RFC: Queries about Arch culture and community

lseubert · 2009-08-08 13:40:25

Good day everyone,

This is a request for opinions from the Arch community, especially the Arch developers, Trusted Users, and long time users. I am writing a review about Arch Linux which I hope to publish within the next month or so. Unlike most distro reviews, which are actually distro installation reviews, I have devoted a lot of space to The Arch Way, unique technical qualities of Arch, day to day use and maintenance of Arch, and the Arch community. In my view, the community of a distro is much more important than its installation process.

If I may, I would like to pose some questions about the Arch community. FWIW, I have been quietly participating in the Arch community myself for some months now, contributing material to the wiki. Anyway, please take a look at the queries below, and comment on any as you see fit.

Thank you,
Luke Seubert

1. Despite its modest size, Arch has a very enthusiastic community, as evidenced by its internationalization projects, derivative distros, 3rd party repositories, Arch schwag, active forums and wiki, etc. Is this statement true or false, and if Arch does have an especially enthusiastic community, why?

2. Arch is deeply conservative, refusing to deviate from core principles. Still, within these bounds, Arch permits a wide array of innovation. Are these statements true or false, and why? If true, what are the pros and cons of such conservatism? If false, in what way has Arch deviated from its core principles or resisted innovation?

3. The Arch community is fairly harmonious, with little bickering, flamewars, forks or threats to fork, etc. Is this statement true or false, and why? (I have my own theory on the why of this one, and the answer in brief is... dogfood.)

4. How good or bad a job is Arch doing in cultivating new Trusted Users and Arch developers? Does it have a formal mentoring process? It seems the most direct path to TU status is to put together packages in AUR, and eventually have them voted into Community based upon quality and popularity. However, at some point, virtually all of the popular packages will already be in Community or Extra. How does an AUR uploader become a Trusted User then?

5. Hypothetical Scenario:
The Chakra Project successfully completes in alpha, beta, and release candidate Live CD testing, and releases its Live CD - version 1.0 - with the GUI easy Tribe installer, to wide acclaim - DistroWatch even raves about it. Suddenly, there are lots of new Arch users, who never went through the traditional Arch install process, who never "paid their Arch dues", and who are not nearly as clueful because they never RTFW. They are flooding IRC and webforums with really, uh, "basic" questions, and suggesting/demanding new features. How does the Arch community handle this abrupt change in its culture? Has it dealt with such culture shocks before?

6. If only you too could lift cars over your head, would you be more cool, less cool, or as cool as Phrakture, and why? What if you could only lift cars over your head after eating a can of spinach and slamming a six pack of Red Bull? Then how cool/not cool would you be by comparison?

Last edited by lseubert (2009-08-08 13:45:07)

Skripka · 2009-08-08 14:07:47

I'll let other folks comment on the 1st few but...As far as #5 goes, Chakra is the product of the KDEMod team.

It is their baby and therefore all problems with Chakra (especially) should be sent to their own forums/irc etc. This is also often (though not always true) with support queries for KDEMod, more often than not they are better served by posting on the KDEMod boards-in large part because that is where their devs post (not here).

Personally, I've warned lots of green linux users about Chakra--these were/are folks who do not see the problem in skipping RTFM or skipping the tutorial on building Arch, and just want GUI tools fast with the need to learn as little as possible... Personally, IMHO, anyone who is too scared of the terminal to do the Arch install really has no business expecting ANYthing other than tears and frustration down the road from a handholding GUI installer which teaches them nothing about the system they are using. The Arch install is about as hard as cooking a box of Mac and Cheese--*if* one reads and follows the instructions.

Perhaps there will be a culture split similar to what happened with Ubuntu's repackaging of Debian into a GUI handholding paradise. Who knows.

crouse · 2009-08-08 14:47:45

1. TRUE -- Because we consider Arch to be the best distro around, and it's, well, fun to use.

2. TRUE -- Arch actually ENCOURAGES community involvement in many many aspects, and yet holds true to it's core principles. I for one am so very very VERY glad that they do. Pros, it encourages people to get involved, builds the community. It keeps users long term, because things don't change because someone new guy demands it. Cons, I cant really think of any major ones. People getting involved is always a good thing, even if they don't always agree, as long as they act adult about it.

3. TRUE -- but your wrong, it's not dogfood, it's the TACOS !!!

4. Arch does fine cultivating new TU's and Developers. I'd say semi-formal mentoring with TU's, but I'm no expert there. I'd say there are MANY MANY packages that could still be built.

5. I'm not sure it has dealt with the rapid influx of "clueless" newbies to this extent before, but I think they do rather well handling everything. Gently pointing to man pages and wiki pages vs giving cut-n-paste answers seems to be the best way to handle things. These newbies either learn, and become proficient linux users, or they end up moving on.... Arch was not meant to be a newbie distro anyway, and never claimed to be. So if people don't want to learn, and do some research on their own, nobody cries much when they leave. However, most users use great tack in dealing with newbies, and generally are pretty courteous. If not, we have some great moderators on the boards, they do deserve ALOT of credit for keeping things civil, I'd hate to think what the forums would be like without them. If you head to the IRC channel, you have to have your flame retardant suit on, and a sense of humor with you.......or you won't survive though.....

