Questions from a possible convert...

elias4444 · 2004-03-16 23:54:15

My sad story: I used to run Gentoo, and honestly, I loved it once I finally got it installed on my Dell laptop. Then my screen went out. It was a hardware problem, but Dell wouldn't even look at it unless I reinstalled windows and removed Linux. So now, after getting the screen replaced, I'm back to square one, and really don't want to spend the next few days compiling Gentoo again.

I've heard lot's of good things about Arch, but I haven't found answers to a few of my questions yet:

1) Is Arch like Gentoo in that once it's installed, you never have to reinstall again? Just keep updating?
2) Does Arch have all the little device drivers and things that are needed for laptop support?
3) Does Arch use the 2.6 kernel "natively" yet?
4) Are all of you as patient and nice as Gentoo users?

dp · 2004-03-17 00:13:20

elias4444 wrote:

My sad story: I used to run Gentoo,...

i'm sorry for you :-)

elias4444 wrote:

I've heard lot's of good things about Arch, but I haven't found answers to a few of my questions yet:
1) Is Arch like Gentoo in that once it's installed, you never have to reinstall again? Just keep updating?

YES ... why would you want to reinstall when "updating" exist??? you can update your Arch every day with pacman, as new/updated pkgs come out regularly (see frontpage)

elias4444 wrote:

2) Does Arch have all the little device drivers and things that are needed for laptop support?

it's the same for all linux distros

at the moment, Arch is missing bluez-tools, so that bluetooth-things are not ready-to-use ... i'm working on the completition for bluez, but have exams this week ... maybe the weekend

elias4444 wrote:

3) Does Arch use the 2.6 kernel "natively" yet?

YES, Arch 0.6 is powered by 2.6.3 ... there is now 2.6.4 the latest 2.6 kernel, but i would suggest you to also install the kernel 2.4.25, as hotplug+sysfs+udev is not set up perfectly ... but it will come --- it's a big step from 2.4.y to 2.6.x, but Arch is very up-to-date in this things

elias4444 wrote:

4) Are all of you as patient and nice as Gentoo users?

NO, we have more patience, a much better forum and much "nicer" people around ... i hope you are not against Arch because of this :-)

wdemoss · 2004-03-17 00:13:50

1) Is Arch like Gentoo in that once it's installed, you never have to reinstall again? Just keep updating?

Yes, arch operates on a rolling release. After you install 0.6, just do a pacman -Syu and up to the latest codebase

2) Does Arch have all the little device drivers and things that are needed for laptop support?

I currently run arch on a dell latitude d800 with the WUXGA screen operating at 1920x1200. Runs great, requires alittle work, but if your from gentoo, then i think you'll find it even easier.

3) Does Arch use the 2.6 kernel "natively" yet?

Yes, its an option. When you install 0.6 i believe you'll be presented with an option between 2.4 and 2.6. Either one you choose, it doesn't matter becuase you can get the other with pacman.

4) Are all of you as patient and nice as Gentoo users?

No we're not, we're nicer and more friendly I just joined the community about two or three months ago and have found the people to be great!

Hope you give arch a try, if you do I think you wont be going back! I think arch has all the wonderful things about gentoo, optimized for my machine, getting into the weeds of linux to learn the system, up-to-date packages, etc... but with out the pain of having to compile everything your self.

Hope to see you around and welcome to the community
-wd

wdemoss · 2004-03-17 00:14:25

Ha ha, dp, you beat me

dp · 2004-03-17 00:15:46

wdemoss wrote:

Ha ha, dp, you beat me

only seconds ... ha ha :-)

dp · 2004-03-17 00:19:15

Hi Elias4444,

where can you find in only 19minutes 2 different people answering all your questions? only here

welcome to Arch

elias4444 · 2004-03-17 01:16:52

Thanks guys! I'm downloading the 0.6 iso right now.

spyder · 2004-05-17 13:18:09

i don't want to sound like an asshole, but you could of made a backup image of the harddrive using a program like norton ghost... and just restored the gentoo image when you got the laptop back.

Dusty · 2004-05-17 15:55:45

spyder wrote:

i don't want to sound like an asshole, but you could of made a backup image of the harddrive using a program like norton ghost... and just restored the gentoo image when you got the laptop back.

This is true, but we must bless any good excuse to switch to Arch.

spyder · 2004-05-17 17:40:08

true enough!

yak8998 · 2004-05-17 17:54:28

you'll appreciate the minimalistic, fast approach when running on a laptop.

As far as the forums go, Gentoos are generally more helpful due to the number of users there. For a lot of things concerning configurations and such I've been forced to look elsewhere. But here you won't get flamed for a simple question like at gentoo.

Haakon · 2004-05-17 17:57:33

yak8998 wrote:

As far as the forums go, Gentoos are generally more helpful due to the number of users there. For a lot of things concerning configurations and such I've been forced to look elsewhere. But here you won't get flamed for a simple question like at gentoo.

IMHO, the Gentoo forums appear a lot less mature too. It's "n00b" this and "l337" that. When researching Arch, the forums were a refreshing breath of air. Let's keep it that way!

Neje · 2004-05-17 21:28:31

But here you won't get flamed for a simple question like at gentoo.

IMHO, the Gentoo forums appear a lot less mature too. It's "n00b" this and "l337" that.

