Arch Linux

Thrillhouse

Member

From: Arlington, VA, USA

Registered: 2007-05-29

Posts: 175

Advice for an Arch newbie

Hello all,

Long time Fedora/Redhat user here looking to try a new distro.  The reason for my interest in a more lightweight distro is because I'd like something with a little less bloat for a laptop I'll soon be getting.  I'll always keep Fedora around on my desktop, old habits and all, but I'd like to try something that's a little cleaner and runs a little faster.  I don't want to have to bother with a week-long Gentoo install and Slackware seems a little...behind the times, let's say.... but I can handle an ncurses installer so Arch seems like it could be ideal for me.  Am I misjudging anything here?  I'd like to hear your thoughts on this.

Also, I'd be grateful if anybody had any advice for a newcomer to Arch.  Obviously, I'll have to acquaint myself with Pacman and I've been reading up on it but if you think there's anything else I should learn about I'd be happy to do it.  Keep in mind, however, I am rather familiar with Linux in general: the file system, commands, common apps, etc.  I do have one question right now.  I've been looking at how to use Pacman and I see that the pacman -S package command will install a package and that the -S option synchronizes the local package database with pacman's repositories but is it necessary to use that option every time you want to install something?  I know it seems like a minor thing but I don't know if that really makes sense to me.  Anyways, that's more than enough for right now.  I'm excited to try Arch and expand my Linux knowledge and I'm sure I'll be back here with some more stupid questions so I'll end this right here.  Thanks for your input.

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For the strength of the pack is the wolf, and the strength of the wolf is the pack.

dawei

Member

From: China

Registered: 2007-05-02

Posts: 29

Re: Advice for an Arch newbie

pacman -Sy to synchronize the local package database with repositories.
pacman -S package to install a package from repositories.
I think so.

Thrillhouse

Member

From: Arlington, VA, USA

Registered: 2007-05-29

Posts: 175

Re: Advice for an Arch newbie

From what I've read, the -Sy option will synchronize the local database with the repositories AND refresh the local database while -S will simply synchronize the local database with the repositories.  Is this incorrect?

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For the strength of the pack is the wolf, and the strength of the wolf is the pack.

Zaffe

Member

From: Santiago, Chile

Registered: 2007-02-22

Posts: 26

Re: Advice for an Arch newbie

The wiki of arch is very useful. Pacman -> http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Pacman

hacosta

Member

From: Mexico

Registered: 2006-10-22

Posts: 423

Re: Advice for an Arch newbie

pacman is divided in operations (upper case letters) and options (lower case) S stands for synch and it is used to work with the repos..  so for example pacman -S -u or pacman -Su or pacman -S --sysupgrade (which are all the same thing) will upgrade your system, of course you can de various options so pacman -Syu will download the databases from the server (think apt-get update) and then will do a sysupgrade (think apt-get upgrade) don't worry, there is a man page and pacman also has an h (or help option). you'll be fine if you read.. good luck

Mikko777

Member

From: Suomi, Finland

Registered: 2006-10-30

Posts: 837

Re: Advice for an Arch newbie

Well I've been running arch on my lappy for some time now and just last weekend installed arch twice (don't ask) on my desktop.

And couldn't be more impressed, installation took 2.5 hours to get everything (apps and settings) the way i like,
I think its way faster install than on windows. Also i'm impressed about the speed (boot up and tremulous win vs arch),
seems alot faster than windows on opengl network and about even on boot time mem usage is 168 MB of 1011MB with all gnome bloat on... I'm happy.

BTW all you need to know is:

Beginners guide http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Beginners_Guide

and of pacman:

1st: dayly do pacman -Syu

2nd: To install do search pacman -Ss "name" then install with pacman -S "name"

3rd to remove do pacman -Rsn "name"

4th to "backup / list apps" do pacman -Q > packages.txt

Thats all you need to know imho.

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Planet KDE | Opendesktop.org | Chakra Project

Weeks

Member

Registered: 2006-01-26

Posts: 91

Re: Advice for an Arch newbie

you may want to place things like "kernel26 klib* udev lilo" in IgnorePkg (pacman.conf) if you don't fancy updating those things every two weeks or so.