6. No ones as cool as Phrakture, even if they can lift cars over their heads too, I mean, he has the cool avatar.

I think one thing that makes Arch stand out, is the number of experienced users it has. Many have used multiple other distros for years, and finally settled on Arch. THOSE people KNOW what a gem Arch truly is, and are generally excited to show others.

Last edited by crouse (2009-08-08 14:49:06)

lseubert · 2009-08-08 15:04:16

Skripka wrote:

I'll let other folks comment on the 1st few but...As far as #5 goes, Chakra is the product of the KDEMod team.
It is their baby and therefore all problems with Chakra (especially) should be sent to their own forums/irc etc. This is also often (though not always true) with support queries for KDEMod, more often than not they are better served by posting on the KDEMod boards-in large part because that is where their devs post (not here).

I understand your point and largely agree with what you are saying. However, consider the recent package split with KDE 4.3.0. Once upgraded, it broke KDE for a lot of folks running KDEMod. They posted queries in the Arch forums, and were politely directed to the KDEMod forums, along with some advice.

So, even though Chakra/KDEMod people should post to the Chakra forums, a sizable number will wind up posting in the Arch forums regardless. If Chakra proves a major success, and Arch is flooded with such posts, how do you think the Arch community would handle it?

Right now, the Arch community seems a fairly happy place. But under such circumstances, might not Arch become a peeved and cranky place? How would Arch deal with such a dilemma?

Perhaps there will be a culture split similar to what happened with Ubuntu's repackaging of Debian into a GUI handholding paradise. Who knows.

Except that Ubuntu wasn't a split - it was a fork of Debian unstable. And it set up its own separate community to provide support, hand holding, etc. Debian remained... Debian. Chakra isn't a fork of Arch - it gladly uses the underlying base that is Arch, and builds a GUI handholding paradaise on top. As such, Chakra seems to me more an extension of Arch, than a fork; and thus more entwined with Arch than Ubuntu is with Debian. Thus, Chakra would have a more direct impact on the Arch community. Hence, the hypothetical question, "How would Arch handle a sudden influx of newbies who never RTFW?" (FWIW, I think the Chakra project is losing its focus, and won't have a big impact on Arch. What I am really doing here is asking how would Arch handle cultural dislocations by giving a hypothetical example.)

On a separate note, have the Arch developers ever communicated such concerns to the KDEMod people, asking them to take steps to ensure that KDEMod support questions are directed to the Chakra community, and not Arch?

Pierre · 2009-08-08 15:24:13

The only way to handle an increasing number of users to stay focused on our philosophy and principles. We need to remember that Arch is no mainstream distro and not everybody's first choice. That also means that we (the Arch community) has to learn to tell (politely) people that Arch might not be the system they want to use and we need to check with our goals if a feature request really matches them.

lseubert · 2009-08-08 15:35:52

crouse wrote:

1. TRUE -- Because we consider Arch to be the best distro around, and it's, well, fun to use.

Heh :-) In addition to being the best and being cool, can you think of some other reasons for the community enthusiasm? The enthusiasm of Arch really is unique. Compare the number of translations and international websites that Arch has, with Linux Mint - which is a very popular and well done distro. (Mint basically fixes Ubuntu and does it right.) Despite far more users, Mint has fewer translations. Voluntary translation requires a lot of enthusiasm - it is dull work.

3. TRUE -- but your wrong, it's not dogfood, it's the TACOS !!!

It's a veritable taco dogfood lallapalooza!

Actually, it is dogfood as in Arch developers eat their own dogfood. Arch developers are basically running the same OS as Arch users, thanks to rolling release. Thus, the interests of both groups strongly coincide - they both want the same thing at the same time - an up to date and bug free system. This produces a very rapid bugreport-bugfix feedback loop, which helps to fulfill the wants of both groups simultaneously. Thus, there is a lot of happiness and harmony in the community. And all of it thanks to taco-flavored dogfood.

Dusty! I see a new T-Shirt in the Schwag store - "I'm an Arch developer and I eat my own dogfood."

4. Arch does fine cultivating new TU's and Developers. I'd say semi-formal mentoring with TU's, but I'm no expert there. I'd say there are MANY MANY packages that could still be built.

Hmm, well, if there are many, many packages still to be built, does that not suggest that Arch doesn't cultivate as many devs and TUs as it needs? What do the Arch devs think of this question? Are you guys shorthanded?

5. I'm not sure it has dealt with the rapid influx of "clueless" newbies to this extent before, but I think they do rather well handling everything.

While Arch does have newbies posting basic Arch questions, it doesn't really have clueless newbies. Clueless people don't get through the install process and/or don't RTFW. In my view, Arch has never had a major influx of clueless newbs (if I am wrong about this, correct me folks), which is why I wonder what would happen if it did.

I think one thing that makes Arch stand out, is the number of experienced users it has. Many have used multiple other distros for years, and finally settled on Arch. THOSE people KNOW what a gem Arch truly is, and are generally excited to show others.

