Arch Linux

PeskyGee

Member

From: Pittsburgh, PA

Registered: 2004-04-18

Posts: 19

I'm back (and glad to be)

Hello everyone,

I back after a "timeout" from using Linux. Between my job and my tweaking, I was wearing myself a little too thin and got very frustrated so I took a time out for almost 8 mths. I had to get away for a little while because I was making myself nuts and was way to absorbed in tweaking computers  . Hey it happens right? So, this week I decided that I was going to install Linux back on my secondary system. I did some surfing and checked out a few distros to see what one would fit for me this time and how much they have grown. My intent was to get a system that installed easy, maintained itself easily and was a very small footprint. As a secondary system I just wanted it for D/L's, TV-Out for Movies and converting video. I did not want KDE or Gnome on the system so that limited my choices right there. Every distro and there brother uses either Gnome or KDE as there default. I do not want either. Here is what I tried and the end result.

Ubuntu/Xubuntu: Not a bad system but seemed to install more junk that I didn't need and was just impossible to get TV-Out working on my Nvidia Card. The install was pretty easy and I like the package manager. They had some good How To's but just didn't do the trick.

Vector Linux: Was very nice and fast. Exactlly what I was looking for. There were a few things that installed that I didn't really want but not bad. The one thing that I didn't like at all about this one was the package manager. It really sucked! Was terrible at Dep. checking and doing a --dist-upgrade destroyed my system. I got it back but still thats not good.

DSL: Was nice and small. Not a bad setup for the WM. But the packages were very limited and the default install had alot of things I didn't want to have. Yeah I know I could remove them but I'd much rather have a Base install first and work from there than have to remove things from the start.

Puppy: Nice distro. I actually have a copy of it on my Pendrive but again, default install with things I just don't want.

There were a few others out there that I tried but to make a long story short, I'm back to Arch  Here are my points on Arch

Arch Linux: Extremely fast distro. The install is a breeze. Very easy and leaves you with a base install and that is it   . Just what I was looking for. Highly configurable/customizable. I was able to install exactly what I wanted and nothing more (besides libs and deps of course). A huge repo of packages and the option to create my own is a plus for sure. TV-Out was very simple with Arch over others for some reason. The package manager is the best I have ever used "hands down". I just love it. Simple and powerful. I went with icewm/rox-session as my desktop and its lightning fast and simple. Had the whole system up and configured in about 3 hours maybe less. The only thing that gave me a little trouble was Xorg7 and fonts. Everything else went flawless. I just needed to install some other modules I was not aware of so that was not the distro's fault at all. There were a few changes since I stopped using the system (hwd, udev maturing and others) but its still about the same.

Oooh one important fact. I have a Nvidia Chipset Mobo and I have 2 USB Drives connected to the system and every Distro I tried (except Arch) would lock my system up with a Call Trace upon rebooting the system. Every Distro I tried!! I tried a variety of different config settings and boot parms and it would still do the same thing. Arch did not and has not done this once yet   

In closing I just want to say that I am glad to be back using Arch 8) and I just wanted to say thank you very much to the Dev's and the community for such an excellent distro 

Thank you

tomk

Forum Fellow

From: Ireland

Registered: 2004-07-21

Posts: 9,839

Re: I'm back (and glad to be)

Welcome back - glad you're enjoying Arch again. I agree with more or less everthing you said, and I particularly like your mention of a "huge repo of packages " - compared to some others, it's arguably on the small side, but it's in tune with the Arch approach, and ABS makes it easy to build your own - which you can then submit to the AUR for sharing.

See you around the forum (and if you feel like it, the ML, IRC, AUR, Wiki, Bugtracker, etc.)

Borosai

Member

From: Sandy Appendix, U.S.A.

Registered: 2006-06-15

Posts: 227

Re: I'm back (and glad to be)

I also agree with you PeskyGee. I am new to Arch, and love it. As far as the number of packages available, I think it's perfect. I haven't had a problem finding any apps I need, and on top of that, they are up to date. The more packages you have, the more manpower is required to update them, and I dealt with outdated packages many times with Gentoo...not anymore.
Arch is a good thing -----> good times.