers.

OssiR · 2006-12-29 19:06:16

Thank you God for this great distro.
Debian was also great, but arch seems to be even better.

Keep up the good work.

krejzihors · 2006-12-29 22:22:22

i've been running linux on my machines for a while (since '98, ditched win*ows in '00 completely ), so you can probably guess that i've done my share of "distro hopping" . i feel like i've tried everything under the sun, but finally now discovered arch (and i'm planning to stay)

i'll name a few other distros that impressed me (hope admins won't mind ):
- debian (many things, but i'll say only one: apt)
- vector (preconfigured and faster slack, great for older hw)
- gentoo (architecturally the craziest distro out there, portage is awesome, but too much work)

and then arch came along...
optimized for speed (like gentoo, but no more compiling stuff!!), great package manager (equals apt, which is the first and ultimately the only thing i miss when i'm away from debian), and the simplicity of slackware!! I'm blown away!

So, to end this (neverending) rant - arch is the best (i've tried the rest )
A big "thank you" to Judd Vinet for his vision, and all the devs for making it happen.

japetto · 2007-01-01 17:42:39

Happy New Year Arch users!!!

garba · 2007-01-03 16:56:14

i too like the rest of you love arch (spent years on debian) but i believe this distro needs a better packaging policy developers should stick to, i'd also get rid of all this current/extra/testing/unstable nonsense which makes things harder and less kiss-compliant

decoherence · 2007-01-07 06:43:45

long time debian user (and a bunch of stuff before that.) used arch around .6 and really liked it, but switched to Ubuntu because I was lazy and more stuff just worked.

Started using Arch again at .7.2 and eventually pacmanned to .8. Just got dbus and audio working. It was simple and well documented, thanks forum!

Arch impressed me right off the bat booting from the installation CD with it's thoughtful instructions. The comments and examples in the BSD-like setup files are great.

The one thing that can be improved (and can always be improved) is the documentation. Not just the amount and quality, but how it's used as well. Documentation should be obvious, even -- dare I say it? -- in your face! I'm not talking about readme files or even README!!! files. I'm talking about those annoying little "Did you know...?" popups that we all hate and turn off. Except these would actually have pertinent information about the task you were trying to do. Say, for instance, I just installed dbus. If I'm in an X environment, a dialog box should pop up and remind me to add it to the daemons in /etc/rc.conf. This can be done outside of any window manager (or for portlands or whatever) and if no X, it logs it, maybe even throws up an informational console dialog a la debconf. Perhaps it'd even take you to the conf files to edit them if need be, like the installer CD.

Okay, I'll shut up and start writing code now...

Roberth · 2007-01-17 00:01:06

Well, Arch seems to end my endless hunt for true love, I've been trying sooo many distro's; Ubuntu, Fedora Core, SuSE, Mandriva, Mepis, Gentoo, Slackware, Debian, PcLinuxOS and you name, but all of these distros I've tried every single one had something that i couldnt live with...

When i first tried, I though well this is probably just another distro with an uneccesary fork of an mainstream distro probably Debian or something, but when i started on this distro, a little bit back and forward, but after a while, there was true love... magic

So Arch stopped my wandering once and for all...

Arch had everything; great choice of witch desktop/wm i can run, bleeding edge, speed, stability(not bullet proof, but its at least much more stable than other distros who arent even a little bleeding edge), rolling release is also great, no downloading cd images all the time because theres a new version out, just pacman -Syu once a day and I'm up to date, Arch is probably the most up-to-date distro on distrowatch.com(without beeing alpha or beta etc.).

I praise Arch!

Excessive · 2007-01-31 12:45:00

I'm coming from a Slackware (since 3.5) background, and I still love it. I have many good memories working on Slackware, since the days when everything was really hard, and no info around (Anybody remember Koules? ). I always used Slackware until I found Arch, and tried lots of distros before coming to it.

* RedHat: It was really good distro in time, but I left it after a small time. (Remember z00t?)

* SuSE: Like RedHat, only used it small time.

