Why I use win98 over arch. Basics. Deployment.

galen · 2004-05-09 10:13:07

for starters I can't stand microsoft and I love linux.

What I find in ALL distros is a fallacy of linux's greatness with many fans often rating their distro 5 out of 5. Software 5 out of 5. To honestly judge a product is of greater value than sucking up, In my shared opinion.
We've heard terms: groupthink, blinders .. while these terms may seems extreme to be applied to a distro like arch, but to a degree it maybe worth considering if arch is going down this road.

Are the basics of an OS switching user being met?

My win98 can: scan, burn, rip, PDA sync, digicam / web cam link with ease
but my arch can not even after weeks of attempts.
Why should I or anyone switch?
Despite the great depth and performance of arch, bottom line is that arch does not get the jobs done [yet]. I'd love to see it do it.
Why can knoppix, morphix and other live CD have hardware detection and configuration while arch does not?

Does arch want to remain for a limited user base?

Are installers, config tools in slackware an insult to our intelligence?
If so why?

Arch tends IMO to shoot itself in the foot by not populating config files, not providing a jump start for those who want to tweak the system instead of being forced to learn.
Not everyone installing an OS wants to be forced to learn right away.

Can I take arch to a friend's or a client's i686 machine and expect it to run and compare to a working M$ OS?
Honestly no.

Will 0.7 be more user ready?

best wishes for arch.

Moo-Crumpus · 2004-05-09 10:24:31

but then arch is possibly not your distro. Run knoppix if you will show others, and arch if you want to fight configurations.

Arch is a game, not a distro.

Abaddon · 2004-05-09 10:25:09

Why can knoppix, morphix and other live CD have hardware detection and configuration while arch does not?

They have hotplug, but not everyone likes them. For example I don't like...

My win98 can: scan, burn, rip, PDA sync, digicam / web cam link with ease

I can do the same in Linux (maybe without PDA, because I don't know what this abbreviation means).

Mr Green · 2004-05-09 10:25:39

Sorry to hear you are having problems but the only way to fail is to quit..

I have had problems with sound & scanning (which in the end I fixed with help from forum)

burning no probelms at all in fact its too easy..

Hardware detection well use hwd ....

If you want a GUI distro that does it all then Mandrake 10 might be for you...

Forced to learn well thats what I want from a distro

Its all a matter of personal chioce..

Arch may not be perfect but only the gods are....

Mr Green

zeppelin · 2004-05-09 10:39:56

galen wrote:

Are the basics of an OS switching user being met?

Yes.

My win98 can: scan, burn, rip, PDA sync, digicam / web cam link with ease
but my arch can not even after weeks of attempts.

Weeks? well you don't get the right info then..
rip: so many user-frinedly apps outthere!!!
burn: pacman -S k3b. the absolute choice for you!
webcams: REALLY? What webcam you have<!> but read below also:
I don't have a scanner I dont' know. But maybe (x)sane is a start?
I don't ahve a PDA so I don't know.

but let me ask you sth. Do you HardWare vendors provide drivers for GNU/Linux?
Better than complaining to ArchLinux or to the linux kernel mailing list, complain to them for not giving drivers and hiding the specs!
So every decent programmer has to reverse engineer the protocols.

Let me add:
AL can read ntfs, win98 can't
AL can have the latest software running excellent, win98 can't
AL has better USB support than win98
and by AL I also include the job by the linux kernel devs.

But the point is not to flame war in AL vs WIN98.
You have the right of choice. I bet you bought win98 so just use that and remove AL. You get no money received, because you didn't pay anything.

Why should I or anyone switch?

because it's free, fun, you learn new things, you don't the MICROSOFT LOGO everywhere, you don't have viruses, worms. Because ArchLinux can too better things than win98(SE) and does a great job over your resources..

Despite the great depth and performance of arch, bottom line is that arch does not get the jobs done [yet]. I'd love to see it do it.

ArchLinux is a new distro, but it's for command liners mostly.

Why can knoppix, morphix and other live CD have hardware detection and configuration while arch does not?