That is a very good point. You are right - it seems most Arch users are ex-distro hoppers who discovered Arch at some point, and stuck with it.

lseubert · 2009-08-08 15:41:16

Pierre wrote:

The only way to handle an increasing number of users to stay focused on our philosophy and principles. We need to remember that Arch is no mainstream distro and not everybody's first choice. That also means that we (the Arch community) has to learn to tell (politely) people that Arch might not be the system they want to use and we need to check with our goals if a feature request really matches them.

Agreed. "The Arch Way" is deeply essential to the Arch community, and along with rolling release is a major reason for the relatively high degree of Arch community harmony.

How good (or bad) of a job do you think Arch does in dealing politely with people who are new and somewhat lost?

Allan · 2009-08-08 15:41:59

Here are my opinions on these questions and do not necessarily reflect other Arch devs...

1. True. I believe part of the enthusiastic community comes from the fact that Arch requires you to set up your system for yourself. So people become very proud of their achievement of getting their system setup exactly as they like it. Also, people have always been encouraged to contribute fixes or start projects to fulfill areas they see lacking. Seeing your work become used by many others is always a good feeling.

2. Somewhat true. It is not so much being conservative. But it is sticking to our core principle being defined in the "Arch Way". I see the pros of this being the ability to readily understand many aspects of your system due to nothing being hidden from you. This simplicity extends to our package manager, which I believe is a major factor in making the AUR as popular as it is. (Note that while pacman is developed primarily by Arch users, it aims not to be tied to any distro). But as always, the principles guiding Arch do get bent when it is sensible to do so. It was always said we don't split packages like many other distros, but we do some splitting these days (e.g. gcc-libs, KDE). We now include info pages and other docs.

3. There are flame-wars every so often... The last one that was probably quite obvious to many was changing rules governing the community repo (requiring votes or 1% usage as defined by pkgstats) and the move to using the official db-scripts (which may be seen as making the TUs less independent). There have also been a few heated threads on the forums. But between an efficient moderation team and a hefty dose of community moderation, these tend to be shut down fairly quickly. I have never heard of a treat to fork the distro or components of it. I guess that is because of the attitude of show us a working implementation of a good idea and it will possibly become official.

4. I do not think Arch cultivates devs and TUs as much as they cultivate themselves. There is no formal mentoring process, although the active members of the community know who is doing what and give advise when asked. While a TUs main responsibilities are to maintain packages in the community repo, being a good packager is never the only criteria for becoming a TU. It is important that other TUs recognise an applicant as an active member of the community (e.g. by their helping out in the bug tracker, or on the forums, developing a community project or contributing to an official one, ...). Also, recruiting for the sake of recruiting is not a great idea...

5. Ask people who have been here a while and they will tell you a flood of new users is happening all the time. It has been debated among some of the "older" of us whether it was always like this and we are becoming jaded or if there really is an influx of basic questions. But new users soon "graduate" to a higher level of knowledge and guide the next lot through (with the usual does of pointing to the documentation) so it is never really an issue. The more experience users that do not like dealing with the "newbie" questions just don't and help out with harder problems.

6. Taking drugs (including spinach and Red Bull) to lift cars over your head is cheating and will only let to detriments to your health in the future.

Ghost1227 · 2009-08-08 17:16:30

1. True. As has been previously stated, this is in large part due to the way Arch handle installation/system setup. As intensive as setting up Arch can be, anyone who sucessfully builds their ideal system ends up being proud of their accomplishment.

2. I would say that this is only partly true. We do stick to our core principles, but we're not quite as conservative as people think. When Arch was first started it may have been so but with the recent move to allow split packages (notably KDE), among other things, I would disagree with our "conservative" label.

3. False. Every community has its share of bickering, and we're no different. Take a look around the Dust/Troll-bin and I'm sure you'll find a few examples, drop by #archlinux on IRC for even more offerings. Now, we may be better off than many others, but we're definitely not perfect. (and words of praise for dogfood!)

4. We definitely do not cultivate devs or TUs. We don't mentor anyone, or train anyone, or seek out anyone for appointment to either aformentioned position. Rather, it is up to the user to decide to pursue those avenues themself, and the user's sole responsibility to show us why he or she should have that position. And as Allan said, the ability to write a functioning (or even a good) package does not a TU make!

5. Hypothetical Answer:
Change happens.

6. Do micro machines count?

Last edited by Ghost1227 (2009-08-08 17:20:32)

lseubert · 2009-08-08 17:18:39

Allan wrote:

Here are my opinions on these questions and do not necessarily reflect other Arch devs...
1. True. I believe part of the enthusiastic community comes from the fact that Arch requires you to set up your system for yourself. So people become very proud of their achievement of getting their system setup exactly as they like it.

This is an excellent point. There is a nice sense of pride that comes from tweaking your Arch install to just the way you like it. And it is an involved process requiring some modicum of skill.

Also, people have always been encouraged to contribute fixes or start projects to fulfill areas they see lacking. Seeing your work become used by many others is always a good feeling.

Yeah, I have noted this in my rough draft. Arch has amazingly low barriers to entry. Sign up for an AUR account, which is quick and automatic, and get to work. Your status and authority is derived from a roughly consensual meritocracy, as opposed to a hierarchical, bureaucratic process full of gatekeepers, aka potential gateclosers, like most distros.

