The future of Arch Linux.

SilentMan · 2008-03-27 19:05:07

Hmm... I don't remember any brakes since I came to Arch. /dev/hands?

cmlr · 2008-03-27 19:12:53

Here are the strengths of Arch, as I see it.

1. A rolling release system. Effort is not diverted into maintaining a stable branch.

2. Allows you to install exactly the packages you want, and easily choose which daemons to start.

3. Speed optimized.

4. Precompiled packages for greater convenience.

5. Vast numbers of packages in AUR. Some that don't even appear in Debian.

These strengths are mentioned in the Wiki, "Arch vs Others". As pointed out there, FreeBSD has many of the same strengths. But Linux is still works a better on the desktop. Even one of the FreeBSD developers tells us that the 64 bit version has limitations for desktop users. I don't see any other distribution which could fill the same role. Perhaps Sidux is similar, but it still sounds like one has to be more careful with it.

adekoba · 2008-03-27 21:27:49

Arch has been a great little distro for the past year on my machine. I can't say I have noticed that there have been more breakages as of late; in fact, I can't remember any recent downstream breakages within the past two months or so.

Changes do appear every once in a while, but you have to be alert for those kinds of things. Most of these critical changes take place in [core] packages, so it might be a good idea to look out for them. I remember /etc/profile changing recently which did require some modification, but otherwise, things have been good.

Another tip I have learned from my experience in using arch is that you should check out the .pacsave files that pacman reports and see if there are any differences from your local version that need updating. Just to make sure that I have not missed any of them, I will run, `find /etc/ | grep ".pac"` every once in a while.

bender02 · 2008-03-27 22:36:41

KimTjik wrote:

VikM wrote:
The present Arch seems a desktop oriented distro for enthusiasts. Maybe it is also good for learning things, but I doubt more and more it can be used to do some "serious" work. And I also doubt it will become a mature distribution. The point is that lately I became more and more disappointed with Arch. Seems like something is missing.
I'm not challenging you, hence my question is sincere: what has to evolve in a different way to make it mature?

Why the heck would you want to make it mature?

daf666 · 2008-03-27 22:45:36

Just wanna give my 2 cents..
My arch router (a fit-pc) died after a pacman -Syu this week.. it now kernel panics on boot.
I guess I was too optimistic about Arch on as a router platform...

Edit: ignore that.. I got it fixed

Last edited by daf666 (2008-03-29 18:12:19)

erm67 · 2008-03-28 07:07:14

Most problems I have had after a pacman -Syu were caused by .pacnew files I failed to merge, and I suppose this is also common to many new users. Initially I searched and updated them by hand and only later found out about the very good pacdiffviewer that comes with yaourt, that tool should really be in arch ...
Ideally pacman should print a warning after the update process telling the user it has created some .pacnew files and invite the user to merge them manually, this isn't sooo difficult to implement.

EDIT: I also had a kernel panic during reboot after a pacman -Syu solved by booting the fallback image and mkinitcpio again, the default menu.lst should really contain an entry for it.

Last edited by erm67 (2008-03-28 07:09:50)

VikM · 2008-03-28 07:18:31

Two interesting questions:

what has to evolve in a different way to make it mature?

- Security. There are some posts about this, but no particular interest. Keeping up to date seems to be the answer, as for most problems. This is not enough.
- Stability, testing, integration. New packages are broken sometimes (php-apc was broken several times). There are updates that make some packages unusable (mod_perl doesn't work with perl 5.10). Actually the "current" repository seems more like a "testing" one, some packages don't seem to be aware about dependencies. I don't like the "enterprise" way to keep the versions locked and apply only security/backports patches but stable packages are sometimes more important than latest-greatest. After all, the most important feature of a software is that it works. Having a some sort of stable repository is not necessary incompatible with rolling-release. Of course testing programs means hard work and is not so cool like the bleeding edge.
- Changelogs, patches, others... The changelogs problem has been raised before with Arch-speciffic answers (who cares about?, look in cvs, you don't trust the devs!?, ...). If a new apache package shows up Monday, you may want to know if it necessary to upgrade as soon as possible before shutting down a site with half a million hits per day. Maybe you can safely wait until Friday evening. Just a scenario.
Keep packages as vanilla as possible. This may be kiss and nice, but is not always good. The discussion is too long for this place.
This one might be hard. Developer does not mean packager, especially for a bleeding edge distro, how many bugs where discovered in Arch, fixed and adopted by upstream developers? There are distributions doing that. I think Arch stability relies mostly on the stability of the software used. But a distribution should be more than a bunch of software packages. Again testing, fixing, testing, patching, testing again, ... Well, I just use Arch, I'm not more involved, but I'm not sure this really happens. I guess I'll be stoned for this.