Because the target group differs. Try Mandrake/Suse/Mepis if you want that kind of easiness/abstraction.

Does arch want to remain for a limited user base?

I'm a user, so I don't know. But ArchLinux is for users-that-don't-fear-the-command-line. [as it says]
So it's up to users, if they fear the commandline, and not up to Arch to give up with the command line and do GUI automated configuration.

Are installers, config tools in slackware an insult to our intelligence?

No. SlackWare is good. I used to have it. SlackWare has a VERY BAD PACKAGE SYSTEM IMHO. I was experiening the dependency hell when I had it.

If so why?

Every distro has pros/cons. Most of them are freeSW, so you can download and use the one you like most.

Arch tends IMO to shoot itself in the foot by not populating config files, not providing a jump start for those who want to tweak the system instead of being forced to learn.

Well that's a point of view. But ARCHLINUX warns you about this in the ABOUT PAGE!!!

Not everyone installing an OS wants to be forced to learn right away.

Not everyone is forced to install ArchLinux either!!

Can I take arch to a friend's or a client's i686 machine and expect it to run and compare to a working M$ OS?
Honestly no.

Honestly yes.

Will 0.7 be more user ready?

User ready? what exactly do you mean by that?
maybe more-user-friendly? I 'm not the guy to ask, but as a user I find AL very user friendly and if it was to become more and more it should provide more packages..

best wishes for arch.

No offense. I just thought and wrote

shadov · 2004-05-09 14:30:57

I agree with zeppelin.

I use Arch because it's easy to learn inside out. Nothing is hidden and everything is made as simple as possible. Down side is that many things don't work out of the box, so you have to learn how the system works.

If you are not willing to learn, Arch is not for you.

galen wrote:

Does arch want to remain for a limited user base?

It's up to developers. My personal opinion is yes. This is not (and should not become) a newbie friendly mainstream distro.

Haakon · 2004-05-09 14:45:25

Why not? I agree direction shouldn't be changed to make Arch another "Mandrake". But if somebody writes a friendly graphical pacman frontend or makes some other configuration tools work with Arch, more power to them. As long as it's not mandatory, more technical users could just not install the "newbie friendly" tools. We're not talking a new "linuxconf" here (Red Hat veterans will remember linuxconf with horror, as it got in the way, was always there, destroyed handwritten config files and more).

Mr Green · 2004-05-09 14:53:58

Try Kpacman (search forum)

I do not have aproblem with GUI tools its just they are not needed to install or even keep Arch up to date ...

But if you want them then hey no problem...

a distro to suit the user.....

Mr Green

kakabaratruskia · 2004-05-09 15:55:34

Even though I'm a complete OSS and Linux fan, I agree with Galen. If you need a computer to work, you should probably go for windows. There's a minimal chance that you're hardware may not be recognized. But it's really small. In linux everyday work, is a little bit of a struggle. On the other hand, I love using Linux, especially arch, because I'm absolutely aware of what is going on in my computer at every moment. In win I just can't do that. I like being hours in front of the screen fixing stuff, and discovering ways of getting it to work, based on what I know. Still most of the time that I have to do a work for school, or something, I use windows, because I know office will not fail, in case abiword and openoffice have.

I would say that it really does not matter if linux never makes it to the desktop. It will be there for and by people like us.

tpowa · 2004-05-09 16:22:33

well i used suse from 7.0 up to 9.0
and now i'm using arch
the main difference between a gui distro and arch is
with the gui distro you don't know where to change files
(and the graphic tools needs too much time to load on old machines (Yast2) )
to get something work and it's hard to be as up to date as arch is
i think if you use the docu from arch it's really easy to set it up
perhaps it's a little bit hard for newbies but there is the forum and the mailing lists

if you have hardware problems use hwd as mentioned
before it helps a lot or use knoppix to identify the modules
you need for your machine

i set up 5 machines with arch and noone needs windows anymore
and it's really easy to update this machines

some things need to be improved but that will come

i think arch is user friendly
as far as the console can be user friendly

Haakon · 2004-05-09 17:15:45

kakabaratruskia wrote:

Even though I'm a complete OSS and Linux fan, I agree with Galen. If you need a computer to work, you should probably go for windows.

