Is Arch really becoming unstable?

miggols99 · 2008-04-03 12:10:14

To be honest, I don't like things I don't understand flying across the screen. It's like compiling things. I have no idea what it means. A splash can hide all of this for people new to Linux, so they don't get scared. If you are one of the "elite" people you can put it on verbose mode. You also get a nice terminal background so no-one is complaining

dyscoria · 2008-04-03 12:18:58

The people you speak of that are new to linux and 'get scared' of seeing text scrolling up the screen during boot...if you're scared of seeing text scrolling up the screen, you probably shouldn't be using computers let alone arch Anyway, that's what Ubuntu is for, hiding everything away. Not arch.

miggols99 · 2008-04-03 12:24:05

That's why I want to make my own distro. I want to be an "easy" Arch Linux. I'm sure it goes completely against the Arch way, but it'll be a completely different project, mostly unrelated to Arch Linux (except it will use it's repos) but there will be a custom repo for Archux (hopefully I'll be calling it that) with what I said in one of my previous posts.

dyscoria · 2008-04-03 12:51:05

Fair enough. I guess there IS a missing niche in the market for a rolling release distro that uses pacman, that has the fbcondecor patch by default, and has loads of GUI's.

Good luck to ya!

fwojciec · 2008-04-03 12:53:07

Mean comment, I know, but I was wondering -- how are you going to roll out your own distro if you, judging by the title of this thread, cannot get Arch to run stable on your own computer? How are you going to make the packages for you distro if you don't like compiling? Also, are you sure you understand how much work is required not so much to *make* a distro easy, as if it were a one time effort, but to *keep* it easy as things constantly change and evolve? Finally, just an observation -- by hiding the things the user might not understand you are not actually making things easier for the user -- you simply prevent the user from being able to learn something new.

miggols99 · 2008-04-03 13:03:19

Well learning is Arch Linux's job...if they want to learn, they can use Arch. If they want to use the computer, use an easy distro. By the way, when did I say that I didn't like compiling? I don't remember saying anything like that anywhere...I think I just said I didn't like words I didn't understand flash past me...hopefully I can get some people to help me with this easy Arch if anyone is up to it

Last edited by miggols99 (2008-04-03 13:04:52)

KimTjik · 2008-04-03 13:43:12

A distro which has potential to be what miggols99 looks for is Pardus.
- It's a rolling release just as Arch
- More conservative updates of packages, so system breaks would be less likely
- A lot of standard and custom-made GUI tools (it actually has one of the best organized KDE menu I've seen)
- You can choose to see more text, but as default everything is well hidden behind splashes and GUI-tools
- It's not Ubuntu in the sense that you can still feel a bit more unique!

Pardus doesn't use Pacman, but has it's own Pisi, which actually as CLI is very powerfull, and has some ideas similar to Pacman, even though based on Python and uses XML.

I'm personally not against the idea that some other distro would be created on an Arch base, as long as Arch isn't forced to become something it shouldn't. Nevertheless looking for any possible niches - like all the *buntus - seems to me as a waste of time and good talent (says one with less talent ).

erm67 · 2008-04-03 18:53:29

miggols99 wrote:

* Shaman (Pacman frontend)
..... I like splashes )

I even tried shaman after reading your post, it has a very nice splash, and looks good, if it only worked half as good as it looked I wouldn't have uninstalled it immediately.

As a suggestion why don't you put your energies in configuring properly your system instead of creating a new distro?

Last edited by erm67 (2008-04-03 18:54:11)

anykey · 2008-04-03 19:16:56

I never really understood what splash screen was good for. I am an administrator with some linux servers. I like it when servers uh, serve, they don't need to boot prettily. No one sees it anyway, most of them don't even have any form of displaying device connected anyway.

I guess someone could provide a splash kernel for users who like them, could make them provide kernel26, conflict with kernel26, and just place them in a repo for all who like to download... but it is just not as good an idea as it sounds making it default.

There's folks who can actually read those "unknown words", and diagnose faults from them. It is not written here to invalidate miggols99's claim for aestetics (or "scares" of "newbies"; that point is more valid than most people would think!); but I wanted to show the other side of the world, of people who actually actively dislike splashes. I'd surely hate 'em.

