Arch makes life boring!

floke · 2007-12-08 22:45:53

Well not quite - but it's so bloody perfect that I can no longer distro hop with any rational purpose!
I miss my hopping- but seriously love this OS.

killajoe · 2007-12-08 22:49:06

right!

oliwer · 2007-12-08 22:57:55

ArchLinux bloody perfect ? Well, it is a smart distro, but Windows is still far more stable.

Sorry for that.

Phrodo_00 · 2007-12-08 23:43:13

oliwer wrote:

ArchLinux bloody perfect ? Well, it is a smart distro, but Windows is still far more stable.
Sorry for that.

might be (if you weren't talking about vista), but windows is not nearly as powerful and comfortable as archlinux... I mean, ¿installing software one-by-one, after finding it on the internet or worse, buying it in a store?

Last edited by Phrodo_00 (2007-12-08 23:43:29)

buttons · 2007-12-08 23:47:58

floke wrote:

Well not quite - but it's so bloody perfect that I can no longer distro hop with any rational purpose!
I miss my hopping- but seriously love this OS.

I find swapping WMs satisfies those urges

PJ · 2007-12-09 00:06:35

oliwer wrote:

ArchLinux bloody perfect ? Well, it is a smart distro, but Windows is still far more stable.
Sorry for that.

That really depends on the drivers, great drivers makes both system stable. That's pretty much the reason why I abandon the graphic card driver from nvidia, with it I could lose the ability to use my keyboard on a daily basis. Right now I am using NV (xorg) and my system is rock-solid stable. My computer was stable with windows to or at least it use to be, I don't have windows on my computer anymore. It was removed since I found it to restricted, to limited, didn't use it any longer and mostly because I was trying to turn windows into *nix (cygwin (a lot of shell commands), virtual screens and some other stuff).

By the way, running windows on an older (pre 2000 at least) cheaper edition of Compaq is pretty much a nightmare in stability. Never seen a more unstable computer and I can tell you, I wasn't the only one who had that experience with Compaq. The interesting part is that they could run pretty stable with Linux on them.

z0phi3l · 2007-12-09 00:35:45

oliwer wrote:

ArchLinux bloody perfect ? Well, it is a smart distro, but Windows is still far more stable.
Sorry for that.

LOL Windows any version is WAY less stable than linux and even more specifically Arch, and yes I've used Windows from 95 - Vista

Vista is as unstable as 95 was, and that was on a new Laptop with quality components and 2gb RAM

kensai · 2007-12-09 00:56:13

oliwer wrote:

ArchLinux bloody perfect ? Well, it is a smart distro, but Windows is still far more stable.
Sorry for that.

HAHA, LOL, can this be posted on the humor section of the newsletter? Prove me, Arch is not as stable as Windows. Well, in my case, Arch is far more stable. Is there anything you do on Windows vs Arch in which Arch runs unstable and Windows performs like a champion? I doubt there is. Well, but different people have different opinions, we just need facts.

Roberth · 2007-12-09 00:59:00

buttons wrote:

floke wrote:
Well not quite - but it's so bloody perfect that I can no longer distro hop with any rational purpose!
I miss my hopping- but seriously love this OS.
I find swapping WMs satisfies those urges

Indeed.

lilsirecho · 2007-12-09 01:27:36

Try Faunos from flash drive...WoW...arch linux based!

floke · 2007-12-09 08:56:11

oliwer wrote:

ArchLinux bloody perfect ? Well, it is a smart distro, but Windows is still far more stable.
Sorry for that.

...and how is the weather on your planet?

Sure it depends on hardware, but I've seen XP BSOD from plugging in a flash drive.

Sorry for that.

wuischke · 2007-12-09 09:40:47

Don't feed the troll, please.

I've stopped distro-hopping as well, but I'm going to change the kernel/OS for a change. OpenBSD is the next candidate, I'm already getting used to it and setting up my work environment. The two real disadvantages are the old intel graphic drivers (915resolution is needed) and package management - pacman and AUR are really something which make me forget about most other operating systems/distributions very, very fast.

oliwer · 2007-12-09 12:49:55

Looks like my trolling attempt was slightly successful. Everybody (including me) on this forum claim Arch is the best distro ever.

