The Official Hello Everyone Thread

Branau · 2016-02-10 04:17:40

Hey everyone! I'm new to Arch, been on Linux since April '15, so almost a year now. I've primarily used Ubuntu and its various flavors but I've tried out Fedora, OpenSUSE, and Debian as well. I work as a web developer so I really enjoy having the same or similar operating system as the ones that run the servers I work on all day. Makes my job a little easier having some Linux knowledge. Ideally I'd like to move into a more Linux-intensive position, but that will come with time, I'm sure. I haven't quite started with Arch, as I've been a little hesitant since I rely on my computer for work. I decided to join up at the forums so that I could look around and ask questions, pick up a few things, and then try the installation one of these days when I have a long weekend and no extra work to do. I'm attracted to the idea of building my own setup so that it'll run a bit smoother, without having to pay for super high-end hardware. I'm currently finding that even 6GB RAM and an Intel i5 aren't quite enough for me. I'm hoping that by bumping my computer up to 8GB and setting up my system myself, I'll be able to prevent hitting swap space so much

quilinho · 2016-02-10 17:43:05

Hello, I've been using Arch Linux almost a year or two until now. I entered in the Linux world after a school work where I should setup a Samba 4 server with ownCloud and integrate both authentication through some new features implemented on Samba 4 and ownCloud last version.
In that work I've been given a Ubuntu server OS, so I used most of apt-get and make, make install to do the work.
I had heard about Linux and a little bit about this world, but after this work I entered in it with an OS in my main machine.
I used Debian because of it's freedom of use and do-it-by-yourself way, since Ubuntu - after Unity implementation - become an almost closed Linux OS, wich doens't satisfy my wiches on a Unix-like system.

After Debian, I wanted something more maneuverable, after going through different desktops enviorements, like Gnome, LDXE, KDE, Enlightenment, MATE, Xfce and Pantheon (from Elementary distribution), I've found Arch Linux.

When trying to setup my machine with Arch, I've passed through hard times solving UEFI and GRUB's installation step, with many tries I did it and now I don't want to change my current setup: Arch Linux and I3, because of its simplicity, minimalistic build and total control.

loredin · 2016-02-11 17:09:51

Hello everyone, got into linux world with ubuntu first (about 4 years ago) , then got introduced to the Archlinux from a colleague one year after and been using it on my arm processed boards (rpi,rpi2 and odroid xu4 now). Reinstalled it properly on a laptop lately. I must thank the Archwiki since it has been my source for many topics in the linux world !

CodeDmitry · 2016-02-11 18:15:05

Hello Arch Linux Forum! Yet Another Guy With No Idea What They Are Doing Here(YAGWNIWTADH for short).

Had to type in a 64 character sha thingy to register.

Wish me luck on trying to install Arch!

I'm on my 5th attempt, but I'm getting further. I finally figured out how to make partitions... I think...

WorMzy · 2016-02-11 18:25:48

Welcome to the forum, loredin. Please note that Arch Linux doesn't provide packages for the ARM architecture, just i686 and x86_64. What you are using on your Pis and xu4 is Arch Linux ARM, a separate distribution. Please do bear that in mind when posting topics -- we do not support ARM on these forums, so you should ask on the Arch Linux ARM forums if you encounter a problem on your ARM devices (unless you are having the same problem on your laptop, of course). Thanks.

WorMzy · 2016-02-11 18:26:47

Mod note: Merging CodeDmitry's post into the Official 'hello' topic.

marcus-s · 2016-02-12 18:46:57

O hai!

Marcus from Germany here. I aspire to be an upcoming freelancer here in the area of Berlin, but for the time being I do work for a fairly big company in IT business.

Since I was young I had the urge to come in contact with machines, so my very first computer in my hands was a Game Boy. Later on, after learning about chips and software, I got my hands on an C64 - like every aspiring future geek should have done. Some time passed, I got my 486 PC. I first used Windows, but eventually I fired away my pocket money for RedHat Linux 5.0 in a box and some CDs at the time! Yay! That was my first contact with Linux.