Why the heck would you want to make it mature?

That seems a real problem. Most Arch users like it as it is, they like playing with, testing, use it as desktop or small (tiny) server. And it is cool. So why doing some hard/boring work to make something mature? Well, the teenagers who don't change this way of thinking will end in mediocrity.

tomk · 2008-03-28 08:11:45

erm67 wrote:

Ideally pacman should print a warning after the update process telling the user it has created some .pacnew files

Something like this, maybe?

pacman.log wrote:

warning: /etc/profile installed as /etc/profile.pacnew

Check your logs, it's all there.

ornitorrincos · 2008-03-28 09:41:59

Stability, testing, integration. New packages are broken sometimes (php-apc was broken several times). There are updates that make some packages unusable (mod_perl doesn't work with perl 5.10). Actually the "current" repository seems more like a "testing" one, some packages don't seem to be aware about dependencies. I don't like the "enterprise" way to keep the versions locked and apply only security/backports patches but stable packages are sometimes more important than latest-greatest. After all, the most important feature of a software is that it works. Having a some sort of stable repository is not necessary incompatible with rolling-release. Of course testing programs means hard work and is not so cool like the bleeding edge.

You could always downgrade, I supose that's why we have a /var/cache/pacman/pkg directory (but I really don't know if it's the main purpose or just a secondary effect).

And, well, do you remember for how long was xorg in testing?(I don't remember if it was the actual version of xorg or the previous one), it was there for a really long time because it broke some systems.

If this is a real concern you could also use debian sid, kind of rolling release, waits some time before putting the packages in the repositories, the bad things are that it doesn't have kiss and the arch community, but anyway I suppose it's a matter of preferences.

With this I don't want to say that arch is perfect, of course it sometimes fails, but you can't simply compare it equally to some other distros because the workforce is simply very different (compare the debian and arch developer numbers)

dolby · 2008-03-28 10:10:23

VikM wrote:

Just a few thoughts.
paragra[h removed
I don't remember exactly since when, like many others, I stopped distro-hopping because I felt in love with Arch (coming from Crux). I guess it was at Arch 0.4 or 0.5.
The Arch community does not handle criticism well. Sometimes even suggestions are not welcome. "If you don't like it, don't use it", "That's the Arch way", "Its bleeding edge, it may crash from time to time", "Don't tell us we are wrong", "Don't tell us what to do" and tons of users telling how wonderful Arch is if someone tries to say it is not perfect and some things maybe can change/evolve.
The present Arch seems a desktop oriented distro for enthusiasts. Maybe it is also good for learning things, but I doubt more and more it can be used to do some "serious" work. And I also doubt it will become a mature distribution. The point is that lately I became more and more disappointed with Arch. Seems like something is missing.
So, it is true, there is at least one advanced user, who uses Arch since may years and "feels" something bad.

I agree with what you say about Archlinux being a desktop orientated distro. Maybe those who disagree with this direction should just use some other distro.
I dont think theres a way back from Archlinux is now. Maybe starting applying less patches would move things to another direction but as most of us agree that Archlinux is desktop orientated it seems like there is no point in that happening.
Regarding what you say about critisism i disagree. At least from my experience the last couple of years Archlinux devs have generally been open to discussion and constructive critisism. We all have to take into account here that their number is limited, was much more limited in the past, and they are doing a very hard work maintaining and expanding this wonderful distribution.

anakin · 2008-03-28 10:37:23

erm67 wrote:

Most problems I have had after a pacman -Syu were caused by .pacnew files I failed to merge, and I suppose this is also common to many new users. Initially I searched and updated them by hand and only later found out about the very good pacdiffviewer that comes with yaourt, that tool should really be in arch ...

Though I may reckon pacdiffviewer's value, much like gentoo's etc-update I don't agree with you since I'll rather use diff with my own custom flags. Moreover, following the KISS concept let pacdiffviewer stay out of arch and install yaourt if you wish.

erm67 wrote:

Ideally pacman should print a warning after the update process telling the user it has created some .pacnew files and invite the user to merge them manually, this isn't sooo difficult to implement.