Boring, as the title said

delphiki · 2007-12-09 19:15:16

Not to further feed this troll , but Arch has allowed me to (well how should I word this), settle down from the days of distro hopping for sure. Not to mention pacman + ABS makes packaging and upgrades a piece of cake, along with the fact that Arch seems to have fewer show stopper bugs because of the fact that its a 'roll your own' kind of distro .

Boring? Maybe, but I'd like to think that it stays boring in a good way

Cheers

stavrosg · 2007-12-09 19:54:03

That's a kind of thread that routinely pop-up every six months or so

Cogar · 2007-12-09 22:30:56

Thank goodness we don't have any fanboys here.

cry0x · 2007-12-10 05:05:20

Try FreeBSD

anykey · 2007-12-10 08:42:48

You can satisfy distro-hopping urges very well by using virtual machines to try out new things. It is not hard to set up a VM to just test another OS, and by doing it this way, you never risk breaking your existing (you know, "working") system while still experiencing new ones.

stability: it would be interesting to know how many users buy computers or even single components just for known Linux compatibility (my current computer was built specifically avoiding incompatibilities, but I see countless people buying PCs at the supermarket and expecting all components to work flawlessly with Linux too, which they often don't).

High|ander · 2007-12-10 10:56:37

I can agree on the fact that Arch gets boring when it all works for you.

But what you can do is to start hacking on some advanced solutions, like a backup system, or something like that, that takes a lot of time. You can learn a lot more arch that way about that you didn't before.
For example, i have learned that Arch has very good logging support configured in syslog. When you create LOG statements in iptables, they get logged in /var/log/iptables.log and not in /var/log/messages (like other distros)

elide · 2007-12-10 15:09:40

2.6.23.8 broke cpufreq_ondemand.
2.6.23.9 fixed cpufreq and broke fglrx.
Catalyst fixed fglrx and broke s2ram.
Shady fun is back again (;

dhave · 2007-12-10 15:24:55

I posted a similar question on the Slackware forum a few years back. After months of getting everything running smoothly, I found myself bored with the stability of the system. If I'd been maintaining a roomful of servers, I would have been ecstatic. But as an ordinary desktop user and inveterate tweaker, I was frustrated by how well everything was working.

I agree with those who recommend trying different WMs and using virtual machines to play around with different distros. Here are a few other things that people suggested as ways to cure this malady -- and get yourself in hot water, sooner or later. Almost all of these are from Shiloh in this thread:

1) Play around with different high performance kernel mods. Put together your own patch set.

2) "Try seeing what packages you can 'get away with' removing from your system. Guaranteed to break something eventually. Then you get to try and fix it."

3) "Learn bash scripting and make some scripts for cron to run. You can do rsyncs, come up with an update notification system, clean up your harddrive, backup your system."

4) "Try out win4lin and wine. Maybe there are other things out there to enable windows compatibility. Check it all out and see if you can get something working."

5) "Try setting up Slackware" -- or Arch -- "on an old box. That can be enough of a challenge, but if you get it done, then you can play with a network instead of just a single computer. Then, you can try out stuff like NIS. If you need an old computer, check out http://retrobox.com . The cheapest computer there I see today is $12!!! If you have money to burn, I see a Pentium II 266MHz 256 MB 3.2 GB with CD for $30!!!"

6) "Try compiling mplayer with all the codecs so you can watch all kinds of movies."

7) "Try re-installing your whole system and take extensive notes. After you're all done, configure a web server, make your notes into a web page, and share your experience with the world. People will comment on it, and you can use there comments to make even further improvements to your system."

8) I believe Arch is built from Linux from Scratch. Work through the Linux from Scratch book. You may be able to do this in a VM, but it could be tricky. All the better.

Last edited by dhave (2007-12-10 15:40:33)

PJ · 2007-12-10 15:48:48

dhave wrote:

2) "Try seeing what packages you can 'get away with' removing from your system. Guaranteed to break something eventually. Then you get to try and fix it."
3) "Learn bash scripting and make some scripts for cron to run. You can do rsyncs, come up with an update notification system, clean up your harddrive, backup your system."

