Arch Gaining popularity

1c3d0g · 2006-08-30 16:07:13

Lone_Wolf wrote:

...
Let's keep in mind we all heave been newbies one time.

Agreed.

Mandor · 2006-08-30 17:20:44

Lone_Wolf wrote:

Less than a year ago (oct 2005) i was a new arch user also.
I felt welcome here and my questions were answered.
Let's keep in mind we all heave been newbies one time.

Actually, I find Arch community to be helpfull as well in fact. I don't think someone can say he's been bashed. But still elder users (hm, how should be called actually?) said they prefer arch not to grow. Which I find ... unsuitable... Something like you'll be eventually helped, but not really wellcomed. At least it looks like that given the comments.

test1000 · 2006-08-30 18:38:28

The reason elder(XD) users don't want arch to grow is that they worry windows/ubuntu users(please don't take offense, this is a broad generalisation to illustrate a point) will start asking for features that really destroy more than help. Like a user just asked here on these forums some days ago why TWM was the default window manager when one started x for the first time; he would much prefer that it was gnome that greeted him...

Well that would be great: completely destroy another advantage with arch: The ability to install a base and start from there.

That's one example.

Another example would be suddenly users are flooding the forums with questions why X doesn't work as they have ran hwd but still X doesn't work.

We all know xorg.conf sucks, but hiding it from the user kinda says: Don't try to mess with this file; it's dangerous.

Thereby pouring gasoline on the FUD fire they have brought over from windows and other wannabe-windows-ductape-distributions. The "Dont-touch, be careful or you might die" mentality which windows nurtures.

The philosopy of linux is laugh in the face of danger. It's D.I.Y -- linus torvalds
It's OK to be ignorant, it's _not_ ok to play stupid. -- Eric Raymond

My point is: Users should learn to help themselves, not trust some ductape-linux distribution with "automagic-tools" which only makes it harder for them in the long run and defeats the whole reason for going to linux in the first place: It's superior features.

sweiss · 2006-08-30 19:09:33

Arch has a certain philosophy or way of things, which we the users seem to like.
That does not mean we shouldn't welcome new users into this philosophy. Who the hell are we to decide anyway?

That also does not mean that we should be strong-headed fools. Even if a new user comes up with a suggestion, it should at least be considered.

The beauty of Arch is that it dares. It's not frozen. It has the very general guidelines but keeps evolving.
Let's not make Arch be like Debian. Arch is a pioneer.

lumiwa · 2006-08-30 19:33:03

sweiss wrote:

Arch has a certain philosophy or way of things, which we the users seem to like.
That does not mean we shouldn't welcome new users into this philosophy. Who the hell are we to decide anyway?
That also does not mean that we should be strong-headed fools. Even if a new user comes up with a suggestion, it should at least be considered.
The beauty of Arch is that it dares. It's not frozen. It has the very general guidelines but keeps evolving.
Let's not make Arch be like Debian. Arch is a pioneer.

I understand what are you said but I don't agree with you and users as you. In the computers world, oS world are "war". If Linux want to be a concurency of Windows and IMO want to be than need to became a user friendly to users if you wanted or no. Otherwise soon will be history. And If you look back to the history you can see that Linux is much more friendly. Maybe it will be small usrs group with some kind of OS but I don't know if it is reallity.
There are also BSD which is more Unix like system and it is also much more friendly or look at Solaris, Nexenta is here...

Dusty · 2006-08-30 19:47:26

I appologize, all, I never meant to imply that new users are not welcome. I delight in helping newbies see the powerful simplicity of Arch. Every once in a while we get an influx of new users that seem to think that Arch should be changed to suit them. Its not going to happen, of course, but teaching these people that Arch is what it is because the current users want it that way can get monotonous. :-) However, even such users deserve a chance to get to know what Arch is really about.

The user community has grown substantially since I first started here, and it is still a mature and wonderful group of people that I am proud to be a part of. As long as the people keep the same ideals that they do now, it doesn't matter how big the group gets.

I do miss when I knew everyone on this board. I miss when I first joined and it seemed like every senior member attended to every post individually. I miss when the Arch Devs used to hang out here as much as anyone else. It was nice when the community was smaller.

