All Arch-based Distributions

xiton · 2010-02-15 21:53:20

I was wondering if there was a list around or if someone could help generate a list of all of the Arch-based distributions that exist now.

Thanks!

fukawi2 · 2010-02-15 22:00:51

First hit in Google:
http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Arc … tributions

Last edited by fukawi2 (2010-02-15 22:01:07)

xiton · 2010-02-16 01:48:20

fukawi2 wrote:

First hit in Google:
http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Arc … tributions

Heh, yeah...sadly I found that right after I posted this. I figured I could find something netbook-based in there somewhere, but no luck so far.

Parter · 2010-02-16 03:18:33

If you're looking for something for netbooks just run a window manager(such as FluxBox) instead of GNOME or KDE. It's very light and fast and is perfect for netbooks.

jasonwryan · 2010-02-16 03:27:15

Parter wrote:

If you're looking for something for netbooks just run a window manager(such as FluxBox) instead of GNOME or KDE. It's very light and fast and is perfect for netbooks.

Absolutely agree. I first ran Openbox, and now dwm, on my EeePC and found both of them to be light, highly customizable and -most importantly- allow you total control about what you install on the machine...

I also posted some time ago (I think in the Openbox screenshot thread) that on a netbook it was pointless using a tiling WM - but, as is wont to happen - I was proven horribly wrong. Tiling WM + netbook is a killer combination...

xiton · 2010-02-16 05:46:41

Thanks for the info guys. I guess I'm a bit confused here. I was under the impression that netbook builds usually contained some sort of optimization for the Atom processor, SSD, and also booted faster (maybe with some Moblin-derived code?). If I can sort all this out, it will help me to choose and customize my own distribution. I notice using Moblin 2.1 and Ubuntu Netbook Remix really seems to boot extremely fast. What is causing that, and is it possible for me to use Arch and get the same if not better performance?

Parter · 2010-02-16 06:12:02

Actually ArchLinux can deliver much faster performance than Ubuntu Netbook Remix. Arch comes with very little to start with and you install only what you need unlike Ubuntu which comes with a lot and most of it you may not need. UNR(Ubuntu Netbook Remix) also uses a customized GNOME desktop manager which is very bloated and slow. With Arch you can setup Xfce which is much faster or you can just go for a window manager(Fluxbox) which will be even faster but you need to install you own apps(Arch has a very good list on the wiki).

As far as "optimization" goes. It isn't by much and using Arch will be even faster than UNR and their so-called "optimization". However if every millisecond counts I suggest google

pseudonomous · 2010-02-16 08:51:46

Arch doesn't do any of the fancy boot-time reducing tricks that Ubuntu or Moblin does, but neither does it start a bunch of potentially un-neccessary services by defualt; back before distros started optimizing for boot-time Arch was one of the fastedst booting systems, now, though, it's not as fast as Moblin, but it's still pretty darn fast. I doubt you'll have problems with boot time unless you run kde (I do, it takes about a minute from power on to fully loaded desktop, va. more like 15seconds to boot into fluxbux instead), but even then, it's really not an issue unless you are constantly turning your laptop on and off ... in which case suspend-to-ram is a better choice anyway.

Certain vendors, like dell, do optimize thier distros for "low power intel architecture", as I understand it (I may be quite wrong) this is more about optimizing for battery life vs. optimizing for performance. I don't think the standard Ubuntu netbook remix uses these optimizations, I don't know if Moblin does. I'm not aware of any other distro that might. Arch builds packages for the i686 architecture, most other distros target i586, so in theory Arch packages are more optimized for the atom processor (it's an i686 processor), in practice this makes very little difference. What does make a difference is that, with Arch, you explicitly enable all the services and applications that you want to auto-start, so you won't be running anything that you don't need to run, this allows the programs you DO want to run more access to system resources like processor time and memory.

As far as I know that only "distro" that does any sort of special optimizing for SSD usage is Solaris, and I doubt that it's a real great choice for a netbook. Arch installs tend to take up less hard drive space then distros like Ubuntu or Fedora though; since SSDs are commonly very small, you could, in a sense, view this as an "optimization". I personally only use 8.3G of Hard Disk space for my combined /,/usr,/var partition
and 13M of my boot partition, and I'm sure many would consider my system "bloated".

Another thing that the netbook oriented distros tend to do is provide custimized user interfaces supposedly better suited to netbooks than standard desktop environments, whereas arch tends to ship programs with default configurations. Many arch users choose to use heavily custimizable window managers instead of desktop environments; I prefer to use KDE, you might want to use Gnome or XFCE, there's a lot of choices available. It's quite possible that you will find something you like much better than what is provided by default on the "mainstream" distros; on the other hand, it will almost certainly take you longer to configure as well.

I don't think using Arch for performance is a good idea; you can probably tune any linux distro to run about as fast as Arch, you use Arch becuase you like to get down at your system internals and tweak things, becuase it has a great command line package manager, and becuase it's simple and, while things do occassionally break in Arch, it's generally much easier to track down and fix them than it is in a distro like Ubuntu where there are more Abstraction layers between the user and the operating system.

Hope this helps.

xiton · 2010-02-17 02:30:16

I really appreciate your in-depth explanation of Arch and other distros, pseudonomous. It really does clear up most of my questions regarding the optimizations and such. I haven't dug into Linux as much as I probably should, so I think I'll give Arch a try again. I'm sure the Wiki as well as other resources online will be enough to get it installed and have a basic setup going.

Thanks again everyone. Perhaps the next time I'm around I'll be posting from Arch.

Parter · 2010-02-17 07:39:37

The Arch Wiki is a great source of information about anything arch related(including setting up and installing certain things). I haven't needed a single external source.

Arch Linux

#1 2010-02-15 21:53:20

All Arch-based Distributions

#2 2010-02-15 22:00:51

Re: All Arch-based Distributions

#3 2010-02-16 01:48:20

Re: All Arch-based Distributions

#4 2010-02-16 03:18:33

Re: All Arch-based Distributions

#5 2010-02-16 03:27:15

Re: All Arch-based Distributions

#6 2010-02-16 05:46:41

Re: All Arch-based Distributions

#7 2010-02-16 06:12:02

Re: All Arch-based Distributions

#8 2010-02-16 08:51:46

Re: All Arch-based Distributions

#9 2010-02-17 02:30:16

Re: All Arch-based Distributions

#10 2010-02-17 07:39:37

Re: All Arch-based Distributions

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