Arch Linux

jellywerker

Member

From: Sunny Seattle

Registered: 2005-04-04

Posts: 286

alternative to arch?

No offense to any of the people on these boards, you have all been helpful enough, but I have been plagued incessantly with problems with arch for these last weeks, and my productivity is falling This is not a bash on arch, I'll come back to it eventually, but for now I need something simple (like arch is...) stable, good package manager and repositories, binary packages, good hardware support, and ftp installable. Basically I am looking for arch, but not arch

I am thinking either zenwalk/slack or gentoo (the ebuilds are binaries right?)

Just so I don't get too many useless replies, I have looked into MANY ways of solving my problems, and nothing seems to work, so I need a stand in till 8. I am not looking at ubuntu, debian (or debian based), Redhat/Fedora, or Mandr*. I need something powerful and that is easily configurable through the commandline, and doesn't baby you with gui's that don't help. A good community would be nice too, as posting here would be akward

Till version 8! Adieu!

Edit: btw, I use my machine mainly for 3d work with blender nad yafray, and writing, so something with a multimedia edge would be nice.

cl0wn

Member

Registered: 2005-12-29

Posts: 32

Re: alternative to arch?

gentoo is not for you. Ebuilds are not binaries. You must compile everything from source in Gentoo.

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knowledge is p0wer...

AndyRTR

Developer

From: Magdeburg/Germany

Registered: 2005-10-07

Posts: 1,641

Re: alternative to arch?

If you like pacman you can try frugalware. It's just similar to archlinux but with regular releases every 6 months. And if you want so you can update to frugalware current at every time. Then it is quiet the same as archlinux.

arooaroo

Member

From: London, UK

Registered: 2005-01-13

Posts: 1,268

Website

Re: alternative to arch?

gentoo is not for you. Ebuilds are not binaries. You must compile everything from source in Gentoo.

I think Gentoo has been working on having binaries too. I'm not sure they exist for every ebuild and for every platform, but I'm sure there is some sort of effort going on in this direction. Still, I'm not sure if Gentoo is 'simple'.

I don't see why Debian or its derivatives is off the cards.

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arooaroo | Jacman (Pacman GUI) | Getting to Grips with LaTeX | flickr

ozar

Member

From: USA

Registered: 2005-02-18

Posts: 1,686

Re: alternative to arch?

Not sure it would be what you want, but it wouldn't hurt to check out Vector Linux, too.  Good luck with whichever route you take.

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oz

cl0wn

Member

Registered: 2005-12-29

Posts: 32

Re: alternative to arch?

anyway, why not stick with arch if you like it so much?

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knowledge is p0wer...

LB06

Member

From: The Netherlands

Registered: 2003-10-29

Posts: 435

Re: alternative to arch?

You want Debian. It is just like Arch, but more stable and secure, and less agile, simple and uptodate.

kth5

Member

Registered: 2004-04-29

Posts: 657

Website

Re: alternative to arch?

Gentoo's main difference is the fact that 99% of things have to be compiled, if you don't like that then don't use gentoo (i use it on my desktop and in most cases i have no problems with the compile times).

sure, time is one thing but what about money? your computer using all that electricity just to do what even the gentoo devs did more than once before? yes, they compiled all packages to test, i guess...

anyway, slack is a good choice but i think from a repository's point of view blows. do they finally get to have a default package manager? see what i mean?

one worth a shot could be gobo linux.

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I recognize that while theory and practice are, in theory, the same, they are, in practice, different. -Mark Mitchell

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cl0wn

Member

Registered: 2005-12-29

Posts: 32

Re: alternative to arch?

sure, time is one thing but what about money? your computer using all that electricity just to do what even the gentoo devs did more than once before? yes, they compiled all packages to test, i guess...

you're kiddin' right?
maybe you even shut down your pc when going to WCsmoke<insert other short-time things here>?
no offense.

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knowledge is p0wer...

Snarkout

Member

Registered: 2005-11-13

Posts: 542

Re: alternative to arch?

You want Debian. It is just like Arch, but more stable and secure, and less agile, simple and uptodate.

With respect, I'd have to disagree. Debian is literally nothing like arch.  It is good though.

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Unthinking respect for authority is the greatest enemy of truth.
-Albert Einstein

LB06

Member

From: The Netherlands

Registered: 2003-10-29

Posts: 435

Re: alternative to arch?

You want Debian. It is just like Arch, but more stable and secure, and less agile, simple and uptodate.

With respect, I'd have to disagree. Debian is literally nothing like arch.  It is good though.

Maybe not, but I still think the TS should give Debian a try.

Once you know your way around in /etc/ in Debian it is not really that much different. APT, while not as fast as pacman, is certainly a good (better?) replacement for pacman. Checkinstall can be used as the ABS equivalent.

dtw

Forum Fellow

From: UK

Registered: 2004-08-03

Posts: 4,439

Website

Re: alternative to arch?

Look, for Christ's sake, would it hurt to stay on topic for once?

To the original poster try distrowatch, it's great...