Well since then a lot of things changed, and I have used some distros over the years... Ubuntu of course, Gentoo. I tried Mandriva at the time too. Eventually I heard of Arch, and I did use it quite often for certain things I was trying out. But eventually I came to the conclusion that Arch is what I wanna use, so I made the switch from what I was using before (let's just leave at that shall we). I even tried PC-BSD - but for some reason the Xorg driver of Intel graphics won't play ball on that OS - particularly if you're using Optimus hardware, which I have. So yeah. It's all working fine on Arch. I must say this wifi-menu thingy for the console is some bad-ass stuff. Do what wifi-menu does for you on Gentoo... good luck and merry Christmas, seriously.

So yeah. I will be around here now.

Apart from that I do have some experience in an array of languages, mostly C++, PHP, JS - those are the prime one. C# is something I needed to use for a project, I also looked into Java. Yeah. What else? Ah yes, some exotic stuff like BlitzMax and Smalltalk is also something I used to use and code for a while. Right now I'm learning Lua (to customize Awesome WM). Yop.

See you around

Alad · 2016-02-12 19:40:08

I fired away my pocket money for RedHat Linux 5.0

I remember those, though in my case it stayed at bewilderment at the guy with the Red Hat.

Welcome.

ffurbo · 2016-02-13 08:58:15

Hi Guys,
I'm a fresh Arch user, but not totally newbie I think.
A little bit from my GNU\Linux history: I started in College. AFAIR here was time of Mandrake (now it is called Mandriva), SUSE and first releases of Ubuntu. After a few attempts working with these so called "user friendly" distros, I started with Gentoo stage1... Few days later I had complete working system and I really liked it. I stayed with Gentoo until the end of my studies.
When I took a job in the corporation in capital and started a family I had no time for Linux at home. There was only old RedHat on servers at work.

Now I'm working in my town as a web developer/maintainer and decided to install Linux on my private PC. I don't feel like I want to compile whole system, but I loved the flexibility of Gentoo, so my choice of Arch was obvious.

A lot of things changed since my previous "Linux desktop time", but many things didn't change. XFCE is still the best DE and ClawsMail is still the best email client. Sorry guys but nobody figured anything better in last ~10 years

I will be lurking here and maybe asking some questions.
Cheers

Lukeee · 2016-02-13 13:44:46

Hello Everybody!

Finally making a Arch forum account now! Well I'm Luke, no give away with the username! I've been a Unix user for quite a long time, infact 10 years this June!
What to say, what to say... I suppose I'll give you a little insight of myself, and the road to Arch.

I started using Unix in 2006, just turned 16 years old, and I finally managed to be able to get a computer of my own! well I say computer but it was a EEE PC 701 "Netbook" (I think?!). Couldn't really afford computers before, I got that as a gift for my birthday. The only computer we had(Rich friend gave it my parents), I wasn't permitted to install another OS, not that I even knew how! That computer had a 30GB HDD, 1ghz cpu( I think), and 512mB of RAM... Far cry from today standards! Ha-ha!

The Eee pc had a custom Linux install on it as stock, straight off the bat I found it amazing, hated the menu's, and the access denied messages I kept getting while exploring my new gadget. I'm pretty sure I reinstalled an early version on Ubuntu on it, version 6.06 I think it was. First application I opened, Terminal, I played with CMD on windows alot, and this new Terminal intrigued me, thoughts of "what can I do?!", "how does this work?" started whirring around my brain. I got so excited when I realised I could create folders, remove them, copy them, and much more all from this single window. From then on I started googling all sorts to do with Linux just to feed my hunger of learning about it. I had started college that Autumn too, studying computer science, but hardware instead of software. I found I had a passion for computers, and knowing how they worked completely.

Fast forward to age 19, I was finally able to buy a better laptop, HP Pavilion I think it was, or similar. It came with Windows 7 on it, this was around November time as 7 was only released in July IIRC! Dual-booted it straight away with Ubuntu, I would deliberately break things to learn how to fix it, I broke Ubuntu at least 42 beyond repair, or me being able to fix it so I reinstalled(always been bad with backups!). Generally from 19 until 22 I mainly used Ubuntu, tried other distro's in VMs.

I found out about Linux from scratch in 2010, added it too my TODO list, which is still on it ironically! I still haven't gave that a go yet, but I also found Arch... Boy did this look difficult! It was on another level compared to anything I had done, literally building your own disto. That went straight onto the TODO list. Fast forward to 2011 I bought a MacBook Pro, I like shiny new gadgets, it's a weakness of mine. I carried on my escapades with Unix on Osx using virtualbox. Everything with OSX was wonderful, I even built a nice gaming rig in 2013 for hackintosh/windows dualboot.