And its still nice. I welcome all new users!

Dusty

Mandor · 2006-08-31 00:50:21

I think I understand that. But open source projects (and especially linux distributions) have irreversible evolution - if successful, they grow. Pretty simple. Maybe growing can have some excitation and charm too.

About the guys wanting X to "greet them with a friendly GNOME" (duh) or something like that - if they want it, it doesn't mean it has to be done... Anyway twm is ugly and totaly useless - I prefer to kill x to the rest.

ady · 2006-08-31 06:50:30

Anyone read this week's DistroWatch Weekly?
"But things don't look as bleak as they sound. The truth is that, realistically speaking, not much has changed since 5 years ago as far as the number of "real" Linux distributions is concerned. Weeding out all the "also-runs", it's not hard to see that we still only have 10 desktop Linux distributions. Besides the five survivors from five years ago, it's Ubuntu, Gentoo, KNOPPIX, PCLinuxOS and Arch Linux. The remaining 340 active distributions are either based off one of the above, or specialise in filling a niche market. In other words, they don't matter."
Arch matters

Sigi · 2006-08-31 07:58:44

ady wrote:

Anyone read this week's DistroWatch Weekly?

Yep ;-)

In my opinion, the speed in which Arch Linux spreads over the whole world is perfect. Arch has never gained too much attention, but more and more people are using it (thats at least my feeling). A lot of those people try out a dozen distros until they find Arch. They try Arch because they aren't satisfied with one or more features of their distros, because the abilities of rpm/deb aren't enough for them, because they fall asleep everytime they have to compile a bigger piece of software using gentoo,... This was also my experience. I was a kind of distro-hopper for about two or three years. I never tried an other distro since I first installed Arch!

Other distros are maybe able to attract a lot more people (at least for a short time), but I'm sure that a lot of us Archers will be using Arch for a long, long time... ;-)

And by the way: I don't recommend Arch to people new to linux. They often want a Windows replacement instead of learning Arch. It's easier to show them the advantages of Arch after they made some linux experiences for themselfs. Arch is the perfect distro for every linux user except those not willing to "learn" to use linux..

Jarsto · 2006-08-31 11:38:56

Sigi wrote:

Yep ;-)
In my opinion, the speed in which Arch Linux spreads over the whole world is perfect. Arch has never gained too much attention, but more and more people are using it (thats at least my feeling). A lot of those people try out a dozen distros until they find Arch. They try Arch because they aren't satisfied with one or more features of their distros, because the abilities of rpm/deb aren't enough for them, because they fall asleep everytime they have to compile a bigger piece of software using gentoo,... This was also my experience. I was a kind of distro-hopper for about two or three years. I never tried an other distro since I first installed Arch!

I guess I got lucky. I only distro-hopped for a few months before stumbling over Arch. Because I installed it over Fedora Core, which had previously provided Grub, it became the default option. At first I went on going back and forth, Arch, Slackware, Debian, Slackware, Arch, Arch, Debian etc. was a normal pattern for a week's worth of reboots.

Then, almost without noticing, I started just letting grub count down and boot Arch. I've played around with other distros since, but only out of curiosity (my old PC was still set up to handle three distros at a time for quite a while), I've never looked to switch away.

brazzmonkey · 2006-09-01 09:26:12

if you want to advertize arch, you can go to distrowatch every day and visit the arch linux page. that'd make arch's distrowatch pagehits artificially growing. and i suppose the higher rank, the higher advertizing. more visits lead to even more visits...
still, arch is around 20th rank with 300 hits per day (not bad actually). still a long way to ubuntu's (more than) 2000 hits/day.

i know this is not a fair way to advertize. but advertizing is usually everything but fair.