It already does during the update process which I always follow closely. It even gets logged in pacman.log like this for instance:

[2008-03-10 13:55] warning: /etc/fstab installed as /etc/fstab.pacnew

perseus · 2008-03-28 12:27:09

Dolby:

I dont think theres a way back from Archlinux is now. Maybe starting applying less patches would move things to another direction but as most of us agree that Archlinux is desktop orientated it seems like there is no point in that happening.

Why is there an inevitable link between increasing numbers of patches and desktop orientation? I don't need to run a server, but nor do I want to run a YADD (Yet Another Dumbed-down Distro). Arch seemed to offer that possibilty and I really don't understand why it cannot / should not continue to do so.

In his ML post Jan de Groot said: "If patching is no longer allowed, get ready for a time where packages are stuck in testing for ages because upstream broke it." I wonder why that is such a bad thing? If there already exists a working version of that package (which will generally be the case), why not wait for an upstream bug-report to fix the new version, rather than supply users with something other than the developer intended? Who will die? What is the problem?

My personal preference is simply to be able to trust (without checking every PKGBUILD before installation), that I am installing precisely what the package developer intended. Why is that inconsistent with desktop orientation in a "bleeding-edge" distribution?

Last edited by perseus (2008-03-28 12:57:57)

Dusty · 2008-03-28 13:25:58

VikM wrote:

Why the heck would you want to make it mature?
That seems a real problem. Most Arch users like it as it is,

While your other statements make sense within your frame of reference, this is a direct contradiction. If Arch users like it the way it is, then it is not a problem. Its a good thing. If we make Arch more like you want it, we'd end up with Debian and all the current Arch users wouldn't have a distro of choice anymore. ;-) Then they'd be going into the forums of whatever distro you end up using and saying "this distro should be more KISS, more bleeding edge packages, more innovation, etc."

You clearly don't like the Arch philosophy. But many many people do. Rather than trying to change the Arch Way, and rather than trying to conform to the Arch Way if it doesn't suit your personality, you should probably be trying to find a distribution that has a philosophy that suits you.

I do know where you're coming from though. about a year ago I got tired of the Arch Way and tested a few other distributions thinking I had matured and it was time for me to move on to something more dependable. I came back after about six months because trying everything else made me realize that I like the Arch Way after all.

Dusty

dolby · 2008-03-28 13:57:50

perseus wrote:

Dolby:
I dont think theres a way back from Archlinux is now. Maybe starting applying less patches would move things to another direction but as most of us agree that Archlinux is desktop orientated it seems like there is no point in that happening.
Why is there an inevitable link between increasing numbers of patches and desktop orientation? I don't need to run a server, but nor do I want to run a YADD (Yet Another Dumbed-down Distro). Arch seemed to offer that possibilty and I really don't understand why it cannot / should not continue to do so.
In his ML post Jan de Groot said: "If patching is no longer allowed, get ready for a time where packages are stuck in testing for ages because upstream broke it." I wonder why that is such a bad thing? If there already exists a working version of that package (which will generally be the case), why not wait for an upstream bug-report to fix the new version, rather than supply users with something other than the developer intended? Who will die? What is the problem?

I dont get exactly what you re trying to say here. First you say white and then black?
Maybe my brain is just too tired. If that is the case i am really sorry in advance.
I agree with the second paragraph you wrote.
Besides breaking almost every aspect of the Arch Way , which in phrakture's own words defines the core Archlinux philosophy - what makes us tick. , thats exactly the whole point. The patching needs to be done upstream. Patching an application is only acceptable when the application doesnt even start or provides [b]essential functionability. Flooding the flyspray for bug reports about buggy software is also unecceptable. Eg. http://bugs.archlinux.org/task/8752 http://bugs.archlinux.org/task/8485 etc etc

When i wrote the part you quoted i was thinking that not applying all those patches would be a step backwards to the right direction.
Also, regarding Jan's reply, in my opinion, packages in extra, not part of large rebuilds (see perl,python) should not go in testing.

The Arch Way(1) The Arch Way(2) . Those are the reasons many users chose to use this distro and have been doing so for years. If the Arch Way is no longer true, people should know.

Last edited by dolby (2008-03-28 13:58:59)

perseus · 2008-03-28 14:19:09

I think that I misunderstood what you were saying in the first place. I will try to reformulate :

(1) I read you as saying that in a desktop oriented distribution a lot of patching is inevitable. (That is what I understood by the quotation I included from your post).