Eventually I grew tired of OSX, hated the limitations, hand holding, denying me the right to modify my system which I had paid for and how I saw fit! I knew it had to go, but it was a very big step, from a fully fledged OS, to one I must build myself... Honestly I was lost, and the hardest part is it was a Macbook, I had read about people bricking them. I was scared to say the least, as I needed this thing(spoiler - it survived - typing on it), I bailed, 2014 I was about to dual boot arch, and I bailed. Told myself I would do it another time.

4 Months ago, I had enough, OSX was crashing, very slow, and kept using loads of resources(8Gb ram, 2Gb gone on fresh boot, nothing opened). I started to google about dual-booting arch and OSX together. Got a few hits, but nothing exactly for what I wanted for my model.
I had big privacy concerns about my laptop, so I decided on having encryption too. I ended up with 2 partitions, 1 - osx, 2 - fully encrypted partition via luks AES 256, with LVM and Arch installed inside. I knew this was going to be a challenge as I couldn't find any tutorials of people doing it on my Mac model. I knew I had to improvise, and read many, many posts/tutorials.

3 attempts of doing this setup, mixing around 9 different sets of instructions, alot of googling, and Arch forum searching... I finally had done it! It took me 4 weeks to get this thing going, I hit so many hiccups, and brickwalls. Nearly bricked it at one point I think, from trying to find the best booting option, and I settled with systemd booting, which was gummiboot - flawless. Since successfully putting Arch on my Mac, I've been continuously working on it, adding bits here and there. Finding a WM was a pain, I tried so many, but I run AwesomeWM.

In the end, I absolutely love Arch-Linux, I love the road that's taken me here, the things I have learn't from having my very first laptop at 16 with not a lot of knowledge, to now 26(almost- June), and my knowledge is brilliant(not boasting). I'm glad I'm here today with all of you fellow Archer's, and I'm definitely staying. I hope I will become a decent member of the community for you all, and hopefully aid people anyway I can, with anything I can!

Apologises for the long winded post, but this is my first one ever, always been a shadow reader. I know some people will skim it, but other will read it with full attention.

Don't stop learning, don't ever give up, and please, please, always work towards making yourself better!

Thank-you very much for reading fellow Archers!

Luke.

Texbrew · 2016-02-13 20:48:06

Hi, Luke. From one forum newbie to another, Welcome!

Really liked your post. FWIW, I think it was just "long winded" enough. A lot of what you said has such a familiar ring to it.

Not a Mac owner myself, but a lot of us have the same fears when leaving the familiar behind.

It took me a good while before I did an actual linux install on a laptop (had been learning linux on an old PC).

Tried dual booting windows & linux on that laptop, and eventually messed that up. The anguish I felt while restoring windows was immense. Recovery disks lost, unable to find them. Arrgghh!!!

Maybe the best money I have spent on my computer hobby was when I bought a spare hard drive for that laptop, removed the windows hard drive, and installed a linux distro on the new one. A reaction to fear, yes. But now I could experiment/learn linux with no fear. Exclellent.

Repeated the spare drive bit for a slightly newer laptop because I was reluctant, fearful of getting rid of windows again. That windows drive has been sitting on a shelf for well over a year now. I confess that I take a certain amount of pride in the fact that I don't need windows anymore. I only brush against windows when maintaining my wife's win laptop and a neighbor's win PC.

I found Arch to be pretty daunting at first, still do at times. Learning as I go, stupidly break it, fix it, break it again, fix it again. Thankfully, most of the breaking/fixing occurs in a virtual machine. I have Arch installed on "bare metal" on a couple of machines, and I try to be extra careful when tinkering with the system on those.

Like many other Arch users, I really like the fact that you can customize it to your heart's content. My Arch builds are very lean, fast, and useful.

And how delightful it is to transform the Arch install from it's terminal screen into a system with a desktop, file manager, browser, and whatever else you want to add. It feels like you built it yourself, but all you really did was to learn to follow instructions (the wiki & the forums).

I hope you enjoy your Arch Linux experience.

tex

elinux · 2016-02-13 22:43:17

Hi everyone ! And Texbrew. Welcome too, I guess

I've been using Arch for some time now, and bugging all sorts of friends for technical help. I figured it was high time to bugger strangers for it too !