This simplicity extends to our package manager, which I believe is a major factor in making the AUR as popular as it is. (Note that while pacman is developed primarily by Arch users, it aims not to be tied to any distro).

Allan, could you clarify this comment? How does pacman make AUR popular? While I use pacman to access binaries from core, extra, and community; I use yaourt to handle PKGBUILDs from AUR. I don't quite follow you on this one.

But as always, the principles guiding Arch do get bent when it is sensible to do so. It was always said we don't split packages like many other distros, but we do some splitting these days (e.g. gcc-libs, KDE). We now include info pages and other docs.

Both of which are good moves. A system should have documentation built in, for those occasions when internet access is down. And I might actually take a look at KDE 4 once again, now that I wouldn't have to download a pile of unwanted packages.

3. There are flame-wars every so often... The last one that was probably quite obvious to many was changing rules governing the community repo (requiring votes or 1% usage as defined by pkgstats) and the move to using the official db-scripts (which may be seen as making the TUs less independent).

That is a flamewar that I missed. How does Arch resolve difficult issues? There is no Constitution that I could find, nor any formal governing structure. Is it as simple as lengthy debate, and then Dred Overlord Phrakture decrees?

I have never heard of a treat to fork the distro or components of it. I guess that is because of the attitude of show us a working implementation of a good idea and it will possibly become official.

Well, there aren't forks, but there are a lot of derivative distros, some of them with very different goals. And there are a lot of 3rd party repositories out there, outside of AUR. I wouldn't call that forking, but it is, I guess, extending. I think such experimentation is a good thing - really good ideas might be developed outside of even AUR, and eventually brought back into the Arch ecosystem. I believe some of Xyne's packages got started that way, yes?

Here is an interesting factoid I came up with in my research:

Packages Per Maintainer Ratio - how many packages on average does a maintainer support?

For Debian, the P/M Ratio is 28

When you add up all the Arch Devs and TUs, and divide out the packages in core, extra, and community, the Arch P/M Ratio is 67.

Arch devs seem quite impressive, until you recall that they mostly maintain one version of each package and for only two architectures, whereas Debian devs support 11 architectures for 5 versions - experimental, unstable, testing, current stable, and old stable. (Ugh - is that brutal or what?)

Seen in that light, one has to admire the very hardworking Debian devs, and wonder a bit about those Arch dev slackers. Yet another T-shirt idea! Change the first idea so it now reads, "I'm a slacker Arch developer, and I eat my own dogfood!"

Allan · 2009-08-08 17:29:37

lseubert wrote:

Allan wrote:
This simplicity extends to our package manager, which I believe is a major factor in making the AUR as popular as it is. (Note that while pacman is developed primarily by Arch users, it aims not to be tied to any distro).
Allan, could you clarify this comment? How does pacman make AUR popular? While I use pacman to access binaries from core, extra, and community; I use yaourt to handle PKGBUILDs from AUR. I don't quite follow you on this one.

Not pacman itself but makepkg and PKGBUILDs. Making a PKGBUILD is easy so contributing to the AUR is easy.

lseubert wrote:

Allan wrote:
3. There are flame-wars every so often... The last one that was probably quite obvious to many was changing rules governing the community repo (requiring votes or 1% usage as defined by pkgstats) and the move to using the official db-scripts (which may be seen as making the TUs less independent).
That is a flamewar that I missed. How does Arch resolve difficult issues? There is no Constitution that I could find, nor any formal governing structure. Is it as simple as lengthy debate, and then Dred Overlord Phrakture decrees?

That can happen. Generally a vote is called and so a decision is made.

lseubert wrote:

For Debian, the P/M Ratio is 28

Remember that each "package" in Arch can be several packages in Debian. Not apples to oranges.

lseubert · 2009-08-08 17:35:34

Ghost1227 wrote:

2. I would say that this is only partly true. We do stick to our core principles, but we're not quite as conservative as people think. When Arch was first started it may have been so but with the recent move to allow split packages (notably KDE), among other things, I would disagree with our "conservative" label.

OK, Ghost1227, noted. And thank you. If you wouldn't use the label "conservative" (which I don't mean in the political sense as used in the USA), what sort of label, if any, would you use? Arch does hew fairly closely to The Arch Way, but as you and Alan rightly point out, it changes over time. Is there a succinct word that could adequately describe this?

3. False. Every community has its share of bickering, and we're no different. Take a look around the Dust/Troll-bin and I'm sure you'll find a few examples, drop by #archlinux on IRC for even more offerings. Now, we may be better off than many others, but we're definitely not perfect. (and words of praise for dogfood!)

Oh, you should spend some time wallowing in Debian forums my friend. Arch is such a happy, happy, joy, joy sort of place. While all communities bicker, how it is handled is something else entirely. You mentioned bickering in the Arch webforums, but in so doing, you at the same time mentioned the Dust/Troll-bin; which is where the really noxious stuff is swiftly routed by attentive forum moderators. That's not so bad. As for IRC, well, it is a bit juvenile and boisterous, but it didn't strike me as nasty. But maybe I need to spend more time lurking there?