I resent that. I need my computer to work, and my computers haven't seen Windows in years. I don't use Linux because I like to fiddle all the time. Although I don't look at my computer as a toaster or some stupid appliance (I love computers), I want the damn thing to work. The distros I've used to run have offered few problems, and Arch is no different -- things work out of the box or after a little setup, for the most part. I installed Arch two days ago, and in two more days I will have it working exactly as I want, and it wil keep working. I take that over Windows any day.

And when my father, who has barely touched a computer in his life, will get a PC later, I'll set him up with Linux. Maybe not Arch, but definitely not Windows.

Mr Green · 2004-05-09 17:59:39

I get a little sad when I read threads about users giving up.

Its too easy to walk away without even trying....

I think you do need patience with Linux (& a sense of humour )

I do not care if you use Arch,Fedora or even Knoppix so long as its Linux

Use the forum the net irc but never give up

Mr Green

shadov · 2004-05-09 18:17:21

Haakon wrote:

Why not? I agree direction shouldn't be changed to make Arch another "Mandrake". But if somebody writes a friendly graphical pacman frontend or makes some other configuration tools work with Arch, more power to them. As long as it's not mandatory, more technical users could just not install the "newbie friendly" tools. We're not talking a new "linuxconf" here (Red Hat veterans will remember linuxconf with horror, as it got in the way, was always there, destroyed handwritten config files and more).

If somebody writes friendly GUI tools for Arch, I have nothing against it. But I wouldn't want our small core developer team to spend time on it, when they have better things to do (bugfixes, keeping packages up to date, improving pacman etc).

Dusty · 2004-05-09 18:39:15

Haakon wrote:

kakabaratruskia wrote:
Even though I'm a complete OSS and Linux fan, I agree with Galen. If you need a computer to work, you should probably go for windows.
I resent that. I need my computer to work, and my computers haven't seen Windows in years.

Me too, dammit! :-D

I use Linux because it gives me so much power to do everything I need to do, especially to develop the applications that don't do what I need to do.

If you can't do this (and anybody can, scripting bash is not hard), then go back to windows and be satisfied with whatever MS gives you to work with. It *is* a matter of how much you want to learn.

Windows "sort of works" out of the box, but you can't change this behavior. Linux "works perfectly" only if you know what you're doing.

If you don't know what you're doing, you ask questions.

Dusty

p0indext0r · 2004-05-09 19:13:50

Ok, I'm not going to bash windows, because it does "do" everything I need, but then agian so does linux (and more).

Ah, freedom, isn't it great?

kakabaratruskia · 2004-05-09 19:28:28

Haakon wrote:

kakabaratruskia wrote:
Even though I'm a complete OSS and Linux fan, I agree with Galen. If you need a computer to work, you should probably go for windows.
I resent that.

Sorry, I didn't mean it that way. Is just that working with documents (which is what many people use the computer for), MS office is really effective. I try using openoffice as much as possible, but most of the time I have problems, either with the printer, or copying/pasting from internet, or anything else.

sweiss · 2004-05-09 20:08:46

Well, as a man who does almost exclusive use of Linux, I still do think there are a few good things in Windows after all. Windows feels a lot more integrated, and it is so in fact. It can make life a lot easier in certain aspects, especially when the desktop users are concerned.

I think Linux is great, and I believe that both operating systems have things to learn from each other.

galen · 2004-05-09 20:47:26

never did I imply I was giving up on linux. I am not. I want to leave ms windows. Just giving honest feedback.
cold hard reality hits when you need to get the job done and not configure for days or weeks, in 5years with many linux distros I have yet to see a distro that can deliver. Hoping very much arch can deliver.

Dusty · 2004-05-09 21:02:01

galen wrote:

never did I imply I was giving up on linux. I am not. I want to leave ms windows.

that be the spirit!

cold hard reality hits when you need to get the job done and not configure for days or weeks, in 5years with many linux distros I have yet to see a distro that can deliver. Hoping very much arch can deliver.