Have the Gentoo forums really gone so downhill? I wouldn't know, I stopped visiting a while ago (guess why ;-) ).

In the old days, the people on the Gentoo forums were all patting each other on the back for not being immature like the "debian guys". I guess that's the way things go when forums get crowded.
Maybe in a few years time we'll see each other at the Crux forums, saying how the Arch forums are so immature these days ;-)

jak · 2004-05-17 21:50:26

dp wrote:

hotplug+sysfs+udev is not set up perfectly ... it's a big step from 2.4.y to 2.6.x

Or you can get rid of devfs

http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Swi … om%20devfs

And good riddance I say.

Zephirias · 2004-05-18 00:23:09

Neje wrote:

But here you won't get flamed for a simple question like at gentoo.
IMHO, the Gentoo forums appear a lot less mature too. It's "n00b" this and "l337" that.
Have the Gentoo forums really gone so downhill? I wouldn't know, I stopped visiting a while ago (guess why ;-) ).
In the old days, the people on the Gentoo forums were all patting each other on the back for not being immature like the "debian guys". I guess that's the way things go when forums get crowded.
Maybe in a few years time we'll see each other at the Crux forums, saying how the Arch forums are so immature these days ;-)

I hope that never happens.

yak8998 · 2004-05-18 01:50:09

LOL - We need to follow some of the suggestions on here and make arch exclusive so that never happens. It can still be opensource/GPL, but only for the brotherhood :twisted:

GaMMa · 2004-05-20 05:33:07

I'm also considering coming here from Gentoo. I don't like the way the community has gone downhill and I have a feeling the leaving of the main man is going to cause some kind of turmoil.

I also have questions:
Are packages compiled from source and if not, is there REALLY any speed difference?

Gentoo had ebuilds, how hard is it to make a arch ebuild type thing; are there any samples I can look at? I'd be switching to help the community.

Are CVS builds possible under pacman?

Does arch still solely use lilo? I had a choice to be here, or use Gentoo a while back, I tried both and went to Gentoo. Gentoo was more newbie friendly and you guys were just starting.

I'm going to try the live CD out soon as it finishes downloading, then I'll consider scrapping my perfect Gentoo install.

bogomipz · 2004-05-20 11:12:08

GaMMa wrote:

I'm also considering coming here from Gentoo. I don't like the way the community has gone downhill and I have a feeling the leaving of the main man is going to cause some kind of turmoil.
I also have questions:
Are packages compiled from source and if not, is there REALLY any speed difference?
Gentoo had ebuilds, how hard is it to make a arch ebuild type thing; are there any samples I can look at? I'd be switching to help the community.
Are CVS builds possible under pacman?
Does arch still solely use lilo? I had a choice to be here, or use Gentoo a while back, I tried both and went to Gentoo. Gentoo was more newbie friendly and you guys were just starting.
I'm going to try the live CD out soon as it finishes downloading, then I'll consider scrapping my perfect Gentoo install.

I don't quite understand your first question. Arch uses i686 optimized binary packages. On Gentoo you can optimize any way you like, but I don't think you gain anything from that except that you can run on older hw. The fact that Arch has a focus on keeping the system simple and not run unnecessary daemons is what makes it run faster than some other i686 optimized distros.

To create a new package you can use /var/abs/PKGBUILD.proto as a basis (you may have to run abs first). Reading the install guide and man makepkg should get you going. There are also wiki pages on the topic.

CVS builds are possible. Here's an example for waimea-cvs. Note that makepkg is what you build packages with, not pacman.

Arch installs packages for both grub and lilo by default. I guess that makes it kind of bloated

-bogomipz

Gullible Jones · 2005-09-12 10:44:50

Why hast thou resurrected this ancient thread?

IceRAM · 2005-09-13 02:26:39

Maybe because it has more value... better taste... since it's old... like the wine does...

Arch Linux

#1 2004-03-16 23:54:15

Questions from a possible convert...

#2 2004-03-17 00:13:20

Re: Questions from a possible convert...

#3 2004-03-17 00:13:50

Re: Questions from a possible convert...

#4 2004-03-17 00:14:25

Re: Questions from a possible convert...

#5 2004-03-17 00:15:46

Re: Questions from a possible convert...

#6 2004-03-17 00:19:15

Re: Questions from a possible convert...

#7 2004-03-17 01:16:52

Re: Questions from a possible convert...

#8 2004-05-17 13:18:09

Re: Questions from a possible convert...

#9 2004-05-17 15:55:45

Re: Questions from a possible convert...

#10 2004-05-17 17:40:08

Re: Questions from a possible convert...

#11 2004-05-17 17:54:28

Re: Questions from a possible convert...

#12 2004-05-17 17:57:33

Re: Questions from a possible convert...

#13 2004-05-17 21:28:31

Re: Questions from a possible convert...

#14 2004-05-17 21:50:26

Re: Questions from a possible convert...

#15 2004-05-18 00:23:09

Re: Questions from a possible convert...

#16 2004-05-18 01:50:09

Re: Questions from a possible convert...

#17 2004-05-20 05:33:07

Re: Questions from a possible convert...

#18 2004-05-20 11:12:08

Re: Questions from a possible convert...

#19 2005-09-12 10:44:50

Re: Questions from a possible convert...

#20 2005-09-13 02:26:39

Re: Questions from a possible convert...

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