The Official Unofficial 'Arch is Best' Thread

doublestroke07 · 2007-05-19 06:24:42

I love the philosophy behind it, for me that makes Arch the best.

When I get everything to work and be able to turn it to a professional recording tool then that would be 2x the fun.

Axis · 2007-05-21 20:19:56

I am loving with this distro right now. It's exactly what I was looking for out of my Linux experience. Honestly, I thought that Debian was just right for me, but I was really interested in a dsitro that was more cutting edge but still let me be hands on with the system. The more popular distros were a bit too automated/bloated for me, Arch feels right at home. Everything just feels a lot more organized (I love the idea of the rc.conf file, very neatly done) and I like that I'm choosing what I want and don't want, pretty much from scratch. Pacman is great, fast and efficient. I don't know how large the repos are compared to other distros, but I have found a number of packages in them that I couldn't find with other distros. Not to mention a very friendly community.

Hats off to the whole Arch Lniux project.

Last edited by Axis (2007-05-21 20:20:27)

dejitarob · 2007-05-31 02:16:12

After running Gentoo for a while, being attracted to it's modularity and leanness, I switched to Ubuntu because I was sick and tired of Gentoo's ridiculously high maintenance. After waiting days to install/upgrade some packages, I just wanted something that worked. Yet after becoming increasingly frustrated with the lack of updates and bloatedness of Ubuntu, I gave Arch a try at the behest of a friend.

For some reason when I first heard of Arch on the Gentoo forums I thought it was more complicated than Gentoo (don't know if this was due to misrepresentation by some Gentoo users or my misinterpretation of their posts). I'm very happy I gave Arch a try because I find it to be a balance between what I want in a distro.

I find it to be extremely modular but, unlike Gentoo, simple at the same time. Unlike Ubuntu, it is incredibly fast and the packages are always up to date (in the unlikely event they are not, I can easily update the PKGBUILD and build from source myself). Additionally, the guides on the wiki have been very helpful (some still need some work, I'm hoping to give back in this area) as well as the forums. Thank you to all the Arch devs and users for making this distro great!

Last edited by dejitarob (2007-05-31 02:19:06)

archluca · 2007-06-03 17:46:18

ArchLinux is really great! So is the rolling-release system, that makes me love it even more!
Congratulations for all your work, you're all doing an excellent job...carry on this way!

congyiwu · 2007-06-07 18:50:43

How you know you've been using arch too much:

So last night I had a dream. I was in this restroom, and for some reason I thought that my body/kidneys could build packages from AUR, and I could install the finished packages at a urinal. I was pissing in my sleep (only in my dream, of course) for about two minutes and everyone around me was staring at me funny. Finally, I finish, and the urinal tells me telepathically that I've just updated 150 packages

ataraxia · 2007-06-07 19:31:24

That sounds like a piss-poor packaging procedure...

Crap but that's a funny dream

Shifty · 2007-06-14 13:40:03

I came back to Arch after a couple of months experimenting with Debian. I'd recently invested in a new computer - the 64-bit processor probably triggered me to try something new. I was aware of the Arch64 port but decided to try Debian and see what the grass was like on the other side. I didn't go for Ubuntu because I wanted more of a power distro and Etch had been released recently (well, in terms of Debian).

It was interesting. But it still left something to be desired.

The install CD had a kernel panic problem (enable_8254_timer parameter fixed it), the default install had a lot of services that I didn't need (like a Bittorrent tracker), the package management tools were unfamiliar (although updating was as straight-forward as Arch and it even stopped you from installing packages that will break the system), and I didn't have the time to sit down and configure everything how I wanted - I still haven't sorted out all my data from my old drives let alone have time for the desired customizations.

A couple of days ago I remembered the KDEmod project (I wanted to try it before I replaced Arch, but at the time I had regular KDE installed) and decided to go back to familiar pastures. So I burn a copy of Duke and installed Arch alongside Windows and Debian. And after the first boot I promoted it to my main OS (just like old times). And now I'm trying out Beryl - and it just works thanks to the wiki. I'm now flaming windows like a pyromaniac!

So I just want to thank the Arch developers and contributors for their hard work on this. You've got something special here. Keep up the awesome work.

mecon · 2007-06-25 04:58:05

Arch Linux is my favorite distro. it's fast, simple, and pacman cant beat that. Debian Users please try updating your distro with one comand without editing your /etc/sources.

Like that saying about slack users leaving is "You will come back"; Same applies to arch doubly so.