Arch gives you the power to configure quickly... but you have to know how to do it.

Dusty

torindan · 2004-05-10 06:25:27

Dusty wrote:

Arch gives you the power to configure quickly... but you have to know how to do it.
Dusty

I think that hwd mostly does it's job (configuring X and detecting modules), but i think it would be even more usefull if it says something like

add module1...moduleN into MODULES in rc.conf,
put this line into some.other.file and so on.

It won't hurt anyone of the "power" users, but it will help others, to start using Arch with at least some of their hardware and a working configuration.

I would be nice if Rasat will do it and also provide support for 2.6 kernel.

I don't want a GUI interface, a commandline tool IS extremly usefull and VERY powerfull but please put some detection/autoconfiguration tools on install CD.

It's extremly easy to configure Arch when you have a connection to internet and you can search forum & wiki (but you must get there).

Many people here in Romania do not have Internet at home, they want to escape from MS, they are sick and tired of rpm distros, want to use new software (not 2 years old "stable").

But it's VERY hard to install Arch on unknown (for you) hardware without any help from internet. I'm not a kernel guru, I have no idea what is the name of modules i need to load and I hate to edit X configuration by hand and I don't want to spend 2-3 hours just to make it work.

I want to "learn" (and i learnd a lot of stuff with Arch) but sitting 3 hours in front of a computer just to be able to run some programs (from install cd) is not "learning".

You stripped all docs from Arch (well, I can grep into kernel sources ), man is not very helpfull on first steps, imagine that you do not have a connection to the Intenet and you have to do an installation on SOME computer. (It is not YOUR computer, you don't know exactly what it has inside, and you don't want to spend 3 hours)

So please provide some tools to make a computer running most of the programs on install CD (X, alsa, cdrw and so on) without need of searching in the forums (aka without internet help).

Some people will say WE NEED BETTER DOCS. Ok, I agree, but you can not put into docs (or can you?) all information about hardware support built into kernel.

P.S. On my computer, I can install Arch in 10 minutes with X, alsa and so on without any docs, but it's me, and my computer where i know exactly what i have and what i need (so don't say: "if you can not do it, Arch is not for you", i can but I want to make it faster than 3 hours)

rasat · 2004-05-10 09:55:20

torindan wrote:

I think that hwd mostly does it's job (configuring X and detecting modules), but i think it would be even more usefull if it says something like
add module1...moduleN into MODULES in rc.conf,
put this line into some.other.file and so on.

Thanks for the suggestion. I have already started to work on hwd 1.7 and hopefully getting it out end of this month (May). Most likely first as a beta for user to give feedback and add new ideas.

The hwd didn't caught my attention in this topic but the question if Arch can do things other distros do (not the GUI and automated configure stuff).
My experience with Arch, its excellent for development work, does well in networking and as desktop. But I am not sure how well it does as a workstation on a heavy duty level. I have problems with office applications either weird printing or the application does something funny. There is no way to know if its an application or Arch problem. To avoid the headage, I use Win4Lin to run MS Office.

Here I don't want to go in detail about problems I am facing then and there, but how will Arch know if its a stable workstation. Other distros can measure the level of stability because everything is automated. But in Arch its done manually or kept as default by each user.

Moo-Crumpus · 2004-05-10 14:30:16

arch is very stable. I had no single crash that was caused by arch. I had several crashes caused by kernel switching from 2.4 to 2.6, but arch was the distro that wiped most of them out, just because it's packages are rather fresh. I lately checked debian unstable, and have seen they still use the old jfsutils, f.e., that cause major damage on 2.6 machines.

Nevertheless, documentation should progress more and more. I feel some of us solved one ore another problem, and just be happy about it. I can see no entry in the wiki about sane (scanner) ore connecting mutliple usb devices handled by hotplug ore whatever. Let's talk about solutions.

