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#1 2003-07-19 02:32:20

Jagged
Member
From: Blacksburg, VA
Registered: 2003-07-18
Posts: 153

My praise to AL

I'm sure this might get posted a few times here (plz no flames) but I just want to give a couple thumbs up and a hat off to the people working on AL.  I am a recent convert (just installed 0.5beta4 today) and am just ecstatic over what this has to offer in terms of potential.

I was introduced to linux with RH 7.1, kept with RH until about 9 was released.  Redhat did finefor me learning how the system worked, installing more than enough apps for me such that i didn't need to worry about tough dependency issues like installing K and whatnot.  Then RPM was my godsend (took me about 5 months before i even thought about compiling something from source).  Slackware 9 was my next step, I was looking for something diferent and a little less bloated than the RH distro.  Not anything against Slackware, but that just didn't fit my style.  About that time I heard from a friend of mine about Gentoo Linux.  That was an amazing distro, source-based install with custom optimization flags, portage trees, and the like.  The only problem was, I just couldn't get a few things I required to work on my system (XFree86 just wouldn't cooperate no matter which version I used).

So, after spending about 1 month stuck in a console with Gentoo, I fell back to RH doing a base install then working on only the things i needed from srpms (big PITA).  Then I went to linuxiso.org curiuous to see if there wasanything new i should know about.

It was there I found Arch Linux,  I had never heard anyone on the #linux channel I'm a regular in say anything about it, so i decided to read some quick docs, while I installed it on a temporary partition.

AL is love at first sight for me; the portage-like build system and installation makes it incredibly easy to install only what I need (and nothing more).  Not to mention the scripting is easy to build my own package database.

After my installation and everything, only 800 MB of hdd space was used for all the apps i ever use.  quite impressive considering to get the same effect form a redhat installer would take about 1.5-2.1 GB.  I was able to compile my own kernel (Gentoo is the only other distro I know that will let you do that on install) and maintain a small 850 kb kernel image.  Boot up into blackbox, browse around through some docs with mozilla, then I figured out how to use the 'other' package trees (unofficial and unstable).  It sure is nice not having to sit on my hands while my machine compiles from source (but yet still retain the option of doing so while maintaining the system package dependency structure).

I've since been recommending this distro to everyone I know who runs linux, and AL is my answer to the question "Should I install Slackware or Gentoo?"

Not too many people have heard of this distrobution, but I'm sure with some word of mouth and a little bit of visibility it can become quite popular.

I'm done with my raving, again a big thank you to the developers of this distrobution, I doubt I'll be using any other distro's for a long while smile


-Jagged


Nkawtg...n!

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#2 2003-07-19 04:18:44

sarah31
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From: Middle of Canada
Registered: 2002-08-20
Posts: 2,975
Website

Re: My praise to AL

almost the same path i took to get here last august. with some varation. haven't even tried another distro since nor have i wanted to.

welcome aboard jagged and i hope that you stay a LONG while:)


AKA uknowme

I am not your friend

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#3 2003-07-20 01:09:10

jlvsimoes
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From: portugal
Registered: 2002-12-23
Posts: 392
Website

Re: My praise to AL

haven't even tried another distro since nor have i wanted to.
my fealings are the same


-----BEGIN GEEK CODE BLOCK-----
Version: 3.1
GU/ d- s: a- C L U P+ L+++ E--- W+
N 0+ K- W-- !O !M V-- PS+ PE- V++ PGP T 5 Z+ R* TV+ B+
DI-- D- G-- e-- h! r++ z+ z*
------END GEEK CODE BLOCK------

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#4 2003-07-20 18:38:28

dariball
Member
From: Germany - Frankfurt
Registered: 2002-10-20
Posts: 118
Website

Re: My praise to AL

i think this is not distro specific... it's because CRUX and AL use the dev-filesystem.

but u can also access the devices through /dev/hdX, too...


nothing,
maybe I have a perfect signature _someday_

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#5 2003-07-21 22:42:39

scottro
Member
From: NYC
Registered: 2002-10-11
Posts: 466
Website

Re: My praise to AL

Possibly because of the timing, Arch gets compared to Gentoo rather frequently.

This weekend, being bored, I installed Deb--I thought to myself, ah, this is probably more like Arch--binary packaging system, that, unlike RPMS, works rather well.

For me, I recommend Arch because it can be installed and maintained very quickly.  While the package base is still small, it has almost everything I need, and it was pretty easy to make packages for most of the other things that I wanted.


Scott

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#6 2003-07-23 18:08:19

Jagged
Member
From: Blacksburg, VA
Registered: 2003-07-18
Posts: 153

Re: My praise to AL

I just found something that made my day:

/etc/makepkg.conf and makeworld

I am now recompiling all my packages with some more aggressive optimizations (of course im doing it in a chroot inside of a copy of my current install).

-march=i686 -O3 -pipe -fomit-frame-pointer -funroll-loops -fforce-addr -finline-functions -falign-functions=16 -falign-labels=1 -falign-loops=16 -falign-jumps=16 -fprefetch-loop-arrays

i'll be able to report back on this in a couple days to see how the 'improved' packages are smile.

Could you not use the same method to cross-compile for other platforms?


Nkawtg...n!

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#7 2003-07-23 19:41:37

sarah31
Member
From: Middle of Canada
Registered: 2002-08-20
Posts: 2,975
Website

Re: My praise to AL

yes but it is not as easy as just changing the make CFLAGS. many apps require specific configure option if you are compiling them on the nontarget platform (ie compiling i586 packages on a i686 processor)

another thing...carefull with compiling somethings with -O3. some stuff just doesn't work. others may be buggy. i know many people who have had some bad luck with -O3. sometimes it is just not worth the extremely mild performance gain.


AKA uknowme

I am not your friend

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#8 2003-07-23 20:59:23

Jagged
Member
From: Blacksburg, VA
Registered: 2003-07-18
Posts: 153

Re: My praise to AL

ehh, it's something to do smile and all was going well until the perl compilation fubar'ed on me =


Nkawtg...n!

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#9 2003-07-23 22:18:42

sarah31
Member
From: Middle of Canada
Registered: 2002-08-20
Posts: 2,975
Website

Re: My praise to AL

heh perl can be a trouble maker. it was when i was trying to compile i586 packages on my i686. it took me a day or so to find how to trick it to compile for i586.


AKA uknowme

I am not your friend

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