The future of Arch Linux.

firewalker · 2008-03-26 18:52:01

In the last few months many people I know are leaving (or they are complaining) Arch Linux for something else. All of them says that Arch is losing the characteristics that they were used to. The system tends to "brake" more and more often after an update. I have noticed it my self too. It is like the developers uploads a new packet without giving many thoughts to the consistency of the system. Some months ago Arch used to be one of the most stable distros. I am not sure that it still is. Have you decided for bleeding edge against stability? What all of you believe? I really want to know the Arch's leading team opinion for this subject.

peart · 2008-03-26 18:58:01

Everything works here.

If anything has changed, I'd say that there are less people who fix things themselves, and way more whiners who run to the forums as soon as the littlest thing breaks.

Dusty · 2008-03-26 19:04:47

These threads come off periodically. Arch has always focused on bleeding edge over stability, although it seems to me to be a lot more stable and a little less bleeding edge n the past year and a half or so. It surprises me when people complain that a pacman -Syu has broken their system, since I consider this to be norma: you're expected to know what you're doing, what is happening with your system when you update, and how to fix it. They don't provide a lot of support for backwards compatibility or long-term support; there are other distros that do this.

So I reckon the future of Arch is pretty much the same as the past for Arch.

Dusty

Misfit138 · 2008-03-26 19:05:43

Arch is a bleeding edge rolling release system and upgrading is, and always will be, an interactive process. One's system is as stable as they make it.
Updates will break it from time to time, it is up to the user to fix it.
You could go 2 years without breakage, or 2 weeks, but eventually user interaction will be required; it's the nature of the model.

finferflu · 2008-03-26 19:05:55

To be honest I have the opposite impression. It seems like more and more new users join Arch on a daily basis. I didn't read any complaints in the forums lately, but only help requests from new users.

As for me, I'm not having any problem whatsoever, and I find Arch to be very stable. I had less crashes, and my system is working better, with Arch than with Ubuntu or Debian *Etch*.

Of course this is just my narrow point of view, though.

firewalker · 2008-03-26 19:06:23

Everything works here too. I didn't implied that "thing" doesn't work. Maybe it is me and this are as they were a year ago or so. This is the reason of this thread. A collection of opinions and users experiences.

fwojciec · 2008-03-26 19:06:23

What you're saying is a matter of subjective perspective -- for example there's a debate on the arch-general mailing list at the moment where a number of people have observed that there is a large influx of new users to Arch as of late. People come, people go -- this is how things work and in order to evaluate the relative dynamics of coming and going, to reach the kind of conclusion that you're hinting at, one would have to go by something much more definite than "many people I know are leaving."

As for stability -- I'm using the testing repo and, quite honestly, I can't remember the last time anything broke in a way that caused problems for me. There are bugs in every distro, of course, but on a whole, Arch has been running perfectly on both my laptop and desktop. Again, one should be careful about projecting one's subjective experience as a general tendency.

Ashren · 2008-03-26 19:06:50

+1 on peart's sentiment.

No problems with my system either, but I've noticed a lot more posts from demanding users the last couple of months. A lot more than when I started using Arch.

My guess is that people are getting fed up with the newbie distro's and are coming here to get more in control with their system, and when they hit a seemingly unsolvable problem they freak out and get demanding. Arch only works out of the box when you tell it what to work with out of the box. (is that a true oxymoron or what?)

Misfit138 · 2008-03-26 19:13:17

Ashren wrote:

+1 on peart's sentiment.
No problems with my system either, but I've noticed a lot more posts from demanding users the last couple of months. A lot more than when I started using Arch.
My guess is that people are getting fed up with the newbie distro's and are coming here to get more in control with their system, and when they hit a seemingly unsolvable problem they freak out and get demanding. Arch only works out of the box when you tell it what to work with out of the box. (is that a true oxymoron or what?)

I completely agree. There seems to be a large migration toward Arch and away from the easier distros as of late, ergo more new users are not quite as used to such manual control over their systems.
They'll grow into it. If not, Arch may not be quite right for them, I guess.

firewalker · 2008-03-26 19:15:00

I haven't experience any major system "brake" since I learned how to deal with updates and read before try. But I couldn't ignore users (advanced Linux users) that were running Arch for quite long time and was thrilled with it saying that something has changed. That something isn't as it used to be. If there was only one or two unexperienced user ok... Maybe their mind is playing tricks with them or so...

