The downsides of Arch ?

rayjgu3 · 2007-03-27 21:05:53

my gripe is things like

$ tovidgui
tovidgui requires wxPython 2.6; please install or upgrade wxPython

when

# pacman -Qs wxpython
local/wxpython 2.8.0.1-1
    A wxWidgets GUI toolkit for Python.

there has been several times in the past i come across things like this & i know its not arch's fault
it has to do with tovid & others requiring a particular version of a package so it leaves me to either to figure out a work around to run tovidgui or use some other means of doing the work i want done

i have tried other distros but they never seem to stay on my pc long.
where as arch once it found its way onto my hard drive it has not left .

raymano · 2007-03-27 21:23:32

My Grandma can't install and customize it.
But she can definitely use it after I've installed and customized it.

Also when a non-techy friend sees me using it and is baffled by the features and speed, they always say "WOW! What version of Linux is this? Where can I get a copy?" I have to tell them "It's Arch. Not for Newbies. Why don't you try out Ubuntu or PCLinuxOS." This is the part that really sucks about Arch.

And yes I do know that Arch was not meant to be everything for everyone and it was not meant for non-techies. But I can dream. Right?

Other than that I LOVE ARCH! I just can't share it with as many people as I like.

Last edited by raymano (2007-03-27 21:36:28)

skale · 2007-03-27 21:40:39

Definitely keep the docs; several times I had to google to find them, when they should be there anyway. Maybe put an option in pacman.conf(however that would work) so that you can choose whether you want them or not.

One of the reasons I kept with Arch is that it usually stuck with the standard setup and all, used the more ubiquitous choice of packages, and the like. There seems to be less of that now. (Mkinitcpio) as an example. I'm sure there is some reason it is better, but it seems like another way to do the same thing, with no noticeable advantage, and another thing to deal with, if you want to update. Support was great, but still, I don't know what the point was. Still, I can get by well using general (not Arch-specific) resources. I used the Ubuntu wiki to set up my video driver (before there was a decent wiki page) and it worked marvelously. Keep it up.

Seriously, those are the only problems I have with Arch. Some of the defaults suck, but that's my problem, I guess.

iBertus · 2007-03-27 21:50:10

I don't think anyone has really voiced a serious problem here. Yes, several packages have everything and the kitchen sink added but that can be fixed via ABS. If you think a dependancy is listed in error you should post a bug report.

.:B:. · 2007-03-28 00:35:04

iBertus wrote:

I don't think anyone has really voiced a serious problem here. Yes, several packages have everything and the kitchen sink added but that can be fixed via ABS. If you think a dependancy is listed in error you should post a bug report.

I think missing info pages are quite a major feature . A lot of people seem to find it very annoying they're missing, sometimes I find them handier then man pages to work with. I heard the space usage was the argument to strip them out, but with today's multi-ten (or hundred) GB HD's, shouldn't be that much of an issue... Arch is a broadband distro anyway.

And about the deps: I want to see you rebuild your toolchain . Then we can talk again .

As the topic of the thread says: It's not about disadvantages Arch has. It's about what you feel uncomfortable with as a user .

Last edited by B (2007-03-28 00:47:21)

codemac · 2007-03-28 05:00:19

I'd like to have info pages back, but that's it.

http://www.methylblue.com/filelight/ima … .6.3-2.png

And that's just kde. I install and uninstall... a lot. I like to try out things. But our packages would be more than double the size.

Last edited by codemac (2007-03-28 05:00:39)

Susu · 2007-03-29 11:08:10

Winblowz99 wrote:

As for the downsides, my number one complaint would be the fact that AUR isn't very well integrated (yet) into pacman. I heard that this is being worked on, so maybe in the future this will no longer be a problem. I don't like the fact that I have to visit the Arch AUR website, download the gzipped tarball, unpack it, cd to the directory, install the dependencies, make the package, and finally install the binary. IMHO it should be much easier than this.

I guess you'll like yaourt...

dystoptic · 2007-03-29 21:32:48

Like Winblowz99 said, integration of ABS is far away of simple usage.

Another downside I experienced is the small community. Problems I post in the forum are often not solved, because there is nobody who has an idea or at least made the same experience.
I also often see posts with 0 responses. Could imagine that this is very annoying to the questioner.

Winblowz99 · 2007-03-29 22:13:00

dystoptic wrote:

Another downside I experienced is the small community. Problems I post in the forum are often not solved, because there is nobody who has an idea or at least made the same experience.
I also often see posts with 0 responses. Could imagine that this is very annoying to the questioner.