Pavel Jackoff · 2006-09-01 11:30:22

lumiwa wrote:

sweiss wrote:
Arch has a certain philosophy or way of things, which we the users seem to like.
That does not mean we shouldn't welcome new users into this philosophy. Who the hell are we to decide anyway?
That also does not mean that we should be strong-headed fools. Even if a new user comes up with a suggestion, it should at least be considered.
The beauty of Arch is that it dares. It's not frozen. It has the very general guidelines but keeps evolving.
Let's not make Arch be like Debian. Arch is a pioneer.
I understand what are you said but I don't agree with you and users as you. In the computers world, oS world are "war". If Linux want to be a concurency of Windows and IMO want to be than need to became a user friendly to users if you wanted or no. Otherwise soon will be history. And If you look back to the history you can see that Linux is much more friendly. Maybe it will be small usrs group with some kind of OS but I don't know if it is reallity.
There are also BSD which is more Unix like system and it is also much more friendly or look at Solaris, Nexenta is here...

well, the nice thing about linux or other free unices is, that you have the choice. it's perfectly viable to create a windows-rivaling user friendly distribution. that's what ubuntu/suse/redhat try to achieve, and they don't do bad. to me, and i think many fellow archers, user friendlyness is not about the ability to do everything with nice guis and the minimum amount of clicking, but to be able to do what i want, the way i want and don't have to fear that yast or something will screw up when installing a new piece of software, just because i edited some script by hand.
btw, i think when it comes to easy usability for everyone, symphony os will blow everything away on day.

mallow005 · 2006-09-03 08:45:36

I believe there was a Slashdot post a few hours ago that explained how Debian's "free for all" discussion/community doesn't work and how Ubuntu's "structured, regulated" community is much more effective. Currently, Arch's community is too small to be bogged down with noise, but it's something to think about for the future. I think the "trusted users" concept for ABS is a great idea, and something that should be built upon.

Currently I think there is a very nice balance between experienced and not-so experienced users in Arch. The intermediate level nature of Arch is probably what makes it so. I think the overall development of the distro is also a good slow-and-steady pace, not too wild to break everything every month (gentoo) and not too slow.

deficite · 2006-09-03 14:10:02

brazzmonkey wrote:

if you want to advertize arch, you can go to distrowatch every day and visit the arch linux page. that'd make arch's distrowatch pagehits artificially growing. and i suppose the higher rank, the higher advertizing. more visits lead to even more visits...
still, arch is around 20th rank with 300 hits per day (not bad actually). still a long way to ubuntu's (more than) 2000 hits/day.
i know this is not a fair way to advertize. but advertizing is usually everything but fair.

Although I don't support what you suggest, I would also not be surprised if Canonical happened to have a few people on payroll to click on Ubuntu's link repeatedly at some select websites and post anonymous messages saying "OMG Ubuntu is teh 1337!lolzolz!!!!!!!!1111111"

PS: This post is not intended to show hatred towards Ubuntu, since it's the #2 best distro IMHO. Replace Ubuntu with any other commercial distro and the same could POSSIBLY hold true.

ady · 2006-09-04 05:50:27

Arch got a new review, saw the link on distrowatch http://www.frlinux.net/?section=distrib … rticle=176.
Can anyone translate the conclusion from that review. My french is prety bad but from what i understand it's a good conclusion.

benplaut · 2006-09-04 06:09:02

To summarize, Arch Linux is a system with a manager of packages well to him which after a little bit of training, this reveals logical and powerful. On the level of material detection, considering the updates of system are recent and that the ISO of the 0.7.2 is based on core 2.6.16, I see only very little difficulty at this horizon. The speed of the system also deserves to be mentioned. Over my weeks of test, I was pleased to use a stable system and which comprises the majority of the packages that you can seek for Linux. Without any doubt a distribution to be supervised for the future.[.quote]
via babelfish... it seems they liked it
"a system with a manager of packages well to him"

Arch Linux

#26 2006-08-30 16:07:13

Re: Arch Gaining popularity

#27 2006-08-30 17:20:44

Re: Arch Gaining popularity

#28 2006-08-30 18:38:28

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#29 2006-08-30 19:09:33

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#30 2006-08-30 19:33:03

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#31 2006-08-30 19:47:26

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#32 2006-08-31 00:50:21

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#33 2006-08-31 06:50:30

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#34 2006-08-31 07:58:44

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#35 2006-08-31 11:38:56

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#36 2006-09-01 09:26:12

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#37 2006-09-01 11:30:22

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#38 2006-09-03 08:45:36

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#39 2006-09-03 14:10:02

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