4. We definitely do not cultivate devs or TUs. We don't mentor anyone, or train anyone, or seek out anyone for appointment to either aformentioned position. Rather, it is up to the user to decide to pursue those avenues themself, and the user's sole responsibility to show us why he or she should have that position. And as Allan said, the ability to write a functioning (or even a good) package does not a TU make!

OK, but once somebody decides to pursue that avenue to TU and/or Arch dev status, should not Arch have some sort of mentoring process to encourage them along? Arch does a lot of good things to encourage people to participate, much to its credit. Would not a mentoring process be yet one more good thing to help encourage participation?

6. Do micro machines count?

No! Wimp It simply has to be the real he-man challenge of a real car. Tonka Toys just don't count. Sorry

jdhore · 2009-08-08 17:37:40

lseubert wrote:

1. Despite its modest size, Arch has a very enthusiastic community, as evidenced by its internationalization projects, derivative distros, 3rd party repositories, Arch schwag, active forums and wiki, etc. Is this statement true or false, and if Arch does have an especially enthusiastic community, why?

I believe it's extremely true. I think the reason arch has such an enthusiastic community is because it's a small(ish, compared to say Gentoo or Fedora or Ubuntu) community and everyone wants to see the best distro in history get even better.

lseubert wrote:

2. Arch is deeply conservative, refusing to deviate from core principles. Still, within these bounds, Arch permits a wide array of innovation. Are these statements true or false, and why? If true, what are the pros and cons of such conservatism? If false, in what way has Arch deviated from its core principles or resisted innovation?

This is a bit of a opinionated question. Some people would say Arch innovates by using BSD-style init and rc.conf, some would say Arch innovates because of how crazy-easy PKGBUILDs are...Some would say these are minor things and Arch doesn't innovate anymore really than some other mainstream distros. I'm in the first camp because after using Debian for a few years, Arch's way of doing things seems much easier. Perhaps this didn't quite answer your question, but i don't think there's a "good" answer to this question.

lseubert wrote:

3. The Arch community is fairly harmonious, with little bickering, flamewars, forks or threats to fork, etc. Is this statement true or false, and why? (I have my own theory on the why of this one, and the answer in brief is... dogfood.)

I agree with this statement. The reason i believe there's little bickering is that people are here because they want to be here, not because they had no other choice which is the way a lot of other distro users are. For example, if you want a source-based distro, your only semi-viable option is Gentoo.

klixon · 2009-08-08 17:49:26

Considering flamewars on the forums, I think the moderators deserve a big, fat pat on the back as well. The moment a thread tends to turn nasty, a mod shows up and gives fair warning to get the thread back on track. If that doesn't happen, the thread gets closed. This helps keep the community focussed on the issues that matter here and tends to keep trouble at a minimum.

lseubert · 2009-08-08 17:52:28

Allan wrote:

lseubert wrote:
Allan, could you clarify this comment? How does pacman make AUR popular? While I use pacman to access binaries from core, extra, and community; I use yaourt to handle PKGBUILDs from AUR. I don't quite follow you on this one.
Not pacman itself but makepkg and PKGBUILDs. Making a PKGBUILD is easy so contributing to the AUR is easy.

Ah, OK. Now I understand what you mean. Yes, makepkg is a very elegant piece of work, which makes it fairly easy to create PKGBUILDs.

Allan, do you think that Arch would benefit from a more rigorous packaging policy with stricter technical checks, like Debian? Once of the things I admire about Debian is their detailed and meticulous packaging policy, along with the wide variety of technical checks that they do. (And yes, I am aware of namcap, etc.) For example, recently Debian decided to compile each package twice, and verify that the md5sums of both packages were identical. They do this as a way of finding odd compilation flaws. Would Arch benefit from such technical rigor, or would it unnecessarily slow things down without producing much benefit?

That can happen. Generally a vote is called and so a decision is made.

Is there any kind of formal governing document on such matters, or is there simply an informal vote? If it is informal, have there been calls for more structure? (I am guessing no, but I would like to be sure.)

Remember that each "package" in Arch can be several packages in Debian. Not apples to oranges.

Ah, so it the Debian guys who are slackers then, eh?

Allan · 2009-08-08 18:07:00

lseubert wrote:

Allan, do you think that Arch would benefit from a more rigorous packaging policy with stricter technical checks, like Debian? Once of the things I admire about Debian is their detailed and meticulous packaging policy, along with the wide variety of technical checks that they do. (And yes, I am aware of namcap, etc.) For example, recently Debian decided to compile each package twice, and verify that the md5sums of both packages were identical. They do this as a way of finding odd compilation flaws. Would Arch benefit from such technical rigor, or would it unnecessarily slow things down without producing much benefit?

Maybe... we do strongly encourage building in a clean chroot containing on base, base-devel and sudo. So two people building the same package should end up with the same result for any given point in time. Of course as we are a rolling distro, deps will change versions and so that the built packages may be slightly "different" at different times. Also, the devs and TUs all know how to make high quality packages or else they would not get the "job".

