Rolling Releases

Lord Illidan · 2008-08-07 12:23:43

If you read linuxhater's latest piece about Ubuntu : http://linuxhaters.blogspot.com/2008/08/yay.html , you'd know that he dislikes the way Ubuntu releases every 6 months.

This is my comment btw :

The future of Linux isn't in released software like Ubuntu, where a new release comes out every 6 months. It's in rolling releases, like Arch Linux. Firefox 3 comes out, woot, installed. KDE 4.1? Same thing. Install the OS once and that's it. Kernels, drivers, it doesn't matter, you don't have to reinstall. Nor do you have 1 mega-huge upgrade every 6 months that tends to break things.

Only pity is that Arch is harder to use than Ubuntu, no gui tools and all text files. But with some work, this can change. I no longer use Ubuntu.

Anyway, nice work LH. Although I like Linux a lot, it isn't wise to be blinded by zealotry.

So, how many times have you installed Arch Linux? What's the record for the oldest installation that's still being kept up to date and running perfectly?

robmaloy · 2008-08-07 12:29:08

i installed it only 3 times
2 times on desktop (second time because i repartitioned the whole disk)
1 time on laptop

but i'm only using arch for a few months now

edit:
lol that linuxhater blog guy is just too stupid. he thinks he has to reinstall to get ~ back? wtf

edit2:
but he can be very funny though

Last edited by robmaloy (2008-08-07 12:45:28)

rson451 · 2008-08-07 12:38:49

I believe there is a thread around here somewhere in Try This about how old is your installation.

Lord Illidan · 2008-08-07 12:40:57

robmaloy wrote:

i installed it only 3 times
2 times on desktop (second time because i repartitioned the whole disk)
1 time on laptop
but i'm only using arch for a few months now

edit:
lol that linuxhater blog guy is just too stupid. he thinks he has to reinstall to get ~ back? wtf

I believe he's looking at it from the point of a newbie. Sure, you can get your /home back easily..but what about your documents?

audaly · 2008-08-07 12:46:45

Lord Illidan wrote:

What's the record for the oldest installation that's still being kept up to date and running perfectly?

My install is 3 years old

Last edited by audaly (2008-08-07 12:47:20)

robmaloy · 2008-08-07 12:47:23

Lord Illidan wrote:

robmaloy wrote:
i installed it only 3 times
2 times on desktop (second time because i repartitioned the whole disk)
1 time on laptop
but i'm only using arch for a few months now

edit:
lol that linuxhater blog guy is just too stupid. he thinks he has to reinstall to get ~ back? wtf
I believe he's looking at it from the point of a newbie. Sure, you can get your /home back easily..but what about your documents?

your documents wont get restored after reinstallation (that would be magic!)

maybe its an ubuntu thing.
no home -> no login -> no funky sudo stuff in gnome-terminal

Gullible Jones · 2008-08-07 13:01:38

The impression I get of LH is that they're a bunch of trolls with very limited *nix experience. Granted, I agree with them on some things - ALSA being a pain in the ass for example - but they're still trolls.

Gullible Jones · 2008-08-07 13:04:18

Aside: I love this:

Thank God! My rogue script only deleted my home directory! I'm so happy it spared my /usr/lib! I just have to reinstall Ubuntu to get my home directory back, right?

Has this guy ever heard of a multi-user system? Or backups?

Last edited by Gullible Jones (2008-08-07 13:05:00)

Pnevma · 2008-08-07 13:07:50

He seems to be pretty active on that blog... spending his days hating something that's completely free and optional.

LOL

Last edited by Pnevma (2008-08-07 13:11:45)

Lord Illidan · 2008-08-07 13:21:38

Personally, I think the guy does come up with some good points. He is very inflammatory though. Also, he tends to attract the real trolls, just look in the comments. But, for all it's good points, Linux is not perfect.

kensai · 2008-08-07 13:27:38

Just telling and not doing anything to fix the problem doesn't make you a great blogger.

Last edited by kensai (2008-08-07 14:00:48)

Dusty · 2008-08-07 13:53:07

I'm pretty sure the linuxhater guy is the same one that got himself banned here a few weeks ago, so lets be polite and not say anything further disrespectful about him where he can't defend himself. Please stay on the original topic, which, as mentioned, I think is actually covered in another thread somewhere.

FTR I typically install Arch Linux once per machine I install it on. I'm pretty sure I installed it twice on my first desktop because I wiped the hard drive and gave the system to my sister and it just seemed easier at the time to reinstall and configure it from scratch for her.