Personally, I would have to disagree with you. I hardly ever see posts with 0 replies. In fact, I find the members of this community even more helpful than in Gentoo.

wiremore · 2007-03-30 07:33:01

The deletion of docs and especially info pages irks me. There have been so many occasions when I have been with my laptop somewhere without internet access and not had access to docs. I think that there should be pkgname-doc packages, so that the docs are optional. They could easily be generated by makepkg automatically. At least, there should really be packages for the gnu coreutil info pages.

Really, everything else is perfect.

But if man pages are removed in the future (seems unlikely though), I'm going to be very annoyed.

phrakture · 2007-03-30 15:44:13

Regarding docs, and I've said this HUNDREDS of times.

Let's use an example... ummm grub. Grub has a lot of (maybe useful?) information in info pages.

$ abs
$ mkdir grub-docs && cd grub-docs
$ cp /var/abs/base/grub/PKGBUILD .
$ vim PKGBUILD
change pkgname=grub-docs
add options=(keepdocs)
in the build() function only install the docs
:wq
makepkg

Now upload to the AUR. They might even make it to community.

stonecrest · 2007-03-30 23:33:21

phrakture wrote:

Regarding docs, and I've said this HUNDREDS of times.

And it's still just as terrible of a solution hundreds of times later.. who would've thought?

deficite · 2007-03-31 01:17:59

I'm sorry, but I think it's an elegant solution. Much more elegant than wasting space on info pages that most people (I can't cite sources here, prove me wrong if you wish) don't care about. If you can't figure out how to do something with man, you can google it. Some programs' info pages are published online anyway. I personally hate info and would never use it. So should I have to waste the time recompiling all the packages to remove it? No. There's a reason I don't use Gentoo. However, the method phrak gave you gives you the docs without having to compile the program.

edit: I do realize I could just delete the info files off of my hard drive if I don't want them cluttering my hard drive. However, you could also just download them and put them on your hard drive too. Goes both ways.

Last edited by deficite (2007-03-31 01:20:46)

stonecrest · 2007-03-31 05:17:03

deficite wrote:

I'm sorry, but I think it's an elegant solution. Much more elegant than wasting space on info pages that most people (I can't cite sources here, prove me wrong if you wish) don't care about. If you can't figure out how to do something with man, you can google it. Some programs' info pages are published online anyway. I personally hate info and would never use it. So should I have to waste the time recompiling all the packages to remove it? No. There's a reason I don't use Gentoo. However, the method phrak gave you gives you the docs without having to compile the program.
edit: I do realize I could just delete the info files off of my hard drive if I don't want them cluttering my hard drive. However, you could also just download them and put them on your hard drive too. Goes both ways.

You also have tons of translation po's on your computer for various apps that you probably don't use, doesn't that bother you too? I bet you haven't deleted those from your hard drive, yet they total 91mb here!!! Holy cow, we can fit another 16 mp3s on our computer!!

Arch is supposed to be very kiss and "vanilla" -modifying someone's application so that info files aren't included doesn't fit that mold. Even if only 5% of people wanted info files, they should be included. I can't believe we're seriously arguing over 50mb of files.

pelle.k · 2007-03-31 09:28:50

Arch is supposed to be very kiss and "vanilla" -modifying someone's application so that info files aren't included doesn't fit that mold. Even if only 5% of people wanted info files, they should be included. I can't believe we're seriously arguing over 50mb of files.

Amen to that!

shining · 2007-03-31 11:15:30

stonecrest wrote:

Arch is supposed to be very kiss and "vanilla" -modifying someone's application so that info files aren't included doesn't fit that mold. Even if only 5% of people wanted info files, they should be included. I can't believe we're seriously arguing over 50mb of files.

I don't understand neither. I never really tried to figure out how info worked on other distribs where it's available, so I keep using man and don't care about info. But I wouldn't care at all if it was included, and wouldn't even notice it.
And I probably always have more space than that wasted for things much less useful than info files.

deficite · 2007-03-31 14:50:24

Yes, it does kinda bother me that those translation files are on there, but guess what? There are a lot more people that need those files than there are people who need info files. This decision (to strip out info files) wasn't made by phrak or iph, etc., it was made by Judd (a long time ago). To address the issue, I'm going to either make my own pacman3 frontend using the libified awesomeness that has an option of stripping out the translation files upon package installation, or I'll patch a frontend that already exists to add that feature.

BTW: I have removed translation files in the past.

Last edited by deficite (2007-03-31 15:13:01)

Lontronics · 2007-03-31 14:54:33

There is an easy solution; build your own system with Linux from scratch, or remove all those translation files by hand.

In fact, it does bother me and I do have added some lines in my rc.local to remove all unneccessary stuff on boot.
This way my system is as clean as I like it, till I make the step to for example Linux from scratch or Crux...