* Debian: It was good, but after downloading whole internet for hours on my 128 kbit connection and crashing on reboot, I left it forever.

* Slackware, it's my first distro, and still love it. It will have a special spot on my heart, forever. But after using it for almost 9 years, I realized that I am actually reinventing the wheel everytime I install it. Thus, I started searching for another distro, as I didn't feel at home anymore.

I found Arch, and I'm glad I did. This distro, devs and the community is just amazing, I can't find words to describe what I feel. Maybe this is what they call "Real love" ?

I've helped lots of friends to install & learn Arch, and they're all glad they switched to Arch now.

I want to thank everybody for their efforts, especially devs and the Arch community. You're all doing great, and please don't let this effort fall apart.

madeye · 2007-02-02 16:40:22

Why am I here? Because I need the best.

Seriously, I was looking for a distro that would enable me to tailor my system exactly to my needs. My first try last autumn was real good, but I had too many other things to do, so I didn't have the time for playing enough with Arch. So until now my desktop is running kubuntu.

Recently I got hold of an old laptop with 400MHz CPU and 128MB ram. Of course it wasn't possible to use any of the bigger distros, as these need more ram to work decently. (trust me, I have tried)
I therefor grabbed a fresh Voodoo iso, and startet to install arch on my laptop. Two hours later the system was ready with a graphical interface. That's what I call quick and slick.

My next project will be to make a file server for my lan. Naturally arch will be my first choice for this.

A little history about me:
My first linux adventure started in 1995. Didn't get me anywhere, as I needed a graphical enviroment, and I was unable to get one to work. The distros I tried was slackware and redhat.
My first real use with linux came in the late ninetees, when mandrake 7 was released. That's the first time I succeded in using linux. I didn't use it much though. I kept running back to my safe haven (windows).

Finally in 2002 I got my nerve up to make a computer exclusive for linux use. All my email has been handled by linux from then on.
Again the distro that won was mandrake. Not that I didn't try others. To name some: Redhat, Suse, Debian, Slackware.

Now since approximately a year I've been using Linux for almost all my computing right now running kubuntu.

I've always been looking for new software to install and try. That's one of my hobbies. In the course of time I have also tried Gentoo, and liked it far better than mandrake(now mandriva), but got a little tired of using 3 days to get the system and kde installed. I believe it was one of the guys from my local user group who introduced me to arch, and I think I have fallen in love. You guys are doing a tremendous job.

This was my short post for this thread.

tt3346 · 2007-02-08 17:03:36

Well, like Roberth, in only one month, I have tried 10+ different distros. To be fair, they all have their good points, yet some problems that I really can't solve, basically because I'm not expecting such problems there. When I find Arch, I know in the first place that this is what I should use. If there must be something not working in the system, why don't we just let everything not working yet and slowly build them up, while welcome troubles? Yes, slowly I can solve all the problem, simply because I am the one who cause that problem (in the configuration), not some one else that pre-configured the system. Of course, now if I come back to any other distro, I can make it work like I want, but I always have the feeling that I don't want to leave this beautiful distro any more.

tsangpo · 2007-02-25 09:29:13

Well,
by my my standards Arch Linux is closest to Slackware, which was my first Linux distro.
I was a complete n00b when i installed it. I learned how to configure it by browsing
tons of HowTo`s Up to today i've tried: RedHat, CentOS, Fenora, OpenSUSE,
all kinds of *ubuntu, openbsd, freebsd, sco unixware and none of them did't
suit my needs.
Thanks to Arch I've came back to my Linux roots, if you can put it in this way
Now I know that all those GUIs, which were made to configure things faster are
just a waste of space on my HD. I'm glad that I've reverted to searching how
to solve problems rather than having the anwser served on a plate.