Misfit138 · 2008-03-26 19:17:03

finferflu wrote:

To be honest I have the opposite impression. It seems like more and more new users join Arch on a daily basis. I didn't read any complaints in the forums lately, but only help requests from new users.
As for me, I'm not having any problem whatsoever, and I find Arch to be very stable. I had less crashes, and my system is working better, with Arch than with Ubuntu or Debian *Etch*.
Of course this is just my narrow point of view, though.

I have to respond by saying that as counterintuitive as it may sound and for all of the talk about stringent testing on Etch, I was met with some very annoying bugs in my brief time with it.

tlaloc · 2008-03-26 19:19:03

Ashren wrote:

Arch only works out of the box when you tell it what to work with out of the box. (is that a true oxymoron or what?)

Even though English isn't my mother tongue, I think we could take this a little step further: Arch only works out of the box when you tell it what to work without of the box.

kensai · 2008-03-26 19:35:02

10.times do print "Arch is the best, everything in it rocks, some users are just whiners." end

In Fact, Arch is improving, I use testing, and I have no breakage, GNOME 2.22 works like a charm, and everything as should work. Still, people will egt the feeling that something is changing, and yes in fact some things do change in the long run, but the breakage so far has been happening when the upstream packages are moved to current, like xorg 7.3 perl 5.10, etc.... And even in those cases my system has been rock solid.

Last edited by kensai (2008-03-26 19:37:33)

dyscoria · 2008-03-26 19:43:41

Demanding users is definately the correct description here
The point is you gets more control with arch, and you generally needs knowledge to make use of that control, and with that knowledge you'd be able to get out of holes and breakages. If you don't have that knowledge in the first place, you shouldn't really be using arch. If you know you don't have that knowledge and still use arch (which is very valid - quite a few have mentioned that arch was their first distro), you shouldn't complain and demand when it breaks.

I feel its also to do with people not truly understanding the philosophy behind arch and the nature of certain aspects, such as the rolling release system. Too many demands as of late concerning the iso....

eerok · 2008-03-26 20:13:15

firewalker wrote:

But I couldn't ignore users (advanced Linux users) that were running Arch for quite long time and was thrilled with it saying that something has changed. That something isn't as it used to be. If there was only one or two unexperienced user ok... Maybe their mind is playing tricks with them or so...

For those who are excited by new things (and I'd say that this describes most of us here) it's natural to become bored or disenchanted when you get comfortable with a system. Then it's time to move on. This is completely natural, and it doesn't matter how experienced you are.

A common trick one's mind might play is failing to notice that the same kind of thing that was an absorbing challenge at the start can become a mere annoyance when looking for an excuse to jump to something else. The bottom line is that the more self-aware you are, the less you blame other people and things for what you do.

And anyway, nothing is ever as it used to be. This is both a blessing and a curse, and so it shall ever be

godane · 2008-03-26 20:14:14

firewalker wrote:

I haven't experience any major system "brake" since I learned how to deal with updates and read before try. But I couldn't ignore users (advanced Linux users) that were running Arch for quite long time and was thrilled with it saying that something has changed. That something isn't as it used to be. If there was only one or two unexperienced user ok... Maybe their mind is playing tricks with them or so...

I been a new user for the last 2 months. It took me 1 week to setup a system with xfce for desktop and every program that I would need. It took one week cause I was remastering it in to a modular live cd like slax or zenlite. (Zenlite I made by the way.) It was different but I got it working with my build scripts. It could have been a lot harder if there wasn't auto install deps with pacman.

I hope this helps you firewalker.

PS Go to my website to download the latest arch-live. Its a first modular rolling release live cd I made.

dschauer · 2008-03-26 20:31:42

For me Arch has not given me any major hassles, as far as installation, setup, use, updating, etc. It has been very solid.

Oh, I did have the recent x86_64 compiz-fusion problem, that got rectified soon enough, and the interim fix to downgrade was acceptable by my standards.

Apart from that it has gave me far fewer headaches/hassles/grief than setting up something like Ubuntu.

On all my installs grub did not get installed right and I had to install grub by hand, but I don't feel setting up the boot-loader is something that an OS installer should be required to do, so that did not bother me.

As long as Arch does not get dumbed down as stays as simple (not complex) as it is, and continues to be easy to maintain, then I'll continue to be happy with Arch.