What I love most about Arch (linux in general, really) is that basically things do not get broken - you break them. I've been doing pretty stupid things, worst of all deleting /lib (meant to move /libBackup right after that, but it gets harder without the library to move things around), and ended up reinstalling from scratch waaay too often, but still, I feel like I'm getting some insight about how things work and it feels good !

So yeah, having a system that allows me to be stupid and gently pats me on the head afterwards feels pretty nice !

Lots of Love !
Elinux

sevendogs · 2016-02-14 01:17:52

Lukeee wrote:

Hello Everybody!
Eventually I grew tired of OSX, hated the limitations, hand holding, denying me the right to modify my system which I had paid for and how I saw fit! I knew it had to go, but it was a very big step, from a fully fledged OS, to one I must build myself... Honestly I was lost, and the hardest part is it was a Macbook, I had read about people bricking them. I was scared to say the least, as I needed this thing(spoiler - it survived - typing on it), I bailed, 2014 I was about to dual boot arch, and I bailed. Told myself I would do it another time.

Well said - OSX was initially a thing of beauty to me, it still is, but that's only surface deep. I also refuse to have my computing hardware and software dictated to to me. No worries bricking a Mac with Linux, I ran many derivatives of Linux and several versions of OSX on my Mac Pro for a long time. Booting is cumbersome but it works fine. It still felt 'wrong" though so I went out and bought "real" Intel hardware, lol.

nomorewindows · 2016-02-14 01:52:24

elinux wrote:

Hi everyone ! And Texbrew. Welcome too, I guess
I've been using Arch for some time now, and bugging all sorts of friends for technical help. I figured it was high time to bugger strangers for it too !
What I love most about Arch (linux in general, really) is that basically things do not get broken - you break them. I've been doing pretty stupid things, worst of all deleting /lib (meant to move /libBackup right after that, but it gets harder without the library to move things around), and ended up reinstalling from scratch waaay too often, but still, I feel like I'm getting some insight about how things work and it feels good !
So yeah, having a system that allows me to be stupid and gently pats me on the head afterwards feels pretty nice !
Lots of Love !
Elinux

If it breaks, it's because Allan broke it!

WFV · 2016-02-14 05:43:44

konakona wrote:

I also learned a lot about Linux when installing it and before I installed Arch Linux I was using Windows 7 so that was a big change. After the first week I found out that I could do everything I do in Windows in Linux too so I didn't need Windows anymore.

There's always Virtualbox or other WM's that you can install Windows in, best place for it, in a box, a linux box and it bodes well with Windows (office) new box looking icon. Linux is for thinking and doing outside the box
...and Welcome!

Lukeee · 2016-02-14 12:48:24

sevendogs wrote:

Lukeee wrote:
Hello Everybody!
Eventually I grew tired of OSX, hated the limitations, hand holding, denying me the right to modify my system which I had paid for and how I saw fit! I knew it had to go, but it was a very big step, from a fully fledged OS, to one I must build myself... Honestly I was lost, and the hardest part is it was a Macbook, I had read about people bricking them. I was scared to say the least, as I needed this thing(spoiler - it survived - typing on it), I bailed, 2014 I was about to dual boot arch, and I bailed. Told myself I would do it another time.
Well said - OSX was initially a thing of beauty to me, it still is, but that's only surface deep. I also refuse to have my computing hardware and software dictated to to me. No worries bricking a Mac with Linux, I ran many derivatives of Linux and several versions of OSX on my Mac Pro for a long time. Booting is cumbersome but it works fine. It still felt 'wrong" though so I went out and bought "real" Intel hardware, lol.

It definitely was, I'm not so sure with the new Yosemite and above, not a fan of those.
It wasn't so much worrying about Linux actually bricking it, but more the bootloader. I don't find booting cumbersome at all, although I use systemd-boot, it's very quick, beats OSX booting by a big margin!

Too be honest, I've had quite a few funny comments regarding booting a "custom OS" on my mac, many people who don't really know much about computers see you with a mac and instantly think OSX buyer. I boot Arch and they always ask "What have you done to OSX?"; My answer, it's not OSX, it's Arch-Linux, you build your own system with it. They always look at me like I'm the biggest computer Geek around... Suppose I am abit. Ha!