Thanks Arch Linux team !

funkyou · 2007-03-03 16:49:14

Arch, where you get a useable vim config right from the beginning

pofkezas · 2007-03-03 21:06:05

So listen to this: I get an external hard drive. I figured I'd boot to Windows for this one just for it to get detected right away and such. Windows popped up the "Found New Hardware" thing and apparently installed it and made it ready for use. However, the drive wasn't there in My Computer. I read a bit of manual and it said that I'll have to reformat it with NTFS. Then I boot back to arch. I thought "hey, a few lines in fstab and some extra usb modules will get it working and then from there I'll reformat it to ntfs using cfdisk." To my surprise, I open up thunar and I see "My Book" on the left right under file system. I click on it and I see all the autorun files and partition is 232gb of fat32 ready to use. Take that Windows! Arch is best!

palmaway · 2007-03-06 00:43:17

stavrosg wrote:

LOL! Most Slack users who switch distros usually go back to Slack after some time ...let's see what happens.
I was a slack user, too. I do miss it at times, but for the desktop, arch all the way

That's what happened to me all the time, but not this one: after years (7? 8? who knows...) of Slackware use, now I'm happy with Arch. I would not go back, for desktop usage: Arch is just what I wanted. Too much troubles upgrading and it was such a pain in the ass to do any software installation, in those old slackware days...
When I saw pacman and the default kde directory in /opt/kde... it was love at first sight

Paolo

Last edited by palmaway (2007-03-06 00:44:17)

F · 2007-03-06 01:51:53

I am also a previous Slackware user. Arch for life!!!

Bison · 2007-03-09 12:25:03

I realize that I recently advocated arch, but I really need to do it again. You really can't beat pacman.

Alejandro Nova · 2007-04-02 16:33:07

This is the end of my first week using Arch after 3 years of Gentoo. The only downside to Arch: it is simply too boring.

Comparing my experience with Gentoo, where package updates were plagued with troubles, documentation is not always up to date, and package updates taking hours or even DAYS (KDE and Openoffice together account for a whole day of compiling), with some don't even working, Arch was silk smooth. I didn't have to endure massive system breakages, your stable branch (current) is always updated with the things I want, when something is updated you UPDATE it (like Gentoo, I love rolling release), and the thing simply WORKS. When I need to change something, well, I have the /etc tree of text files. I got used to it in 2 days. And, why is it boring? Because I DON'T HAVE TO FIX MY SYSTEM EVERY MONTH, of course.

I love the mixture between source and binary. I love Pacman (it's 2^80.000 times faster than Portage), I love your lack of GUI (after all, Gentoo didn't have much of a GUI), and I love, really, LOVE KDEmod!. And aurbuild more than made up for the lack of packages in your official tree, if I compare it to the Portage tree.

For others, Arch may be complicated. For me, has been the simplicity of Ubuntu and the power of Gentoo combined. I have seen in Gentoo forums tales of constant returning to Gentoo. But I don't plan to go back. I'm staying. Thanks, guys.

Last edited by Alejandro Nova (2007-04-02 16:34:27)

gbrunoro · 2007-04-04 22:28:21

arch = slack feel (kiss) + portage + apt
When I switched to Arch form Slack it was what I felt first, seemed like I was using Slack with apt-get and, when I needed it, pacman could act like portage. I could manage to play with unstable and testing without losing my whole system
I <3 Arch /o/

aardwolf · 2007-04-14 14:23:10

Until 2004 I've always been using Windows. Then I switched over from Windows to Linux, and installed Archlinux, which went without problems (unlike a small experiment with Mandrake that I had done many years before that). I've now been using Archlinux as only operating system without ever touching any other distro nor Windows, for 2 years.

Since Archlinux is the only distro I really used, I can't really compare to other distros, but I can say that I like it and it hasn't given me a lot of problems. It doesn't require much maintanance either, other than typing pacman -Syu now and then and fixing some little problems that such an update sometimes causes. That's less maintanance than Windows requires

I do have installed Ubuntu on another computer and have had a less good experience than Archlinux with it; it's an outdated computer however which can add to the negative experience. But for some reason I like pacman more than those package systems that are in Ubuntu. Plus this Ubuntu got outdated and it seems to be impossible to update it to version 6 without a reinstall.

My Archlinux has been staying up to date for 2.5 years without ever having to reinstall.