Mikko777 · 2008-03-26 20:35:12

I've noticed the following:

-Lot more noobs than last year.
-Lot more gentoo/ experienced users too
-Devs fight more
-No new developers newer get hired, altho patches are always welcome.
-Arch has never been stable and it still breaks only once a year.

So ppl should quote the wiki more. or just ignore wiki questions.
Also there should be more answers to the real problems and interesting topics

I think theres still a good balance between stability/bleeding edge. (compiling/tweaking vs arch defaults)

But if arch decides to go ANY more vanilla DIY distro then i think ppl will leave to BSD/Gentoo/Ubuntu.
(meaning if half the ppl need to compile features in packages instead the arch packages having em as default then that would be too much)

Last edited by Mikko777 (2008-03-26 20:37:55)

.:B:. · 2008-03-26 20:48:22

I think we have too much Ubuntu influx already. Ubuntu has its place in the distro landscape, but if 'renegades' drown in their own tiny problems/questions already during install, they should realise they're not up to the job. In the end installation is easy enough if you just read the relevant wiki entries, so even a complete Linux noob can pull it off. If he's prepared to invest some time in reading, which a lot of new users are not. They want it hic et nunc.

* puts on flameproof suit *

If I see how many basic questions get asked on the forum (and how much enthusiast response there is to them sometimes) I start wondering. If you start to lower your treshold considerably you'll find yourself catering to a completely different audience, and I guess that's not what Arch wants. It is already starting to show, though. What's even worse is those feature requests starting off like 'hey Ubuntu has this why can't we?'. My thought is always: you can have it. Install Ubuntu, then you have it. If you don't know how to get it yourself without Ubuntu... Maybe Arch is not for you. If Ubuntu provides a package, so can you on Arch.

Be proud you run Ubuntu, or any other distro for that matter, but don't push it. Tolerance has its limits, there's a reason Ubuntu has its own forum, and Arch has its own... Go ask your Ubuntu questions there. I don't like the wannabees posting Ubuntu screenshots in Arch threads either (well surely it all looks the same in the end, but the distro is still different ay?).

Had to get that off my chest .

Last edited by B (2008-03-26 20:49:58)

ph0tios · 2008-03-26 20:54:37

I use to ask a lot of questions a few months ago..even coming from something like slackware, and sometimes I still ask a lot of questions. I don't like to be annoying, but sometimes it just happens. Lately though I've opened up a lot more to just trying to figure out for myself first when I absolutely can't find the answer in a wiki or past forum post.

Some people don't like having to do that...it's the reason some people don't use linux at all(reason my friend won't use linux..I think it's lame, but I respect his personal choice), because even in ubuntu, out of the box isn't always out of the box. They don't want to spend time reading and tweaking, or even asking questions without figuring it out for themselves. They'd rather pay for Windows or OSX preinstalled on a machine that someone else spent time making work.

But honestly, I suppose it is a lot of whiners. I can't speak from experience, because I've only been here a few months. Arch broke on my laptop the other day, don't know why, it just progressively went down hill after an update and probably all the messing around I did before I understood arch(was my very first install, then I installed it on my desktop). I thought about going on the forum and whining about it, and getting help...but for whatever reason I just decided to say f-it and do a fresh install. Now Arch works even better on my laptop than it did before, and I was able to pay better attention to the details because I wasn't half scared of the unknown.

Arch is a learning experience, and that is why I like it. It seems to get better and better for me each time. I discover new problems and ways to solve them...or I realize something I did caused a problem I was having and I learn not to do that. And it helps me understand linux better as a whole; which allows me to be more competent when it comes to helping other users or friends who use Arch or even other distros. And if nothing else..it is mental exercise to keep me sharp for my vocation or other hobbies, instead of letting my mind rot doing something less stimulating in my spare time. But again, like everyone has been saying...it is subjective, and in the end some people will stay away from Arch and linux in general for all the reasons I just gave for sticking with it.

Just my two cents.

wantilles · 2008-03-26 20:59:07

firewalker wrote:

In the last few months many people I know are leaving (or they are complaining) Arch Linux for something else. All of them says that Arch is losing the characteristics that they were used to. The system tends to "brake" more and more often after an update. I have noticed it my self too. It is like the developers uploads a new packet without giving many thoughts to the consistency of the system. Some months ago Arch used to be one of the most stable distros. I am not sure that it still is. Have you decided for bleeding edge against stability? What all of you believe? I really want to know the Arch's leading team opinion for this subject.