Those two made me think of: "Why not make a cron job that randomly removes a package!!"

Some other stuff you could do:

1) Start developing a program that you are missing or join a project which is already developing a similar program.

2) Contribute to OSS projects by creating documentation, graphics or any other stuff.

3) Learn other programming languages.

Edit:
Guess you could always check out this wiki page for some tips:
http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Mutualism_Arch

Last edited by PJ (2007-12-10 16:01:58)

arnuld · 2007-12-10 16:06:24

oliwer wrote:

ArchLinux bloody perfect ? Well, it is a smart distro, but Windows is still far more stable.
Sorry for that.

Joke of the New year in advance

arnuld · 2007-12-10 16:10:13

wuischke wrote:

Don't feed the troll, please.

wuischke is right

wuischke wrote:

I've stopped distro-hopping as well,

me too, Arch is really very well designed distro. Judd Vinet did a very imprssive technical thing.

wuischke wrote:

but I'm going to change the kernel/OS for a change. OpenBSD is the next candidate, I'm already getting used to it and setting up my work environment. The two real disadvantages are the old intel graphic drivers (915resolution is needed) and package management - pacman and AUR are really something which make me forget about most other operating systems/distributions very, very fast.

I like OpenBSD too and my reason of not using it are same. I am workign ona project whihc requires at least GCC 4.0 in base and OpenBSD is still using 3.x series . Arch works great for my project

arnuld · 2007-12-10 16:15:46

High|ander wrote:

I can agree on the fact that Arch gets boring when it all works for you.
But what you can do is to start hacking on some advanced solutions, like a backup system, or something like that, that takes a lot of time. You can learn a lot more arch that way about that you didn't before.

ditto.

High|ander wrote:

For example, i have learned that Arch has very good logging support configured in syslog. When you create LOG statements in iptables, they get logged in /var/log/iptables.log and not in /var/log/messages (like other distros)

when I made my computer an SSH server, an sudden-insight came to me. Try configuring SSH on Fedora, you will not even need to know what the conf file is doing, defaults are enough ( as advised by official Red Hat Documentation) but On Arch, you need to go to Arch Wiki and read the docementation about /etc/ssh/ssh_config and that tells you what is SSH doing on your system and why

Arch Linux

#1 2007-12-08 22:45:53

Arch makes life boring!

#2 2007-12-08 22:49:06

Re: Arch makes life boring!

#3 2007-12-08 22:57:55

Re: Arch makes life boring!

#4 2007-12-08 23:43:13

Re: Arch makes life boring!

#5 2007-12-08 23:47:58

Re: Arch makes life boring!

#6 2007-12-09 00:06:35

Re: Arch makes life boring!

#7 2007-12-09 00:35:45

Re: Arch makes life boring!

#8 2007-12-09 00:56:13

Re: Arch makes life boring!

#9 2007-12-09 00:59:00

Re: Arch makes life boring!

#10 2007-12-09 01:27:36

Re: Arch makes life boring!

#11 2007-12-09 08:56:11

Re: Arch makes life boring!

#12 2007-12-09 09:40:47

Re: Arch makes life boring!

#13 2007-12-09 12:49:55

Re: Arch makes life boring!

#14 2007-12-09 19:15:16

Re: Arch makes life boring!

#15 2007-12-09 19:54:03

Re: Arch makes life boring!

#16 2007-12-09 22:30:56

Re: Arch makes life boring!

#17 2007-12-10 05:05:20

Re: Arch makes life boring!

#18 2007-12-10 08:42:48

Re: Arch makes life boring!

#19 2007-12-10 10:56:37

Re: Arch makes life boring!

#20 2007-12-10 15:09:40

Re: Arch makes life boring!

#21 2007-12-10 15:24:55

Re: Arch makes life boring!

#22 2007-12-10 15:48:48

Re: Arch makes life boring!

#23 2007-12-10 16:06:24

Re: Arch makes life boring!

#24 2007-12-10 16:10:13

Re: Arch makes life boring!

#25 2007-12-10 16:15:46

Re: Arch makes life boring!

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