Last edited by mecon (2007-06-27 15:09:53)

supersoundguy · 2007-06-29 16:24:59

I've tried many distro's and whether they're Debian based, RPM based (like fedora core ICKY!!!) they haven't compared with the features and the robust speed of Arch, pacman rocks my socks!

delphinus · 2007-07-02 17:40:28

After trying several distros I have found that Archlinux is the best distro that was ever developed.

thedonvaughn · 2007-07-03 21:38:08

For a bleeding edge rolling release distro, Arch is hands down my favorite and the best designed. I switched to it from Debian about a year ago. Debian needs to get their act together, but that's another topic for another forum

Roberth · 2007-07-04 02:28:31

After reading all these posts, I began to wonder, why is Arch the distro most in the end turn out with after trying tons of distros? like for example debian people find debian about 2nd or 3th distro, but Arch mostly comes after 20 or 30 distros, and everyone that are skilled enough with arch, likes it, the only person I know about that didn't like Arch was a friend of mine, he has used linux for about 1997/96, but he didn't directly dislike Arch, it wasn't kind of his "thing", he was more the Slackware guy that needed something more tested and approved, Arch was to bleeding edge, though he used arch every time he want to test GNOME.

quaaack · 2007-07-07 17:56:34

I'm impressed with arch. It's the first distro where everything worked on the first install. Pacman is so powerful yet so easy to use. Binaries are very fast and just as fast as gentoo's sources, except it didn't take 8 hours to install gnome. It's great since I have a fast connection, but a slower computer.

Arch is great so far.

Mikko777 · 2007-07-07 19:00:18

Roberth wrote:

After reading all these posts, I began to wonder, why is Arch the distro most in the end turn out with after trying tons of distros? like for example debian people find debian about 2nd or 3th distro, but Arch mostly comes after 20 or 30 distros, and everyone that are skilled enough with arch, likes it, the only person I know about that didn't like Arch was a friend of mine, he has used linux for about 1997/96, but he didn't directly dislike Arch, it wasn't kind of his "thing", he was more the Slackware guy that needed something more tested and approved, Arch was to bleeding edge, though he used arch every time he want to test GNOME.

I found arch pretty fast. Although finding linux was a lot longer process like 6 years or so.
As I remember it was always some winmodem or such that sucked but then after knoppix / debian / gentoo came ubuntu and linux seemed to have matured to a "working desktop", well i liked ubuntu but it was kinda "slow" and i saw a post about making ubuntu run like arch in ubuntuforums and after they failed to do that i decided its better to see what arch was about. Well after learning some "l337" linux skills its hard to imagine what could be better in linux distro.

Now i'm almost exclusively using linux and pondering wether to ditch win partition altogether
(maybe install winxp or vista in virtualbox as backup, i'll just have to tweak some final things before its format C: /y for me

Fal · 2007-07-11 23:04:10

Arch rules but I'm missing some RAM from my linux puter Guess ima back soon with arch reinstalled

Though I think none of you remember me since I was user for so short time.. Social requirements said I must use windows..
Damn I hate it

DeLiCe · 2007-07-15 13:22:45

i passed exactly 48hours now with arch, and iam really confused that it is MY ULTIMATE DISTRO, at least for now

High|ander · 2007-07-15 16:11:21

Arch is the dist i have just the most and I LOVE it ! using it on my laptop, desktop and home server.

PDExperiment626 · 2007-07-24 05:21:25

I really love arch; but I agree with cactus. Saying arch is the "ultimate" distro is a bit disingenuous. Case-in-point, some people may want a more windows-like linux experience; something like ubun*cough* (can't bring myself to type it) is more suitable. I love arch because the maintainers work hard to incorporate packages into arch that are as close to the original source as possible (unlike ubu*, who has a propensity for making many of their packages totally proprietary).

That being said, I view the package manager as really the core part of any distro. I really love pacman just because it allows you to essentially allows you to use versioning controls to continuously update your system. It's really awesome. I hope that maybe some of the repos will go onto a full-on svn system to make this full transition. I also really like how easy it is to write package builds; and this has resulted in the really awesome AUR collection of packages. Then there is ABS for those of us who love to compile are own binaries with optimized gcc flags. I love the versioning nature, simplicity and versatility of pacman.

As for comparing Arch to *BSD, BSD's kernel simply doesn't offer what the linux kernel does at the moment. Specifically, things like power management are not as well supported. Yes, *BSD's has a much more structured development; but I like having things like my JFS filesystem and my SD scheduler. I see comparing *BSD to linux really like comparing apples and oranges; they excel at different things.

Anyway, I think arch has a great community and executes it's own idea of what a disto should be extremely well.

aria · 2007-07-24 09:59:18

I just couldn't resist posting this, but I think that Arch Linux is the first distro that I've tried which does it completely right.

In general I've been a Windows zealot for at least a decade now, and I've tried a few linux distros in passing since my first encounter with Red Hat 7.1, including some more recent ones like Xubuntu and Debian (lenny), but so far I've hated every second of it and still remained a complete newbie as I never used them for more than a couple of days and even then I spent most of the time on my Windows PC since I'm very impatient when it comes to problems (that seem to follow in my wake - perhaps I'm stupid) with a cause or solution which I cannot figure out even if I search all over the internet.