(2) If that is what you were saying, then I was asking why it is true.

(3) From what you say in your most recent post, it seems however that I misunderstood you. You now say: "When i wrote the part you quoted i was thinking that not applying all those patches would be a step backwards to the right direction." I did not pick up any sense of "not" and "right direction" from what you first wrote.

(4) It seems, therefore that you and I are actually in agreement - except that I do not see even why something which does not work at all should be fixed downstream unless, perhaps, it provides essential functionality. In the latter, very extreme case, however, it seems likely that an upstream fix will quickly come along, and I would prefer to wait for it if at all possible.

My personal path in the last 6 years or so has been LFS -> Slackware -> Arch. Maybe I should try Crux .. I was researching it as your post came in.

Peace

ljshap · 2008-03-28 14:51:56

I have only been using Arch for 4 months but think it is a great distribution. I can't explain why other than it just feels good, stable and responsive. As one of those Ubuntu refugees, I DO NOT want to see Arch cater to the newbie other than continuing to provide good Wiki's. I like its simplicity and do not want to see Arch or gnu-linux turn into windows. The one thing MS excelled at was dumbing down the OS.

The only breakage I have experienced is USER inflicted. My curiosity far exceeds my knowledge and brains.

When ever I post a question in the forums, I consider it a request and not a demand, and usually don't do this until I've done my homework. Many of my questions have either been answered by an Arch Wiki or elsewhere on the internet. I think the right approach lies between RTFM and answering questions of people too lazy to do their own research.

Keep up the Good Work! It is appreciated!

Larry

bender02 · 2008-03-28 14:54:01

VikM wrote:

bender02 wrote:
Why the heck would you want to make it mature?
That seems a real problem. Most Arch users like it as it is, they like playing with, testing, use it as desktop or small (tiny) server. And it is cool. So why doing some hard/boring work to make something mature? Well, the teenagers who don't change this way of thinking will end in mediocrity.

By the way, I'm 28 (and hence I'm mediocre by your standards (but no offense taken)
I like the Arch the way it is; that's why I'm using it right now. If I'd want a mature distribution (as you see it), I'd be using FreeBSD (or other BSD, or debian, or Solaris, or something like that) - which is actually the system I use on my server.

Every distribution has its goal, something that it's trying to achieve (stability/security/portability/whatever). My impression was that "maturity" is not one of the Arch's goals.
(edit: typos)

Last edited by bender02 (2008-03-28 14:56:37)

VikM · 2008-03-28 14:56:26

Dusty wrote:

While your other statements make sense within your frame of reference, this is a direct contradiction.
...

Well, fair enough. I'd like a perfect distro, with well tested packages, up to date, rolling release, security, kiss and so on, but it does not exist yet ...
While I believe there is place for improvements in Arch, I understand from this thread that things are not going to change because:
- nobody really wants to update (not change, just some updates) the Arch way
- the community is not large/powerful enough

Arch meets only some of my wishes, but I don't have the enthusiasm to try a dozen alternatives, so I ended building kernels on my own, using custom CFLAGS and PKGBUILD to rebuild lots of packages, and a few other things that tend to look like swimming against the river. I think I need a break, maybe I'll be luckier than you trying to find happiness in the arms of another linux or bsd...

Last edited by VikM (2008-03-28 14:56:46)

bender02 · 2008-03-28 15:03:33

VikM wrote:

While I believe there is place for improvements in Arch, I understand from this thread that things are not going to change because:
- nobody really wants to update (not change, just some updates) the Arch way
- the community is not large/powerful enough

Relying on the opinions of "the community" is veeery dangerous (look at politics).

VikM wrote:

Well, fair enough. I'd like a perfect distro, with well tested packages, up to date, rolling release, security, kiss and so on, but it does not exist yet ...

As I said, I use FreeBSD, and it does all these things you want now... (the only thing I don't like is that if you want to be really really up-to-date, you need to compile (with one command only, though)).

fwojciec · 2008-03-28 15:03:57

VikM wrote:

Arch meets only some of my wishes, but I don't have the enthusiasm to try a dozen alternatives, so I ended building kernels on my own, using custom CFLAGS and PKGBUILD to rebuild lots of packages, and a few other things that tend to look like swimming against the river. I think I need a break, maybe I'll be luckier than you trying to find happiness in the arms of another linux or bsd...