I had several configfuration problems, and still have them, allthough I kept asking for hints and advice, and tried out a lot, and read how-to and readme files for ages. I lost a lot of time with arch, that I should have spent with my family. I run xp on my major desktop machine now, just to do all that desktop stuff, and arch on my laptop, to find out how to do all desktop things with it. I will do some tests on it, from time to time. In the future, I hope, I can run archlinux on all my machines.

tpowa · 2004-05-10 16:03:40

for usb scanners have a look at
http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/USB Scanner

rasat · 2004-05-10 16:39:20

Currently hwd has two modes: simple and expert. As an idea, what if we add a third mode for newbies? It detects the hardware and modules as usual. But instead of displaying a simple manual setup info, it gives links to Wiki's how-to documents. This means this mode will be run in X creating one HTML page with related links.

kakabaratruskia · 2004-05-10 20:53:23

rasat wrote:

torindan wrote:
I think that hwd mostly does it's job (configuring X and detecting modules), but i think it would be even more usefull if it says something like
add module1...moduleN into MODULES in rc.conf,
put this line into some.other.file and so on.
Thanks for the suggestion. I have already started to work on hwd 1.7 and hopefully getting it out end of this month (May). Most likely first as a beta for user to give feedback and add new ideas.
The hwd didn't caught my attention in this topic but the question if Arch can do things other distros do (not the GUI and automated configure stuff).
My experience with Arch, its excellent for development work, does well in networking and as desktop. But I am not sure how well it does as a workstation on a heavy duty level. I have problems with office applications either weird printing or the application does something funny. There is no way to know if its an application or Arch problem. To avoid the headage, I use Win4Lin to run MS Office.

That's exactly what I mean.

Arch Linux

#1 2004-05-09 10:13:07

Why I use win98 over arch. Basics. Deployment.

#2 2004-05-09 10:24:31

Re: Why I use win98 over arch. Basics. Deployment.

#3 2004-05-09 10:25:09

Re: Why I use win98 over arch. Basics. Deployment.

#4 2004-05-09 10:25:39

Re: Why I use win98 over arch. Basics. Deployment.

#5 2004-05-09 10:39:56

Re: Why I use win98 over arch. Basics. Deployment.

#6 2004-05-09 14:30:57

Re: Why I use win98 over arch. Basics. Deployment.

#7 2004-05-09 14:45:25

Re: Why I use win98 over arch. Basics. Deployment.

#8 2004-05-09 14:53:58

Re: Why I use win98 over arch. Basics. Deployment.

#9 2004-05-09 15:55:34

Re: Why I use win98 over arch. Basics. Deployment.

#10 2004-05-09 16:22:33

Re: Why I use win98 over arch. Basics. Deployment.

#11 2004-05-09 17:15:45

Re: Why I use win98 over arch. Basics. Deployment.

#12 2004-05-09 17:59:39

Re: Why I use win98 over arch. Basics. Deployment.

#13 2004-05-09 18:17:21

Re: Why I use win98 over arch. Basics. Deployment.

#14 2004-05-09 18:39:15

Re: Why I use win98 over arch. Basics. Deployment.

#15 2004-05-09 19:13:50

Re: Why I use win98 over arch. Basics. Deployment.

#16 2004-05-09 19:28:28

Re: Why I use win98 over arch. Basics. Deployment.

#17 2004-05-09 20:08:46

Re: Why I use win98 over arch. Basics. Deployment.

#18 2004-05-09 20:47:26

Re: Why I use win98 over arch. Basics. Deployment.

#19 2004-05-09 21:02:01

Re: Why I use win98 over arch. Basics. Deployment.

#20 2004-05-10 06:25:27

Re: Why I use win98 over arch. Basics. Deployment.

#21 2004-05-10 09:55:20

Re: Why I use win98 over arch. Basics. Deployment.

#22 2004-05-10 14:30:16

Re: Why I use win98 over arch. Basics. Deployment.

#23 2004-05-10 16:03:40

Re: Why I use win98 over arch. Basics. Deployment.

#24 2004-05-10 16:39:20

Re: Why I use win98 over arch. Basics. Deployment.

#25 2004-05-10 20:53:23

Re: Why I use win98 over arch. Basics. Deployment.

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