LB06

Member

From: The Netherlands

Registered: 2003-10-29

Posts: 435

Re: alternative to arch?

Look, for Christ's sake, would it hurt to stay on topic for once?

To the original poster try distrowatch, it's great...

Distrowatch doesn't tell you much about the simplicity or maintainability.

But you're right, distrowatch can be helpful indeed.

phrakture

Arch Overlord

From: behind you

Registered: 2003-10-29

Posts: 7,879

Website

Re: alternative to arch?

I'd probably suggest frugalware - you can actually still use the arch repos under frugalware, I think.

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http://phraktured.net

demonus

Member

Registered: 2005-01-31

Posts: 62

Re: alternative to arch?

anyway, slack is a good choice but i think from a repository's point of view blows. do they finally get to have a default package manager? see what i mean?

they've always had a package manager:
http://slackware.it/en/pb/package.php?q … 2.0-i486-5
and a nice tool:
http://slackware.it/en/pb/package.php?q … 2-noarch-2

tomfitzyuk

Member

Registered: 2005-12-30

Posts: 89

Re: alternative to arch?

anyway, slack is a good choice but i think from a repository's point of view blows. do they finally get to have a default package manager? see what i mean?

they've always had a package manager:
http://slackware.it/en/pb/package.php?q … 2.0-i486-5
and a nice tool:
http://slackware.it/en/pb/package.php?q … 2-noarch-2

Yeah, I like slackpkg. It's similar to pacman kind of, it synchronizes with a server and then you're able to ugprade/install packages from the server.

The official slackware repository doesn't have that many packages because the maintainer, Patrick Volkerding, only allows packages which he believes to be really secure. Any other program you need either needs to be compiled (from source) or installed through use of a third party application such as Swaret or Slapt-get.

When I used Slackware (and I've not fully decided on Arch Linux yet, it's between Arch and Slackware though) I just used Slackpkg to keep up-to-date with the packages which Pat believed to be safe and then compiled any other program I wanted from source.

arooaroo

Member

From: London, UK

Registered: 2005-01-13

Posts: 1,268

Website

Re: alternative to arch?

But don't you need other package managers if you need dependency resolution? (That's always been my understanding, but I've never been a slackware user.)

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arooaroo | Jacman (Pacman GUI) | Getting to Grips with LaTeX | flickr

demonus

Member

Registered: 2005-01-31

Posts: 62

Re: alternative to arch?

there's no real dependency resolution in slackware but I've never seen it as drawback, however some things you have to know about like man depending on groff. well slackware is for advanced users isn't it?

arooaroo

Member

From: London, UK

Registered: 2005-01-13

Posts: 1,268

Website

Re: alternative to arch?

there's no real dependency resolution in slackware but I've never seen it as drawback, however some things you have to know about like man depending on groff. well slackware is for advanced users isn't it?

That maybe true, but I've never really understood the inference that competent users have plenty of spare time to mess around with tedious tasks. I always picture advanced users constantly striving to save time so they can do interesting things. That's why advanced users are always knocking up bash-scripts to automate everything, etc, etc. (I'm talking about the linux boffins I know, at least).

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arooaroo | Jacman (Pacman GUI) | Getting to Grips with LaTeX | flickr

jellywerker

Member

From: Sunny Seattle

Registered: 2005-04-04

Posts: 286

Re: alternative to arch?

Hmm, thanks for all the replies, I'll be looking into frugalware.

As for debian, that's personal taste, I *really* dislike it.

tomk

Forum Fellow

From: Ireland

Registered: 2004-07-21

Posts: 9,839

Re: alternative to arch?

Nobody seems to talk about Rubix anymore. Remember them? Essentially, they're using pacman on Slackware, AFAIR. Anyway, I just dropped by the homepage, and they seem to be working away - hardware problems notwithstanding.

Oh, and guess what? They have a community repo. What a great idea! 

syamajala

Member

From: here, there, everywhere

Registered: 2005-01-25

Posts: 617

Website

Re: alternative to arch?

netbsd is nice. its arch but not really ;-p i have actually gotten rid of arch64 on my desktop and installed netbsd. pkgsrc is good.

Gullible Jones

Member

Registered: 2004-12-29

Posts: 4,863

Re: alternative to arch?

On the other hand they still use XFree86.

syamajala

Member

From: here, there, everywhere

Registered: 2005-01-25

Posts: 617

Website

Re: alternative to arch?

thats is a bunch of crap. i have netbsd 3 running with xorg 6.8 and gnustep/wmaker.

codergeek42

Member

From: Anaheim, CA (USA)

Registered: 2005-06-03

Posts: 90

Website

Re: alternative to arch?

You could try FreeBSD. While a lot of it is compiling (and it's only similar to Linux, but not truly Linux), it puts out a set of binary packages every so often that you can install/manage with the pkg_* suite of tools. For example, instead of using ports to compile and install cups yourself, you could run `pkg_add -r cups` or similar and it would download/install the binary tarball and any needed dependencies.

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~Peter~