Dusty

AndyRTR · 2008-08-07 13:57:42

[andyrtr@workstation64 ~]$ head /var/log/pacman.log
[11/28/05 23:54] synchronizing package lists
[11/28/05 23:59] synchronizing package lists
[11/28/05 23:59] synchronizing package lists
[11/28/05 23:59] starting full system upgrade
[11/29/05 00:06] warning: no /var/cache/pacman/pkg cache exists.  creating...

still my first Arch x86_64 installation (made with a Gentoo LiveCD because we hadn't had any iso...). replaced the disc, mainboard and cpu only a few times

kensai · 2008-08-07 13:58:39

Dusty wrote:

I'm pretty sure the linuxhater guy is the same one that got himself banned here a few weeks ago, so lets be polite and not say anything further disrespectful about him where he can't defend himself. Please stay on the original topic, which, as mentioned, I think is actually covered in another thread somewhere.

OK...

Lord Illidan · 2008-08-07 14:29:24

Dusty wrote:

I'm pretty sure the linuxhater guy is the same one that got himself banned here a few weeks ago, so lets be polite and not say anything further disrespectful about him where he can't defend himself. Please stay on the original topic, which, as mentioned, I think is actually covered in another thread somewhere.
FTR I typically install Arch Linux once per machine I install it on. I'm pretty sure I installed it twice on my first desktop because I wiped the hard drive and gave the system to my sister and it just seemed easier at the time to reinstall and configure it from scratch for her.
Dusty

I had no idea about that, and it wasn't my intent to discuss him, either.

Also, the thread you mention is closed.

However pretty cool, an Arch Linux install from 2005. Have you ever had any problems with breakages?

Allan · 2008-08-07 14:39:28

Here is a previous thread about age of your linux install: http://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=38642

I'm sure I have posted in another similar thread around here somewhere but I can't find that one...

Edit - and here it is: http://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=51154

McQueen · 2008-08-07 17:13:49

Lord Illidan wrote:

Only pity is that Arch is harder to use than Ubuntu, no gui tools and all text files. But with some work, this can change.

The idea that using text files to configure your system is harder than using a GUI is very misleading. At the very least, it would completely depend on the GUI under consideration and certainly such a statement can't be taken as blanket endorsement.

Lord Illidan · 2008-08-07 22:28:42

McQueen wrote:

Lord Illidan wrote:
Only pity is that Arch is harder to use than Ubuntu, no gui tools and all text files. But with some work, this can change.
The idea that using text files to configure your system is harder than using a GUI is very misleading. At the very least, it would completely depend on the GUI under consideration and certainly such a statement can't be taken as blanket endorsement.

To a newbie who has never edited a textfile in anger, yes it's harder. It's not intuitive, for instance. Make a mistake, and the system might not boot up (Happens with grub).
To install Arch, I had to read the wiki, and double check everything. The first time I installed Windows, I knew exactly what to do, without having ever installed it before.

Of course, Arch isn't aimed at newbies. However, it has an extremely good distro, which would be improved with a larger userbase.

dunc · 2008-08-07 23:08:36

Lord Illidan wrote:

McQueen wrote:
Lord Illidan wrote:
Only pity is that Arch is harder to use than Ubuntu, no gui tools and all text files. But with some work, this can change.
The idea that using text files to configure your system is harder than using a GUI is very misleading. At the very least, it would completely depend on the GUI under consideration and certainly such a statement can't be taken as blanket endorsement.
To a newbie who has never edited a textfile in anger, yes it's harder. It's not intuitive, for instance. Make a mistake, and the system might not boot up (Happens with grub).

Just what I was about to say. A GUI holds your hand (or it should). But once you know what you're doing, it can just get in the way and become more of a hindrance than a help. I've always understood that, but my experience with Linux really brought it home to me. In the early days, the Mandriva Control Center was a godsend, allowing me to configure all kinds of stuff I had no idea about. But once I learned a bit about xorg.conf and menu.lst, for example, loading that behemoth up just to change one tiny option got to be a pain. And if I tried editing them by hand, as often as not, the "helpful" hand-holding systems would change them back again at the next boot. If not before.

Arch was a breath of fresh air. And, as a Linux user for - at that time - 18 months, I didn't find it difficult at all.

As for rolling releases, I'm not sure if they're the future. That is, they're certainly a future, but not necessarily the only one. We all like them of course, and I'm sure there are a lot of other people out there who'd enjoy the idea once they found out about it, but there are plenty of others who like the stability of fixed release dates - not least businesses, who wouldn't be at all happy with the sort of fun surprises we're all used to the day after a pacman -Syu.