I always despised having /etc/issue blank out the screen and likewise never understood having that as a default.

ph0tios · 2008-04-03 19:23:11

miggols99 wrote:

EDIT: I don't know why, but I despise using 32bit programs. I cannot use flash on my laptop, but instead use swfdec, which works with most websites, but is woefully out of date...0.5 is in the repos, but 0.6.2 has been released! When I installed flash on Kubuntu, Call me weird, but I shuddered when I saw it install lib32 packages.

I know how you feel...I was tempted to use nspluginwrapper...I installed it on Arch and saw it installing all the lib32 packages...I used it for about an hour and couldn't take it anymore...opened up a terminal and typed "pacman -Rsc nspluginwrapper nspluginwrapper-flash"...watched it all disappear from my system, and felt much better. Besides, Adobe is not a company I want to support anyway. They were very rude to the KDE devs at one point, and are generally unhelpful.

Edit: I have PKGBUILDs I modified from ABS to compile and install the newest version of swfdec and swfdec-mozilla if you want them. Or if you want to do it yourself, just change the version number, then /0.5/ to /0.6/ in the source url, and finally the md5sum. And there you go. This is actually something I find superior about Arch compared to other distros. Even the port system is completely in your control.

Last edited by ph0tios (2008-04-03 19:38:43)

B-Con · 2008-04-03 22:12:48

miggols99 wrote:

That's why I want to make my own distro. I want to be an "easy" Arch Linux. I'm sure it goes completely against the Arch way, but it'll be a completely different project, mostly unrelated to Arch Linux (except it will use it's repos) but there will be a custom repo for Archux (hopefully I'll be calling it that) with what I said in one of my previous posts.

To be honest, if you knew enough to make your own distro in an Arch-like fashion, you probably *wouldn't* want to hide the details. People who know them and/or are familiar with them are the most likely to want to see them.

ConnorBehan · 2008-04-07 22:58:34

I am late in joining this thread but let me assure you, being easy to use is NOT the same as being stable. Arch may seem to have more problems than Ubuntu, but that's only because Arch is configured almost from scratch.

Lets say Alice chooses Arch. She installs exactly the programs she wants, no more no less, modifies their configuration files according to tips on the wiki and runs pacman -Syu about once a week in order to receive about 100MB worth of updates.

Now lets say Bob chooses Ubuntu. He installs the distro which already has thousands of programs installed including many he doesn't want, but at least they are all configured properly from the start. Then all he has to do is install maybe 10MB of minor updates per week because his only major updates come in the form of a new install CD which he must burn about twice a year.

Clearly Alice will have a few problems. This is because Arch requires Alice to set up a lot of stuff and sometimes she makes mistakes.

Bob will not have as many problems. This is because he doesn't have to make any decisions -- the work has already been done for him by the Ubuntu developers.

This is the tradeoff: if you have VERY SPECIFIC requirements for a distro... you will have to become deeply involved in maintaining your copy of it. If you want a distro that requires ALMOST NO WORK... it isn't going to be as flexible or customizable. There's no getting around that tradeoff unless some programmer out there happens to want exaclty what you want and builds and maintains your perfect distro for you. This would be nice but don't hold your breath.

I've had a few problems since I started with Arch but I'm sure 99% of them have been my fault (even if I still have not diagnosed the causes). I don't blame them on Arch because "what is Arch"? When someone says their computer runs Arch, that can mean just about anything. Ubuntu comes with thousands of packages by default and if Ubuntu wants to claim that it is stable, it has to make sure that each and every package it comes with is stable. Arch on the other hand is just 96 packages in core/base that you can bet every Arch user has, then everything else is what you make it. For that reason, Ubuntu can never be as stable as Arch can be.

Last edited by ConnorBehan (2008-04-07 23:02:38)

Jerry · 2008-04-10 11:42:15

There was a talk of an arch stable, I'm not sure about the status though. You might find something useful there to save you from grief of maintaining.