But you are right, there are much more people using the translations then the info pages.
So, I think it is fair to leave them in

Jan

deficite · 2007-03-31 15:11:37

Um....how is building my own Linux system from scratch easier than patching an existing frontend for pacman? Do you know how much work goes into building a Linux system from scratch? I already said I have a solution for myself that will work beautifully (and it'll probably only take an hour of work to make a patch for somebody's frontend. Plus I can send the patch to the developer and perhaps get a new feature added. Ah, the beauty of OSS), and it's not even a big issue for me. Whether or not info pages are on my system is not a big issue with me either. The main thing that I didn't like is how stonecrest bashed phrak for providing a solution. That's why I joined this discussion.

If your post wasn't aimed at me, then ok.

Last edited by deficite (2007-03-31 15:14:55)

.:B:. · 2007-03-31 16:10:44

Lontronics wrote:

There is an easy solution; build your own system with Linux from scratch, or remove all those translation files by hand.
In fact, it does bother me and I do have added some lines in my rc.local to remove all unneccessary stuff on boot.
This way my system is as clean as I like it, till I make the step to for example Linux from scratch or Crux...
But you are right, there are much more people using the translations then the info pages.
So, I think it is fair to leave them in
Jan

Providing no translation files would be highly undemocratic. Not everyone understands English well enough to run a distro day to day. Of course if you can install a distro with an english installer...

hacosta · 2007-03-31 19:31:54

this is getting flamy, any ways, if i had a say, i would vote to include info files (and everything else as vanilla as possible).. but we don't.. at least not until pacman gets optional depends and we have a documentation repo..

pelle.k · 2007-03-31 19:37:08

optional depends! There is a task about this in the bugtracker. This would solve _all_ these stupid issues (which are splitting us in two camps atm...)

[edit] http://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=31324
documentation could be an "enhance", and other optional dependencies a "suggest". [/edit]

Last edited by pelle.k (2007-03-31 19:42:24)

krejzihors · 2007-04-01 19:45:46

somairotevoli wrote:

Out of the 20 or so distros I tried before Arch, none lasted more then 2 weeks for me. Things just didn't work. I would always end up breaking things. I been using Arch for almost a year now and only reinstalled once, not because anything was broken.....I just got bored.

ditto. (well, except for the last part )

dolby · 2007-04-01 21:18:46

can anyone name an example of an application where docs proved to be important and wished they werent stripped?
i honestly cant think of any..

liem · 2007-04-02 05:49:36

sendmail, httpd, smtp-vilter, spamd, thttpd, (most servers) and `ls /bin /usr/bin`. Most cli apps infact.

Documentation in the linux world suck, but it is all we got.

Last edited by liem (2007-04-02 05:51:35)

Arch Linux

#26 2007-03-27 21:05:53

Re: The downsides of Arch ?

#27 2007-03-27 21:23:32

Re: The downsides of Arch ?

#28 2007-03-27 21:40:39

Re: The downsides of Arch ?

#29 2007-03-27 21:50:10

Re: The downsides of Arch ?

#30 2007-03-28 00:35:04

Re: The downsides of Arch ?

#31 2007-03-28 05:00:19

Re: The downsides of Arch ?

#32 2007-03-29 11:08:10

Re: The downsides of Arch ?

#33 2007-03-29 21:32:48

Re: The downsides of Arch ?

#34 2007-03-29 22:13:00

Re: The downsides of Arch ?

#35 2007-03-30 07:33:01

Re: The downsides of Arch ?

#36 2007-03-30 15:44:13

Re: The downsides of Arch ?

#37 2007-03-30 23:33:21

Re: The downsides of Arch ?

#38 2007-03-31 01:17:59

Re: The downsides of Arch ?

#39 2007-03-31 05:17:03

Re: The downsides of Arch ?

#40 2007-03-31 09:28:50

Re: The downsides of Arch ?

#41 2007-03-31 11:15:30

Re: The downsides of Arch ?

#42 2007-03-31 14:50:24

Re: The downsides of Arch ?

#43 2007-03-31 14:54:33

Re: The downsides of Arch ?

#44 2007-03-31 15:11:37

Re: The downsides of Arch ?

#45 2007-03-31 16:10:44

Re: The downsides of Arch ?

#46 2007-03-31 19:31:54

Re: The downsides of Arch ?

#47 2007-03-31 19:37:08

Re: The downsides of Arch ?

#48 2007-04-01 19:45:46

Re: The downsides of Arch ?

#49 2007-04-01 21:18:46

Re: The downsides of Arch ?

#50 2007-04-02 05:49:36

Re: The downsides of Arch ?

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