But ArchLinux I only recently found out about, and since my Debian install was useless and I never used it anymore, I decided to see what ArchLinux is. Now that I tried it, I must say my opinion of Linux is completely shattered. I am not sure if it "sucks" anymore, but if it does, I like the way it sucks.
The ArchLinux beginners guide, the Wiki, it's all well written and a good read.. The install procedure, the package management and general configuration is also fun and interesting as well as relatively easy once you get a hang of it, in the past 12 hours I've used ArchLinux I've learned more things about it and Linux in general than I've learned since I first used Linux several years ago -up until now I didn't even know how to manually add daemons that start at boot. And so far I have not had any problems that took me hours to solve either, something which I've encountered on everything else within the same time period. I suppose knowing what I was doing to some extent with the help of an excelent guide has a large part in that

I'm actually for the first time enjoying using my Linux PC as a desktop, so I just want to say that whatever you guys are doing, keep doing it. It may not be perfect, and I feel that my programs start a little slow (compared to WindowsXP, not other Linux), but considering everything that I like about it, this is a needle in a haystack.

There, had to get that off my heart. It's not every day something you hate becomes something you like.
Long story short, Arch Linux is the best as far as I'm concerned.

darkglow · 2007-08-02 00:40:49

moskvax wrote:

I got bored of arch so I left to sourcemage.
WHY DID I EVER LEAVE :cry:
Sourcemage is pretty good, but trying another distro for the first time in about a year makes me see why I loved Arch so much. Arch WORKED, although it worked so subtly I suppose I sadistically yearned for the harrowing experience of having to manually comment out broken portions of code in packages to get them to compile. I've spent two weeks on Sourcemage, and right now it's almost half working after having to manually debug multiple packages... but there's so much still broken. I must return to Archlinux. Binaries own :mrgreen:

I'm also using sourcemage gnu/linux and I find it pretty nice. I'm far too new to archlinux to properly compare these two distros but the basic difference is obviously that sourcemage is a source-based distro, like gentoo, while archlinux is a binary-based distro.

The advantage of source-based distros is that you get to choose the optional dependencies while in binary-based distros these optional dependencies have been chosen by someone else. The source-based distros also allow you to choose some gcc optimizations for your processor but that doesn't really seem to affect the speed or the snappiness of your system as much as some people say. IMHO, the choice of the optional dependencies is where the source-based distros excel.

One of the downsides of source-based distros is that sometimes the packages just fail to compile. Then you really start thinking that binary-based distros are better from the user's point of view -- the distro developers have already settled these compilation issues for you. But, then again, it's only the crappy applications with spaghetti-code that fail to compile. Maybe it's better if you don't use such poorly coded applications in the first place?

Another downside is that it takes a lot of time to install and upgrade packages in a source-based distro -- installing binary packages is much faster. Then again, compiling packages in the background doesn't really slow down the performance of modern computers noticeably. And sourcemage has a really cool package management system that also has a "self-healing" option (the command called "cleanse") that checks the integrity of the installed software. Sourcemage gnu/linux is really a rather cool distro.

My initial impression is that archlinux is also a pretty cool distro. I'm planning to dual boot between sourcemage and archlinux. Both of these distros seem to prefer unmodified packages with upstream configurations. This is a good way to see which applications are really of high quality and which are not. Some other distros make a lot of distro-specific modifications to disguise the fact that some applications just are of very poor quality but I think it's much better to completely avoid such crappy applications.

_nalle · 2007-08-03 00:25:28

Yey for archlinux! It really is my favorite distribution!

xmoke · 2007-08-05 05:10:42

like the life, like arch, yeh!

JaDa · 2007-08-05 07:04:49

I Like ARCHLINUX

a1ex · 2007-08-05 09:04:14

Arch is my first Linux dirstro. I chose it because my reason for switching from windows was to achieve a less bloated system and control. Plus, using Arch, you learn to use Linux. (actually my first try was Ubuntu in a VM... it felt like a new Windows but I didnt understand anything... )

MetalRandomist · 2007-08-16 19:52:05

After trying out OpenSUSE, PCLinuxOS, Gentoo (which I totally gave up on installing) and [X-, K-, and] Ubuntu, I decided to try Arch and I have to say Arch is the best Linux distro I've seen so far. Its speed is blazing and the whole thing runs in under 100M of RAM.

Arch Linux

#126 2007-05-19 06:24:42

Re: The Official Unofficial 'Arch is Best' Thread

#127 2007-05-21 20:19:56

Re: The Official Unofficial 'Arch is Best' Thread

#128 2007-05-31 02:16:12

Re: The Official Unofficial 'Arch is Best' Thread

#129 2007-06-03 17:46:18

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#130 2007-06-07 18:50:43

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#131 2007-06-07 19:31:24

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#132 2007-06-14 13:40:03

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#133 2007-06-25 04:58:05

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#134 2007-06-29 16:24:59

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#135 2007-07-02 17:40:28

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#136 2007-07-03 21:38:08

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#137 2007-07-04 02:28:31

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#138 2007-07-07 17:56:34

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#139 2007-07-07 19:00:18

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#140 2007-07-11 23:04:10

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#141 2007-07-15 13:22:45

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#142 2007-07-15 16:11:21

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#143 2007-07-24 05:21:25

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#144 2007-07-24 09:59:18

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#145 2007-08-02 00:40:49

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#146 2007-08-03 00:25:28

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#147 2007-08-05 05:10:42

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#148 2007-08-05 07:04:49

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#149 2007-08-05 09:04:14

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#150 2007-08-16 19:52:05

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