WFV wrote:

konakona wrote:
I also learned a lot about Linux when installing it and before I installed Arch Linux I was using Windows 7 so that was a big change. After the first week I found out that I could do everything I do in Windows in Linux too so I didn't need Windows anymore.
There's always Virtualbox or other WM's that you can install Windows in, best place for it, in a box, a linux box and it bodes well with Windows (office) new box looking icon. Linux is for thinking and doing outside the box
...and Welcome!

Marvellous! Windows is only really useful for games that wont run anywhere else.

Hello, and Welcome to anybody else that has recently joined too, please feel free to drop me a message too.

Regards,

Luke.

Last edited by Lukeee (2016-02-14 12:51:39)

Akae Fujita · 2016-02-16 22:46:39

I'm shy, so here's a quick hi !

sammyyx · 2016-02-17 01:01:22

"Hello"
Feeling great to join the Arch family, Still newbie to Arch/Linux, Hope can learn more in this forum.
Sorry for my terrible English.

x33a · 2016-02-17 04:29:10

Akae Fujita wrote:

I'm shy, so here's a quick hi !

Haha, nice rhyme.

betseg · 2016-02-17 05:44:57

Lukeee wrote:

[...] but I also found Arch... Boy did this look difficult! It was on another level compared to anything I had done, literally building your own disto.

That sounds like LFS

sevendogs · 2016-02-18 01:54:50

Lukeee wrote:

It definitely was, I'm not so sure with the new Yosemite and above, not a fan of those.
It wasn't so much worrying about Linux actually bricking it, but more the bootloader. I don't find booting cumbersome at all, although I use systemd-boot, it's very quick, beats OSX booting by a big margin!

The bootloader was never an issue for me - not heard of "systemd-boot" until I just googled it - interesting. I used reFind and it worked well but it had to be reinstalled periodically. I dual booted between Linux Mint and OSX Yosemite routinely. I installed grub on the Linux drive as normal and let reFind control where I went. No issues until I tired of reFind and decided to chuck the Mac entirely and buy real Intel hardware.

macstar3000 · 2016-02-18 06:49:04

these threads are definitely not my strenght at all. i usually register and just take part in the forums, no matter if it's about linux or something else.
so yeah, i started with computers (and windows back then) in 1996, consequently moved up until the first beta version of win 7, before i switched over to ubuntu in 2009. (i tried a version of suse linux arround 2000 but it did not last long). since then i have never turned back to windows, except the rare case of gaming. been on ubuntu/kubuntu most of the time, but tried out lots of distros, xubuntu, lubuntu, fedora, open suse, open mandriva, debian, fuduntu, solydk, manjaro, etc. but up until 2 months ago kubuntu was my favorite distro, when i finally decided to switch over to arch to try something more advanced and thanks to the wiki it was really not that difficult. so far i am very happy it still has to prove in the longer run and i have not found too many reviews of long term arch users who maybe describe what problems they faced over let's say 2 or 3 years but ok. i am still trying the most mainstream distros in virtualbox to see whats new but so far i am staying with arch as it seems to run perfect.

jad1097 · 2016-02-18 09:21:05

Hi, I've been using various linux distros for the past 3 years, never used arch, but it's coming along nicely so far, Possibly going to switch to xfce over kde later this month just to see which I like more
And before a joke, No the name isn't based on runescape...that was just lucky

pungvarg · 2016-02-18 20:40:36

Hello, I migrated a couple of months ago from Linux mint (and xubuntu before that, and fedora before that.) I've been using GNU/Linux for 10 years now and I must say. I'm in love with Arch. I migrated becouse I wanted to learn more about the operating system.

Texbrew · 2016-02-19 02:22:29

pungvarg wrote:

Hello, I migrated a couple of months ago from Linux mint (and xubuntu before that, and fedora before that.) I've been using GNU/Linux for 10 years now and I must say. I'm in love with Arch. I migrated becouse I wanted to learn more about the operating system.

From one recently registered user to another, Welcome!

I have read countless posts like yours, "I wanted to learn more about the operating system". I jumped in for the same reason, and for the challenge of getting an Arch system running. I have stumbled more than a few times using Arch due to my inexperience, but thanks to the outstanding wiki and these forums, I'm managing not to break Arch beyond recovery.

And having tons of FUN with it!

tex

Arch Linux

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