Lord Illidan · 2008-08-07 23:21:30

Actually, I've never really had any surprises with pacman -Syu....but I did have a nasty surprise upgrading my dad's laptop from Gutsy to Hardy.

To be clear, I don't think Arch is hard for me, for instance. I am the type who reads manuals before I jump into something. And, it isn't as hard as Gentoo, to be sure. Also, I like the way that the rc.conf is the central config file, there are fewer points of failure that way.
I'm just saying that this isn't going to be the distro that attracts Windows users (unless they are power users and machos), but it will certainly grab other Linux users who are looking for something else, just like I was. I still believe a good gui configuration is important.

To give a stupid example..placing icons in fb-panel or py-panel..yeah what a waste of time. Making 3 line entries for each icon I wanted to put in really grated on me. In Gnome, I could have just dragged and dropped the icons from the menu to the panel. A good GUI system could have solved it.

angryfirelord · 2008-08-07 23:25:04

Pnevma wrote:

He seems to be pretty active on that blog... spending his days hating something that's completely free and optional.
LOL

Actually, if you look at his points, some of them are legitimate. The problem I have with some of the "linux youth" is that they tout a distro like Ubuntu as a drop in replacement for Windows when there are still many features missing or broken (remember Bulletproof X?). Grandma isn't going to go on a linux forum to report a broken driver or wondering why her TurboTax software isn't working properly. Yes, some of the stuff is flamebait, but if you want your product to perform well as a competitor to Windows on the desktop, the linux community needs to analyze any criticism that is thrown at it.

McQueen · 2008-08-07 23:37:42

Lord Illidan wrote:

McQueen wrote:
Lord Illidan wrote:
Only pity is that Arch is harder to use than Ubuntu, no gui tools and all text files. But with some work, this can change.
The idea that using text files to configure your system is harder than using a GUI is very misleading. At the very least, it would completely depend on the GUI under consideration and certainly such a statement can't be taken as blanket endorsement.
To a newbie who has never edited a textfile in anger, yes it's harder. It's not intuitive, for instance. Make a mistake, and the system might not boot up (Happens with grub).

We can agree to disagree then, as I've seen some GUI's (on Windows as well) that IMO were vastly less intuitive and potentially more dangerous than simply editing a text document. But again, the statement that there are "no GUI tools" is just as misleading as the other observation. Arch does have some very good GUI tools that are community supported and probably more in the future.

Lord Illidan · 2008-08-07 23:40:39

I haven't yet seen a useful gui for pacman. Useful as in synaptic useful. To be honest, I haven't tried shaman yet, so it might be good, but due to libraries not being up to date, I can't. And when I said "no gui tools", I was referring to the installation itself, actually. You're thrown into an empty shell.

Now, I know this is for simplicity reasons, and I do appreciate it. But most people who use Windows are terrified of the command line. My fellow IT students in university hardly ever touch it, whereas I usually always have one or 2 open.

kensai · 2008-08-08 00:01:25

People think Windows work out of the box and does not need for people hunting for driver breakages in forums. I don't use windows, because it is too much of a hassle, you need to hunt down drivers and every package update. You have to install antivirus anti-spyware and anti-everything software. And if I am to pay for an OS, in this case, pay that much, it has to be perfect, and not ever have a bug, and do everything for me. Thinking about it, it should as well move the mouse for me, open the cd/dvd tray, oh, that is already achived by some viruses.

For the sake of not being off-topic, no windows is not a rolling release system.

Last edited by kensai (2008-08-08 00:02:54)

Dusty · 2008-08-08 02:45:10

Now, I know this is for simplicity reasons, and I do appreciate it. But most people who use Windows are terrified of the command line.

Totally different target audience from Arch too. We tend to be sensitive about community size, a lot of people don't like to see Arch grow too fast because its meant for a very specific type of crowd. If it starts growing really quickly it probably means that its not suitable for that original intended audience anymore, which would suck since it leaves them out in the cold.

Luckily we have a dev team that is made up of members of that original intended audience, so they're likely to ensure it continues supporting their own ideals and purposes. Even more luckily, its a very open project with lots of room for people to create their own repos based on Arch that are targeted at totally different audiences. kdemod is the most popular and successful current one, archlinuxfr is another well-known one.

My fellow IT students in university hardly ever touch it, whereas I usually always have one or 2 open.

You'll probably be the most efficient and get the best jobs in the long run then.

Dusty

Arch Linux

#1 2008-08-07 12:23:43

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