And the list of available packages and programs is huge.

So: good job, Arch

Last edited by aardwolf (2007-04-14 14:30:13)

sweiss · 2007-04-20 06:30:26

And so I'm downloading the Voodoo ISO, after trying out Ubuntu for 2 months.
The more I try other distributions, the more I see how "correct" Arch really is.

Hopefully I still have the Archer abilities within me.

Last edited by sweiss (2007-04-20 06:30:56)

peets · 2007-05-05 07:24:09

I don't use Arch yet. However I can't wait to.

I discovered Linux last year at work. I installed Gentoo on a computer there. It was fine, but configuration was complicated for nothing. Things were done through config files, which normally is the most obvious way to do things, but finding the right file(s) to edit was very confusing: some configurations were saved across multiple files in completely different locations!

Upon getting a home computer I decided, after roaming the internet, to install Arch. It looked very promising. But I've had hardware problems that kept me from ever doing so properly. I'm going to buy some new stuff tomorrow and I can't wait to try this out.

Here's what makes me think that Arch is the best choice: it doesn't impose itself. The role of an OS should be to provide a platform from which to accomplish tasks, like work or play. I'm interested in using apps.

I want to be able to install them easily; my limited use of pacman has been flawless --I can rely on pacman and it doesn't feel like I'm doing anything complicated when I use it.

I want to be able to configure applications easily; Arch doesn't impose any rules or requirements on applications, it lets them be themselves : I can use the application's own standard method of configuration.

I want to be able to use them efficiently. With Arch, there aren't 100 daemons running in background comnsuming resources, unless I want them to. With Arch, it's easy to get and configure the software I need to make my workflow intuitive and efficient.

I want to rely on my software. Sometimes with Linux, it's complicated to get certain pieces of software up and running. I mean, I've been installing Arch on and off for a few months now, and never got it working like I want. But the parts that worked worked well, and I'm not afraid of them breaking. I think through simplicity comes stability.

Arch (will) enable me to run all the software I want easily and efficiently. I can also customize things simply without fear of breaking them. It is easy to learn: I don't use it yet, I've only done a few installs and "test drives" but I feel like I know my way around Arch already. In fact, there's nothing to learn really, besides pacman and AUR, which are extremely simple.

I hope I'm right about this. If not, I think I'll give up on computers altogether, because from what I can read, Arch is closest to my ideal OS. If I am, yay. Keep up the good work; I may pitch in one day if time permits.

Cheers

-ppp

EDIT: Yes! I have Arch now, and X set up. Now let's get the sound to work.

Last edited by peets (2007-05-09 02:39:19)

lietuva · 2007-05-13 21:32:00

jordi wrote:

I looooove Arch linux
#2
I came from Gentoo, which i really liked. But when I got a new Laptop I were to lazy to compile everything again, thus I gave Arch a try and so far (3 months or more) i really love it...

hehe, same start here

Romashka · 2007-05-13 21:48:00

lietuva wrote:

arch isn't the best distro. I'm sure

If you know better - tell me and probably I'll try it...

antis · 2007-05-18 16:58:13

Having tried numerous distros for several years I think that I have found what I am looking for.

I have used Slackware for quite some time but wanted something more "desktop-friendly" for my laptop. Something that always works and that has a good packagin system. I feel like I have tried them all by now, Ubuntu, Zenwalk, Mandriva, SuSe... you name it and I have had it installed but somehow I have always ended up going back to Slackware.

Now the turn came to Arch and the old Slackware saying "Once you go Slack, you won't go back" is no more... I think
I have only been using Arch for a couple of weeks but I have it installed both on my private little server and on my laptop now and I'm loving every second of it. The system is lean, rock solid and I've got it set up exactly as I want it. Pacman works great and the repos have all the necessary programs for me and then some.

So far Arch is a joy to use. Great job and thanks to those who created and maintains this fine distro!

gbrunoro · 2007-05-18 17:25:29

The strange thing about Arch is that things actually work after installing

Arch Linux

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