This is not to say that everything is perfect (if it was, we would not need a bug tracker). I think one of the benefits of a fixed release schedule over rolling release is that you can implement a change and all packages will have that change implemented for the next release. e.g. in Arch, man pages are still gradually moving from /usr/man to /usr/share/man. Many PKGBUILDs still use $startdir which is no longer recommended. Obviously, I think that benefit is not enough for me to switch!

lseubert wrote:

Allan wrote:
That can happen. Generally a vote is called and so a decision is made.
Is there any kind of formal governing document on such matters, or is there simply an informal vote? If it is informal, have there been calls for more structure? (I am guessing no, but I would like to be sure.)

There is formalities for the Trusted Users: http://dev.archlinux.org/~simo/TUbylaws.html

lseubert · 2009-08-08 18:27:15

jdhore wrote:

I believe it's extremely true. I think the reason arch has such an enthusiastic community is because it's a small(ish, compared to say Gentoo or Fedora or Ubuntu) community and everyone wants to see the best distro in history get even better.

Yeah, Arch does have a modestly sized community. However, what happens if it grows? Arch has been attracting of lot of media attention relative to its size for the past few years. Also, every now and then, Ladislav Bodnar over at DistroWatch.com revises his "Top Ten Distro List". What if he demotes, say, Gentoo or PC Linux OS, and replaces it with Arch? Suddenly, Arch might not be so small any more. How would the Arch community handle such growth? How should it handle such growth?

This is a bit of a opinionated question. Some people would say Arch innovates by using BSD-style init and rc.conf, some would say Arch innovates because of how crazy-easy PKGBUILDs are...Some would say these are minor things and Arch doesn't innovate anymore really than some other mainstream distros. I'm in the first camp because after using Debian for a few years, Arch's way of doing things seems much easier. Perhaps this didn't quite answer your question, but i don't think there's a "good" answer to this question.

Well, BSD-style init sort of isn't an innovation. BSD, and previous Unices, actually, innovated that one - Arch has the good sense to copy and improve. But I understand - there doesn't seem to be a good answer to this question. Arch mostly adheres to its principles, but it also innovates to a degree. What is the balance? And what should this be called? I guess I'll have to ponder this one further before writing it up.

I agree with this statement. The reason i believe there's little bickering is that people are here because they want to be here, not because they had no other choice which is the way a lot of other distro users are. For example, if you want a source-based distro, your only semi-viable option is Gentoo.

There are a few other source-based distros, but Gentoo is the big one - and it has struggled with problems lately. Interestingly, while pacbuilder isn't quite as sleek and powerful as emerge, it does provide similar functionality, and Arch PKGBUILD scripts are far more up to date than Gentoo. Arch users can enjoy most of the benefits of Gentoo, with more software currency and a pleasant community environment.

lseubert · 2009-08-08 18:40:06

klixon wrote:

Considering flamewars on the forums, I think the moderators deserve a big, fat pat on the back as well. The moment a thread tends to turn nasty, a mod shows up and gives fair warning to get the thread back on track. If that doesn't happen, the thread gets closed. This helps keep the community focussed on the issues that matter here and tends to keep trouble at a minimum.

Agreed, and I speak as one who got politely swatted a few times when first posting to Arch forums. Not that I'm naming names or anything. <cough> allan <cough>

I was surprised by this, but not offended. The moderation in these forums is swift - compliance with Arch netiquette guidelines is enforced - but I feel the moderators, while firm, are also fair and polite. This is the best sort of policing to have, and good policing can be a very good thing indeed. Like you say - it promotes focus and quashes trouble.

That said, it also requires moderators who are trustworthy and who use good judgment. The risk exists that over-policing can lead to censorship and the squashing of good, albeit rebellious ideas. And that can really lead to community frustration. The decision to strictly moderate brings benefits, but carries risks and entails a lot of work. It is definitely not the lazy, timid choice.

lseubert · 2009-08-08 19:00:49

Allan wrote:

lseubert wrote:
For example, recently Debian decided to compile each package twice, and verify that the md5sums of both packages were identical. They do this as a way of finding odd compilation flaws. Would Arch benefit from such technical rigor, or would it unnecessarily slow things down without producing much benefit?
Maybe... we do strongly encourage building in a clean chroot containing on base, base-devel and sudo. So two people building the same package should end up with the same result for any given point in time. Of course as we are a rolling distro, deps will change versions and so that the built packages may be slightly "different" at different times.

Well, I think the Debian double-compiled md5sum package check is run against packages that are compiled on their build machines, not the devs local machines. This is done as a sort of final check before releasing the package into whatever Debian repository it is slated for. So Debian doesn't have the concerns you mentioned, with slightly different versions due to changing libary packages, etc. over time. Still, two versions of the same package compiled on an Arch build machine should meet the md5sum test.

This is not to say that everything is perfect (if it was, we would not need a bug tracker). I think one of the benefits of a fixed release schedule over rolling release is that you can implement a change and all packages will have that change implemented for the next release. e.g. in Arch, man pages are still gradually moving from /usr/man to /usr/share/man. Many PKGBUILDs still use $startdir which is no longer recommended. Obviously, I think that benefit is not enough for me to switch!

Hmm, OK. Well, I assume that Arch Packaging Policy recommends that man pages be shifted over to /usr/share/man and that PKGBUILDs not use $startdir. If so, why do some Arch devs and TUs not follow their own written policies? And wouldn't consistency across the board, and strict adherence to the latest written Arch Packaging Policy, improve overall quality?