Considering the changes you make to Arch on your system I really think that you'd enjoy Crux. You build the kernel yourself by default, and the ports solution in Crux, while similar to PKGBUILD/makepkg, is in some ways more convenient when you rebuild/customize a lot of packages yourself. Plus you get to build your entire system with the CFLAGS you want... and of course you get an abundance of KISS everywhere

Last edited by fwojciec (2008-03-28 15:09:52)

Misfit138 · 2008-03-28 15:27:28

It seems that a new package can remain in [testing] until patched from upstream, and users who truly want bleeding edge can just run [testing] and patch themselves...?

Mikko777 · 2008-03-28 15:45:45

Edit:

Since it seems i got my Facts wrong... I'll remove false statement

Last edited by Mikko777 (2008-03-28 19:16:43)

Mr.Elendig · 2008-03-28 16:10:00

<offtopic>mikko, don't post while drunk. You know how that went on the irc channel </offtopic>

VikM wrote:

While I believe there is place for improvements in Arch, I understand from this thread that things are not going to change because:
- nobody really wants to update (not change, just some updates) the Arch way
- the community is not large/powerful enough

I belive a famous person once wrote: "Don't give the people what they want, give them what they need"

Giving in to the community's every whim is only going to cause one thing: Unstable, ever-changing and overly complex policy, something that gains no one.

Slackware is an example on a distro that's incredible "conservative" in that regard, and it's still excellent. But the downside is that it's rely hard to get anything changed. On the other hand you have Mandrake/Mandriva (at least this was my impression when I used it) where every update brought with it some major change that more often than not would leave you with a messed up system.

And the point of it all:
You got to have a balance. To much or to little community input in the development process will only harm Arch linux. It's a tricky path to walk, and lately, imo we are getting dangerous close to stepping over the edge that is to much community interference.

Edit: fixed 10% of the spelling mistakes

Last edited by Mr.Elendig (2008-03-28 16:39:37)

SoftVision · 2008-03-28 16:29:15

Everything works fine with me. I've never had any breakage due to upgrade.

erm67 · 2008-03-28 17:44:54

tomk wrote:

Something like this, maybe?
pacman.log wrote:
warning: /etc/profile installed as /etc/profile.pacnew
Check your logs, it's all there.

Yes I know, I am just overprotective toward noobs :-)
I meant at print a summary the end of the update, I usually do pacman -Syu switch back to firefox, switch back to console press Y, than switch back to firefox (or whatever I am doing at the moment). I do not follow the update process like many probably does, just check later if there were errors. Maybe only a warning like 'Some configuration files were updated check your logs'?
I really enjoy using arch at the moment and have absolutely no complaint about it, I switched to it after a few other distro because I wanted something fast (my PC is getting old) and hassle-free and (for me at least) Arch was the perfect choice.

Arch Linux

#51 2008-03-27 19:05:07

Re: The future of Arch Linux.

#52 2008-03-27 19:12:53

Re: The future of Arch Linux.

#53 2008-03-27 21:27:49

Re: The future of Arch Linux.

#54 2008-03-27 22:36:41

Re: The future of Arch Linux.

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#56 2008-03-28 07:07:14

Re: The future of Arch Linux.

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#58 2008-03-28 08:11:45

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#59 2008-03-28 09:41:59

Re: The future of Arch Linux.

#60 2008-03-28 10:10:23

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#61 2008-03-28 10:37:23

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#62 2008-03-28 12:27:09

Re: The future of Arch Linux.

#63 2008-03-28 13:25:58

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#64 2008-03-28 13:57:50

Re: The future of Arch Linux.

#65 2008-03-28 14:19:09

Re: The future of Arch Linux.

#66 2008-03-28 14:51:56

Re: The future of Arch Linux.

#67 2008-03-28 14:54:01

Re: The future of Arch Linux.

#68 2008-03-28 14:56:26

Re: The future of Arch Linux.

#69 2008-03-28 15:03:33

Re: The future of Arch Linux.

#70 2008-03-28 15:03:57

Re: The future of Arch Linux.

#71 2008-03-28 15:27:28

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#72 2008-03-28 15:45:45

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#73 2008-03-28 16:10:00

Re: The future of Arch Linux.

#74 2008-03-28 16:29:15

Re: The future of Arch Linux.

#75 2008-03-28 17:44:54

Re: The future of Arch Linux.

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