Last edited by Jerry (2008-04-10 11:43:45)

anakin · 2008-04-10 11:59:33

Just as I've mentioned earlier in this thread one should really understand the KISS idea before whining, Arch is really what you make out of it and it certainly requires proactive maintenance unlike other distros like Ubuntu. Having said that, I felt I should share something funny with you. Inside my regular Arch desktop I run a separate user mode linux installation of Arch within an image file for testing purposes or just for fun which I happened to forget about for the last four months since early December 2007. Yesterday after all this time I booted it and performed a pacman -Syu which obviously resulted in a massive update, guess what, not a single problem.

schivmeister · 2008-04-10 14:37:30

if 30 days uptime isn't stable, i don't know what is. and that includes abuse.

hypermegachi · 2008-04-10 15:21:36

distupgrade has always left me with a broken system
customizing anything with yum has left be with broken groups (try removing "printing support" and "gnome desktop" doesn't work no more)

arch might not be the easiest to use or set up. but i can know for sure that i won't be left in the dark.

drf · 2008-04-10 15:56:56

erm67 wrote:

I even tried shaman after reading your post, it has a very nice splash, and looks good, if it only worked half as good as it looked I wouldn't have uninstalled it immediately.

Reasons? Reporting bugs? Giving out suggestions?
Ok, I recognize half or more the community doesn't need a Pacman GUI, but this is not a good reason to try one out, (considering it's still in development), saying "bah, it's shit" without even saying why and telling anything to developers on how to improve it.
This ain't Arch, this ain't KISS and most of all this ain't what FOSS is all about

EDIT: Whoa, this post seems to mean even more: http://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=46887

Last edited by drf (2008-04-10 16:02:28)

Misfit138 · 2008-04-10 16:09:49

I tried Shaman repeatedly, but could never get it to to much of ANYTHING. It wouldn't update the database, wouldn't install anything- nothing.
Then, on a hunch, I commented out the Server= line in my pacman.conf and -poof- it started working. It works quite well, and is under heavy development, it seems.
My only disappointment is that it is based on qt, which brings in a lot of dependencies for an Xfce user like me, but that's not a big deal. (I'd also like to find a way to get these qt apps to look better under Xfce as well).

Shaman is a great community effort, as it should be; it certainly doesn't belong in [core] or [extra], but when it's more polished, it should find its way into [community].
Hats off to the authors.

drf · 2008-04-10 17:28:26

Misfit138 wrote:

I tried Shaman repeatedly, but could never get it to to much of ANYTHING. It wouldn't update the database, wouldn't install anything- nothing.
Then, on a hunch, I commented out the Server= line in my pacman.conf and -poof- it started working. It works quite well, and is under heavy development, it seems.
My only disappointment is that it is based on qt, which brings in a lot of dependencies for an Xfce user like me, but that's not a big deal. (I'd also like to find a way to get these qt apps to look better under Xfce as well).
Shaman is a great community effort, as it should be; it certainly doesn't belong in [core] or [extra], but when it's more polished, it should find its way into [community].
Hats off to the authors.

Thanks, I don't want to bring this post OT, but please report any parser bug or anything else here: http://shaman.iskrembilen.com/trac

Arch Linux

#51 2008-04-03 12:10:14

Re: Is Arch really becoming unstable?

#52 2008-04-03 12:18:58

Re: Is Arch really becoming unstable?

#53 2008-04-03 12:24:05

Re: Is Arch really becoming unstable?

#54 2008-04-03 12:51:05

Re: Is Arch really becoming unstable?

#55 2008-04-03 12:53:07

Re: Is Arch really becoming unstable?

#56 2008-04-03 13:03:19

Re: Is Arch really becoming unstable?

#57 2008-04-03 13:43:12

Re: Is Arch really becoming unstable?

#58 2008-04-03 18:53:29

Re: Is Arch really becoming unstable?

#59 2008-04-03 19:16:56

Re: Is Arch really becoming unstable?

#60 2008-04-03 19:23:11

Re: Is Arch really becoming unstable?

#61 2008-04-03 22:12:48

Re: Is Arch really becoming unstable?

#62 2008-04-07 22:58:34

Re: Is Arch really becoming unstable?

#63 2008-04-10 11:42:15

Re: Is Arch really becoming unstable?

#64 2008-04-10 11:59:33

Re: Is Arch really becoming unstable?

#65 2008-04-10 14:37:30

Re: Is Arch really becoming unstable?

#66 2008-04-10 15:21:36

Re: Is Arch really becoming unstable?

#67 2008-04-10 15:56:56

Re: Is Arch really becoming unstable?

#68 2008-04-10 16:09:49

Re: Is Arch really becoming unstable?

#69 2008-04-10 17:28:26

Re: Is Arch really becoming unstable?

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