I have been using Arch for a year now.

It has always been stable for me.

Perhaps you have a vivid imagination.

Last edited by wantilles (2008-03-26 21:01:19)

Sigi · 2008-03-26 21:01:37

dyscoria wrote:

Demanding users is definately the correct description here
The point is you gets more control with arch, and you generally needs knowledge to make use of that control, and with that knowledge you'd be able to get out of holes and breakages. If you don't have that knowledge in the first place, you shouldn't really be using arch. If you know you don't have that knowledge and still use arch (which is very valid - quite a few have mentioned that arch was their first distro), you shouldn't complain and demand when it breaks.
I feel its also to do with people not truly understanding the philosophy behind arch and the nature of certain aspects, such as the rolling release system. Too many demands as of late concerning the iso....

+1 I agree in every aspect

finferflu · 2008-03-26 21:04:16

B wrote:

If I see how many basic questions get asked on the forum (and how much enthusiast response there is to them sometimes) I start wondering. If you start to lower your treshold considerably you'll find yourself catering to a completely different audience, and I guess that's not what Arch wants.

Well, we have a Newbie Corner for a reason, don't you think?

I come from Ubuntu myself, and only through the Ubuntu forums I have known Arch. Indeed, they also host an Archlinux subforum. I understand your concerns, but helping newbies finding their way around is never a bad thing in my opinion. I also think this is benefiting the Beginner's Guide: it's getting better and better, and I think it's because of the audience we get. And to be honest, helping out newbies is something that not many advanced distros do. It all goes to the quality of this forum.

fwojciec · 2008-03-26 21:07:17

B wrote:

(snip) Ubuntu (snip) Ubuntu (snip) Ubuntu (snip) Ubuntu (snip) Ubuntu (snip) Ubuntu (snip) Ubuntu
(snip)
Had to get that off my chest .

My guess is... you don't like Ubuntu?

thisllub · 2008-03-26 21:13:10

My Arch system is better / faster / more stable than any other distro I have used. I started with SUSE 6.0 so I have used Linux for a while.

I see the difference as with Arch I install / enable what I want compared to the SUBUDORIAN way of turning off what I don't want.
I never want to go back to that way of doing things.
I would sooner go to Linux From Scratch.

Arch Linux

#1 2008-03-26 18:52:01

The future of Arch Linux.

#2 2008-03-26 18:58:01

Re: The future of Arch Linux.

#3 2008-03-26 19:04:47

Re: The future of Arch Linux.

#4 2008-03-26 19:05:43

Re: The future of Arch Linux.

#5 2008-03-26 19:05:55

Re: The future of Arch Linux.

#6 2008-03-26 19:06:23

Re: The future of Arch Linux.

#7 2008-03-26 19:06:23

Re: The future of Arch Linux.

#8 2008-03-26 19:06:50

Re: The future of Arch Linux.

#9 2008-03-26 19:13:17

Re: The future of Arch Linux.

#10 2008-03-26 19:15:00

Re: The future of Arch Linux.

#11 2008-03-26 19:17:03

Re: The future of Arch Linux.

#12 2008-03-26 19:19:03

Re: The future of Arch Linux.

#13 2008-03-26 19:35:02

Re: The future of Arch Linux.

#14 2008-03-26 19:43:41

Re: The future of Arch Linux.

#15 2008-03-26 20:13:15

Re: The future of Arch Linux.

#16 2008-03-26 20:14:14

Re: The future of Arch Linux.

#17 2008-03-26 20:31:42

Re: The future of Arch Linux.

#18 2008-03-26 20:35:12

Re: The future of Arch Linux.

#19 2008-03-26 20:48:22

Re: The future of Arch Linux.

#20 2008-03-26 20:54:37

Re: The future of Arch Linux.

#21 2008-03-26 20:59:07

Re: The future of Arch Linux.

#22 2008-03-26 21:01:37

Re: The future of Arch Linux.

#23 2008-03-26 21:04:16

Re: The future of Arch Linux.

#24 2008-03-26 21:07:17

Re: The future of Arch Linux.

#25 2008-03-26 21:13:10

Re: The future of Arch Linux.

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