Debian, for example, uses lintian to verify incoming packages on the build machines to ensure that each incoming package strictly conforms to Debian policy. Debian devs can also verify this themselves by running lintian before uploading. Does Arch have anything similar? I don't think namcap is quite so extensive.

There is formalities for the Trusted Users: http://dev.archlinux.org/~simo/TUbylaws.html

Yeah, I found that one in my research. I dug around but couldn't find anything similar for Arch devs. OK, now I know. Thanks.

kriz · 2009-08-08 23:42:55

lseubert wrote:

OK, Ghost1227, noted. And thank you. If you wouldn't use the label "conservative" (which I don't mean in the political sense as used in the USA), what sort of label, if any, would you use? Arch does hew fairly closely to The Arch Way, but as you and Alan rightly point out, it changes over time. Is there a succinct word that could adequately describe this?

yeah, conservatism has stong political semantics...(negative connotations for me)
i would describe it with that acronym...
TACAAOBRFACCTATC -> the anti-circling-around aggreement of basic rules for a community constitution to advance together cooperatively

sry, that i couldn't bring the words in order to display a TACCO... beginning acronym

lseubert · 2009-08-09 00:23:00

kriz wrote:

yeah, conservatism has stong political semantics...(negative connotations for me)

Conservatism also means sticking with tradition and being resistant to change. That, as well as the political philosophy. And Arch does stick to "The Arch Way" pretty closely, making the behavior a type of conservatism.

Just an FYI for all you youngsters... 25, 30 years ago? Republicans and conservatives were the hip, cool, and up and coming thing. They were wicked smart, and they had fresh, innovative ideas - good ideas that worked. And most interestingly, conservatives back then took pride in being very polite, even whilst engaging in intellectual debate with their opponents. Young voters flocked to them. Things have really, really changed since then. Yeesh, have they ever changed. Kind of incredible how things change

sry, that i couldn't bring the words in order to display a TACCO... beginning acronym

TACO - The Arch Community Omnivores?

Mmm, nah. Doesn't sound cool enough to make into a T-shirt.

Sakurina · 2009-08-09 01:50:26

I'm pretty new to Arch, came in with a Mac + Debian background around last October, but after trying several distributions, I keep coming back to Arch due to its thriving and interesting community, as well as its overall philosophy.

Most of the answers so far have been spot on, so I might be rehashing a bit of them. I'll also refrain from answering questions about stuff I don't know anything about to save you the trouble.

lseubert wrote:

1. Despite its modest size, Arch has a very enthusiastic community, as evidenced by its internationalization projects, derivative distros, 3rd party repositories, Arch schwag, active forums and wiki, etc. Is this statement true or false, and if Arch does have an especially enthusiastic community, why?

True. People who use Arch need to get over an initial hump at installation to get everything set up as they like. Once they are set up, you don't need to know much more to get started contributing. If a package is missing from the repositories, building a PKGBUILD and submitting it to the AUR is incredibly easy to do. If you're a good writer, contributing information to the wiki is an easy way to give back to the community. If someone runs into an issue you ran into and posts about it here, you can reply to say what you did to fix it. I believe Arch users acknowledge how much of a resource the wiki and the AUR are, so they are more likely to contribute back to them to help their fellow Arch users.

2. Arch is deeply conservative, refusing to deviate from core principles. Still, within these bounds, Arch permits a wide array of innovation. Are these statements true or false, and why? If true, what are the pros and cons of such conservatism? If false, in what way has Arch deviated from its core principles or resisted innovation?

Arch is fairly conservative when it comes to its philosophy because it's a good philosophy. Arch caters to a niche market of Linux users who want a binary distribution with the simplicity and customizability of source-based distributions like CRUX and Gentoo.

I don't believe the developers behind Arch would change the philosophy just for the sake of getting more users; Arch users love the Arch way, and those who don't have a myriad of other respectable Linux distributions to choose from. I don't think anyone here opposes anyone who isn't an Arch user, and we realize Arch isn't for everyone, but for us, this is Linux heaven.

3. The Arch community is fairly harmonious, with little bickering, flamewars, forks or threats to fork, etc. Is this statement true or false, and why? (I have my own theory on the why of this one, and the answer in brief is... dogfood.)

The distribution lets users set it up exactly to their liking, so what is there to bicker about?

We tend to get along well with each other, because fundamentally we are all passionate about a Linux distribution we love, and we're more likely to spend time collectively expressing our superiority than to argue about silly things.

6. If only you too could lift cars over your head, would you be more cool, less cool, or as cool as Phrakture, and why? What if you could only lift cars over your head after eating a can of spinach and slamming a six pack of Red Bull? Then how cool/not cool would you be by comparison?

People can be cooler than Phrakture? This is news to me.

