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#1 2008-11-11 06:30:35

ioky
Member
Registered: 2008-06-19
Posts: 93

Will you need to spend a lot of time on maintaining Arch?

Due to lack of back up drive. I keep hold back my will of install Arch Linux on my Desktop. I have try it on my laptop, almost every thing run perfect, except the suspend/sleep problems. (It might due to lack of knowledge.) SO, I hope it will work on my Desktop. Everything such be much easier for Desktop.

What my true question is, will you need to spend a lot of time maintaining  the system? Like will update often break? I mean once for a long while should be fine. It is a rolling distro after all, so something will break due to change. I can perfectly understand that. I use the Desktop as a work station, normally doing 2D/3D stuff, programming, HTML(CSS...Java.... you know web stuff), and a good amount of media editing. So some graphic engine like crystal space might be installed, along with few other package that doesn't come with Arch.

Beside that, is there anyway good software/package should include in Desktop installation in general?  (in term of help the Desktop run smooth and better.)

I might also use GNOME as the primary/general work environment and a very light weight environment of heavy processing/compiling.

Feel free to give any suggestion.

Thank you so much

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#2 2008-11-11 06:55:24

shazeal
Member
From: New Zealand
Registered: 2007-06-05
Posts: 341

Re: Will you need to spend a lot of time on maintaining Arch?

Arch is pretty low maintance, the biggest problem most have as far as updates go is usually kernel's. I always recommend installing or building an alternative kernel if only as a backup if you keep using the default arch one. Other than that, a "find | grep pacnew" (need to learn how to use find correctly one day) in /etc every now and again and make any changes to the needed files. smile

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#3 2008-11-11 07:13:18

Allan
Pacman
From: Brisbane, AU
Registered: 2007-06-09
Posts: 11,365
Website

Re: Will you need to spend a lot of time on maintaining Arch?

find / -name *.pacnew

or quicker,

updatedb
locate pacnew

To the question on hand, a rolling release distro does require more maintenance than one with a fixed release schedule.  Updates can bring in new configuration files.  Also, they may cause unsupported packages to need recompiled due to a library soname bump.  In general, I don't spend much time maintaining my system but it is more than zero time...

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#4 2008-11-11 13:34:25

mianka
Member
From: BE LEUVEN
Registered: 2006-05-30
Posts: 229

Re: Will you need to spend a lot of time on maintaining Arch?

In my view Arch is an "update-often" system.I have 2 desktop machines and several portables and the desktops (what I call the productive gear) are updated every day. It takes about 15 to 30 minutes for the two in total via a DSL line. My experience is that ,if you wait to long between updates the chances of breaking the system are greater.
On the other hand, if you want to go safe, keep your hands off the testing repository:it is what it says and thus not quite safe (learned that one by experience,crashing a production machine with no means of recovery -second lesson: back-up regularly.

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