Allan · 2009-08-09 03:28:25

lseubert wrote:

Allan wrote:
This is not to say that everything is perfect (if it was, we would not need a bug tracker). I think one of the benefits of a fixed release schedule over rolling release is that you can implement a change and all packages will have that change implemented for the next release. e.g. in Arch, man pages are still gradually moving from /usr/man to /usr/share/man. Many PKGBUILDs still use $startdir which is no longer recommended. Obviously, I think that benefit is not enough for me to switch!
Hmm, OK. Well, I assume that Arch Packaging Policy recommends that man pages be shifted over to /usr/share/man and that PKGBUILDs not use $startdir. If so, why do some Arch devs and TUs not follow their own written policies? And wouldn't consistency across the board, and strict adherence to the latest written Arch Packaging Policy, improve overall quality?

No, you missed the point. There are still packages that have not been rebuilt since the policy change. We usually just rebuild as needed and not do a mass rebuild for a minor change in packaging policy.

AdrenalineJunky · 2009-08-09 05:15:22

well i'm not a terribly active poster around here, but i've done a good bit of lurking

lseubert wrote:

1. Despite its modest size, Arch has a very enthusiastic community, as evidenced by its internationalization projects, derivative distros, 3rd party repositories, Arch schwag, active forums and wiki, etc. Is this statement true or false, and if Arch does have an especially enthusiastic community, why?

i think there are quite a few reasons for this - one, as meantioned, is the sense of accomplishment about getting it installed, i also think another factor is that "the arch way" tends to appeal to either more advanced users, or users who have a strong desire to learn - the do it yourself kind of people, who tend to be able to and/or want to contribute more then the average person. and the final reason is the lack of constant bickering around here that you find so many places. people like being a part of something, but many places they'll get put off by the other people, doesn't seem like as much of a problem here.

3. The Arch community is fairly harmonious, with little bickering, flamewars, forks or threats to fork, etc. Is this statement true or false, and why? (I have my own theory on the why of this one, and the answer in brief is... dogfood.)

i would agree with this stament, i'm not sure why, but it is nice.

5. Hypothetical Scenario:
The Chakra Project successfully completes in alpha, beta, and release candidate Live CD testing, and releases its Live CD - version 1.0 - with the GUI easy Tribe installer, to wide acclaim - DistroWatch even raves about it. Suddenly, there are lots of new Arch users, who never went through the traditional Arch install process, who never "paid their Arch dues", and who are not nearly as clueful because they never RTFW. They are flooding IRC and webforums with really, uh, "basic" questions, and suggesting/demanding new features. How does the Arch community handle this abrupt change in its culture? Has it dealt with such culture shocks before?

i don't really see it being that big of a problem - normally you can tell when a group is hostile to basic questions even when they don't get alot of them, but people here seem to have a good balance, which kinda goes hand in hand with why arch is the way it is. from what i've seen there are plenty of people glad to point you in the right direction, but not rushing to hold your hand, people who can take the direction and figure it out on thier own will likely do fine and could become contributing members of the community themselves... people who really need thier hands held will be directed to the chakra project, because arch is not really about hand holding.

iphitus · 2009-08-09 10:50:25

4. I think what helps here is that the 'barrier to entry' for participating in Arch is incredibly low due to three things - a) AUR, b) PKGBUILDs are trivial, c) Documentation is detailed, examples are abundant.

The AUR provides a way for everyone to be developers. There's popular packages there maintained by users who only maintain a couple of packages of interest. Through comments and notification they can interact with users, discuss and improve packages. These small contributions often give rise to further contributions and a greater understanding of Arch - and then we get TU's and Devs.

5) Chakra scenario. I think we've already had it. In the last 2-3 years there's been a huge influx of Ubuntu users, and users who heard arch was "simple" (though they expected a different simple). Not all of them have stayed, but many have and learnt about Linux in the process* - which I reckon is very awesome. As a result of this influx I've found the documentation has improved phenomenally. One of Arch's biggest criticisms was once documentation - now it's a strength.

* I've learnt more about Linux using Arch than any other distro. I did an LFS before Arch, however it's so closely guided that it just ends up as continual copy paste. I actually did half of the LFS before I even knew how to copy paste under Linux.

Arch Linux

#1 2009-08-08 13:40:25

RFC: Queries about Arch culture and community

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Re: RFC: Queries about Arch culture and community

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Re: RFC: Queries about Arch culture and community

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Re: RFC: Queries about Arch culture and community

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Re: RFC: Queries about Arch culture and community

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Re: RFC: Queries about Arch culture and community

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Re: RFC: Queries about Arch culture and community

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Re: RFC: Queries about Arch culture and community

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Re: RFC: Queries about Arch culture and community

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Re: RFC: Queries about Arch culture and community

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Re: RFC: Queries about Arch culture and community

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Re: RFC: Queries about Arch culture and community

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Re: RFC: Queries about Arch culture and community

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Re: RFC: Queries about Arch culture and community

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Re: RFC: Queries about Arch culture and community

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Re: RFC: Queries about Arch culture and community

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Re: RFC: Queries about Arch culture and community

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Re: RFC: Queries about Arch culture and community

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Re: RFC: Queries about Arch culture and community

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Re: RFC: Queries about Arch culture and community

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Re: RFC: Queries about Arch culture and community

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Re: RFC: Queries about Arch culture and community

#25 2009-08-09 10:50:25

Re: RFC: Queries about Arch culture and community

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